Independence Day Parade

Early Morning, July Fourth

COMING SOON: Orleans Fourth of July Parade highlights!!

Freedom

And so here we are, the Fourth of July. It's the big celebration that kicks off each summer. Parades have always been a part of the day for me, having grown-up in an Elks Club family. I remember those humid New Jersey mornings when we'd rendezvous with family and friends to stake out some hopefully-shady spot along the parade route, where we would sit...and stand...and pace as kids do, impatient until the first police car siren was heard, until we caught the first glimpse of that flag waving in the morning light. The crash of cymbals, the drum cadence, the blare of trumpets, the thrilling sound of marching steps in unison. Of course, I never realized any military implications in all that, though it seems so crystal clear today.

Things are simple when you're a kid...there's balloons and bands and funny cars and clowns (I've never been afraid of them, despite Tim Curry and Steven King's best efforts), fire trucks and who knows what else. No doubt it was a thrilling couple of days, usually with any number of opportunities to see the fireworks displays of various townships and organizations, outdoor concerts on park greens, and all the picnicking or barbecuing with family and friends.

We'll be working through some of this holiday weekend, but hopefully there'll be time to squeeze a few of those traditions in here and there--I think our schedule will work out nicely to allow that. I'll try to share some of those moments with you, as time allows. And I've made a switch with the playlist for the weekend, choosing a few things that feel appropriate to the occasion.

Meanwhile, the garden along the fence is offering its own version of a spectacular fireworks display, though it is a bit more slow-motion than the traditional skyrockets. Today, this second rudbeckia flower opened...completely different from the first, but bursting forth from the same clump.

Not far away, a tall pink garden phlox has opened its first sweetly-scented flower, and more are swelling, their bright pink petals slowly spiralling open. A little lower, the small yellow flowers of coreopsis echo the shapes of the stately Shasta Daisies, while brilliant orange and red daylilies airburst all along the fence.


I hope your weekend brings you oppor tunities to explore your world, like this young cowbird who was off on his own, foraging in the lawn this morning.

'Tis true, Independence Day is an American holiday, celebrating the birth of a new nation on the shores of a New World two hundred and thirty-two years ago today. Although this sounds quite old by human standards, when held against the yardstick of the other nations of the world, we are quite young, a whippersnapper, really...and perhaps can be forgiven for some of the brashness we have shown over the years. It's also possible we ought to be sent to reform school. I feel myself scraping along the side of politics and that's absolutely not where I want to go.

Independence Day is more than a birthday party. It's a celebration of freedom, though typically, we don't ever seem very certain what that should mean, exactly. We say all men are created equal, but we don't always act like that's true. We believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness...within certain guidelines, of course, as to what Happiness might actually be, and who's Life we're talking about, and it's quite possible Liberty's just a pretty statue in the harbor.

Silly homo sapiens, thinking we have all the big ideas and the answers.

Wherever you are on this big planet of ours, I hope today finds you with a nice sunny day, or at least partly so. One that teases, its big green finger beckoning, enticing you out the front door, down the street or through the woods, or along some glistening shore...into some place that's green...where you can get a glimpse of what freedom really looks like: through the soaring birds in the air, or the squirrels and chipmunks who dart and dash about, fish who break the surface of the water, the fluttering butterfly, a basking reptile. Take a deep breathe and try to put yourself in their lack of shoes for a few minutes.

"Freedom ain't a state like Maine or Virginia
Freedom ain't across some county line
Freedom is a flame that burns within ya
Freedom's in the state of mind!"
- Shenandoah, Gary Geld and Larry Udell,

An Award-Winning Day

This first snapdragon is now blooming top to bottom. In fact, the lowest blooms have already left the stem to flutter down to the garden floor. And the scent is fun, too--like red Kool-Aid!!


I'm really pleased with my decision to plant all the portulaca in a single raised patch together around the base of my garden sign. Aren't they the merriest bunch of blossoms?

I was a little disappointed that my fantastic sunflower has begun to loose a few of its petals. The three or four at the top of the flower have flown away on the breeze, leaving a bit of a bald spot. I had hoped it would still look kind of perfect when Kelly and Carol arrived today.

