Memorial Day

It was a delightful day, and the idea of staying home and avoiding the season's fresh traffic (even tho it meant missing a Memorial Day parade) seemed an attractive one. So I spent the day puttering at various projects in the garden, all the while keeping our military service people--and their sacrifices on our behalf--in my mind.
Another portulaca to greet the morning's sun.


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The white globe allium are preparing to bloom, only just behind their purple cousins. I had expected they might be a little taller than this, but looking forward to them anyway.

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In the meadow, more spiderwort blooming.

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This foxglove, in the front garden bed, and many others like it(in all the other gardens), will be blooming shortly. In the background, another purple globe allium.

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Two of the rhododendrons began blooming today, just a little, down near the bottom of these huge plants.

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Here's the whiskey barrel by the kitchen door, planted with an assortment of pansies, double pink petunias and allyssum. Note the film of oak pollen on the birdbath. Around noontime, I stopped gardening a bit, thinking that washing the yellow film from our cars was a good idea. By two p.m., they were ready to be washed again. I think I'll wait until the pine trees have had their little party before I try again.

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A mid-afternoon view of the garden, with a first look at the benches I cobbed together out of old pine trunk sections and some miscellaneous boards. They're aren't beautiful enough to be featured in Martha Stewart's LIVING, but I'm happy with them...and it sure is nice to have a relatively comfy place in the shade to sit and watch the garden grow!

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Checking in with the grapes, who are now happily twining around the old TV antenna. This may have been a better idea than I originally imagined.

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This is an ornamental grass called "Northern Lights", which has been in the garden a year. It's planted at the convergence point for several clumps of the Oregano That Ate Eastham, but I've weeded around it, in hopes it will grow strong and hold its own against agressive neighbors.

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In the northeast corner of the garden, which I am coming to think of as the "grape complex", things are still a bit overgrown, despite my "trellacing" efforts. In the tangle are some irises (so far non-blooming), and these cupless white daffodils, both of whom I hope to rescue and replant in other areas later this season.

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The pine tree that came down on the pond's edge in the December windstorm makes a nice "duck blind" for spying on pond residents. The red-winged blackbirds aren't fans of the paparazzi, tho, so mostly its a nice place to watch the pickerel weed grow.

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A blue columbine plant prepares for full-on bloom on the western side of the house.

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