Pretty Things

I imagine you all thought I was kidding when I said it was nice to have the chair so Badum would have a place to sit...so I thought I'd share this image with you. I'm sure if I'd gotten there first, things might have gone differently.

But I was hard pressed to sit still last night, trying out the new Swiffer, playing the sliding tile puzzle game with all the boxes, cartons, milk crates and laundry baskets full of stuff, so I could Swiff (is that that proper verb form here? I'm new...), rearranging furniture, etc.

Anyway, he looked too comfortable to move and when I did sit down, I had color swatch charts spread out on the floor around me.

What fun to have carte blanche with colors! I think I've come up with the Plan of Attack, and might even be getting a start on the painting this evening. It just makes sense to try to do as much of it as possible before actually unpacking too much.

Of course, once I was reminded on the radio of the good possibility that the world as we know it might be sucked into a black hole when they turned on that particular accelerator in Switzerland, I did settle down a bit. No point being all exhausted when I get to the Hereafter, I figure. Considering I'd just found a great apartment and paid rent, it made perfect sense that the world might come to an end, at least according to the laws of Murphy.

Still, I was quite happy to see this morning that it had not. Hopefully, those scientists will be able to learn incredible new things about the birth of the Universe without all the trouble of those pesky black holes or dark matter. I can get all that in comic books, for gosh sake.

Considering the last few days, though, I am a little tired and not sure I have loads to say today, so I thought I'd give you a break from all that (and me, too), and just share with you some pretty flower pictures, which have been a bit minimal for the last few days. There are some nice shots from my visit to the garden on Monday that I think you'll all enjoy.

Oh, but I did want to show you first, one of the cool features of the Gardener's Nest I hadn't shared with you yet: this cool, plaster light fixture on the living room ceiling. Not having a supply of spare bulbs, I've not had the chance to see if it works yet (on the list of things to do this evening), but I sure hope it does.

Purty, ain't it?

Let It Be

Glory In The Morning

Okay, so once again, these are yesterday's photos and I'm a day late getting them up here. If only I could stop myself from taking all these pictures. I mean, you've seen one morning glory, you've seen them all, right? But each flower's so great, I just can't help myself.

I'm a shade annoyed with myself for forgetting to mention something last time around. It turns out that the last post was my 1500th!! Now, sure, that counts a bit skewed by all the individual photos I uploaded here back in the early days of my blogging, before I worked out exactly how to include multiple photos in a post.

But still, it's some kind of a landmark. At the very least it explains the sleep deprivation. Sorry there wasn't a contest or a give-away. There ought to have been, since I have the best readers in the entire blogosphere. I promise I'll try to hit you with something fun for Post 2000; really.

Meanwhile, kisses all around.


Meanwhile, did you know that the bachelor's buttons I love so much are actually outlawed in North Carolina as an invasive weed?

Apparently, even though it was originally called cornflower exactly because it coexisted alongside crops in England, in North Carolina it wreaks havoc with local agriculturalists, who apparently can't stand the sight of a little beauty.

No, no...to be fair, the Carolinas are probably right about that point where the conditions are maybe a little too right for this species and so they tend to take over an area (which bodes well for your success growing them, Java...sssh...). But really, what sweet invasion.



To balance out the recent show of sunflowers, let us focus unabashedly today on the morning glories, the other truly prolific flower in this summer's garden.

Now these flowers, unlike the sunflowers, thrive best without a whole lot of fertilizer and special care. In fact, I've heard if you fertilize them too much, they'll produce all leaves and no (or few flowers).

So I've tried to be careful when fertilizing everything else to give a bit of a berth to the base of the morning glory vines. Certainly they are probably benefiting from some of that adjacent fertilizer, though...which would explain their miraculous and unparalleled success. They are thirsty little buggers, though, so I always try to give them a little extra water, especially when there's heat in the forecast.