As a nice substitute, the first of the rudbeckia flowers quietly opened this morning.


So great to see "the girls" today! We had a fun tour around the garden, before heading off for a Dairy Queen lunch and a rousing round of mini-golf (we had originally thought to do a brewery tour/tasting...but perhaps for the best, we discovered the brewery only offers such things on Tuesdays and Saturdays...ah, well).

The game was fun, the course challenging and we merrily critiqued the minimal landscaping, though we found a few delightful roses to sniff along the way, too.

I had the highest score, so as the winner (ha ha...) I bought the ice cream after!!

What wonderful friends they are, and I thought so even before they brought this pot of dwarf lilies as a "garden warming" gift, since they knew we were a little shy on lilies this season!

I'm especially pleased with the lily variety's name, Tiny Hope, which makes my spirit soar a little. Their red flowers should be opening up some time very soon, and I know they'll be just fantastic.

Of course, the challenge was finding the right home for them in a garden already well-filled with plants. Still, a gardener can always find room for something more when he puts his mind to it, and I decided these guys would look terrific in the lamp post garden, which at the moment is still sort of sparse, with a bunch of late seedlings only just coming into their own.


After returning home, I was inside, away from the late afternoon heat and discovering that my feet were a little sunburned (dang Tevas!), as I surfed a few of my favorite blogs.

To my surprise and delight, The Midnight Garden has been given an art blog award by the funny and talented (and thrifty) Jenn of Of Cabbages and Kings and also The Thrift Shop Romantic.

Clearly she had the gnomes in mind. They join me in thanking her for this honor and will probably try to crowd me away from the microphone to give their oft-practiced acceptance speeches, as the orchestra music swells to urge us off into the wings.

This lovely award was originally created by Arte Y Pico and is dedicated to those who

"nourish and enrich the spirit and creativity. They see dedication, creativity, camaraderie, joy and above all, ART - much art. I wish that this prize is entertaining to all bloggers who share this space and enrich it a little more each day."

Aww, shucks, folks, I'm speechless.

Except, now, I have the privilege of introducing you to a few other bloggers of note, who are equally, if not moreso, deserving of such an award:

* Abe Lincoln of My Bird Blog, who's art is easy to find in the brilliant images he captures of the birds who make his part of the world a little more delight.

* Joe, of Hooky Beach, who sees beauty and interest in every corner of his daily life and also seems to always have just the right words at hand for any occasion.

* Curt, at While Walking Duncan, whose magical eyes find beauty and wonder everywhere they look, not least in the loving eyes and playful demeanor of his beautiful red-headed traveling companion.

Also, while this last may technically not be eligible, being a private blog, I offer a well-deserved shout-out to Cooper at Nico's Niche. Coop's art is made of words, but his true media are his sweet family.

Thanks, again, Jenn, for the honor, and the opportunity.

Invasions

At first I took it for the wet roof of a house, but one flash following another showed it to be in swift rolling movement. It was an elusive vision—a moment of bewildering darkness, and then, in a flash like daylight, the red masses of the Orphanage near the crest of the hill, the green tops of the pine trees, and this problematical object came out clear and sharp and bright.

And this Thing I saw! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder. A flash, and it came out vividly, heeling over one way with two feet in the air, to vanish and reappear almost instantly as it seemed, with the next flash, a hundred yards nearer.

Well, no. Actually, that's just the water tower here in Harwich, and those words are worshipfully lifted from Chapter 10 of H.G. Wells' sci-fi classic, The War of the Worlds, always good summertime reading. But with July 4th coming this Friday, we on the Cape are dealing with an invasion of another sort.

It's true that ever-rising gas prices have had their impact on the sheer numbers of people visiting Cape Cod, but things are still busier here than a few weeks ago. There's longer lines in stores and more cars on the highway. Wailing sirens fill the air, both day and night.

