Thanks For the Meme-ories

Remember the day around mid-July when I posted my response to a pair of memes here at the Midnight Garden? They were things I'd been tagged on and not addressed for a while, and it was a relief to know I'd taken care of that and could get back to the daily garden photos. Well, for a few minutes, anyway, until I learned I'd been newly tagged by my pal James over at Lost in the Landscape (whose completely different garden blog is another of those daily treasures the blogging world has to offer. Go look at the teasel.).

So, that meme was supposed to be 10 random things about me. I've already done a couple of those and there's the 100 List, too (though I suspect some of that may require revision in future months). James gave me permission (while simultaneously pointing out that the 100 list lacked a #26) to just do six or seven things, because of the meme-convergence.

I decided to go for eight, although you may find that each of the eight points contains more than just one random bit. Meanwhile, I wanted to do something to mix it up a bit, make it more interesting than just another list and so I dug around in some old photo albums to see what I could find. Please cue the Bob Hope theme music and we'll begin.

1) This is a dear old friend: the apple tree in our New Jersey back yard in whose arms I passed many a lazy summer day of my childhood...and thanks to the annual drop of crab apples, a few of those days were spent tidying up the yard, too. To the right of center, you can see two waterspout-y kind of limbs, which were just the right distance apart to serve as a sort of tree seat, where you could lounge with a small pile of comic books in your lap and read in the apple-scented breezes.

The fledgling garden photographer took this photo in May of 1979, just before we moved away to the Adirondacks of upstate New York. A close examination of recent Google Earth imagery suggests that some subsequent owners of the property have removed the tree and filled the tiny space with a swimming pool. The silly fools.

2) That same fledgling photographer took this picture of my Mom's tulips in that same yard, same year. Note how the tulips themselves are out of focus, but the lovely purple violets in the background are fairly clear. That still happens to me...all the time!

3) So we moved to the mountains, which was an interesting change. From a class of 300 in northern New Jersey, I now had 17 classmates, and we were the third-largest class in the history of the local K-12 school.

I'm grateful to have spent so many of my "formative" years in a place of such incomparable beauty and I'm happy to know I have so many friends there still, for when I want to visit in the future!

The town is called Long Lake, as it is situated to straddle the lake of the same name, which is fourteen miles long. Technically, though, the body of water is actually a widening of the Raquette River and thereby not a lake at all. But whatever.

Here's a view of it looking south from over the town beach. That's not the long end, but I forgot to scan that photo.

4) This next view shows the only intersection in Long Lake. No traffic lights there, although there is a yellow blinking light down by the lake, to remind people to turn instead of getting wet.

In the center, more or less, of this image, is the property we moved to, which included a small cottage colony for summer rentals...which also made life pretty interesting, at least between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

I've sketched in an arrow (tho thanks to the monitor issues here, I've no idea just what color that arrow is...) which indicates the site of the very first garden I ever really got to create and tend.

Of course, it didn't exist until we sold and moved some of those cottages.

By the way, these two photos were also taken in 1979, by the same young photog, during the only fifteen minutes of my life I have ever been aloft in an airplane.


4) Once those cottages were removed, there turned out to be more than enough space for a good long border garden in the corner of the property. In time, the garden looked like this. Here it is around 1995 or so.

It was my first real chance to play with something other than annuals. Of course, since it was USDA Zone 3, the choices were still somewhat limited.

A few of the perennials in this garden (the Shasta Daisies, the Garden Heliotrope and some tall garden phlox) are plants which made the move with me, eventually and still live.

They are now planted in the fence garden I feature here every day.

5) When I moved to Cape Cod and settled in Provincetown in 1997, I lived for a time in a second story apartment where there was no garden. However, there were gardens a-plenty all around and I enjoyed walking or biking about town to admire them all. This also gave me a little time to study just what it was possible to grow in this different climate, USDA Zone Coastal 7.

I did, however, use a stash of old theatrical lighting gels leftover from college and some black electrical tape to create this faux stained glass window in the apartment, which I still think was pretty damn cool.

Like so many of Life's most interesting things, it was very temporary, since I hadn't thought to create it on a piece of plexiglass or anything like that which I could actually have moved. Only this photo remains.


6) When we first made the acquaintance of Emily Grace, we weren't really sure of her age. But we knew she was incorrigible.

She was a wild, untrained dog of great strength and will who'd been to the pound three different times before our paths crossed hers. While our relationship was rocky at the start, to say the least, it was clear that she loved us for our devotion and faith in her.