Of course, Robin suggested that perhaps they are just growing so well because they know that I love them...and I expect that they probably do. I whisper the words to them now and then, for sure...and they reward me with this incredible show.


It's funny, though, how you can look down the garden border at a certain angle...at many angles, actually...and see that by this point in the season, there is no denying that the sunflowers are ruling the border, have completely wrested from me any illusion that I was even remotely in charge of the goings-on.

Frankly, I'm thrilled with their initiative.


Perhaps encouraged, like the roses, to reblooming by the cooler days and evenings, the honeysuckle is staging something of a come-back and while the show is smallish at this point, the scent is still powerfully wonderful when I lean over to bring my nose a little closer.

(In fact, I can smell it drifting in the open window now, as the katydids roar in the bushes across the street.)



Hopefully, you can bear the sight of a few more morning glories, because I'm making you look at more of them. But you may notice they are not the ones you've seen before.

Now that the registration on the car was renewed, it was time to get her inspected, and so this morning we went off to Nickerson Service Center in Eastham.

One of my annual pleasures is getting the car inspected at this time of year, because it means I get to enjoy the peak of Claire's fantastic blue morning glories, which she plants in twin whiskey barrels and trains up and over the entrance of the garage. Last year, crappy weather early in the season messed up their growth, but I was happy to see that they were restored to their former glory this summer.




She also had some nice zinnias growing in the barrels, as well as some marigolds and other things.





It's always fun to trade stories with another gardener and we did some of just that while I was paying my bill. Claire confirmed something I'm hearing from other local gardeners this summer: it's a big year for bunnies, chipmunks, squirrels and other rodentia.

Some have posited that this is because of a recent decline in the coyote and fox population. But Claire said there's one large bunny in her neighborhood so smart that when he sees the coyote coming, he makes it a point to stand closer to the humans. Apparently gardeners in her neighborhood are so fed up with the munching and the nibbling that they are consider gunning their car engines when they see a rabbit in the road.

I told her all about Liquid Fence and my success with it. Perhaps it will help with their stress levels. It doesn't help anyone if you go all Fudd and it rarely ends well.


I couldn't resist a stop at Rock Harbor on the way to work once the inspection was successfully completed, and the view was, as always, worth the time and trouble.


And in case that hadn't made me smile, there were the delighted cries of this little girl (visiting the beach with her parents, who are just off image), as she had what might have been her first encounters with the big lapping waters of Cape Cod Bay.

Pink and The Tracks to Nowhere In Particular

Well, I'm running consistantly a little behind lately, what with deciding it might not be a totally horrible idea to get myself some extra sleep now that summer's drawing to a close.

So, these are actually yesterday's photos, but still an enjoyable bunch, I think.

The pale pink morning glories are coming on strong now, which is fun, as they are a nice addition to the color range of the species. Actually, as you'll see, Pink seems to be something a theme today.

Of course the hot pink and blue vines from earlier in the season are still going on like crazy and now leaving the fencepost (yes, there really IS one in there somewhere...a garden lantern, too) to twine and vine their way around some sky-bound sunflower stalks.

The weather's a little cooler now. Yesterday morning I almost wore a flannel shirt (albeit with shorts) for the first time since spring. But after I got dressed, it felt like a warmer-than-necessary choice and I changed to something lighter. I shouldn't have second-guessed, though, as clouds moved in to make it a pretty cool afternoon, with temps in the 50s; the flannel would've been just right.

The cooler temps are encouraging the dianthus to another round of flowering for September. This will be convenient, as I was pricing plastic flowerboxes today with a thought toward transplanting these guys to the balcony at my next location. That they are flowering again will make them easier to find in the current chaos of the fence garden.

I'm also considering one of those clay strawberry pots with assorted planting windows (they are on sale at the local nursery) as a new home for my sedums and hens and chicks, but I don't know how well this sort of planter might winter and what I'd have to do to encourage that sort of survival.

I'm thinking maybe some sand inside, below the dirt, would be more "flexible" during winter freezes and thaws, but I'm not entirely sure.