We haven't lived this far up-Cape before, so it's a little hard to judge just how much the economy has impacted things, but you can see the difference at the restaurant. We've not yet seen those crazy nights where there's a waiting line for hours. Surely that will come soon, though...probably as soon as the weekend.

Still, the other day, as I waited at the end of the on-ramp to the highway while a long line of cars passed by, a red car came dashing up beside me, doing close to 50, slipped around me and inserted itself into the flow of traffic, expertly fitting between two cars there was barely enough room to fit. It seemed carefully choreographed, but it was clear to me: the idiots always find the money to go away on vacation. If only they could leave their fast-paced lives behind them, instead of treating a day at the beach like another business appointment.

Here's some of those lychnis flowers I keep talking about. I've got a few of these plants now and I see plenty in the neighborhood. They are one of those plants that likes to sow itself around with impunity and so once you've got one, you seemingly always have it.

I wanted to show off this pair of toymaker gnomes /elves, who are nestled into a bed of holly along the walk into our backyard. Granny painted and fired these at her ceramics class in Florida not too many years ago, shipping first one and then the other to us. They've stood sentinel in several of our gardens now.

My most sincere thanks to all of you, who have expressed your concern, offered your comforting words, good wishes, thoughts and prayers to us and for Granny. We wouldn't be at all surprised to see her make a good recovery from this--that's just the kind of person she's always shown herself to be--but it's become clear this week that it will be perhaps a bigger challenge than she's faced previously.

Dad's flying down there tomorrow and I have no doubt that the sight of her Number One Son's smiling face and the warmth of his hand in hers will go a long way toward bolstering her spirits.

Here's one of those spectacular shasta daisies, about as tall as the top rail of the fence. Others are even taller. More of them open each day and some of them are showing lots of side shoots, so we should see a nice, long-ish show from them this year.

Also notable here is the fly who's doing some pollinator work on the daisy. Notable because these are the pollinators I'm seeing most in the garden this year. There have been some of those round black and yellow bumblebees, though none I've yet managed to photograph...and honestly, they were mostly brought to the yard by the sweet smell of honeysuckle and took little interest in the rest of the border.

I haven't seen a single honeybee this year.


The zucchini seedlings are now almost all sprouted and doing pretty nicely, completing the trio of plants which comprise the Three Sisters garden. I look forward to watching them trail and ramble around, covering the ground and trying to take over.

A warning to you all: now's the time to arrange to rent a guard dog for your front yard, to fortify the locks on your doors, or boost your virus protection: one way or the other, I suspect I'll be trying to sneak great sacks of the slender green vegetables into your life come August.

Here's that yellow rose, now fully in bloom. I still can't quite fathom that the Victorians designated this flower to represent jealousy (did they forget the whole "green with envy" thing? Or did we come to that notion later, when money became so very important?), although I suppose, if you have it growing so delightfully in your yard, there's a possibility your lesser gardening neighbors could hate you for it.

Em and I saw a hawk (I'm pretty sure it was a hawk, anyway, but considering the speed with which everything was happening, I suppose I ought not rule out an osprey) down at the end of Not Wisteria Lane last night, stirring up trouble with a host of smaller birds, who were all ganging up to drive him away from their homes and young ones. Troubling for all those other birds, but still, hawks are so darned cool to see close up, and this one was not far overhead. Of course, the camera was far behind me, back at the house.

Obviously, I did no posting last evening--jeez, I gotta take a break sometime. I did manage to get a little weeding done and edged the beds in advance of Kelly and Carol's visit later today, but I was also on the phone with Mom and Dad for a while and the day's heat lingered into the evening. It took only a minor camera battery SNAFU to encourage me to check email, surf some blogs and then to YouTube (we can make anything a verb, eh?)for a little while instead, before heading off to bed.

Here's another look at the ever-lovely verbena bonariensis, soaring over the rest of the garden bed. Woo hoo...is that a pretty color or what?

Some Days Are Fine, Some A Little Bit Harder

Last night, we were having some steady breezes, easily little gusts without the power to do more than stir the treetops, the leaves' whispers rising and falling in the dark. It's the sort of sound that tells you that there's probably some rain coming...though it continued to not arrive for the longest time. Still the sound of the trees is a soothing one, and the breezes stirred the air and seemed to push away some of the day's humidity, though it was still a warm enough night to sleep atop covers.

