Woolly Mutts

Time it was

Remember Bookends?  Simon and Garfunkel?  Such a lovely melody and I've had it playing in my head today.  July 1 already.  Summer used to mean trips up north and hours by the backyard pool, being home when the street lights came on.  Good memories.  Times change and new memories are made. It's all good.

The tall tiger lilies are blooming in a riot of orange and it's easy to be enchanted by them.  Despite the crazy weather this year the gardens are lush and happy as can be.

So, its been a week.  All this week AH has had to make the 2 plus hour communte into the city for a special training workshop.  He leaves before 6am and isn't generally home before 7:30 or 8:00 pm.  Today is the last day, thank goodness.  He's draggin.  Sunday, as he ran some last minute errands the Accent gave up the ghost in the Target parking lot.  Dead battery.  Haste was made to get a new one so I was not left without transportation all week.  Crisis level lowered to green. Yay.

Monday night the cat who needs 2 pills a day for her hyperthyroidism decided it was no longer convenient for her to take the pill with food, even the gourmet stuff and it became a two person job with one holding and the other stuffing the pill down her throat.  Strangely, she doesn't seem to mind much.  However, with Tom leaving so early she is missing her morning pill.  Not such a big deal in the scheme of things. I'm sure she's happy about it.

I've been having what I thought was shoulder pain for several weeks and finally got to the doctor to discover that it is not my shoulder, but my neck.  Bulging discs...c4 and either 3 or 5 or maybe 407...I don't remember.  He, my fav Doc Everson, is somewhat of an expert of this having just recovered from surgery for the same thing, though his was much worse.  Yah...not really wanting to consider surgery.  So, for a week I pop the Aleve and an occasional muscle relaxer which takes the pain completely away as well as puts me right to sleep.   Or, maybe puts me to sleep so I don't know I'm in pain.  Either way it works for me.  No lifting (especially Miss C.  Luckily I can get down to her level and have her come to me.) or straining my neck. Had to get rid of my admittedly VERY heavy purse (which I loved) and spent not a little time trying to decide what I really needed with me all the time and what I could leave at home.  Grr.  I go back in a week and we'll talk about some therapies that may include a visit to a chiropractor and/or physical therapy.  Sigh.  Could always be worse.

So, to perk myself up I went in for a hair cut and had a feather put in my hair. I do love a feather.

 You can wash them, curl them, brush them...just treat them like hair.  I am loving this like crazy.  I've found a few sellers on etsy where I could get a whole bunch of colors and do it myself.  This has brightened my day like a double rainbow!  One little feather and I feel all sassy.  Go figure.

Enjoy your long weekend and be safe with all the exploding things. 

 

June

Tomorrow is the first day of summer the solstice and longest day of the year.  It's a good day; a good thing to celebrate, this warm portion of our years cycle.  I was not put together for summer.  It's the only thing that makes any sense.  While others are basking on beaches and sipping margaritas, I long to be standing on the rocky shore of Lake Superior hearing the waves crash and covering my ears from the cold.  I'd blame my hot flashes, but truth is I've always been this way.  I'm wired for cold and believe me I know that I am in the minority here. 

Today the humidity is insane.  When I returned from the grocery store I couldn't get my jeans off fast enough and as I passed the mirror I tried not to scream just a little bit at the image of my bush of hair.  Curly hair is a blessing and a curse, I tell you.  However, I decided to take a breath, cool off and take the camera out into the garden and find the things I do love about this time of year.  Turns out that there are many.

I love how the older tree roots pop up through the grass and create interesting shapes and nice places for moss to grow and ant to find homes.

Milkweeds, which we grow to provide homes for the monarch butterflies, grow at a ridiculous pace.  Inches a day, I think.  They are trying to grow in places that I mow and each week I mow down a six inch plant.  Crazy and amazing at the same time.

I love how the delicate little green bean shoots twine around the supports. Some of them got a little trampled last week when an inexperienced meter reader (who should not have come at all) showed up to read the meter, saw Cooper, and vaulted onto the beans in the veggie garden to seek safety.  He was sorry.  So was Cooper. 

The geraniums in the garden gate pot are such a vibrant pink that they almost glow.

I love the quiet chaos of the back flower bed.  It is safe place for the bunnies and chipmunks to run for shelter when the dogs are let out. 

While the Jizo peacefully stands watch.

And finally, this little jack-in-the-pulpit who is sheltered from the rain by his own strong leaves.  I love how nature provides.

