Long Weekend

Not a long weekend as in a holiday weekend, the sort of weekend where you have all kinds of free time to work in the garden, or spend time with friends, or maybe fire up the barbecue.

Goodness, no. It wasn' t that sort of long weekend at all.

What it was was a very busy weekend at work, with all sort of special events and guests thereof to host and manage and keep moving on schedule and when possible, happily so.

Fortunately, the weather worked with us for a change. While we had some heavy showers move through Friday evening (as I took that sunset and clouds photos which wrapped up the last post, actually...), the rest of the weekend has been delightful and sunny, but with reasonable temperatures and not lots of humidity.

Having seen the forecast for the weekend, however, I did manage to get out for an abbreviated watering session in the garden early yesterday, before heading off to get things set up for the day's first event.
I'm really happy with this lantana plant (left), which is doing quite nicely in its hanging basket on the front of the house. I'd grown this once or twice before...or tried to, but with only moderate success, since I was working with lesser exposure to full sunshine.

Of course, all the sunshine in the world isn't helping the Early Girl tomatoes live up to their name, as the first of those tomatoes--looking sort of apple-like, I think--are only now beginning to get the slightest blush of color.





Now of course, it's Sunday and all the business of work (save a visit to the office shortly to address some paperwork) for the weekend is happily behind me.

And it wasn't all bad, really. Certainly, it was a long and tiring string of parties, but for the most part, all of our guests were quite lovely and some very memorable and fun.

The events biz is, of course, rife with uncertainty and the need to adapt schedules and think on one's feet. Like when you have to delay dinner for over an hour because half of the guests speak a language other than English, which you've learned has seriously delayed the conclusion of the wedding rehearsal they're coming from.

And then realizing that same language barrier is making it surprisingly difficult to get across the idea that the party has come to a conclusion and all the other guests have left and "it's time you did the same so we can clean up and go home" without simply turning out the lights and pointing toward the door.

Or dealing with the self-important and drunken guest from a culture that doesn't value women as it should, who becomes angry when you defend your female employee's hard work at keeping tables at his family's party clean and orderly because she may have taken away his last half inch of watered-down scotch.

Which might actually have been consumed by the under-aged guest you've been playing cat-and-mouse with all evening.

But as I said, there are plenty of great moments, too, and for the middle of our trio of parties this weekend, we celebrated/hosted the wedding reception of some of our neighbors from here on Not Wisteria Lane. Congratulations and best wishes to Jen and Kevin!!

In the process, I was able to meet some more of our lovely neighbors here. Of course, now they know what I do for a living, they are thinking I might be talked into organizing the annual fall block party. We'll have to wait and see about that one, though.

It was just nice to get off my feet last night and relax a little with a bit of blog-and-comment reading before falling into bed finally.


All in all, it's been a pretty great weekend, even if the work schedule did mean I had to practice brevity with my earlier blog posts.

That's okay. Sometimes, I really enjoy sitting back and letting the garden speak to all of you, and see just what it encourages in you lovely people who come back regularly to visit the Midnight Garden.

I hope the weekend was a beauty for you and that all your hopes and dreams for what was hopefully a few days off came together exactly as you hoped, or maybe even better!

Before wrapping up, I'll just offer my thanks to my pal Meredith, who worked with me throughout the crazy weekend of ups and downs and kept a smile on my face and a laugh never far from my lips...even if we did have to hear the "Chicken Dance" more than once.

: )

Thursday in the Garden

An early morning today for work and the day was dull and gray. While it looked like rain was likely, it never really materialized. This was fine, as we had some yesterday. Also, you'd be amazed what a rainy day does to traffic on Cape Cod. It is NOT pretty.

But the nice thing about beating the sun out into the garden was the rare treat of seeing the morning glories still waiting in the wings, breathlessly awaiting their cue.

NOISES OFF: (loud cough) " And then, I said, all the morning glories along the fence came into bloom..."


It wasn't really a particularly gloomy morning, though, just a bit overcast and foggy, a condition that cleared away pretty nicely as the day unfolded, though sadly, I wasn't still at home to see the morning glories' big moment in the sun. But that's okay. There were other things.

