Breathe

The other day, Jenn wondered what it might look like inside the sunflower blossom, and so this morning, I was able to catch a couple closer shots of this latest yellow mammoth, as context for this very busy bumbler. Each of them should get a bit bigger if you click.

I think one of the things that fascinates me about looking close at the sunflower is that you realize that what we think of as the flower is actually a whole garden of tiny flowers, arranged in a ring.

Those big yellow petals are like flags, landing strip markers...something to indicate to the pollinators that there's something wonderful here. It does seem there is never a sunflower without some busy bee digging diligently through it.



Just about every morning lately, the two Super Sweet 100 plants have been providing me a handful of tasty cherry tomatoes as a breakfast-y snack while I'm exploring the border. I think that's actually why I like having them out there. Convenient snacking while gardening.

I suppose there are worse reasons to choose a plant. When I am patient enough to let these little beauties get to that perfectly deep red shade, they are a rich sweet mouthful of Wow.

The portulaca isn't blooming quite as steadily as it had earlier in the season, though the six little plants I bought have grown into a lovely tangled cloud of succulent foliage around the base of my Flower sign.

Perhaps part of the problem is that they are now a bit shaded by giant sunflowers, corn, sulphur cosmos and cleome. But every now and then, there's a rosy little blossom to enjoy.

And in the category of Things For Enjoying, the clematis vine on the lamp post, which is now almost entirely a study in frilly seedheads, has this morning presented one more purply-blue flower.

One of the things I love best about August is that the dragonflies don't seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere. In July, they flit about, exploring the world, getting to know one another, eating their share of the more annoying insects. Dragonfly business. It's nearly impossible to get a good photo of them.

But then August arrives and I suppose we all slow down just a little, or want to. And if you want a good dragonfly photo, that's exactly what you have to do.

This little dragonfly perched on a dried daylily stalk along the walk in the back yard late this morning, seeming to enjoy a peaceful moment to soak in the warm sunshine.

It was one of those mornings where the sun seemed to come and go a little, fading now and then behind a bit of cloud, it's color and brightness ebbing and flooding like the wash of the tide. There was an easy rustle of trees and their leaves as the wind seemed to do the same thing, the tide becoming long, deep breaths.

Today, the dragonfly wasn't just enjoying a quiet August moment. I felt like he'd stopped by with a message for me. Something about being still and steady now and then, and remembering to take the time to enjoy the warmth of the sun.

And to breathe.

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.

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.

Her Own Affairs

It appears that my timing in rearranging the morning glories was quite good. Today was the heaviest blooming I've yet seen from them.

As you can see, it was delightful, and probably just a prelude of things to come. I also noticed that one of the several strands of three vines I'd untangled from around the bigger flag had already re-wrapped itself, loosely, around the flag again.

But just look at these guys. How can you fault that kind of enthusiasm?
(Oh, Java love, it occurs to me I forgot to mention not to fertilize those morning glories we were discussing. That'll actually give you tons of beautiful leaves, but fewer blossoms.)

I'm a little sorry that I never got around to picking up one or two of those pale blue morning glory vines this spring, only because their flowers are, I think, a little bigger, and it would've been fun to see that color cavorting with some of these others.

Ah, well...there's always room for a few more morning glory seedlings in the garden budget for next year! And while I'm at it, I have always wanted to try those red Scarlett O'Haras, which would be fun, too, I'm sure.

Fiddle dee dee.


Moonflowers would've been fun, too...especially if they were blooming alongside the Casa Blanca lilies, which are gleaming in the moonless night tonight, their seductive scent wafting amongst the many vines and stems all along the fence.


In the Three Sisters garden, all of the zucchini plants began flowering heavily today. I swear, I like the vegetable well enough (especially in tomato sauce with gooey Mozzarella cheese...), but damn, I just love growing the vines for their fantastic blossoms.

One year we had a pumpkin vine (the off-spring of the previous autumn's jack-o-lantern, actually), which joined a vineful of blue morning glories to climb up the front of the house and over the front door. It was quite a site.

This is the first year I've grow so many of them, and I can finally allow myself to imagine this concept of fried squash blossoms (With fewer plants in the past, I've always hesitated to sacrifice the fruit.). I'll have to look around for a recipe. I imagine a simple light batter would do the trick...but of course, I know little of those, except where cookies and cake are concerned.

The Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes are also ripening up en masse now. I'm sure it'd be nice to clip the whole little vine branch when they are ripe...but I've already munched up half of them. They are delightfully sweet...and I just couldn't resist a few as I examined the rest of the garden's offerings for the day.
All things in mode ration, of course. I've heard tell of stomach acid imbal ances from too many all at once. It's easy to see how that could happen, really, they are so tasty. But there's only the two plants here, so the danger is not so great.

I just love the gradation of color on these guys, from the dark green of the newly formed to the perfectly red of the fabulously-ready.

Heh...of course, since uploading the pic from my camera onto the computer...they are all green and yellow to me, as the monitor is still, as they say, uncooperative. As they also say, dying.

Hey, but check out this newly-opened sunflower, ready to welcome the first day of August.

It's funny how it seems to happen all at once, but it's August 1st and the roads around here today were suddenly JAMMED with cars full of impatient people who have appointments with the beach. Hey buddy, you honkin the horn like that isn't gonna make the sun shine.

Patrick, is there anyone else left in Manhattan besides you, or have you been charged with shutting the door and turning down the lights when you wing off for home?

But August also brings the sulphur cosmos and today, the wind had subsided enough to allow me to catch this nice cosmos porn shot.

More of them are appearing all along the fence, since I also planted these guys in two successive waves. They should bloom merrily well into September, unless Mother Nature has other plans.

Their cosmos cousins, the seashell blossom variety, grow taller by the minute, but have yet to begun producing flower buds. I continue to expect them any moment. I haven't grown this variety, so you may note with assurance I'm a little eager to see how they turn out.

The zinnia seedlings are substantial enough to mention now, and only a little shorter than the ones I saw beginning to bloom in a roadside garden on the way to the bank this morning.

These are the California Giants, and really get to growing quite tall and flowering abundantly as August comes and goes. I very much look forward to that.



The bachelor buttons continue to charm and delight me, as they flower a little more heavily each day or so.

Daisies are reblooming, the Queen Anne's lace holds forth, embracing all of its neighbors in its elegantly wild chaos.



"Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way, she better understands her own affairs than we."

-- Michel Evquem de Montaigne