I did very little this past weekend except read The Hunger Games.  I stopped listening to it on audio at the 3rd disk when I couldn't handle the narrator anymore.  Reading it was quicker and so much better.  Fantastic book!  I have begun the second in the series, Catching Fire, and am now under its spell.  Love when I find such good reads!

Morning in the garden

It is the Monday after a week long staycation and AH and I are struggling with re-entry to the world of normal. For seven days we slept late, went to bed late and did whatever we pleased.  It was good.  Mostly.    The intention of the week was to get the yard and gardens in shape and make some progress on turning the hole in the ground into a pond.  Accomplishments were made, but the weather was anything but cooperative.  It was either 90 degrees and humid enough to wring your clothes out after working, or raining.  Poor AH did his best, but it was just so hot.  Today, on the other hand, I have just turned the heat on.  Spring has got a bee in her bonnet this year and is taking it out on us.  All in favor of a nice happy medium raise your hand. ......  Thank you, I believe we have a majority.  Spring; take note.

I love the garden in the morning.  The way the shadows fall across the leaves is so beautiful.

Not the kindest light for picture taking though. 

Yesterday AH put in this path through the Jizo garden. 

I just love it.  It will make the garden so much more accessible, especially when weeding (of which there is still much to do.)  Everything is SO green right now.  I guess we can thank the heat and rain for that.

This is the veggie garden.  It got a major overhaul this week.  We have gourds, green beans, tomatoes, peppers and sunflowers.  There are also spaces to be used as a nurse garden for the plants being displaced by pond growth. 

One of the loveliest things about my morning walks in the gardens is how each growing thing changes, sometimes so quickly.  New blooms on the bushes great me each day.  Today I was fascinated by the pineapple candles on the pine tree.  In a few weeks they will be fresh new needles.  Isn't nature wonderful? 

We have a few new visitors to the garden this year.  Red Wing Blackbirds have taken over the trees between our yard and our closest neighbor.  They are a noisy, busy bunch.  We also have a murder of crows in the trees behind the house.  Samten has a particular hate for the crows and I swear they know it and tease him purposefully.    Yearly regulars include gold finch, house finch, cardinals, robbins, grackles, starlings, cowbirds, chickadees and many types of sparrows.  Woodpeckers have made an impressive design on the side of one of the pine trees and Jenny Wren, whose voice is the loudest among them, has come back to take residence in the tail of the metal dragonfly.  During our Mother's Day bonfire we were treated to a visit from the bats.  All are welcome and greatly enjoyed.

I hope this Monday brings you something wonderful!

Garden evolution

Once upon a time, in the carefree glory years of my children's youth, we had an above ground pool with a fenced deck.  Man-oh-man the good times we had in that pool.  It wasn't huge or fancy, but it was big enough to make summer a grand time.  Years past, kids fledged from the nest and the pool become a lot of work without much benefit so down it came.  Oh sad day.  The deck was dismantled, wood stored away for a different project.  What that project was changed several times.  The wood storage also changed a few times.  A pond was created where the pool once lived and all was well with the world.

Also, during those carefree days, there was a garden.  My next door neighbor called it "Holly's Fort Garden".  I cut down trees....LOTS...of trees from the creek bed out back and made a fence around the garden.  It was lovely.  AH and I had our second wedding (story for another time) under the arch of its entry.  Then the trees behind it grew large and shaded all the plants intended for sun.   Years of wind and weather beat the fence pieces into broken pieces and eventually the garden was dismantled, plants moved and a general eye sore grew in its place.  The pond was in a state of flux and rocks, etc, were flung into the old garden space.  Milkweed pod plants grew in profusion and the monarch butterflies came to live there.  It was ugly, but it was butterfly home so we left it alone.  I wish I had before pictures, but maybe I don't.  It was a little embarrassing all the junk we found in the spot when AH began clearing it. 

This past weekend magic happened.  It might not seem like it to the average observer, but the end result has made me so happy that it certainly feels like magic.  That poor old garden space and the leftover pool deck wood came together to create this:

That giant hole in the foreground will be the new pond and we will be able to lounge upon that deck and enjoy it.  It still needs a little landscaping.

And there is still some junk that needs to find its way to the curb, but oh joy, oh joy.  It's also quite close to the fire pit, which is a bonus.

The afternoons will bring lovely shade to this spot.  Three cheers and a loud HURRAH for AH and all his hard work.  I can hardly wait for the weather to get warm enough to spiff it up with some potted plants.

I have been feeling crumby all week.  Congestion headache that has now traveled south to a cough.  I have felt mighty guilty resting while AH worked but the end result has completed brightened my day.  Mwah! !♥♥♥

Holly's philosophy on weeds.