Very early this morning, I woke up long enough to realize that soft wooshing sound had changed a little...the difference between leaves rustling and rain washing the leaves of everything in the garden, soaking into the earth, bringing strength to seedlings recently transplanted. It too, was a good sound, and with the cat snuggled against my legs, I settled back against my pillows to sleep a little longer.

When I went out into the garden a little later with my coffee, there was plenty to celebrate. This first snapdragon, which I'd thought to be pink in bud stage, has turned out to be something a little more fiery and exciting.

There are more shasta daisies in bloom each day, and now that the hot magenta lychnis has begun, that's true of them as well. Birds sing, bunnies hop, chipmunks scamper and all seems right with the world.

Of course, that's rarely true, that bit about the world. It's too hot, or there's too much traffic. Loved ones don't necessarily value us the way we hope and probably the same is true of us about them. The almighty dollar turns out to be not nearly as mighty as we'd like. There's too much time to be spent in offices, and well, a thousand other things that just aren't worth going on about.

The garden is my refuge and also my strength, usually giving me smiles enough to get through the day and it teaches me plenty, too.

In the garden, you learn Life isn't always fair. Adorable bunnies have a taste for valuable plants. A plant that is perfect and full of promise one day can be mown down the next by some anonymous insect or accidentally trod upon by some eager pup. Wind can snap lilies or hail pelt your tomato plants. All you can do is clean up the mess, figure out what you can learn from the experience and move on, hoping that next time things might go a little differently.

This weekend I found this pretty eggshell in the vegetable end of the garden, near the bushes where catbirds and house sparrows make their homes. It is, I'm pretty sure, the shell of a catbird egg, and it seems to be empty, so my hope is it was just tossed out during post-fledgling nest cleaning.

While researching to confirm the egg type, though, I did learn that sometimes cowbirds will lay their eggs in catbird nests, and if they manage to replace the catbird's first egg at the same time, the catbird will occasionally be fooled into thinking that its own subsequent eggs are imposters and toss them out of the nest, incubating instead the egg of the cowbird.

You see: Life's just not always fair.

This morning saw the usual examination of things, admiring a strong seedling here, whispering encouragement to others over there, taking another noseful of that heliotrope, yanking out a few tufts of grass, and realizing that once again, it was time to trim the edges of the bed to make it look tidier.

When I was through, I decided to give Granny a call. She's been on my mind always lately, as you can imagine, and I hadn't been able to talk to her in a while. I thought perhaps I could encourage her in her recovery efforts with talk of a thriving garden. And at first, we did just that.

But then something changed, and all of a sudden she was very confused, repeating herself almost endlessly, her words getting mixed up in her sentences, seeming to think for a minute or two that she was talking to someone else. This evening finds her back in the hospital once again, as she may have suffered a worse injury than we'd originally believed. Everything else seems to leave my mind and she is, quite naturally, all I can think about.

One of the many things that she and I talked about the morning before her accident were a set of solar lights shaped like tulips, which she'd recently seen in a catalog. She wanted to know what I thought of them, and of course, I thought they sounded pretty neat. She asked if I'd like them and I said sure, but suggested that perhaps there were other things she ought to be spending her money on (like, in hindsight, rides to the grocery store)instead.

But it turns out that she had her own ideas, as always, and she had either already ordered them for me, or did so when we finished talking that day.

For as I sat by the window this morning, thinking about our confused and unsettling phone call, worrying about her and wishing I could be at her side, even knowing there's nothing much I could do for her, a package arrived with the morning mail, containing a set of those silly solar lights.

I wasted little time in assembling them and then finding them homes within the garden bed, so they could soak up all the sun the day had to offer. They were glowing brightly out there in the garden when I got home from work and I've lit my wee lanterns to add to their light.