Like this fantastic planting of Purple Coneflower (echinacea purpurea) at the Seaman's Bank. I use the Eastham branch at Brackett Farms. It's the picture at the bottom if you follow the link. I'll try to get some other pictures of the place sometime. They did a fantastic job of echoing/honoring the old farmhouse which was on the site for years.

It's a comfortable place to visit and I have to say, I've never been anything but pleased with the personal and friendly service here. (Plus, sometimes, in between customers, they visit the Midnight Garden! Hi Nan!)

After taking care of business, I lingered for a few minutes to enjoy the coneflowers and also a fun aeriel show presented by a pair of exuberant monarch butterflies.

There was a good breeze blowing there this afternoon, and that seemed to whip them around a little bit, fueling them to fly faster as they dipped and looped and made spirals together, chasing one another from flower to flower.

It really was great fun and impossible to keep from laughing right out loud at what seems to be their sheer joy at being alive. Another lesson from the garden.

I was lucky that this one decided that it was a good idea to rest, for a second or two anyway and so I got my shot to share with you, before the games resumed and the pair flew off to another part of the garden and I moved on to the rest of my afternoon. But not before deciding that I will definitely be re-introducing some of this wonderful purple plant into my garden in 2009.

Although the cloud cover had returned by the time I arrived back in Harwich, there was still lots to smile about in and around the garden...not the least of which was the latest harvest of cherry tomatoes.

Contrary to my first impression when these plants first started setting fruit, their flavor is now amazing me more with each taste, rich and tasty...and sweet as anything. I like to pick them and give them a little chill-time in the fridge (tho a few never make it in the house, of course).


In the windowbox on the back porch, the pansies are still carrying on, just as their cousins in the front garden are. It's kind of amazing, considering it's August.

These guys in the container, I realize, haven't had the fertilizer feeding that the gang out front has enjoyed, which explains their smaller flowers. I just think they look even sweeter that way.

Still, I ought to mix up a little something for them sometime soon, as reward for carrying on so far into the summer. I did give them a bit of a pruning tonight, as part of a massive dead-heading session.

More of the daisies have now been trimmed back to the lower leaves. Here and there amongst those larger leaves I can see the tiny buds that may form into additional flowers, though they doesn't always happen. As with the pansies, the Shasta daisies second or third wave of blossoms are considerably smaller. But since they are somewhat massive to begin with, this is not a problem.

I'm a little surprised by this different variety of black-eyed susan, which is, I think, a yellow coneflower. It's leaves are shiny instead of the furry foliage the coneflower rudbeckia on the other side of the fence sports and this is a much shorter plant.

I don't remember purchasing this one, so I wonder if its something from some of the random seed I collect here and there and scatter into garden beds...or if it was something that was here already that I'd overlooked initially.

I don't remember bringing it from the last location, although for a while at the beginning of the summer, I did think it was some of that marsh hibiscus I'd meant to transplant and apparently did not.

I like this next photo because you get to see all the different stages of a bachelor's button flower.

It's now been twenty days since that last cigarette. Sure, there's been a craving or two, but generally I couldn't be happier with myself and my success so far.

At Quitnet, I calculated that I've saved about $42 so far (probably more, since that's calculated on the half-pack a day I was smoking when I made this latest quit. I used to smoke more than that even...and was probably on my way back up toward a pack a day when I gave the Nicodemon the ole shoe-stomp. Plus, cigarette prices went up again about the time I made the quit...). Also, one day and twenty-one hours has theoretically been added to my eventual lifetime.

Not a bad thing at all. Of course, it suddenly occurs to me that I didn't plant any nicotiana (flowering tobacco) in the garden this summer. I suppose that's for the best; it would've just confused the issue. But next year, for sure...I love those flowers!


I also love the way the cleome have grown so big and strong, and there's still only just this one white-blossomed plant. All the others are indeed purple, as advertised.

In the background there, you can see another pair of those Russian Gray mammoth sunflowers rising up into the sky, with a third one drooping further back, it's flowerhead long past its prime. I might need a hacksaw to dead-head that one.

While going about the dead-heading this evening, I initially thought this faded marigold flower was infested with some kind of bug. But a closer examination revealed those to be sunflower seeds which were dropping freely from the prolific flower stalks high above.

