Sun Day

Despite last night's cooldown, it was hot from the get-go this morning, as we hit 81 around 9:00 a.m. I got right out to the watering before that, to make sure all my green friends were prepared for the day ahead.

This patch of dianthus is one of those flowers where it's hard to capture the flower color correctly, depending on the light conditions. It's actually, to my eye, just a little more toward the orange than the pink side of the spectrum, as reds go...but I'm having a heck of a time getting it right. Ah, well...lovely just the same.

I was happily surprised to see that this cleome seedling has developed so quickly. I think it's benefitting from its location along the route of the soaker hose, not to mention the hot golden rays of the sun.

Here's a pair of seashell cosmos seedlings at the feet of a clump of veronica (left). I'll need to transplant them so they're a little further apart, since they both look like good healthy plants.

Now, in the fish pond, you may have noticed we have a potted iris. You'd probably just have noticed the sword-like leaves coming up out of the water, really, but you might have guessed iris.

Anyway...the thing hasn't bloomed for us for about five or six years, as it seemed to have gotten pot-bound...and also didn't have a good strong sun location to thrive in.

When it bloomed last, it looked something like this, so you might imagine how psyched I was to see a pair of buds on the plant last week.

I didn't mention it here, because I figured it'd be a great Purple Flower Surprise to spring on you (get it? 'spring on you'...heh) when the time came.

Except, that time came this morning, and as you can see, the result was something different than anticipated, though clearly, there was still a surprise.

I'm not entirely sure what happened here. Plants rarely just change their mind about what they're going to look like, after all. (Do they?) The results of my online searching have suggested that both are most likely Louisiana irises.

I wonder if maybe we got two different kinds of roots at the nursery and when I divided the overgrown plant a couple years back, I gave more room in the pot to a root which hadn't been blooming before. Which makes me wonder if we'll still see the blue/purple one.

Anyway, lovely, isn't it?

Here's a look what everyone else at our house was doing as I headed out for an afternoon at work.

No, it wasn't exactly my first choice for a location on a Sunday afternoon, but there were things to be done and also, air conditioning!

The clematis vines on the lamp post really are an eager bunch. I wouldn't want to try to untangle them at this point, that's for sure. And they are covered in flower buds, which should be fun to watch over the next week or so.

It being June and busting out all over and such, there are plenty of things to see getting ready to show off just about now, like this foxglove flower spire, which is climbing and beginning to reveal its flower buds. It looks like there'll be several other flower stalks rising from this same patch. Yay!

In another part of the border, the sweet William is showing its spikey little flower heads now. Have you noticed there don't seem to be many plants named after guys? I mean, there's this William guy, and of course, Narcissus...and maybe Stephanotus (am I spelling that right?) but who else? I'm not thinking of any others off the top of my head just now. The rest, I'm pretty sure, are all girls' names. Doesn't seem quite fair, does it?

In other news, look at this sunflower seedling. Remember when they were crowding my bedroom window, what seems like forever ago? This one is also very close to the underground route of the soaker hose, and clearly thriving for the regular moisture to its roots.


Not far away, it gives me great pleasure to point out that this carnation plant, which managed to avoid being nibbled by my long-eared friend, has some lovely flower buds bobbing on curling stems. The plant that did get nibbled, though, also seems to be giving it another go, since I also see some lower flower buds appearing there, too!

And here's another look at that new arrival, the verbena bonari ensis, and it's flower buds. I love these long, thin jagged leaves. And there really aren't enough plants with square stems.


Meanwhile, summer seems to have arrived on Not Wisteria Lane. You can tell because these siberian irises down the street are now suddenly blooming. But there are other signs, too.

Now that everyone's windows are open to catch the breeze, it's become clear that almost everyone on the street watches "Jeopardy", since you can hear the Ding tone that signals a correct answer in super-quadraphonic sound when you're out in the garden after 7:30 p.m.