Tonight I don't hope to attract the fairy folk, nor am I much in the mood for leaping and dancing. But I hope they add some positive energy to the world, all of which I send in my Granny's direction.

Tonight, the garden is my comfort and I hope, hers, too.

Last Sunday in June

Another daylily country heard from this morning, as this one opened amidst a jumble of curly grass to the right and rudbeckia to the left (and pansies and allyssum all around). It seemed to me it has a little more red in it than the others, and is about half the height of those other orange guys.

I did welcome some new daylilies to the fold last fall (divisions from a friends renovated garden) without having seen them in bloom. I wonder if this is one of those.

This here pot gnome is the reason I was so happy to find those tiny hens and chicks yesterday. The pots he holds are big enough, but still pretty small, and so something with an alpine background was called for. I hope these guys will do nicely in his embrace.

Last night's weeding opened up a few spots in the border, so I already knew where I was going to be siting the marine heliotrope plants before I grabbed hold of my trowel this morning.

I also finally planted out that last wave of morning glories, putting a few near the base of the lamp post. I figure they can hitch a ride in the clematis vines this season, since they are already a tangled mess...and I'll sort it all out come fall.


I also dug up and relocated a few of the seedlings which are now large enough to cope with such activity. In the case of just about every kind of seed I'd sown, there were healthy looking plants too close together. So I pried loose some cosmos, or some bachelor buttons and moved them around to different locations, watering in well when I'd finished.

I also potted up the fuschia I mentioned yesterday, and a lantana I forgot to. Those are both in hanging baskets on the front of the house, where I expect they will do very well. I also scattered still a little more allyssum seed along the margins of the lamp post garden and planted a pack of Four O'Clocks, which are among Granny's favorites.

Sometimes it seems that she's on the mend, but other times her recovery seems a little tougher going, and of course, it's hard to be sure of what's really happening at such a distance. Still, I hope to talk with her soon and perhaps that will shed some light...and maybe I can get some advice about those four o'clocks.

I learned this week that I have possibly been doing myself and others I know a disservice all these years. I had always heard that yellow roses signified Friendship. But in that book I was talking about the other day, as well as Love in the Time of Cholera, I have read that yellow roses signify Jealousy...which was never my intention.

Oh, dear, what a confusing world of flowers and love it is, eh? I think that's the Chrysler tea rose with it's first yellow bud, and a host of others following shortly after. If so, it has apparently somehow lost its metal tag in the move.

There's a fifty percent chance of showers for us tonight, though so far nothing has materialized. This storm, seen over Cape Cod Bay from Rock Harbor late this afternoon, seemed to be a localized affair, as there were a few spatters of rain on my windshield as I left town, but I seemed to drive out of it.

Dogs Walk. Boats Return. Tide Rising.


Here's one of those heliotrope plants, making a nice pre-Fourth of July display of patriotism in its new location.

Of course a bluer tone would be more ideal, but the white centers of those tiny purple flowers do approximate the whole starry field thing nicely, don't they?


Once the planting and watering was complete this morning, I rounded up the appropriate hardware to get the new flags added to the fence, just in time for celebrations of Pride.

Of course, there was no parade in our neighborhood, per se, just the usual assortment of dog walkers and Big Wheels. But I celebrate in my own quiet way...and I'm glad to know that the next time I go looking for a Rainbow Flag, I won't have to look any further than my own front yard.

For those of you rolling your eyes and grunting at the whole business of gay pride parades, please, let me encourage you strenuously to check out Joe.My.God's take on that whole attitude. If you will.

To my gay, lesbian, transgender friends and our friends(and Dorothy's)and supportive families, near and far, hither and yon, up and down, left and right and wherever else you may be (we don't need all the details), Happy Pride!

Celebrate wisely, but do celebrate!

Sunshine Saturday

Ahh, Saturday morning. I was apparently quiet as I came out the front door with my first cuppa joe today, as I had been sitting for a minute or more, the caffeine slowly prying my eyes open, before I realized that one of my bunny friends was enjoying some of the lawn for breakfast.

We regarded one another for a moment, him doing the big freeze routine, before I wished him good morning and went back to my coffee, and he returned to his grazing.

