Arrivederci August

Weekend Jumble

So here's one of those honeybees who were so elusive at summer's start. This weekend, I've been seeing them everywhere...so I'm happy to say that reports of their death may have been somewhat exaggerated. That's a flowerhead of Autumn Joy sedum he's dancing about on, only just coming into bloom as Labor Day weekend gets underway.

Yes, it's that last weekend of the summer, here already, proof that Time doesn't only fly when you're having fun.

I want to say thanks to all of you who've written me your comments or private emails of support, in regards the situation with Owen and I.

I can only really skim the surface of letting you know just how much it means to me...and how important its been to hear from you.

This is probably the last thing I ever wanted to happen; ten years is a long time to be with someone and I know and love him in ways that I don't know many people. Which makes it sadder still that he knows so little about the way my brain works and what has value in Life to me.

You might guess I would be quite happy for us not to have reached this point. And that wish makes me want to be swayed, won over by the somber attitude and thoughtful demeanor I have been subject to this past week. But I know from past experience, and from other peoples' too, that this is a temporary fix...a band-aid on a bigger problem. And thankfully, every time I start to get a little weak in my resolve, one of your comments or emails appears, just in the nick of time.

I really don't want to beat a dead horse, I'm not even sure I'm prepared to declare the horse dead...but there was something else I wanted you to know.

The gardening it seems I've always done...and the blogging started just to show my long distance (and local) friends what I was working on in a secret garden not easily seen from the road...but as you all have discovered it in the last year and come back to visit over and over again, this blog has truly helped me to remember that I have a voice worth listening to, that I am important to the world, in some small way. And that, as much as everything else, has encouraged me to seek a little something better for myself.

So when I say thanks, I hope you know I mean it.

Now sweet Jesus, can we please talk about the Garden again? I am so sick of being on the edge of tears lately.

Here's a Nursery Spider we found in the kitchen sink the other day. I don't believe we have much to fear from them, which didn't mean we both weren't startled to the ceiling when it jumped over a foot to get away from us.

Yikes...

I have made a mental note that next year, zinnia seeds should be started indoors before the season gets underway, or at the very least, planted in the ground the week before Memorial Day weekend.

These guys are only just beginning to reveal their first flower buds and while they are pretty wonderful, there could be so many more by this point.

To the left is a photo taken on Friday. Below is the same flower as seen on Saturday. The whole idea behind the Jumble thing starting to be more clear?


Here are some of those fancy marigolds I bought for the lamp post garden in the spring. In the background there, you can see one flower still bears the distinctive red coloration that caught my eye in the first place.

However, it seems the rest of the plant is a little weary at this end of the summer (I wonder if it needs more water, or maybe some fertilizer), since so many of the other flowers are just plain yellow now.



I don't know what these bamboo-ey like plants are. I know there are a great many of them growing on the side of Mount Dump-it in our yard in Harwich; I see them out our back windows.

Today I noticed this cluster of the same plant out behind the restaurant, in between dumpsters...and noticed for the first time the spectacular clusters of tiny white flowers.



They aren't memorably scented or anything like that. But the flowers themselves are tiny, but kind of exciting when you look at them up close.

Perhaps you don't agree, but there was a crowd of bumblebees and honeybees who couldn't get enough of them





Here's one of the center pieces last evening's custo mers brought for the tables at their Rehearsal Dinner.

I think my favorite arrangements are the ones that don't hold to a particular color scheme, but instead engage all the colors there are. These did that wonderfully, and featured a terrific assortment of flower varieities, too.

I do enjoy the Gerbera Daisies and was a little disappointed that my budget dried before I had a chance to pick up a few for the border this summer.

I used a few as bedding plants in my first garden on the Cape all those years ago, and the effect was pretty terrific.

I have no idea what that orangey-thistly flower is, but it sure interests me. I hope to stop in at the responsible florist and see what I can find out sometime this week.

In just a little more time-travely-ness, here's what the sky looked like over Not Wisteria Lane this past Friday evening.
Thinking of everyone in New Orleans this weekend, as the third anniversary of Katrina's devastation comes and goes, marked mostly by a new evacuation in the face of a much more terrible looking storm called Gustav.

Everyone down there on the Gulf Coast (not to mention all those lives touched by this storm already as its passed through the Carribbean) has my thoughts and prayers for their safety...and hopefully yours, too.

