Stormy Dark. With Yellow

It was a dark and stormy night.
Suddenly, a shot rang out, a maid screamed.

It is a dark and stormy night. No, really. But I'll get to that shortly. But since there's a break in the weather just now, I'm doing a little blogging as I watch the shot put events at the Olympics.

Yes, I'm on that schedule lately, since so much of the events happen live during our east coast wee hours. If Freestyle Snooze Alarm were an event at the Summer Games, I'd be in contention for a medal.

Anyway, the Garden. I'll lead with this new snapdragon that's begun blooming at the edge of the thistle cloud. It's really the only color other than yellow I'm offering today(and so, James, if you need to scroll down, I'm okay with that...).

It's not that there weren't other colors. As you can see from the long shot below, there were plenty of morning glories, but you know, we've been seeing those everyday for a while.

But yellow seemed like a good idea for this gray morning and so that's mostly what I seem to have captured. The glow of Apollo made a few sporadic appearances during the course of the day...most notably in early evening, when the deep orange light made long shadows outside of work.


But considering how gray the morning was, I think you can understand my wanting to focus on the yellows, like the evening primrose and marigolds above.

Soon there'll be new flowers and colors to share with you, as I've now officially found the first cosmos bud on one of those seashell-flowered plants.

The rain we're getting tonight should be an encouragement. I wonder, probably Sunday morning it will open.



In six or seven different places along the fence garden, you'll find clumps of this threadleaf coreopsis, regularly providing fresh little flowers as long as I remember to deadhead the old ones.

I do think this little guys are pretty enjoyable and I'm always amazed to remember that they have grown so prolificly from the tiny little side shoot that I dug out of my friend Paul's Wellfleet garden back in 2001.

Down below you'll find one of the tickseed coreopsis, re-blooming in a smaller fashion than earlier in the summer. As with most yellow flowers, I think they are pretty terrific, but I do think they are at their best when they mingle with other colors for contrast.


On the way home tonight around 11:00 p.m. was when I first spotted the lightning (I'd stayed to have a bite to eat while I watched the Mens 100M Butterfly swim with Michael Phelps on the bar TV. One more gold medal--this guy is amazing. But I'm not addicted to the Olympics. I could stop any time I wanted. Really.). By the time I got home the storm was ramping up pretty nicely, with some big lightning and heavy rain.

I stayed in the car in the driveway for a few minutes once I'd arrived. Partly for safety, but also to watch the lightning dancing across the sky.

When I was finally inside, I got a few candles lit. The power doesn't seem to go off too often here in Harwich, but I like to be ready when there's a big storm. And the radar map was making clear that this was a big storm.

It has been a lightning filled early morning, some of it pretty dramatic...and only hinted at in this latest series of screen caps.





Since it looks like a dreary mid-afternoon, I do feel the need to remind you that this last image was captured at about 12:35 a.m.
It's very quiet now, as the storm has moved past, a quiet darkness of dripping and crickets, punctuated by a distant roll of thunder receding in the distance.

Oh, and the crack of a starter pistol on television for the one of the races of the Heptathlon (Which always makes me think of the contest they had on Paradise Island to decide which Amazon would be Wonder Woman.). Time for bed!

Night Falls

The Good Times ice cream truck returned to Not Wisteria Lane tonight. The last we'd seen the truck and it's female owner/operator, Nicole, she advised me that she'd be back on Tuesday and Saturday evenings. As it turns out, I'd been here most of the Tuesdays and Saturdays the last two weeks...and no ice cream.

But then this evening, when all hope was lost, we heard the distinctive tones of the electronic "Turkey in the Straw" drifting on the evening air and we dashed around waving them down and grabbing some money. What can I say, those Strawberry Shortcake bars are a rare treat.

When I mentioned her absence, she told me she'd been working the Eastham beaches (oh, sure, now that we're in Harwich...), but she gave me her card, "in case you have an ice cream emergency." (Weren't we just chuckling about the Cookie Emergency truck in Montreal?)

So now we've got her phone number and it almost seems worth it to have another barbecue, just to get the ice cream truck to cater dessert. She also does Weddings (picture, if you will...), Birthdays and other Special Occasions, naturally. Next time, I'll have to ask her if the truck plays "La Cucharacha", as I hear this is a popular choice for ice cream trucks in Baltimore.

And so we had our dessert while dinner was still cooking.

* * *

The sun sinks behind the trees, light on the garden becoming first dappled, then indirect...and gradually seeping away as the sky darkens above.

Walk with me along the garden's edge, our bare feet in the damp grass of evening. We'll light some candles and talk some about the various plants...whispering their names and stories, if we know them.

We stoop to sniff at one blossom or another. All the snapdragons smell like different kinds of candy, their scents growing stronger in the gathering shadows. In nearby bushes, birds chirp their young ones a nest-time story as they settle in for the dark night ahead.



Here's a sort of group picture, the Midnight Garden Class of 2008, Spring Semester, if you will.
As the sun sets, the moon suddenly appears behind the treeline across the street. As the evening progresses, we watch it clear the treetop and light the sky, puffy cotton clouds lit sideways with it's glowing beams.

I believe that "star" to the east/left of the moon is Jupiter. It's elliptical orbit has it as close to the earth as it ever gets this week, thus the extra brilliance.

The Fair Orb is not quite full this evening, but it's close enough that you really can't tell much of a difference. It's bright beams catch the white petals of the daisies and snapdragons and that single white cleome and set them to gleaming in the dark. Maybe someday I'll have a White Garden for just such occasions, as Vita did at Sissinghurst (though perhaps on a more manageable scale).

For now, the daisies' glow is enough.