He continued to nibble around, eating a little plantain here, some clover there, until I was awake enough to get up to connect the soaker hose, and he took off for the woods across the street, behind Sophie's house, where I believe he and his family have their warren.

It was still a little while after that before I realized that our first morning glory of the season had begun blooming on the street side of the fence.

Here's a sample of the variety I'm seeing from the portulaca, all in a single photo. These guys are especially loving the sunny location.

Once the watering was finished, I headed off about the rest of my morning, which involved a little shopping on the way into work.

First up was a visit to TJ Maxx, where I picked up a couple new pair of shorts. The summer heat has definitely found us now, and while the garden is thriving, I was getting a little tired of wearing the same old thing.

I found what I was looking for and went to pay. On line behind me was a woman I had noticed earlier in the store, because of the black sequined cowboy hat she was sporting and I turned to compliment her on the hat. We ended up talking, as reasonable people often do to make long lines more bearable (there was air conditioning, so it wasn't all bad) and I learned that she sells the hats on the internet, to raise money to research Pancreatic Cancer, which took her husband in 2006.

Impressed with her story, I asked for her business card, so I could pass her link along to all of you. After all, while I rarely remember to do so myself, wearing a hat when you're working in the garden is never a bad idea. If you need a new hat, check out Sue's: you'll Love Your Hat.

No, no...the Midnight Gardener was not involved in, or witness to, an accident: this is just the kind of cluster -schmozz that driving looks like here on the Cape now that July's bearing down on us.

My next stop was a visit to our local farmer's market, which happens every Saturday morning in summer.

It's located on Old Colony Way at the far end of the parking lot by Dunkin Donuts and Willy's Gym.

There's a great assortment of vendors, offering potted plants for your home or garden, produce, baked goods and other assorted products.

Naturally, I'm usually there to check out the plants and today, I was particularly looking for some of the tiny versions of hens and chicks, for a particular planting I wanted to do. I found these two tiny pots of tiny plants for a dollar a piece, a price you really can't beat.

Next, I was off to spend the last of some Christmas gift card bling at one of our local nurseries, since I hadn't yet acquired any marine heliotrope, and it's a plant I just adore. They had three left, so I scooped them up, as well as a small fuschia plant...I think a variety with a purple center. We'll see when it blooms.

Here's the marine heliotrope, which is, by the way, an annual, but totally worth purchasing every year.

As you can see, it puts out these delightful flowerheads of tiny purple flowers. The flower colors cover a range of purple shades across the head, as they lighten as the individual flowers age.

The scent is amazing, and I'm afraid it's a bit of a challenge to me and my feeble writing skills. I find it to be one of the most extraordinary of garden scents, but it's also tough to make you understand. I've always thought it had a sort of vanilla-esque, sometimes almost a light almond-y scent. But two other people I had sniff these new plants today gave me completely different responses. One suggested it smelled like baby powder, the other chocolat.

I'm beginning to suspect that perhaps the plant actually does something to your pleasure center and makes you smell the thing you like best. All I really know is that, whatever the scent/flavor is, they really ought to try making an ice cream flavor from it. I bet it'd be divine.

I think I'll continue to ask visitors to the garden for their impressions as the season progresses, and I'll try to report the various responses here, for your entertainment, if nothing else. Perhaps by Labor Day we'll have some over-arching sense of this scent.

Late afternoon found the first of these tiny coreopsis flowers beginning to form.

I love these guys with their seemingly never-ending waves of daisy-like flowers all summer. Their bright yellow color is a terrific partner for the white Shasta daisies and the orange daylilies, which are both also blooming now.

I haven't counted how many stands of this stuff I have now - it seems to be everywhere - but it all started from a little side-shoot I dug out of a friend's Wellfleet garden when we lived there back in 2001. It's amazing how it has thrived over the past seven years, moving through three different gardens with us in that time. No doubt the regular divisions have helped spur it along.