Just Another Day

The annuals really own the garden this time of year. Most of the big ticket perennials have come and gone. Of the fabulous lilies only green leafy stalks remain. Just a few of the former multitude of daisies are still showing their cheery faces. There is still some phlox to tease the eye and scent the air.

But the day belongs to the hardest working residents in the garden: the allyssum, the marigolds, bachelor's buttons and sulphur cosmos.

The other cosmos still have not joined the show yet, though there are buds forming. I can't believe they are waiting so long this year. I think there's some reason behind that I've not quite figured out. The seeds were certainly sown early enough. Perhaps the soil is too rich for them. The plants are tall enough, some of them topping off at nearly four feet.



I hadn't thought I was going to show you any morning glories this morning, though there were plenty in bloom. And then I spotted this bumblebee tight-rope-walking along one of the twining stems, clambering over tomorrow morning's flower buds.

And this pale pink morning glory was a bit of a surprise, since I've not seen any this color before today. At first, I thought it was actually a bindweed flower, but a closer look showed it to be another color of glory heard from.

Pretty, eh?
Here's something for the Big Book of the Minorly Weird: at work today, one of the waitresses was cutting lemons and discovered this lemon with another lemon which had grown inside the first.

Hardly a sign of the coming apocalypse, but vaguely interesting nonetheless.

We heard of a severe storm warning around 1:00 this afternoon, and within minutes it was swirling in on us, thunder echoing in the distance to the west.

In a matter of minutes, the clouds billowed out of nowhere to obscure the sun and the sky grew very dark. It was sort of amazing how quickly it happened. I learned late tonight that there was actually a microburst causing lots of tree damage not far from the Cape Cod Canal at about that time, which explains the speed with which everything was moving.


As the thunder continued booming and lightning flashed across the sky, the gusty winds arrived first and then the rain. At first, it made a sort of fog as it came in contact with the hot pavement and evaporated.

Then suddenly it was falling in sheets and making visible the great gusts of wind that were blowing in a variety of directions.

I understand there was golf-ball sized hail connected with the microburst, but we didn't see any of that in Orleans, just lots of that heavy, heavy rain, sometimes blowing sideways, helping us feel a sort of kinship with our friends and family in Florida who were braving the battering wind and rain of Tropical Storm Fay.

I did download an impressive radar map of the storm's track and another detailing the frequency and location of the lightning strikes...but sadly, I've misplaced those files, so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was a big, unexpected storm.

[EDIT: 8/20/08, 8:20 am: here's a link to more coverage of this storm, if you're interested.]

After work, I stopped by Rock Harbor for a look out across the bay, where it was cloudier than I'd expected, since we'd ended up having a pretty sunny afternoon following the storm. It wasn't until I got home to Harwich that I discovered that they were having a second storm about that time.

It's much cooler this evening, with temperatures dropping down into the low sixties...and now, after midnight, we've slipped down into the 50s. Definitely a nice night for a sweatshirt. I think I'll sleep well for a change.

There's still some fast moving clouds passing by overhead, and I didn't find the right setting to capture those crisply on the new camera yet.

But really, I wasn't so into photography tonight and mostly just sat in front of the TV and enjoyed some more Olympics coverage. Men's diving, women's gymnastics, BMX bike racing, more running and hurdle-jumping.

It's all good, though I am often a little disappointed that, in trying to make sure we see as much of the games as possible, some of the "lesser" contenders don't get their televised moment of glory. We see all those countries' athletes enter the stadium on the first night, and many of them are never seen again.

Succeed or fail, they are all part of the beauty of the Olympic experience.

Changing Weather

The rainy night passed and morning came to Not Wisteria Lane. It was not a sunny morning, but there were blue patches of hope appearing amongst the lingering cloud cover. While the garden is looking a bit overgrown and now a little bedraggled and rain-battered, there were still plenty of surprises and discoveries.

First, allow me a moment to crow about the corn in the Three Sisters garden. It's at least as tall as me (5'11") now and the beans are nicely working their way up the stalks. One of those stalks is actually a few inches around. I am totally impressed.

I wonder where the credit is due, but there are so many factors. First, we must not discount the position of nearly full sun. This patch is actually seriously shaded in the morning hours, but gets strong sun from about 10 a.m. to about 6 p.m.