Wouldn't it be fun if this turned out to be THE perfect spot for growing sunflowers? Ah, just imagine the possibility that they might reseed themselves in this location for years after I've moved on to another flower patch. Heh heh...I like that idea. I've left patches of foxglove and daisies and irises and assorted bulbs in a variety of places now...making me just a little more diverse than Johnny Appleseed or Miss Rumphius.

The Midnight Gardener: hapless romantic seed-sower, or gardening evil genius?

You decide.

Thy Neighbor's Garden

Mornings have become so entertaining here on Not Wisteria Lane, now that the irrepressible Bosun has arrived in the neighborhood. There's always at least one sighting, when she joins her parents to walk their little girl out to the school bus.

It's the best time of day for a good solid watering (it's now officially a week since our last fall of rain) of the garden, so I get to see and participate in all the fun.

At the risk of turning this into a blog about dogs, I'll related the latest. Today, on the way back from the bus stop, there was a convergence of neighbors and Bosun decided to try engaging Sophie in some rough-housing.

Sophie is really the Grande Dame of the neighbor hood and despite her dimi nutive stature, she wasted no time in laying down the law to this younger, over-enthusiastic new generation.

We all laughed as she gave her sternest "arp arp arp" and chased Bosun right out of her yard.

Out of breath and more than a little surprised, Bo came running back out and cowered behind her parents and me in the street. It's good she's learning the pecking order in the neighborhood and certainly great fun to watch.

When the watering was all taken care of, my camera and I wandered down the street to explore some of the neighbors' gardens, particularly the one with the dark iris I spotted on Em's and my nightly walk.

These pink roses are certainly beautiful, but I was disappointed to discover they have no scent to them. Fortunately, I'd also discovered that our east and west hedges--where the weigela and spirea intermingle--are also home to some of those wild white roses, so the air was already delightfully scented. I told you they were everywhere!!

On the way to the irises, I met another of our neighbors, G. His yard was beautifully gardened by the former owner, and is in a sort of wild, overgrown state these days, but still home to a wonderful assortment of blooms. G admits to not being much of a gardener and also believes that the former owner is more than a little annoyed about what he sees as neglect.

However, the wild state of things there hasn't discouraged these big oriental poppies even a little. Over the course of the spring, I've also spotted an assortment of crocuses, irises, daffodils, hellebores and all manner of other things growing quite happily. Isn't it nice to see a well-established garden doing its own thing, too?

G told me there was, at one point, a band of wild turkeys who wandered into the neighborhood. All the neighbors were keen to keep them around, until they started marauding and attacking people...which probably explains why I haven't seen any sign of them during our brief residence here.

Check these red and yellow columbines--pretty fancy, huh? After a nice visit, it was time to mosey along and I came to that big iris, which turns out not to be purple at all, but in fact a very deep, dark red. And yes, it's true--some irises are scented. This one, to my great surprise, smells of root beer! Amazing!!


I'm not sure if these blue irises are scented or not, as they were located deep in the bed and I didn't want to trample anything. But they sure are wonderful to behold, and look how nicely they play with the royal blue columbines down in the lower right.

When I returned to the home garden, I was thrilled to discover this swallowtail butterfly looping and diving and soaring over and through the sections of the fence. It seemed as happy to see a garden where there'd been none last year. And I took this activity as a hearty endorsement of my efforts.

After fixing a second cup of coffee, I went back out to the garden to do some more weeding and reviewing, carefully pulling out the little bits of grass while trying to identify and avoid the new seedlings which are coming up all over the place.

I also got the pole beans planted at the base of the sprouted corn stalks, Step Two in the making of the Three Sisters Garden. In addition to the butterfly, I also noted a greater assortment of various pollinators visiting the garden today, as well as some of the first bees I have spotted here so far...definitely good news there.

Being the twelfth of June, today was also my half-birthday. That's not something I usually celebrate or even take note of, but as it turned out, today was a real nice day for me. I'll even go so far to say that it was a vast improvement over my actual birthday last December, when I had screwed up my back and was not only hosting Christmas parties at work, but in the process of making the move from Eastham to Harwich.