This image is taken in early December 1998, just two months after she'd joined the household and is truly a moment frozen in time. The doggy bed pillow and "Santa's Helper" holiday scarf were two early-season gifts we gave her earlier that evening.

By the following morning, the pillow was a cloud of white fluffy filling which wafted about the living room.

By Christmas morning, three weeks later, she'd chewed all of the scarf she could reach so that, appropriately, only the letters "Santa's Hel" remained.

7) When Owen and I combined households earlier that year, we also combined gardens, as I added many of my floral friends from my Adirondack gardens to the beds he had already created in Eastham.

It was a lovely show the following summer and nicely symbolic of our new relationship. Which isn't to say that territorial issues about the garden didn't also crop up, as a result of the merging.

We ended up moving the following year, the first of many for us. Many of the plants came along for the ride, but a host of them remained behind. We can still enjoy some of their bloomings as we drive by our old homes each year. Just look at all those lilies.

8) In the summer of 2002, this pair of golden snapdragons in our Wellfleet garden made me cry one hot July morning, as they reminded me of the Twin Towers that had fallen in New York City the previous year and how the world around us was beginning to change.


** This isn't one of the eight points, but just to put this out there, it's now been fifteen days without one of those cigarette things. There's been a few surprise cravings this week, but nothing I couldn't work through.

The Nicodemon, you get him under your heel, but the little bastard is kind of like one of those gremlins in a horror movie that just won't quite die. Oh, but this one will...and quite horribly, too.

Heh heh heh....


As a bonus (but you all can decide if it really IS one or not), here's a fresh look at the Midnight Gardener, who in the heat of late July remembered he was the proud owner of a pithe helmet (just one of the spoils of a late-night raid on the costume store room of the fine arts building of my college way too many years ago.). Since he rarely remembers a hat in the hot sun, this was a good thing, stares from the neighbors aside.

I won't wax poetic or adventurous about hacking through the jungle that is the Weeds of Late July, as Jenn has recently done so to great effect over at Of Cabbages and Kings and I couldn't top that.

It was she who reminded me I had such a hat in my possession, though she knew it not. I also thank her for the chuckles she brings me each day with her humor writing. Laughter is the seasoning that makes so much of Life palatable, and we should just pour it on everything. Well, almost everything. No, Everything. Because good gods, Life is too short.

I'm tempted to tag a bunch of you, but it's no doubt a somewhat more complex meme now that I've added the component of having to scan old photographs, so I don't want to be the source of that burden. However, if you've got some old pics you wanna share and a few interesting things to say about them, well, I bet it'd be lots of fun to see what you come up with.

Hope it's a great weekend for you all!

Evening's Gardens

This shot of the purple tulip (with few exceptions, they are long-lasting in their beauty) made me think of Gillian's recent photos of that deep maroon tulip from her garden (she turned it into her new header photo--you should check it out here).

Have you noticed how spring's popping up all over the internet? It seems like everyone's blogging from the garden these days...and what could possibly be wrong with that?

Hey, remember when I introduced you to the ajuga a few weeks back and they seemed to tower above the shasta daisy foliage?

You can see (right) the daisies are now taller than the ajuga, though each of those two blue flower spikes have sent out six inch runners in several directions.

Helpful gardener that I am, I covered those runners with a little dirt as I weeded the other day...to help those runners turn into roots. I'd like a whole patch of those blue flower spikes next year!

To the left in that picture, you can see another of the successful peony transplants, with a rose climbing up the fence post. Peeking over from the other side of the fence, there's some tall garden phlox in the background. The white in the foreground is pansies to the left and allyssum to the right. The pale green right in the center down there is a clump of autumn sedum.

The light was perfect for photos in the garden this evening, and I finally got a good shot of the columbine, the buds of which are only just starting to look like the unique flowers they become.

I'm always interested to see what the flowers will look like...there were two or three different varieties going in Eastham, and I'm not sure which ones made the trip...and which might've been new seedlings from cross-pollination. It could be a flower I've never seen before. I mention this because I don't remember them being this purple last year.
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We interrupt this blog post to bring you a lapful of kitty.

Half an hour passes. There is chin-rubbing, bread-making, belly-rubbing, ear scratching and almost deafening purring. Now, with the possibility that something more interesting might be happening somewhere else in the house, he's off again.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog. We regret any inconvenience.
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The evening sun also allowed me to get this terrific shot of the buds of the red valerian (distant relation, I believe, to the white valerian I also know as garden heliotrope...confused yet? Good, I'm not alone.)

