A Few Things Including the Moon

Still catching up on a back-log of images...

On Monday evening after work, I came home and jumped right into the painting business. Well, okay, that's not entirely true. Now that I have a phone and an answering machine, there were messages to listen to, as well.

Now, Comcast may have referred to this as a new number...but they didn't mean mint. In this case, I appear to have gotten the telephone number of someone named Josh, who ran up a great bit of credit card debt with Capital One, contacted credit counselors about consolidating that debt and also pre-ordered the new Star Wars video game (which is now available) before abandoning the number for me to inherit.


But somewhere in there was also a message for me from my pal, Bethy, who it turned out has a double mattress and box spring in good shape she wants to pass along to me. So we phone tagged a little about the plans to get that to happen...and then I went off to do some painting.

In this case, I was daubing a bit of gold leaf onto the bedroom walls with a sponge, to get a little sparkle going on. The stuff really reeks, though, so even though the windows were open, I was happy to be finishing that just about the time of sunset, and so I made my way off to First Encounter to see the evening's show.

I had barely arrived when this great bundle of energy and fur nearly bowled me over. Never fear, it was my friend Randy's kid, Alexander.

'Xander and I met last week for the first time, and at that time, I happened to have dog treats in my pockets as I was fresh from a visit to the bank...so he gave me the once over and, while disappointed that I was not similarly prepared to see him this week, was still relatively happy to see me.

It was fun to see them, and I enjoyed having a little doggy time.

Randy and I had a chance to visit a little more than during our brief crossing of paths last week, just before everything changed...and so we had much to chat about...and a beautiful sunset and moonrise to enjoy as Alexander explored the dunes and the shoreline for the stinky things that dogs enjoy.


After they'd departed for the rest of their evening, I stayed a little longer to enjoy the feeling of the warm sand on my bare feet and catch the last lingering bits of light over the bay, before heading home for a late dinner and a little more painting.

Oh, what a beautiful time September is.


Did you know the full moon closest to the Autumn equinox is called the Harvest Moon? I suppose we all do, thanks to the old song.

Two out of three years, the Harvest Moon is a September phenomena, but the other year it occurs in October.

They named it that since it appears to rise at a similar time for a few nights, only 20 minutes later than the night before, instead of the usual 50 minutes, giving farmers a little more time to spend in the fields at the harvest.

Tuesday's Trials

Here at the Midnight Garden, it's all about the Garden.

Except in the last few days, there's been some kind of convergence of petty annoyance, worry, genuinely stressy moments, busy work times, heat and humidity, seasoned with a dash of the oddness that only comes from living on the Cape this time of year.

Really, I only mention it here to say that sometimes, you really need to have a garden handy into which you may escape. Sometimes, it's the only place you can really think clearly.

Not quite so this morning, however, when we learned...somewhere just after 6:30...that a street sweeping operation had come to Not Wisteria Lane and decided to idle for fifteen minutes or so right out in front of our place. Boy, is that a clean patch of pavement.

Perhaps he had to take a cel call, or was refilling a coffee from his Thermos, or maybe he was some government shill sent to scope out the neighborhood and spy on one or another of us.

Anyway, it was not the most relaxing way to start the day. But look how well my plan to grow a garden that creates a wall to screen us a little from the street is working!

And I was not alone in this assessment of things.

As I was came out the door with coffee in hand, this bunny (the first nibbler of last spring, I believe, the one who grew so round and prosperous on my crocuses and early tulips...not that I'm bitter or anything) came dashing away from the driveway, as startled as the rest of the neighborhood at the arrival of this loud, swishing, splashing splendid yellow street sweeper.

He settled down enough to tuck into a clump of asters on the far side of the veggie patch, though. I don't really mind that so much; the asters don't bloom 'til late in the season, so all he's really doing there is pruning the plant back, so it will be lower and bushier when it does blooms.

Since this is a Look I like in asters, please allow me to point out that I've now tricked him into working for me!



Morning saw the opening of that yellow Chrysler rose bud, a beautiful sight indeed framed by allyssum, with some orange marigolds for contrast.




The other rose bush which pre-existed the garden here, has produced a first pink bud, with more clustered around to follow.

In the house, the Gardener's Cat wasn't up to anything at all. Really. He was just sitting in the sunshine, posing beside the Easter cactus. Not at all thinking about eating it or any other nearby.


Some of the recent drama resulted of concern for the cat's big sister, Em's well-being. Our Girl ended up with an appointment at the vets this afternoon, never a favorite activity of hers, though.