Here's a variety of sunflower I've shown previously, but didn't include in yesterday's full array of the sunflowers. This one's located down at the very far end of the fence garden.

Behind it you can see that large planting of boneset I featured recently when it was just starting to bud.

The later part of the morning had me venturing up-Cape, on newly-vacated local roads, as I headed for the Registry of Motor Vehicle, as t'was time to renew my auto registration.

On the way, I found this lovely and massive planting of impatiens. It's one of my favorite flowers, but I had no shade for a change this year, so we didn't get to play together as we have in past years.

I'm happy to say it was not the Waiting Room To Hell that the RMV can often be (actually, they are pretty efficient there and I've rarely had complaints, of course, part of that comes of being properly prepared with something enjoyable to read, in this case, one of James Patterson's Alex Cross novels, Cat and Mouse.).

On the way to work from there, I made a stop by a favorite spot of mine, along the abandoned tracks of the Cape Cod Railroad.

Almost all of the rails on the Outer Cape (my standard stomping grounds) were long ago removed and turned into bike trails...which is lovely and fun, but a little sad if you're a rail fan, as I am.

This spot is accessible from an old rest stop parking area from Route 6, and the old railroad bridge that crosses the Bass River is a popular fishing spot, although no one was around when I visited.

There is still some freight service in the Yarmouth area, but the tracks to this remainder of the line have recently been cut...and as you can see, are pretty seriously overgrown.

I've been trying to identify just what these little wildflowers are growing along the trackbed, but to no avail. They are also growing pretty wildly on Not Wisteria Lane, so I had hoped to figure out what they were...but have not been able to narrow things down much further than this family, which frankly, I could have guessed without benefit of a detailed Google search.

As I mentioned, the weather caught me a little off-guard yesterday, as the forecast had a great big orange sun icon all across it. However, there's a storm out in the ocean that's swirling around and occasionally backs some cloud cover in overhead, which helped to keep our temps on the cool side. There's no rain in forecast to benefit us, but the occasional cloud thing is continuing again today.

I was wandering the garden at work later in the afternoon and noticed that the kousa dogwood's berries were coloring up nicely. Like the other dogwoods, this one is a beauty when it blooms in late spring, but I think I like it best for these "dogwood crunch berries", of which the local crows seem quite fond.

I noticed, too, that the cooler temperatures of this end of the summer seem to be encouraging some of the roses out there to another flush of blooming.

As always, I wish I could share with you the fragrance. It was a small pleasure that helped perk up a low moment in my afternoon and I know you'd have enjoyed it, too.

Mostly Sunflowers

Hello and happy September, everyone. I hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend (that's with a U if you're reading from Canada, of course...). I find myself breathing a sigh of relief on a couple of fronts this morning.

First, I'm relieved for the good folks of the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, who seemed to have come through the landfall of Hurricane Gustav with minimal worries (well, besides that minor business of having to evacuate a couple million people)--schoolkids from NOLA are no doubt annoyed to hear that school will be in session next week.

Also, now that this last holiday weekend of the summer has come and gone, the roads here on the Cape (and the beaches, too, no doubt, though I've not had the chance to confirm this one) are emptier now, much easier to navigate. While we enjoy (don't we?) the hub-bub and chaos of high summer, it's always a pleasure to get our wonderful Cape Cod back for our own pleasure.

While the calendar page's turning seems to have brought slightly cooler temperatures and lesser humidity, we know that September and the Gulf Stream will conspire to bring us some delightful weather to let us have our last hurrahs of summer without much traffic.

Of course, we are keeping our eyes on the latest tropical activity. There's a storm called Hanna we're especially keeping an eye on, as she seems to be stalking the east coast a bit. And after her are Ivan and Josephine.

We'll keep our fingers crossed...but maybe do a thing or two to make ready, just in case.