The spirea bushes (there's two) along the fence are also starting to bloom these week. I love the hot pink of these tiny flowers...and they also form these great heads. This plant would probably be big and round like many of it's relations in the area, but again, this one has moved a number of times with us...and has broken off into several plants during one or two of those moves.

The other day, Afod pointed out some particular attributes that set the daylily I was showing you off from others you normally see. At first, I sort of discounted this, as I believed them to be just sort of standard, that tall orange daylily you see growing just about everywhere alongside the highway.

But I took another look at this second flower, from the same clump and it looks just a little different to me. The petal colors are a little lighter, as are the anthers...and so I'm just not sure. Both those things could be attributed to the fact that one was photographed shortly after opening in the early morning, while the other was photographed at the end of its life, in the glow of early evening. A mystery?

Perhaps not...but there are so many less pleasant things to ponder.

You didn't think I could resist another look at my magnificent first sunflower today, did you? I'm kind of excited that these guys have decided to start blooming this week, as I am anticipating a visit from Kelly and Carol around midweek, and Kelly is essentially the goddess mother of my sunflowers, having provided the seed packets in the first place!

Their visit is always a highlight of the summer season for me, though it's coming a little earlier than usual! I wonder who I'll drink weak margaritas with as summer winds down this year.

In advance of their visit, but also just because it was overdue, this evening I spent some time trimming off the spent roses from the big rose bush and also working at that infinite business of weeding...mostly limiting myself to the witch grass, while I wait for other seedlings to be large enough to identify.

And now that I've removed lots of that grass, it's so much easier to see how well things are doing...lot of big cleome plants and bachelor button plants and sunflowers and asters (I didn't remember planting asters, I'll have to go back and look at my seed packets...nope, no asters...hmmm, I could swear that's what those are...we'll see...)and two kinds of cosmos, all from seed.

Ah, what a fun garden this is.

Colors of the Rainbow

So, being late June, it was sort of past time for me to get my locks shorn. I sort of hated to do it, since the curl was coming out pretty nicely and I do enjoy the "I live on Cape Cod and as far as you know I just came from the beach." look. But I suppose it was getting a little unruly...and really, I wanted to make the trip to Provincetown before the tourism season "blossoms" all around us come Fourth of July.

Plus, I've been thinking of those long ago years when I attended pride celebrations and there really isn't much of that around here, so I was looking forward to a walk along Commercial Street afterwards, as I have always enjoyed the site of rainbow flags billowing on ocean breezes.

The weather turned out not to be too fabulous for photos, as I might've hoped for some of that classic late afternoon sunlight. But clouds loomed overhead and it was a hot and muggy day. I took some pleasure in feeling the temperature drop a bunch as I drove down the hill from Truro...ahhh.

After the haircut (thanks, Barry!) I headed down to Commercial Street for a bit of a stroll. The whole street is festooned with nautical flags, as this weekend the town celebrates the annual Portuguese Festival and the Blessing of the Fleet.

The street was definitely a-buzz with visitors to town, strolling and shopping. I wanted to visit Marine Specialties for a couple of new flags to add to those on the fence in the garden, so that was my goal, but I also just wanted to wander a little, do a little people watching, see old places, revisit a few memories...that sort of thing.

And of course, there's always plenty of wonderful flowers in tiny gardens and containers here and there.

Now, I don't usually blog on this sort of topic...the consensus is such things are more the bailiwick of our friend Tornwordo...but hey, I'll sneak it in amongst the flower pictures and see if you notice.

After leaving the salon, I realized that there was a certain call of nature that needed to be answered. Anyone who's been a tourist in Provincetown knows that there's a limited supply of public restrooms, unless you duck into a bar, have a cocktail and use their loo, but that sort of works counter to solving the whole primary issue. So, I planned a route that would take me to the facilities at Town Hall before anywhere else.

So I'm walking along Commercial and this guys stops me and asks if I'd mind answering a few questions for a survey. Feeling agreeable (and the other not being quite a pressing need yet), I answered his questions. It's for a study for UMass Medical regarding recreational drug use and HIV transmission, as it turns out...and after the first few questions, the guy told me he'd give me $20 if I provided an anonymous urine sample and answered a more detailed questionnaire.