I'm sure she will already think it's too indiscreet of me to say she seems to have a urinary tract infection, without my delving into the way we discovered this. She also got her nails trimmed while she was there, no small feat.

The evening ended well, though. We found some nice breezes while sitting out on the lawn and we celebrated the day's successes with a bacon and pineapple pizza from Dominos. We just love that whole online Pizza Tracker thing.





You'll forgive me if I continue to bore you with the snapdragons, but they've really begun to bloom more heavily now and I would hate for you to miss them.






In addition to the snapdragons, assorted other things are continuing to grow larger all the time.

This evening I spotted the first bachelor button flowerhead forming. And in various locations along the border, the first cleome seedlings have reached blooming height and begun to form some buds.

As they bloom they'll continue climbing toward the sky, their stalks waving back and forth on the breezes.


Almost all of the coreopsis plants have at least a few of these little yellow flowers.

They're pretty cheery and bright, and will continue to bloom more or less all summer long, provided I remember to keep them deadheaded.


By the by, it seems I'm not the only one with Stuff going on lately, so I've tucked a few extra purple flowers into today's post to send some good energy out there into the Universe to give us all a little extra strength.

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!

Weeding and Thinking and Dogs and Roses and the Moon, Oh My...

Ahhh...the heat has broken, as much as it was ever unbroken for us, anyway. We didn't ever crack the 90 degrees that so many inlanders suffered with, thanks to those ocean breezes.

It certainly felt hot as blazes here as it was, so my greatest sympathies go out to those who were melting in temperatures well above ninety.

I'm usually okay with a few days of such weather. My lazy nature is always happy for the excuse to do less in the name of self-preservation, but there's plenty to be done in the garden this time of year, so I end up merely adjusting schedules to do that stuff in the earlier and later parts of the day, when that fiery globe isn't burning down on us. Watering early in the day is key, especially since it's been some time now since we've had any rain.

That's paying off nicely, as I'm beginning to see the evidence of the marks I made on the ground, as I sketched out shapes and letters and secrets and dreams in the dirt with seeds. Little green seedlings of all different shapes and sizes are appearing throughout.

Also, that witch grass that Sophie's dad warned me I'd "never get rid of" when I was first digging the garden bed last November has indeed taken the triple blessing of heat, water and fertilizer to its advantage, the tiniest scraps of roots setting up little tufts of green nearly everywhere throughout the garden.

This morning, in the cooler temps, I took some time and began to carefully tug at them. The key is to loosen the soil a little and grab hold at where the leaves and roots meet. To yank too hard only breaks off the leaves from the roots, and doubles their underground efforts. The slow and steady tug most often rewards with the roots pulled out mostly intact.

You can choose to be angry at the grass for being there, but that feels pointless to me. I try to focus on how impressive Nature is about reclaiming open ground and beginning the sucession of species and instead I appreciate the time to work carefully at a mindless task, the sort of thing which leaves your mind open to race over a thousand other equally important things to think about.

It was exactly this Zen-like state that kept me unawares this morning, until I realized I heard a sort of galloping sound coming at me, and then, I was knocked sideways and slurped by my new girlfriend, that friendly and playful boxer pup, Bosun, from up the street.

Of course we played; she wouldn't have had it any other way. But of course this attracted the attention of my Own Girl, who'd been peacefully lounging on the couch inside. At twelve or thirteen, she doesn't have too much interest in being outside for much of the heat...but Em does like to play, and the best way to get her attention is to give some to someone else. Before long, they were standing and sniffing on opposite sides of open (but screened) windows, whining at one another.

Feeling adventurous, I decided to attempt a meeting between the two of them, and brought Bosun into our fenced backyard...and then let Em out. They were both pretty excited, but Em overly so...and her agression concerns me sometimes, so I seperated them probably too soon, for the puppy's well-being...but also for Em's. After all, part of the responsibility for rescuing a somewhat-incorrigible-but-still-lovable dog like Emily is protecting her (and the world) from situations where she might get herself into trouble, right?

But she has had a few good dog friends over the years(most recently was her pal Lucy, a little free-range dog who Em used to send out into the old neighborhood to find out what was happening and Lucy would report back to Em with all the details, and then come inside and steal our cigarette lighters and hair brushes and other things that intrigued her), and I know she'd enjoy the occasional bit of canine companionship. After all, how much fun can you really have with a cat?

Anyway, we'll trying another introduction another day. It was time to calm them both down and get Bosun back to her place, where I discovered her parents were not home once again. I was starting to get a little annoyed with them for just leaving her to fend for herself out in the world when they left, until I spotted the tiny open window leading out to their screen porch, and the pushed-out bit of screening.