Morning glories are back in the picture today. Not only are those early blue and pink ones still going strong, as you can see above, but yesterday morning I was caught off-guard - in the best possible way - by this all-white morning glory. I didn't remember there being any of those suggested as included in the mixed seed pack these came from, but as we've seen before, every now and then something unexpected happens.

As surprises go, it's a pretty sweet one.

Now I know I've been showing you a lot of sunflowers this summer, but let's be clear on this point: there's LOTS of sunflowers to show you. I've tried to work them in here and there with other flower shots, so as not to saturate the market...but the truth is, at this end of the season, the sunflowers are really dominating.

So today, I figured I'd give in and feature a whole bunch of them, so you can more easily see the variety of them I'm enjoying. Plus, Kelly will recently have or be about to return to school, and as she is the godmother of these fantastic beauties, why shouldn't she (and you) get to enjoy them some more?


Perhaps you will think I am being needlessly humble, but I can't help be a little amazed at the smashing sunflowers successes I've enjoyed this year. Many of you have written to say that you've never had that much success with them, and before this year, I was solidly in that camp with you.

I haven't ruled out the idea that the Garden simply knew that I was going to need all these cheery faces as the season wore on, and that all this is merely a bit of good fortune, but for the sake of perhaps duplicating this success in the future, I figured I'd consider the factors which probably also contributed.

First, FULL sun. We simply cannot underestimate the value and power of those warm golden rays. Just about everything I've grown this year has done moreso than ever before, thanks to the bright rays of Ra, or Apollo, or Al Gore, or whomever it is you think might be in charge of the sun.

However, the full sun exposure will quickly bring an end to even the hardiest of plants without the other key ingredient in this recipe, which hopefully, is obviously water. Two thirds of the fence garden here in this year's Midnight Garden is underlaid with a soaker hose, and except on or just after truly rainy days, I have let it run for about ten to fifteen minutes every morning, to make sure all the plants out there have gotten a nice deep drink down by their roots.

The last third, the end around the lamp post, has no soaker hose, though, and I've tried to do some careful top watering of that end of things to keep the balance. That bed is planted more heavily with sulphur cosmos, which is a little more drought tolerant, but sunflowers are also thriving and climbing toward the sky there, as well. I think that might be where some of the luck thing comes in.

Other factors which are no doubt contributing to the show are the quality of the soil. When I dug in this garden almost a year ago, I was pretty pleased to discover that there was some nice rich looking black soil, always a good place to start in the garden.

As spring began to flutter its wings, you may recall I amended the area with lots of coffee grounds...and once the garden got going, I fertilized a couple of times, usually about once a month through mid-July to give everything that extra shot in the arm...or stalk, as the case may be here.

So many people tell me that they actually have success getting the sunflower seeds to grow. That really is one of the easiest bits. They germinate quickly and their seeds are pretty distinctive, so unlikely to be accidentally weeded out of the bed. But they are often the prey of squirrels or chipmunks or bunnies...and so we can't under-value the Liquid Fence treatments in all this.

Those are the secrets, as I see them. I've certainly been happy for the success, since it's hard not to smile when you look out the window and see all these guys. I hope you'll find yourselves a sunny patch and give some a try next year. I think I'll be doing the same.


And so now we've gotten through the last busy weekend of the summer at work, which is also a bit of a relief. Time to turn my attentions to other things for a little while.

I hope your first week of the after-summer (even though the season lingers for another three weeks, I know it starts to feel like its over pretty quickly now that September's here...it's a slippery slope to Autumn, it seems) isn't a mad one, and that you're still able to find a few echoes of the summer...reasons to take a moment to sit in the sun, or admire a few flowers or have a good laugh at the antics of birds and bunnies and the like.

And don't despair: September has treasures just barely imagined yet to come.

"Spring flowers are long since gone.
Summer's bloom hangs limp on every terrace.
The gardener's feet drag a bit on the dusty path
and the hinge in his back is full of creaks."

-- Louise Seymour Jones