There aren't any.  There are just displaced plants.

Before I go into any more detail on my weed philosophy, let me say that I'm a nobody in the field of botany.  My brother-in-law is a Master Gardener and while he practices his green art with as few chemicals as possible, his weed philosophy is even more succinct than mine; kill them.  I also live in an area where what goes on in my yard is in no way censored.  There is no neighborhood association that tells me what I can or cannot do in my yard.  I do have one neighbor that spends some serious dinero to have lots and lots of very bad chemicals used to insure sparkling green grass.  I figure that if my dandelion seeds float in that direction they might just cancel out some of the chemical drift coming our way. Ying and yang of the gardening process. But I digress. (Surprise!)

So, weeds.  What classifies them as such?  They live in places we don't want them.  Now I've got garden areas that I would prefer the grass and dandies avoid and I yank them out (with whispered apology).  Otherwise, whatever decides to come up I welcome. Anyone who has acquaintance with me knows how I love the dandies.  I also adore wild violets, clover, pussy toes, creeping charlie, just to name a few and all reside in my yard. I just can't wrap my head around the "if it isn't dark green and a straight blade of grass it has to die" mentality.  It's like plant racial profiling.  "Whoops, yellow, you're outta here. Purple, take a hike." And, if that isn't bad enough, horrible chemicals are sprayed or spread that seep into ground water, or get picked up on the feet of small animals (and pets, btw) and sicken and kill them as well.

However, there are always exceptions.

 

In my area it is these guys.  Garlic Mustard.  Bad dudes, the GM.  Around here they are referred to as alien plants and are growing in such profusion that they are wiping out many native plants.  We have a creek bed in our back yard and it's full of them.  They are more than just plants growing where we don't want them; they doing environmental damage as they do so.  Other parts of the country struggle with other types of alien plants. Sad, but true.  Again with the ying and yang.  Dark and light in all things.

I believe that all things that live on this planet are connected and intended to be so. Plants, insects, animals, birds, fish all sharing and in harmony with each other.  Or, at least, that is the dream.  Certainly, that is my dream. 

This is the time of the year I fall in love with my yard all over again.

**The new banner picture of the dandelion was taken by Amazing Husband.  I never knew all those little spirally tendrils were there, did you?

The Amaryllis that refused to die. (And I gave it my best effort.)

Behold the hearty Amaryllis, purchased in November at Target for glorious holiday season blooming.  Except it would not bloom....or die.  We purchased another one for my mother and it did exactly as advertised, though we did take in to account that my mother kept her apartment at a temperature somewhere between a hot house and a sauna.  Our amaryllis came up out of its loam, looked all green and lovely and then that was it.  All kinds of green and no glorious red.  Amazing Husband put it in a sunny window, lay a heating pad beneath (which the cats thought was solely for their benefit) and checked on it frequently.  All winter and spring it kept up the green, continued to refuse to die, and still did not give us the blooms.  Summer came and AH decided to put it outside with the rest of the outdoor plants, in partial sun on the deck.  Yesterday we awoke to the above picture.  Two big, glorious blooms.  A little lower on the plant than we were accustomed to, but no one here is complaining.  We are going to have to do some research as to what we do with it now, since it seems determined to be a regular part of our plantage.  Guess it just goes to show that you should never give up on anything.

 

Sweet Pea sweater is completed and blocking.  I am a new, HUGE fan of the mattress stitch for seaming.  The seams on this thing are perfection.  I am not, however, thrilled with the way the collar lays, which is why I decided to block it.  For one thing I twisted one of the garter stitches right at the front collar edge, so it's right out there in front really easy to see (for me).  I'm going to wait until it dries and then maybe knit another collar.  Or not.  I'm also not happy with the way the whole collar lays around the neck, but it does look exactly like the one in the picture so I'm probably just being picky.  I'll keep you posted.  Now on to the hat! 

Today's blog post is brought to you by the color purple.

*those of you that read these posts via facebook might want to head over here since I'm pretty sure fb is gonna reject the size of this one.

There is a storm coming.  The dogs are restless and the birds have changed their song from happy to slightly alarmed.  It's nicely overcast so I decided to head out into the gardens and see what was blooming before the wind and rain blow things around.  Lots and lots of purple.

This amazing delphinium is blooming near the back door fence.  It's poker straight, though it probably won't stay that way after the storm blows through.  Only nature could get that mixture of blue and purple so divinely perfect.

Near the old pond is this tiny forest of Veronica.  It's getting a bit lost among the bee balm so after it finishes blooming I might need to move it someplace where it can be the star of its own show.