So I agreed. He seemed a little surprised, but then I pointed out what a long walk it was going to be to Town Hall.

Of course, now (hours later) I'm having all kinds of fun with this...calling out from the bathroom, "I'm just pissing away money here!"...or using it to bargain: "Eef you tell me where you have hidden zee dog's leash, I will give to you a cup of my urine."

Heh...obviously, I crack me up.

Anyway...I resumed my walk through town, now relieved and free to take in the sights at a leisurely pace.

I enjoyed this store window display especially. Who doesn't love a fleet of rubber duckies? These guys look like they are ready for all weathers, which is just right for this end of the Cape.


There are plenty of fancy plants and special varieties, but sometimes, you just can't go wrong with that classic combo of marigolds, geraniums and dusty miller.

While the temperature in Provincetown was cooler than it had been further up-Cape, after a while, I realized that it wasn't any less humid and with the clouds pressing down overhead, I felt a little oppressed.

I also wasn't finding any rainbow flags to photograph, which surprised me. There were a few of the PEACE rainbow flags...and I kind of like that design(who doesn't like Peace?!), but I also think the white letters sort of dilute the rich colors of the original...and that's what I was looking for.

Plus, I have to say I was just a little annoyed at how many flags were completely tangled around their flagpoles. If you display a flag of any kind, you really ought to take the time to make sure it's flying free for passing photographers, 'cause it's all about us. Plus, it just looks better. That's what I think, anyway.


The tide was coming in during my stroll and every alley or driveway or street between buildings brought that wonderful pungent smell of the harbor, salty and rich.


One of the things I loved best about living and visiting there was the way the ocean was right there in town. The smells teased your nose, the sounds of storm surf or a foghorn lulling you off to sleep at night, ships' horns in the harbor waking you in the morning.




There's also secret nooks and gardens and patios hidden all over town, their margins just packed with beautiful plants, creating little oasises everywhere.



I remember being impressed to learn that ships used to use soil from different ports as ballast and would offload it as heavy cargo loads dictated. Thus, the dirt in the tiny yards and gardens of Provincetown had come from many different places far away.

I'm not familiar with this yellow flower, but just loved the puffy quality of the flowerheads. Can anyone tell me what it is? I'd love an introduction.

Of course I recognize this clematis, which was tangled on a fence across the street from where my apartment was. That building is just one of many which has been completely renovated over the years. It's kind of amazing how things change. What was a restaurant one year is a gallery another year, and former galleries become bars, or gift shops. Many houses seem to be completely renovated each time the property changes hands.

I was amused when I first washed ashore at that thing where people refer to a place by what it used to be called, which is, of course, no help at all when directing someone newly arrived. I guess people do that everywhere, but here on the Cape things change so quickly that I hear myself doing it all the time now, and can only grin.

I did get the flags I was looking for at Marine Specialties and you'll see them added to the fence in the garden in the next day or so. But I had just about resigned myself to not seeing any true rainbow flags in a town that used to sparkle and flap with them...when I spotted this one as I made my way back to the car.

Mission accomplished.

Friday Morning

Eighty-eight days after the first seeds were planted, this first sunflower has turned its face toward the sun and begun to bloom. Over the course of those 88 days, I've also planted a variety of sunflower seeds in waves, and so I hope we'll have this kind of show all summer long.

The portulaca continues to bring a great variety of flower colors, like this hot red one, matching our early morning temperature in the mid-70s.

Along the fence in the back yard, our first two daylilies have started blooming today, as well. You can kind of feel the momentum of bloom now that we're in the first days of summer.


Until now, it lurked at the feet of the daylily above, but this morning, this purple foxglove revealed itself as it came into bloom. Here its stalk is still concealed by the long stem of the daylily towering above.

And out along the fence, the shasta daisies have fuzzy tops, as they begin to unfurl in the summer sunshine.




"I know a little garden close, set thick with lily and red rose, where I would wander if I might, from dewy morn to dewy night." - William Morris.