Ah ha, she's an escape artist...and probably just twitterpated like the rest of us, it being Spring and all. Her parents did return while I was there and we had a bit of a laugh about it. To be honest, I'm glad she seeks me out when she gets loose; maybe that'll keep her from wondering further afield than our quiet street.

And by the by, since this IS still a garden blog...they have a delightfully over-grown yard, full of all sorts of wonderful things like lilies and columbines and lychnis and irises and coreopsis and sedum and bunches of other things there was hardly time to identify at a glance. Hmmm...if I play this right, I could get me some divisions...if I play it wrong, I could end up doing too much work in someone else's garden. Those are thoughts for another day.

In other news, these wild white roses have begun blooming this week (these are outside the restaurant). They are considered a bit weedy and invasive here on the Cape. They are a reversion from the seed of fancier hybrids which the birds spread far and wide and the plants grow like crazy.

But they also are nicely fragrant and because they are everywhere, you can often get the scent of them on the air through your open car window...just one of many delightful fragrances drifting on the air these heady June days.

As for their invasiveness, I can't help but admire them, along with the grasses and yes, even the dreaded poison ivy, for the way they have their way with broken or fallow ground and help to renew it. In the case of the roses with their thorns and the poison ivy with it's own special powers of darkness, you could almost make a case for these being plants that actually protect the land from self-serving humans.

But it's late, and I might just be projecting super-heroic qualities onto the plants now. Still, it's not too late, as tomorrow is actually my first day off for this month of June. I'm off to sleep now, with plans to do some more weeding and then planting some more seeds (tomorrow the beans and also some zinnias), before a well-deserved massage in the afternoon.

I leave you with a look at tonight's moon.

Dog Day

When people speak of the Dog Days of Summer, they are generally referring to those hot days of mid-August, not early June. It's true, our temperatures have been fairly high this week, but there were other reasons to apply the Dog Days moniker to today.

This delicate little flower is Sophie. She lives directly across the street from us with her Dad.

Most mornings, when they emerge from the house, she makes her away across the road to say good morning to one of us. Usually it's Owen she sees, but he was still getting ready for work when I was out watering, so I had the pleasure this morning.

I was also greeted this morning, but a massive resprouting of witch grass in the most recently dug out portion of the garden bed. I've managed to carefully tug out a few of these, but most remain for some morning when I can sit down and tease them out, without damaging the newest flower seedlings which are already beginning to emerge.

That red in the background here is the scotch broom. Through that you can see one of the sunflowers...and in front of the broom, to the left, is that peony plant I thought was dying a few weeks back. It seems to be slowly recovering, thanks to its replanting here.

However, it doesn't appear that any of the peonies--generally looking pretty healthy, will be blooming this year. This is a little disappointing, as they have been so fantastic previously. But if they've survived the move at all, I should be grateful, and will have to accept a year without those fragrant flower bombs.

I still haven't had the time to do a Sniff Test on the dianthus, though I'm hoping to explore that aspect of these eager little plants tomorrow. Still, no reason not to show you this one in fire engine red.

Continuing the dog theme, I have learned that the pup who befriended me one morning last week is called Bosun. She's about six months old, and seems to be mostly taking to her training very well--we watched this morning as she walked at her Mom's side without a leash for the first time...well, for her Mom, anyway. She did the same trick with me last week when we first met.

She was apparently left alone outside again this morning, which bothers me a little. I was sitting in the car, choosing a CD for the car ride to work when I was suddenly being slurped once more by this gangly cutie.

Since I was ready to leave, I opened up the passenger door and she hopped right in...and I drove her down to her house.

No one was home, and I wasn't going to put her back into the backyard pen she'd escaped from...especially because it's pretty sunny in their back yard. (*While we never reached the 90 degree mark predicted for today, it was still a hot morning) There is a line in the front yard, which is pretty shady, so I hooked her up to that and found a bowl to fill with water from their outdoor tap.

It was really all I could do before leaving for work, well, except to get a photo of her. I really hope they don't continue leaving this sweet dog outside on her own. She seems to be seeking me out when she's lonely...which is heart-warming and cute, but still...

Behind the restaurant today, I spotted this lady bug larva, which is so very different looking from the insect it will become. Here's another photo I took of one of these last year.

And today a morning look at that fantastic purple iris. It's not as dark as I recalled. However, I saw one down the street this evening which did indeed appear to be nearly black. I'll try to get a photo of that tomorrow.



I spotted the Nibblers grazing across the street this evening and disturbed this one a little as I wandered over for a closer photo.

Clearly they weren't that disturbed, though.