Pterydactls, anyone?


While I poked around the garden--I'm happy to say there are still carnation buds yet uneaten by the Giant Bunny--this cowbird swooped down to get a drink and have a bit of a wash.


In the little birdbath in the sideyard, this house sparrow was doing the same.

But it was time to turn my attention to more "local" wildlife, as it was time for the Nightly Walk...and Em was eager to hit the dusty trail.

Her enthusiasm never fails to inspire me--she gets more excited about these walks than she does about Paper Day (her name for Christmas morning).

She is always in control, but even moreso as we pass the gardens in this yard every night.

I'm so enchanted by their arrangement and design; I'm constantly surprised as I recognize one plant or another(there's purple violets in between and underneath the hostas)...and then spot another I've never seen before...and Em just drags me along, so I never get to look for very long.

I made her stop for a few moments on the next corner, where there are a few mayflowers blooming. I've been trying to photograph them all week, but seem to be continually foiled by wind and too-bright sunlight...and of course, the impatient dog.

She's all business on these trips, and has little time to be standing around while I take pictures, so I usually take them on the fly, or not at all.

This evening, I managed this one of the lily of the valley (and buttercups!!) growing under this fence around the last corner as we headed into the home stretch.

Busy Day

Today was a fantastic day. At first, it was hard for me to tear myself away from the Weather Channel, I was so fascinated with hearing that our forecast was to consist of "plentiful sunshine." Oh, did it ever.

Too much sunshine, in fact, for me to stay inside, with so much on the docket to accomplish today. The first order of business was to finish digging in the garden bed around the lamp post and the clematis vine there.

As I worked the soil free of the grass roots, plenty else came free as well, all the stones and bits of organic material and all the residents, as well, like this catepillar.

And, holy crap! Look at this giant worm. I couldn't believe the size of it, but fortunately thought to lay down my hand fork beside it for comparison. Now there's a worm you want to keep happy...


I had that section finished by around 11 a.m. or so and then turned over the bed where I'd laid out all the seaweed and salt hay a week or so ago.

The last thing I did before breaking for lunch was to test out the soaker hose. I'm always fascinated by the way the water beads up out of the hose. A side benefit of this was that the hose was full of water as it lay out in the noontime sun while I lunched, so it was more pliable for the afternoon install.

The pink azalea by the front door is starting to open today. Beautiful, huh?

The lunch break included a trip to the store, as I needed to pick up a few things for the afternoon projects: twine and pushpins to make some trellacing to help the morning glories find their way up the fence, some plastic knifes to mark where the soaker hose would be buried and a few other things, as well as a tuna sub from the Harwich Subway, where the world's angriest man was making sandwiches.

The soaker hose installation went well, and I wove a path through the garden, burying it about an inch under the soil surface. I tried to arrange it so that it would water the plants who'll benefit most.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite long enough to cover the whole garden, so I'll still have some hand watering to do in certain areas. But I've also got a lot of seeds to plant which will thrive in drier areas, so it should all work out to the good.

Once that was in place, I built up a series of mounds in the area around the birdbath, which will be the home for the Three Sisters garden. Step one is complete now, with the corn planted in the center of the flattened mound. Once those sprout, I'll plant the beans, and then a week after that, the squash.

Next I made some trellaces on a few of the fence posts and got the older vines planted and trained onto the bottom of the strings. I have a feeling they'll take right off and start climbing up the posts by summer.

Meanwhile, as I dug in the hose, I also moved a few plants into the new bed near the lamp post.

That opened up space for the tomatoes I'll be planting tomorrow. And I was able to get my garden sign into the ground, as well. Also into that bed went the two canna lily plants I've been harboring in pots inside this winter.

I finished up with all I'd planned to do today just as Owen was getting home from work around 4 p.m. Whew...what a long and productive day. My forearms and face may've gotten a little more sun exposure than necessary, but I think I'll sleep especially well this evening, knowing all I've accomplished.


Perhaps the best part of the day was having everything done early enough that I was able to steal a few peaceful moments to sit in the sun on the back porch and do a little reading.

I seem to have a lot on my mind lately, since I find myself re-reading paragraphs as I get into the first chapter of this new book. Fortunately, they are great paragraphs. And what about that beautiful bookmark, hmmm? Thank you, Patrick!!

Here's the northern flicker on the lawn outside the front door this evening.

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.

And So it Grows

Checking in at the Sunflower Academy, some of my most eager seedlings have now surpassed the one foot mark, and still not quite a month old. I'm so proud. I'll be happy to get these guys outside in the some real sunshine and let them see what they can do.