Also, the hard-of-hearing lady two houses down and over, watched Airport '75 last night. I know because I was able to sit inside our own house and listen to all my favorite Karen Black and Helen Reddy scenes quite clearly. ; )

Oh, and the most important sign of the change of the seasons: the Ice Cream Man is COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm always eager to have a new photo of me, but am rarely happy with my results.

Tonight I was playing around with the bug-repellent tiki torches as a light source, and I thought this didn't suck.

Hi everybody!!

I was still dripping a little from a brief visit to the hot tub, which, surprisingly, did help me cool off a little.

Great cloud formations at sunset this evening. This one caught my eye. It almost looked like there was (Great Hera!!)an Invisible Jet swooping down out of the sky.

Although I began this entry well before midnight, it's now 12:28 and the temperature is still 74 degrees, so the sea breezes seem to have abandoned us. It looks like there's a slight chance of a storm overnight, which could be kind of fun.

Meanwhile, I think I need another ice cream sandwich.

A Friend To Dogs Everywhere, Apparently

I woke to another overcast morning today. We seem to be getting the less delightful weather out of the way before the long weekend starts, which is a nice change of pace.

The forecast for the weekend is fairly stellar, as such things go. Either we're finally catching a break from the holiday weekend blues, or the local chambers of commerce have finally strong-armed regional meteorologists and said, "Look, you don't know what you're talking about, anyway. Tell them it will be nice so they'll come to the Cape for the weekend." We'll see...

Inside, the thriving morning glories are eager to climb something. They'll be high on the weekend's list. There wasn't lots to see outside in the short time I had to visit the garden before work today...just a host of things I hope to accomplish with some free time this weekend.

The money plant's still giving us a nice range of purples, as its flowers fade, replaced with the beginnings of the papery silver-dollar seedpods that inspires their most common name.


But other things are on the way, as is evident in this recently discovered iris bud just outside the front door.

These irises predate us in this location, so the color of their blooms is unknown. I'm suspecting they'll be some light color, like white or yellow...but I've been surprised before. And on this topic, anyway, that's rarely a bad thing.

Despite being early out the door, I was later arriving to work than I expected since I met a new neighbor. As I got into the car, I spotted this long-legged dog booking down the street in my direction. She turned into our driveway and leaped up on the side of the car, a goofy smile on her face. It was like she spotted me and said, "Hey, WE'RE going to be great friends!"

She was only a pup, I could tell, though nearly as big as thirteen year old Emily. All legs and tongue. I think this may have been a mastiff, tho I'm often a little vague on specifics like that. Do mastiffs come in white and pale brown? Do their faces smush back a little like there's a pug in the family tree? I'm not sure. Maybe she's a distant relation of Hagrid's dog, Fang. Anyway, her temperament was great, thank goodness--friendly as anything, slurping me through the open window as I stroked the top of her head.

I got out after a moment, when it became clear she wasn't going to leave me or the car alone...much less get far enough away for me to comfortably drive away. It's a long ride to Orleans, and it'd be a longer run behind the car, I thought, which seemed like exactly what I might expect of this eager girl, so I thought I'd see if I could figure out whose house she came from. At that point I was pinned against the side of the car and solidly slurped.

Once I extricated myself from that, and offered a half-hearted admonition through laughter, I must confess (don't tell Em) that it was refreshing to walk down the street beside a dog (not on a leash, just a chain prong collar) who walked alongside me and listened when I suggested sitting and such. Everything seemed to fascinate her, though, as she noticed and woofed at each bird that flew by. Wait'll she meets the bunnies and butterflies.

There's a house down the street where I've noticed they have multiple dogs, so I thought perhaps this one came from there...but there was no human present, and the reaction through the window we got from those multiple dogs made it clear this one wasn't one of them. We walked back to the house of one of the neighbors I know, and she told me the dog belonged to the people who'd just moved in next to her.

