Face To Face

Sometimes, you just can't go wrong with some beautiful zonal geraniums for annual color. These are potted up in the greenhouse section of the restaurant dining room, where Leslie's been doing a great job of bringing some seasonal color to the decor with container gardening.

It was a long restaurant day today, too, with a breakfast event getting me there at 7:00 and a lunch to follow shortly after that. No worries though, really: it wasn't one of those weather days you minded missing particularly, what with the damp, almost-raining-all-day quality and the temps barely hitting 60 (It's 55 now...).

I'm not sure if I've never noticed these two doing this before, but I had it in my head that the roses and the azaleas didn't bloom at exactly the same time, usually. I suppose I ought to have been paying better attention.

The day went well and fled before too long. I made a sidetrip to the nursery on the way home. I needed (not wanted, but required really...)a sixpack of portulaca for a particular spot and since I was there, I picked out a young golden sage plant to replace the one that passed on last winter...and they actually had a pot of verbena bonariensis.

I'll hit you with some photos of mine later and no doubt throughout the season - this is another of my Top One Thousand Absolute Favorite(you can make me choose, but you can't make me choose just one) Plants, with it's squarish stems and pointy jagged foliage and lovely little deep purple blossoms! I squee a little just thinking about it.

I countered the grey weather with some showtunes in the car: Showboat today, and it was "Old Man River" that had me taking the long way around our circle to get to the house (you just don't shut off OMR before its through!), when I had to stop short for a pair of cardinals...possibly juveniles, who came crashing onto the roadway, seeming to wrestle with one another, more at play, I thought, than any real show of agression. There was a tiny purple finch on the scene, too. A referee, perhaps.

It was positively Disney-fied.

Which perhaps set me up for what would come next.

As I was changing, I looked out the bedroom window and saw Him. My Nemesis. The Nibbler By Night. The Hungry Hare. The Bunny Bane of my tulips and crocuses.

And damn if he's not adorable. Of course, I knew he would be.

However, he also wasn't in the garden itself, except in the way that British folks refer to the whole yard as The Garden (which I rather like, while we're being tangential and all...), but peaceably grazing on the diversity that is our "lawn". I snapped the first photo through the window, but then finished changing and went out to sit on the front step.

He (again I'm assuming gender...but what's wrong with boy bunnies, anyway?)regarded me with frozen concern at first, retreating to be closer to the shelter of the hedges if things should turn ugly.

After a few pics, I set the camera down and let him see my hands were empty and I meant him no harm, because really, I don't. Provided he's not eating all my bulbs, it's kind of an honor to have him visit. It didn't take him any time at all to dismiss me as a harmless rube and return to the grazing.

Perhaps there's something to this "Liquid Fence" stuff after all. Or maybe there's just something really tasty growing amongst the grass. I'll have a look-see in the morning.

After he'd gone and I got something cooking for dinner, I went out to plant my new additions, and also to do some more weeding and seeding, this evening adding the rest of the everlasting strawflower seeds, a packet of Pacific statice and teensy pack of red poppy seeds.

As for earlier seedings: the allyssum seedlings, the first to be scattered in early April, are now approaching blooming size, and are adding more tiny white flowers to the lowest edges of the garden bed. There are sunflower seedlings popping up all over the place and possibly the first of the bachelor buttons. The seashell cosmos have now begun presenting their true leaves, so they are well on their way, as the garden as a whole seems to be.

A Little Fall of Rain

A gentle rain was falling as I woke this morning...light, but steadily so. Just the right kind of rain for tender seedlings and new seeds in the ground. And with watering off the schedule, I was able to turn my attention to a few housekeeping details before heading in to work.

The afternoon cleared off and seemed golden and sunny, though I really only saw that through the windows at work. Nonetheless, a warm afternoon like that was a nice follow-up to the morning's rain.

Naturally, things were clouding over again by the time I headed for home. Check out this giant bird that tried to land in front of me on Route 6 this evening.

Actually, you get bonus points if you figured out its actually a giant bird poo on the windshield. (Have a great time in Paris, Torn...)

It was almost drizzly this evening, but not enough to keep me out of the garden. The big fountain of leaves near the center of this photo is my favorite perennial, the garden heliotrope. Although it's not blooming yet, I'll still take this opportunity to wish my Dad a very Happy Birthday!!

Herbalists would chop up the roots for an effective sleep remedy, but I won't let them touch mine. The delicate flowers are so wonderfully scented, I couldn't have spring without them.

You can see one of my sunflowers peaking from behind the fence here, and there's also some daisies to the left and a snapdragon seedling to the right. But for me, the excitement is centered around those little pointy tufts of darker green in front of the heliotrope and behind the white allyssum flowers. This, I believe, is the first sign of butterfly flower, something I tried to carefully transplant from Eastham. I know it doesn't always take to moving, but it's too beautiful...and important to the butterflies...to leave all of it behind.

Here's a not entirely focussed shot on the pink columbine flowers taking shape this week. A breeze kept me from getting a clearer shot, but in the meantime, let me proudly turn your attention to another of my sunflower seedlings, easily keeping pace with this very healthy peony plant!

Oh, I spotted that wascally wabbit out in the garden border this evening. He's (perhap she's) quite large--next time I'll try to get a photo before I do any shooing, but I may have already lost the remaining carnation buds.

Meanwhile, I'm a little troubled by the fact that Spring is getting me in touch with my Inner Fudd. But I'll be working up some sort of plan that doesn't involve a shotgun before I plant the tomatoes outside.

On another front, you may remember my being a little annoyed when I recently discovered that the beautiful slender speedwell is classified as a weed.