Second, there's some nice soil in that part of the yard, plus it was supplemented with a big harvest of seaweed and saltgrass and other shoreline debris I collected at Rock Harbor and spread over the top back in April.

Third, there's the soaker hose weaving its way just underground through this bed, which has resulted in it's having been well-watered down at the roots where it counts most for a plant.

Fourth, in addition to the seaweed and all, the corn has also received a feeding or two of organic fertilizer pellets over the season and is additionally receiving the benefit of the nitrogen which its bed-mate, the pole beans, are fixing in the soil as they grow.

I also wonder if the corn being planted in raised mounds has an impact. No doubt, such a situation seems like it would cause the soil to heat up and encourage hearty root growth. Like I said, it's probably a convergence of all those things.

I do see a few ears forming here and there, which is kind of exciting. That sort of balances out the fact that I went looking for zucchinis this morning and couldn't find any. After the great rush of flowering last week, I'd have hoped for something...I wonder if my bunny friends have been nibbling on flowers again.

The morning glories are continuing to be a fun and ever-changing show in the early hours of the day, especially as the later plantings begin to bloom and different colors mingle together.

These new purple ones--there seems to be just one vine of this particular shading--aren't flowering heavily yet, but I still get excited seeing them. What a color!

One of the larger sunflowers with the giant drooping faded flowerheads has now decided to present a few smaller side blossoms and the first one unfurled this morning.

On a gray day like today especially, it's easy to see where they got their name. It almost seemed the flower was coaxing the sun to come out of the clouds.


Although the clouds were thinning out, there was still a lot of darkness in the sky to the north.

The storm we'd received the severe warning about on TV last night actually moved north across the Upper Cape, around Sandwich area, so we only saw some distant flashes of lightning...and there were a few showers on and off throughout the night.

Since I had noted the direction of the storm on radar (I'm such a weather geek, eh?), I didn't shut down the computer, as I said I was going to do and would probably have been a smart move, just the same.

While mostly sitting back and enjoying the late night Olympic coverage [oh, man! I'm watching tonight as I blog, too...and swimmer Micheal Phelps just won his tenth-ever gold medal!! Woo hoo!], I was also keeping an eye on the radar. It was fascinating to watch the storm (even in the limited color range my monitor currently allows) pass over land and then blossom into a much bigger business as it crossed the waters of the bay.

On the animated radar map I was watching, you could see little bits of storms swirling in a larger funnel pattern, all centered around the Cape, with that intense storm at the heart of it.

By the time I woke this morning, it had all solidified into a large storm over the waters north of the Cape and it looked like it might actually swirl back down over us again. That didn't happen; it went north to Maine instead, but the dark clouds in that direction made it seem a little uncertain early on.

There's a long shot of that hanging basket of lantana. I really way the tiny flowers change colors as they mature, so that their compound flowerheads are ultimately patterned with different colors. I gave them a sniff last night, after some discussion on the subject in comments. I don't find they have any particularly rich or notable fragrance...just a sort of pollen-y pungence, if that makes any sense.

I've always been quite comfortable admitting to you all that I don't know lots of things about plants and gardening. One of the persistant mysteries of the last few years of gardening (and actually most of the three year history of this blog) was the identity of the white flowered plant below.

I had discovered it in the meadow at our old house, where it's seedling self was growing shoulder to shoulder with the coneflower rudbeckias, then also seedlings and some purple siberian iris (which the bunnies mowed completely this spring).

It looked like an interesting plant and in the orchard garden's partial sun it grew to astonishing heights. True, it's tiny white flowers were a bit of an anti-climax, but the butterflies loved them and I thought they might have been Joe Pye Weed, if not for the color of the blooms. Now I have learned the two plants are indeed related.

Today I learned this is called common boneset, or eupatorium, and it is an important species in the butterfly life-cycle, so I'm glad that I've welcomed it and taken some "on the road" with me.

I have a newly-discovered fellow blogger to thank for the information, as well. Recently I joined Blotanical, which is a sort of MySpace for garden bloggers. You may've noticed the widget in the right column that links to random other garden blogs out there on the internet.

I haven't had as much time to explore the whole community as I might've liked so far (but limited exploration has brought delightful discoveries every time!), but today discovered some lovely photos at Nature Remains, where Nina had captured one of those unexpected Cycle of Life moments in the canopy of this plant, which she called boneset. I won't give away what she saw...you can check that out for yourself.

