Glory In The Morning

Okay, so once again, these are yesterday's photos and I'm a day late getting them up here. If only I could stop myself from taking all these pictures. I mean, you've seen one morning glory, you've seen them all, right? But each flower's so great, I just can't help myself.

I'm a shade annoyed with myself for forgetting to mention something last time around. It turns out that the last post was my 1500th!! Now, sure, that counts a bit skewed by all the individual photos I uploaded here back in the early days of my blogging, before I worked out exactly how to include multiple photos in a post.

But still, it's some kind of a landmark. At the very least it explains the sleep deprivation. Sorry there wasn't a contest or a give-away. There ought to have been, since I have the best readers in the entire blogosphere. I promise I'll try to hit you with something fun for Post 2000; really.

Meanwhile, kisses all around.


Meanwhile, did you know that the bachelor's buttons I love so much are actually outlawed in North Carolina as an invasive weed?

Apparently, even though it was originally called cornflower exactly because it coexisted alongside crops in England, in North Carolina it wreaks havoc with local agriculturalists, who apparently can't stand the sight of a little beauty.

No, no...to be fair, the Carolinas are probably right about that point where the conditions are maybe a little too right for this species and so they tend to take over an area (which bodes well for your success growing them, Java...sssh...). But really, what sweet invasion.



To balance out the recent show of sunflowers, let us focus unabashedly today on the morning glories, the other truly prolific flower in this summer's garden.

Now these flowers, unlike the sunflowers, thrive best without a whole lot of fertilizer and special care. In fact, I've heard if you fertilize them too much, they'll produce all leaves and no (or few flowers).

So I've tried to be careful when fertilizing everything else to give a bit of a berth to the base of the morning glory vines. Certainly they are probably benefiting from some of that adjacent fertilizer, though...which would explain their miraculous and unparalleled success. They are thirsty little buggers, though, so I always try to give them a little extra water, especially when there's heat in the forecast.

Of course, Robin suggested that perhaps they are just growing so well because they know that I love them...and I expect that they probably do. I whisper the words to them now and then, for sure...and they reward me with this incredible show.


It's funny, though, how you can look down the garden border at a certain angle...at many angles, actually...and see that by this point in the season, there is no denying that the sunflowers are ruling the border, have completely wrested from me any illusion that I was even remotely in charge of the goings-on.

Frankly, I'm thrilled with their initiative.


Perhaps encouraged, like the roses, to reblooming by the cooler days and evenings, the honeysuckle is staging something of a come-back and while the show is smallish at this point, the scent is still powerfully wonderful when I lean over to bring my nose a little closer.

(In fact, I can smell it drifting in the open window now, as the katydids roar in the bushes across the street.)



Hopefully, you can bear the sight of a few more morning glories, because I'm making you look at more of them. But you may notice they are not the ones you've seen before.

Now that the registration on the car was renewed, it was time to get her inspected, and so this morning we went off to Nickerson Service Center in Eastham.

One of my annual pleasures is getting the car inspected at this time of year, because it means I get to enjoy the peak of Claire's fantastic blue morning glories, which she plants in twin whiskey barrels and trains up and over the entrance of the garage. Last year, crappy weather early in the season messed up their growth, but I was happy to see that they were restored to their former glory this summer.




She also had some nice zinnias growing in the barrels, as well as some marigolds and other things.





It's always fun to trade stories with another gardener and we did some of just that while I was paying my bill. Claire confirmed something I'm hearing from other local gardeners this summer: it's a big year for bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels and other rodentia.

Some have posited that this is because of a recent decline in the coyote and fox population. But Claire said there's one large bunny in her neighborhood so smart that when he sees the coyote coming, he makes it a point to stand closer to the humans. Apparently gardeners in her neighborhood are so fed up with the munching and the nibbling that they are consider gunning their car engines when they see a rabbit in the road.

I told her all about Liquid Fence and my success with it. Perhaps it will help with their stress levels. It doesn't help anyone if you go all Fudd and it rarely ends well.


I couldn't resist a stop at Rock Harbor on the way to work once the inspection was successfully completed, and the view was, as always, worth the time and trouble.


And in case that hadn't made me smile, there were the delighted cries of this little girl (visiting the beach with her parents, who are just off image), as she had what might have been her first encounters with the big lapping waters of Cape Cod Bay.