With such a good start out of the gate, I think we stand to be impressed.

Not far from the sunflowers is this easter cactus. I bought it as just a small plant as a gift to myself when I moved into my Provincetown apartment. It's never bloomed for me, though grown considerably in the ten years since.

This week, I'm seeing for the first time, a few hot red flower buds. Woo woo!! Don't underestimate the power of a south-facing window!

The rains were heavy overnight and continued for a while this morning. If there were thunderstorms--I don't think they materialized--I slept through them (not an impossible scenario).

But the quantity of rain itself was a good test of the new level of the garden...and I'm happy to say, it seems to have passed admirably. The rain water still pools outside the garden, but doesn't spill through the rocks and flood everything...meaning the water is in the perfect place to feed the garden residents, without washing them away. And that's good enough for me just now.

As you can see, the rain's done a world of good for a garden already thriving, and the shades of green seem so much richer today against the dark wet colors of the dirt.

A few of the very full young hyacinths flopped over under the weight of the rain, which is not a sad thing...since I'd been thinking about cutting a few to bring inside.

I'm a big fan of their scent, and it's kind of fun to have it wafting through the indoors, as well as the garden.

Rain Coming

Remember how I grumbled and moaned about the rain in February and March?? I'm a little chagrined to admit this morning, I was disappointed to wake up and not find it already raining.

Of course, since those dreary months of rats and sporadic heating, I've had the opportunity to fix the level of the garden above the level of the rainwater that pools out in front of the garden, and so partly, I'm eager to see how things fare with some substantial rainfall. Also, we haven't had any in a while...and finally (my selfish reason), I'm just giddy knowing what all those plants will do out there after a day or two of serious rain, in Wednesday's sunshine.

In past springs here on the Cape, I've been lulled into false irrigational security by dire forecasts of rain to come, only to have those storms break up as they crossed the bay. So I debated whether or not to give things a watering this morning, before deciding all would be well. You have to have some faith in a 100% chance of rain, I guess.

Meanwhile, the hostas have begun to emerge. This is one of the many at the place in Eastham, the one which came along with us. The garden elf was my Grandma's. I can remember him residing in two different gardens of hers, before coming to live in each one of mine.

His age is showing and a fresh coat of paint has long been planned. Perhaps this summer I'll get around to sprucing him up.

Until today, I was uncertain as to whether Big Daddy hosta made the move with us. I could remember hemming and hawing about potting him up, so pleased was I with his performance in the former location. But then this morning, I spied those distinctive blue-green horns coming up from a spot I honestly don't remember planting him in (great sentence, eh?).

Not only is this a beautiful hosta variety, but you just gotta love the Tennessee Williams moment you get when you hear yourself say, "Why, Big Daddy, there you are!" right out loud in the garden.

And today, on Tales From The Bedroom Window Sill...those big sunflower seed lings -not quite a month old-are now taller than the lowest row of window panes (about seven or eight inches, I guess).

Man, they are the very definition of heliotropism, too: I must turn them two or three times a day to keep them more or less straight and tall (imagine encouraging that). I hope to get the largest of them planted outside within the week.

Huddled close at the same window, the first of the recently-planted morning glory seeds have sprouted.


At work, this purple-leaved oxalis is merrily blooming in the greenhouse dining room.

The day darkened as it continued, and the wind continued to kick up. By afternoon, the first of the rain found us and fell pretty steadily throughout the day.

There was a break in the showers long enough for Em and I to have our nightly stroll (yank and drag, more like, my sweet beast) around the block. There's lots of pretty things happening in other yards in our neighborhood, which I'll try to show you some of soon.

The blackbirds were chattering up a storm in the windy and wet treetops, as we made our way around, the sort of talk we just don't hear from them on more pleasant evenings. None of the usual "I feel pretty" calls, but lots of staccato sounds, short and crisp...or tight strands of warbling that sound like words.


As much as I am grateful for the rain, I felt a little wistful watching the garden through the rainy window this evening, wanting to go out and stand there as I do as often as possible...marking the growth, spotting the new appearances(and trying to identify them), imagining where I'll plant other seeds later on...and what they might look like later in the season.

We may see some thunderstorms passing through in the overnight. I always welcome a good storm. The tingle in the air, the rush of the wind, the call and response of the deaf lightning and the blind thunder, older generations of my family now passed, bowling in heaven. And also, my theory about lightning and plant growth(#57 on the Hot One Hundred).

Ah, but I love these April showers.