They weren't home, of course. And they had apparently left their dog out in the backyard, where she'd easily gotten underneath the flimsy coated wire fencing they thought would discourage her. Just as easily, she went back under when I lifted it, sat down and grinned at me.

I don't think I left with illusions that she was going to stay in the pen for any great length of time once my back was turned. But at least she stayed in there long enough for me to walk back to our place, two houses down. I hope she decided to be a good girl and stayed put, because she certainly was too sweet and I wouldn't want anything to have happened to her. But as much as I was falling for her, she's not my dog or my responsibility...and a half hour had passed since I'd first set out for work...so off I drove, fingers crossed.

It'll be interesting to see how quickly this dog and I cross paths again.

The day continued graying as the afternoon came on, when I was able to get a break from work things to drive to the bank. I caught these clouds over Boat Meadow Creek on my way back.

I'm not sure what these low shrubs are growing on the edge of the marsh. I feel like I have known their name in the past, but if so, it escapes me today. However, their honeyed fragrance was not lost on me, as it hung thick in the air when I stopped for the picture.

It was, though, nothing compared to the scent that greeted me when I stopped a little further down the road, at a spot where there's a great hedge of lilacs. It's quite spectacular, stretching three or four car-lengths, along a bend in the road. There's one pale flowered plant (like the one I showed you the other day), but the rest of the hedge is this darker variety...the shade of which was really popping on such a grey day.

We've had some off and on showers since late afternoon, though I noticed through the windows of the banquet hall that the sun returned, glorious and gold, just in time for sunset. But it rained pretty hard for the ride home.

At the moment, though, stars are visible everywhere in the sky.

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.

Orioles Return

I was giving the garden a little attention this morning when I heard a familiar voice behind me. I knew it was about the time the orioles would be returning, but I didn't know if I should expect them here in this neighborhood. But there he was, a flash of orange, sitting up there singing to let us all know he had arrived. I'll have to pick up an orange or two to cut up and leave out for his enjoyment and use in courting.


I remember watching the oriole couples frolicking in the apple blossoms in Eastham. As it turns out, the apple tree outside the kitchen window is about to burst into flower, so we might be in for a similar show this year and right outside the window. The cat will have a happy stroke.

The larger, earlier purple tulips are starting to show a little signs of wear, but the smaller ones which have appeared alongside the first flowers are looking quite enjoyable.

I wouldn't mind if they all came up this size. Perhaps that's something I can look forward to as the bulb ages.

I hope you all will indulge me another long lingering gaze at these delightful bleeding heart blossoms. It's been so long since I've had one of these around. Does anyone else see Marlo Thomas as That Girl (but with pink hair) in these pendant little hearts?

Our neighbors to the west are almost never over there, so the grass and other denizens of the green are having their way with the backyard. Here's the view through a break in our own fence. It's a delightful sort of chaos that happens when plants get their way, isn't it?

That little splash of purple by the break in the fence is more money plant--it really does seed itself in everywhere. Oh, and I also took this photo to show you all the LEAVES which have suddenly appeared in the treetops all around!

Every spring this happens. Meteorologists apparently love to f*ck with me. They tell me we've got four out of five days coming full of rain and so I leave the hose and watering can aside for other pursuits. And then the storm changes track, or breaks up over Cape Cod Bay...and there's my garden, unwatered.

This week, it was supposed to rain Monday and Tuesday...and we didn't see Drop One of that. The storm moved out to sea, so all we got was some serious wind. And in a week where tropical cyclones and earthquakes have killed hundreds of thousands of people in other parts of the world, how do I find it in me to complain about a sunny day?

It hadn't been that warm, so I really wasn't too worried about watering...especially since it was still going to rain on Thursday and Friday. Now that schedule's been revised, too, with rain currently predicted/guessed at to show up Friday and last the weekend.

I'll be watering things in the morning, just to guarantee it.

Check out these crazy clouds over our street tonight. I swear I didn't photoshop them, but doesn't it look like the winds just going in all different directions?