Well, this evening, I must submit this bit of evidence to lean in favor of that ruling: this slip of speedwell is making a home high above the floor of the garden, in the joint of our old fence. Pretty impressive, huh? For now, I still find it charming.

And speaking of charming...ladies and gentlemen, what about this pink azalea?

Sunny Sunday

My backyard birding has been a bit short-circuited by the emergence of all the trees leaves and flowers this past week. There sounded to be a least a dozen different species up there this morning, as I reveled in my first giant mug of coffee, but I sure couldn't see them. The catbirds' distinctive call was amongst them, I can say--they've begun to make their appearances just in the past week.


Here's another pansy from the front border sporting some royal purple to continue our visual internet discussion/celebration of this delightful side of the color wheel.

I spent the morning (well, once I'd waken up...I did get to sleep in bit later than usual, which was very nice--my horoscope yesterday mentioned that part of my foul mood could likely be blamed on needing more sleep...and that sounded likely enough...so I was happy today was a day off) puttering around at assorted things hardly worth discussing, like laundry and dishes and stuff like that.

But I also got a substantial bit of work done on finishing up the front garden's overall layout, by beginning to tackle the last section around the lamp-post. If you embiggen this photo, you can get a decent look at the Super-Terrific-Happy clematis that's about to be taller than the lamp-post itself. Hey, I just remembered--back when we were moving in, our landlady told us it was purple!

I didn't finish the job, unfortunately, since the weather was changing as the afternoon wore on, and I opted to head inside for things like cooking some dinner, a nice hot shower, a walk with my girl and a little hot tub time.

But I did get the rock edging laid in and about half the "sod" (as you can see, our "lawn" is a model of diversity) seperated from its soil. The rest has been loosened and will probably be a little easier to get cleared away once I get back to this in a day or so.

Ideally, I'd have finished it today, so I could do my veggie planting in perfect conjunction with tomorrow's Full Corn Planting Moon. But honestly, I know if I get my corn planted sometime in this next week, everything should be just fine.

Having this part of the project done will allow me, too, the ability to shift around the locations of a few plants, as I prepare to add a few tomatoes along the inside of the fence, as well as assorted other veggies. And I am giving some more serious thought to some kind of canal/moat business to help address those times of heavy rainfall, in hopes of avoiding yesterday's frustrations returning.

Our forecast had called for showers to begin around three p.m., which is when this first bit of clouds slid by overhead. They never really thickened up, though, so I continued to work a little longer, and it wasn't until I knocked off and got things put away that it started to really cloud over.

While we are celebrating purple, I'd be remiss not to include a shot of our across-the-street neighbor's purple azalea, which has come into bloom this past week. Gorgeous, huh?

It was misting very lightly as Emily and I headed out on our evening walk around Not Wisteria Lane...but not enough to deter us (frankly, she's taking to our evening time together that I don't think any kind of weather would rain on Em's parade).

The last few nights, we've seen a pair of ducks--one male, one female--walking together along the street, which amuses me no end. I didn't realize they went in for this sort of traditional, old-fashioned courting ritual, but it's pretty cute.

I haven't been bringing the camera along, since it just distracts me from the business of walking her, and once there's a full poo bag to carry, it just stays in my pocket anyway. Tonight I brought it, though, so naturally there was no sign of those ducks.

Seeing Red

Well, this morning's discovery about the flooding really did have me seeing a very frustrated shade of red for a while earlier. I've done about all I can do with the site, short of digging every plant out of there and buying a great truckload of dirt to create a truly raised bed.

That's just not in the cards now, so I have to hope that the sandy soil below helps whatever standing water that may collect to drain off slowly enough to benefit the plants, but fast enough to keep them from harm.

But the garden flooding wasn't the only thing driving my mood. I also find myself annoyed in the wake of yesterday's news that the California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on gay marriages. Not the sort of thing you'd expect would annoy me, and frankly, there's nothing I'd like to do more than celebrate 'til the cows (and the bears) come home.

But suddenly gay marriage may once again be THE big issue distracting voters in these last six months before the fall's election...and the idea of listening to a bunch of self-righteous people say all kinds of foul and untrue things about me and my people as if we weren't human or as deserving of equality as anyone else, as though we weren't even in the room to be offended...that prospect kind of turns my stomach and I'll be trying not to listen to very much of that.

Because I really want to be happy about this step (even as I wonder if we're sidetracking the rights of single gay people by focusing so strongly on the right to marry)...so I'll try having a little more faith in my fellow Americans that they are as fed up with the way things have been going in this country the last eight years...and that they won't let themselves get distracted by the fear-mongering of religious types.

And really, at the heart of all my anger this morning was this whole business of nicotine withdrawal. It really is amazing, even as someone who loves and respects plants and their abilities, how this demon weed gets under your skin and plays with your brain (although I know it's as much a product of all the added chemicals and such).

Anyway, as I slapped on a new nicotine patch and prepared to leave for work, I saw that the morning's flood waters were beginning to recede some.

As the sun came out this afternoon and helped to dry up the rest of it, I got to thinking that I could turn the whole business of seeing red into something positive.


So...as I made my way home from work, I arranged my route to capture some lovely red flowers I've been seeing around lately...like the crab-apple trees above, on the road to Rock Harbor...and this flowering quince along the same stretch of road.

I'm stretching the red portion of the color wheel to include these dark pink dicentrus, another variety of bleeding heart, which I wanted to share with Butch, who's got a much paler shade blooming in his yard.

They're a little red...but moreso if you're wearing my smoke-tinted sunglasses, I confess.

As I returned to Harwich, there were these red azaleas in front of the bank. The late day sun was a little strong on them, but I still think this picture turned out okay.

I hope the same can be said of everyone else's Saturday!