As it turned out, I had a massage scheduled for the early afternoon, a free one from my pal, British Jane, who's just getting started. It was quite delightful, not only to have a bit of a visit with her, but also to enjoy a little pampering and relaxation. I'm happy to highly recommend her services--if you live locally and need a massage, send me an email and I'll hook you up with her real name and phone number so you can make an appointment!

To carry the relaxation theme afterwards, I felt it necessary to see The Ocean today and so I drove to Nauset Beach in East Orleans. I didn't stay long, as that would've entailed me paying for parking and all that (it's June now, after all, and the government likes to regulate access to the ocean at this part of the Cape, it being the National Seashore and all...), but even just a few moments gazing out at the vastness of the Atlantic was wonderful.

Too soon I was back home and tending to some less glamorous aspects of a day off, such as laundry, dishes, cat box and some window cleaning. But as soon as I could, I made my way back out to the garden, for that fantastic late afternoon light.

I gave the garden another watering, for better picture-taking (the wet soil is darker and photographs better, plus everything glistens a little...) and promptly discovered that my batteries were almost dead, so headed back inside to charge them.

Fortunately, it only takes 15 minutes, but in that time I missed capturing quite a show, naturally. As I stood looking out the front window, I spotted a goldfinch pecking through the dirt near the tomato plant closest to the driveway. It flew over to another tomato, lighting on one of the stakes...and a second, female, goldfinch joined it. Then a third appeared, this one male, and a fourth, another female. Just then a fifth flew across the yard in an up-and-down rollercoaster sort of flight pattern...and a sixth one joined the first four in the garden.

They all took to the garden bed, pecking and rooting through the soil, plucking out little bugs and slugs and worms and seeds and whatever it is they enjoy most. Out in the "lawn", a juvenal cowbird pecked through the grass.

Such fun to see the Garden so full of life. Flowers are wonderful and all, but they are not the whole picture. This time of year, the garden is a full-on community.

Although it was frustrating to have the show end just as I finally heard the battery charger shut off, it was great to be able to enjoy it. And these catbirds showed up for a visit to the birdbath just as I returned with my camera.

I also had noticed, while I was waiting, that the carnations had begun blooming today, and the dappled sun through the trees was focussed perfectly on this first blossom.


Here's some of that wonderful purple allyssum. I've noticed this week that the allyssum plants I bought at the nursery are now beginning to fade from their first flush of blooming, just as the ones from seed are beginning to flower. What good timing.

So, part of my weeding time has also been spent pinching off the fading flowerheads of those early nursery plants, and scattering their seeds further around the beds, in hopes of creating massive drifts of tiny scented flowers by summer's end.


Another exciting discover today--several milkweed seedlings have now appeared here and there throughout the garden.

The butterflies will be even more excited than I, as milkweed is one of those plants critical in the support of the monarch lifecycle. Plus, their flowers are wicked cool and weird.

In the back ground of this pansy photo, the first sweet william flower has emerged. But the colors are only just developing, so I will save a nice close-up as something to look forward to on another day.

All in all, a most lovely unbirthday. I hope you all had nice days, too!

A Golden Light From the Sky

And on Monday, the sun returned in all its glory. Here some of the blue lobelia in windowboxes begins its show.

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As the sun shines, temperatures rise and more flowers begin to bloom, the garden is becoming a busy center of activity. Here a butterfly sips nectar from the newly-blossoming yarrow.

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A colony of foxgloves thrive in the shady margin of the back garden.

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A bluetail fly basks on a leaf, munching on some much smaller insect.

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In many places around the yard, Sweet William flowers have begun to spiral open.

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Our newest frog lounges in the shallow end of the koi pond, perhaps hoping there'll be a waitress offering poolside bug cocktails.

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Many of the milkweed plants climbing toward the sky have begun to form their unique flower clusters (see below). I also noticed during the course of the day that many of the yucca plants have begun to send up their flower stalks. Guess there's something to be said for so much rain!

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Orange moss rose (portulaca). Posted by Picasa
Recently, I found these terrific (and inexpensive) roosting baskets on a visit to the Birdwatchers' General Store in Orleans. I've hung one in each of the apple trees in the back garden, in hopes of encouraging some of our smaller neighbors to move in and help with bug control. I just can't decide: seasonal, or weekly rental?

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Mirroring the color combination of butterfly and yarrow, a ring of calendula surround a bit of oregano.

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