Plus, there's a blackberry cobbler recipe!


The agastache has grown into a tidy little plant this year, about two feet tall, its flowers wonder fully purple and long and attractive to some industrious bumblebees.

Here, the agastache - or hyssop- is joined by some allyssum, marigolds and a single pink bachelor's button.

It's doing very nicely in this location and looks like it will remain sort of tidy this year, though I imagine next year it will get very tall, if it continues to be happy with its accomodations.



Everything in the garden is looking a little wild these days, owing to the queen anne's lace and evening primrose I've given free reign to. The queen anne's, at least, I planted as close to the fence as I could. They tend to have a bit of a boarding house reach, though.

The evening primrose actually seeded themselves in, growing often in the front areas of the garden, where it might be tidier to have lower growing plants (although the allyssum, at a foot tall, are barely cooperating with that plan, either).

Second generation daisies on weaker stems lean over into the picture, with a variety of marigolds rising from the chaos of the nearly-hidden floor of the jungle. And out of the chaos appears a crazy tangle of super-producing cherry tomatoes!


In another part of the garden, this plant of white garden phlox has begun to bloom.


Hey, since I know you're just dying for an update, I'll let you know it's now been 25 days (20 hours, 54 minutes and 5 seconds, but who's counting? Not me. QuitNet does that for me.) since my last cigarette. I remain grateful to the makers of both Altoids and pretzel rods.

According to my habit before quitting, I have not smoked 388 cigarettes...and have now added nearly three days onto my life.

Eccentric Old Gardener of the Future, here I come.

I went to work via Brewster this morning. Since it was a gray and spattery morning, it seemed not unreasonable to think I might be able to actually approach the shoreline and that proved true. I was, in fact, easily able to find a spot to park at Linnell Landing's small permited lot so I could take a look at the storm clouds over the bay.

The air was sharp and salty with the sea as I stepped out of the car, the bay churning with chop from the storm moving off to the north. God, I love that smell...

An intrepid bunch of beach and boat-goers were clearly not going to be deterred by a little spritz of rain, as you can see. As the day went on, their faith was rewarded, as the clouds did clear away leaving a beautiful afternoon behind.

This north-facing beach looks into the curve of the Cape's landmass, toward my more usual stomping grounds at Skaket and First Encounter Beaches and Rock Harbor, so it offers an interesting perspective.

This wonderful place is cleverly called Linger Longer and is a private home located just to the west of Linnell Landing. They must have had a most fantastic view of the storm as it moved across the bay late last night. Sunrises and sunsets and even the Cape's most dismal days must look beautiful from there.


Sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't cheer on the wholesale collapse of society for the opportunity to live in such a place.

As I said before, the sun burned through the clouds which didn't drift off on the breezes and I found a great day just beginning to fade as I left the office around dinnertime.

Naturally, I couldn't resist a drive-by Rock Harbor and watched for a few minutes as the tide rolled into the harbor and up the boat launch ramp.

This evening, I spotted a blue heron in the pond at the end of Not Wisteria Lane, as Emily and I enjoyed our night perambulation, but was camera-free at the time.

Then, as we passed around the loop that brought us facing to the west, Emily put on some speed (she likes to get past Snoopy the noisy Min-Pin's house as quickly as possible) and only because a neighbor called a warning did I realize how close we came to colliding with one of the broods of turkeys who were crossing the road just ahead of us.

Em seemed not to notice them, as further along, a terribly portly black pug we'd never seen before came out of his house to bark at us as we passed. But we only missed the mama turkey and her six youngins by about a foot! I went back with my camera when we'd finished our walk, but they were long gone by then. The heron, too.


Here's another look at my favorite, the marine heliotrope. Oh, how I wish I could figure out some way for you to smell it through your computer. It is just amazing. Perhaps its just my memory, but I am thinking that I can smell it drifting through the open window on the night air...and its just heavenly.

So the day turned out pretty right, after all. In fact, as I finish this (11:54 pm), the moon is setting in the southwest and it looks like it may be a nearly perfect night for some Perseid meteor gazing and just in the nick of time!

Here's another one of those orange sulphur cosmos flowers. That towering monster in the background is one of the latest sunflowers, climbing toward the sky and currently topping six feet.