Yesterday's Garden

So, here's what the garden looked like early this morning, with a heavy fog hanging overhead. Must've been an early morning high tide today (or perhaps my ability to smell things is improving as I celebrate twelve days of no cigarettes!!), but the mist was strongly scented with seasalt and the other tangy things that mean high tide.

I just didn't get around to posting yesterday, obviously.

T'was a good garden day, with much accomplished, just as I'd hoped. But it was a hot day and a long one. I ended up succumbing to sleep much earlier than any other night lately, which I obviously needed. The dreams were nice, too.

It's just as well I got some sleep--I took 120 pictures yesterday! Yikes. Just a few of the highest lights follow. But first, check out this katydid I heard...and then spotlighted with a flashlight...in the back yard the other night!

Since then, a number of them have no doubt appeared, since they were quite loud (but harder to find in the dark) late last night...well as late as I managed to stay awake, anyhow.

Anyway, yesterday was a bright, sunny morning and after addressing the usual liquid issues - H2O for the garden, and caffeine for the gardener - I took care of some other things.

As I mentioned previously, I had spotted a few obvious "weeds", at least by my accepting and welcoming standards, these were things that just don't look great, or had looked okay, but were about to spray seed everywhere...and so up they came.

I also took the time to address the latest wave of that witch grass that sneaks in underground and suddenly is taller than everything! I learned that the roses and the grass may be having a secret affair, as the roses were not especially pleased with my efforts and let me know so in their usual thorny ways.

Additionally, it was time to trim back some more of the allyssum and to give the hard-working pansies a good haircut.

Take a look at these gloriosa daisies. They have retained the shapes they took on while wet during last week's big windy soaker-storms. So even tho today was rather still, they yet appeared to be fluttering on the breeze. Fascinating...


Here's some chamomile flowers, along the path in the Three Sisters garden, where some further weeding was (and also still will be) required.

One of the offenders is something called pokeberry, which is pretty common around here. I got to know it a few years ago, when it began to grow in a yard where I had extensively seeded foxglove. Thinking these were the seedlings I was awaiting, I dug them up and transplanted them EVERYWHERE...only to discover later what foxglove really looked like.

Ah, well, live and learn.


This year, I let it linger a little while, even tho I thought I recognized it, because I do think it looks a little similar to the leaves of Four O'Clock in the early stages. However, now that I can see those distinctive flowers forming, it was time for them to go.

Hey, check out what the "lawn" in the side yard looks like, now that its due for another mowing: I'm kinda crushing on this sweet combination of yellow hawkweed, and tiny little queen anne's lace...since it has been mowed pretty regularly 'til now, what's blooming is very low and adorable.

More of that rescued yarrow is blooming under the fence and is just a terrific flowering partner with the orange marigolds.




Look at the sweet new Morning Glory yesterday revealed. It was just a little more grapey-purple than it appeared in this photo...really kind of exciting. The morning glory colors do still seem to be keeping themselves segregated to the different fences.

Interestingly (well, to me anyway), this one happens to match the purple clematis flowers through which it is now weaving up the side of the lamp post.

Speaking of the morning glories, I was able to extract, at least temporarily, all of the flags overrun by these eager and pretty vines. This one, shown to the left above (go on, enlarge the photo--there's lots going on there), as really the trickiest one to rescue, as there were no less than six or seven vines which had not only braided themselves together as they encircled the flag itself, but also had joined together to climb toward the sky about six or seven inches above where the flagpole ended.


Their vines are pretty delicate, as enthusiastic as they are, so you really have to be gentle and patient about untwining them from one another, trying to make them backtrack to tease them loose from one another. However, in each case I was able to do so without damage, which meant that I was able to then redirect those great lengths of vine around the crossbeams of the fence and have enough to weave them together, to encourage them to remain down there. I'll still have to keep a close eye on them, of course...

It was a nice afternoon for trying to get all the flowers to crowd together--alright, everyone get close for a photo--say Seeds, everyone!