The very last of the purple iris.  This one looks like it got munched by someone.  The iris were especially wonderful this year.

Spiderwort.  These are volunteers to the center garden that I don't have the heart to pull out.  They stand so tall above the lilies with those burst of purple blooms. 

Purple petunias in a pot on the deck.  Who does not love a petunia?  Happily blooming away all summer long.

My fingers after holding the spiderwort still to get an unmoving shot.

Looking forward to that first clap of thunder!!!

A garden is a lovesome thing.

We are having a Spring like none I can recall for years.  Glorious green is everywhere we look.  It is at this time of the year that I am especially pleased to living in a home for as many years as we have been. (30...I think.) The gardens have matured and changed, plants re-arranged like furniture in a favorite room.  We spent most of the weekend outdoors mowing, raking, making wintered gardens smile again.  We have almost two acres.  The back of the property is against a wooded creek bed and the west side is a large field.  All the land gives us so many opportunities to create different gardens and areas to enjoy.

I am particularly pleased with this garden and the space beneath the bench. 

The Sweet Woodruff, Lungwort, Catmint, and Hostas have grown together in a carpet of loveliness that makes me feel very "old English garden".  It's such a joy to sit on the bench and be surrounded by beauty.

Cooper especially enjoys the days spent outdoors when the whole "pack" is together.  He is growing a bit gray on the muzzle of late.  I guess gray hair happens to the best of us.

Over near the house in a shady area beneath a bush the Jack-in-the-pulpits are having a good year.  This is one of five and each one is a little different than the others. 

In yet another garden is a large Lady's Mantle.  I am always captivated by their ruffled leaves that draw the rain and dew down to the center creating small drinking fountains for insects and birds.  How perfectly nature takes care of itself.

I spent some time this morning trying to get a shot of the play of the light on Buddha's face. 

He resides on a pedestal among the artemisia and fern beneath the crab apple tree.  The lady's mantle pictured above is right at the base of his pedestal.  He adds to the general atmosphere of peace. Remember that you can click on any of the pics to see them larger.

Speaking of gardening, if you are on facebook, have you discovered the wonders of Farm Town?  Warning: it's a little addictive.  In a good way. :-) 

Spring to Summer in 2.5 days.

It's been a rather tough week here in Muttville.  I'm so dysfunctional that it's tough for me to admit that things have been tough.  A dear friend is near the end of a long battle with cancer, some family health issues, a little of this and a little of that.  Nothing earth shattering, but enough to keep my brain working on other things than blog posts.  Thanks for being patient.

As the title suggests, the weather here went from rainy and chilly to warm and sunny (high of 78 yesterday) in a very short period of time.  I am no fan of summer, so this does not bode well for me, but the warmth  has jump started the garden and Amazing Husband has been making some great progress toward our garden goals.  We even have a few little blooming faces to cheer us. 

The big project for this year is enlarging the pond.  Our first pond was a beginner pond, just to see if it was really something we would enjoy enough to make worth all the work.  We found that we did and then some.  The wildlife that it draws is so entertaining.  We can spend hours watching the fish and toads interact with each other.  (Go ahead and say it; we're a little loopy.)  Some  sad mishaps over the winter months brought about the death of several of the fish and the survivor is now residing in it's own fish tank on our back deck.  A new, larger, more exciting pond is in it's future.  Excavation has begun.  The dream is to build a deck on the northwest side that protrudes a couple of feet over the pond so we will have prime observation.  That might not happen until next year, though. Time will tell.

In other garden news, the veggie garden is being revamped to be a cutting garden and nursery area for plants that need to be moved during the pond expansion.  Since we won't need to keep the hungry Peter Rabbits away, the chicken wire fence came down and the soil is almost ready to be planted.  Amazing Husband has some seeds started in our little basement greenhouse, which really are flower seedlings and not a home based illegal money maker.  (Weed, baby.)  This has been a long standing family joke every since AH began starting plants in the basement under the grow lights.  Come to think of it, we could use the extra money.  (just kidding)

   My favorite spot in the yard is the hammock.  Late yesterday afternoon AH went out to put it up and came back in a little sooner than I expected.  Evidently (and I really wish I had been there for this.  GREAT photo op.) he hung the hammock on the existing ropes, got on to try it out, and ended up flat on his back on the ground after the old ropes gave way.  He walked away unharmed and new ropes have been installed.  The view from the hammock up into the pine boughs could not be more perfect.

  So, on to a new week.  Earth Day is tomorrow.  Get out there and love her.  You'll never regret it.