At Summer's End, A Friend

Look at this lovely morning glory Patience has climbing a string down in the backyard. I just love the delicate purple markings.

Yes, it's been a few days since I've blogged last, and surely you are all wondering just what the Gardener's been up to, how the Nest is coming along and was anything of note done to celebrate the final days of Summer 2008.


Actually, I had just planned on a quiet weekend of painting and time in nature, but it turned out to be a much more interesting and exciting weekend than that, as Badum and I ended up hosting our first weekend guest!

In commiserating with a fellow blogger about our recent respective malaises (is that the plural?), I had touted the creative process as a helpful means to distraction...and painting as the sort of process you could do while spending time sorting through your thoughts...and I extended a sort of Tom Sawyer-like invitation to come help paint the apartment this weekend.

But I must admit, it was still a delightful surprise when Patrick called to say he was interested in coming to help paint if I'd been quite serious (perhaps he's realizing that I am rarely all-the-way serious about many things...there's little fun in seriousness, after all) about the invite. Which is how we ended up finally meeting at the bus station in Hyannis late Friday night!

The whole blogging experience (or at least ours) has put us in touch with such a great circle of people, where at least the frameworks for real friendships have been somewhat intensively forged online, and of course, that whole cyber world creates this sense of "imaginary" friends, and you never truly know how you'll respond to someone when you meet them for real.

I'm happy to say Patrick and I seemed to step across the gap between worlds with a hug and a smile...and we quickly moved on to proving that old John Lennon saw about how what people really want to do is sit in rooms and talk...although we proved they also want to do it (the talking, People; heads out of the gutter, please...you cheapen us all with your tawdry little imaginings...) in cars, during inauspicious late-night dinners in Wendy's parking lots...and while walking through marshes...or standing in the cool waters of Cape Cod Bay...or sitting in the sun on the deck with coffee and Cheerios...and yes, even while painting...we did get around to a little bit of that, too.

But we did speak of each one of you. Some more than others, naturally, and almost entirely good things. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that any one of you spent at least some little piece of the weekend going, "hey, what's that I feel in the Universe...something's going on...why are my ears ringing...?" Yah, that was us. We talked about the Secret Wisdom of Bachelor's Buttons, too.

Look at the color of the dining room: it's called Amsonia Peach, which I chose as my orange component of the rainbow painting scheme for the Nest. It's amazing in the way it changes so totally as the light does. One moment, it's pumpkin pie orange, another moment cinnamon brown or here, with a blush of gold and pink, just like the skin of a peach.


The light changes a lot in this room during the course of a day, so it should be fun to watch as this color transforms right along with it. And also, some of the late day light comes in bounced off the now-pink, but soon to be brick red walls of the kitchen...so it will be interesting to see just how that changes things, too.

It really was a fun weekend. It was nice to have a kindred spirit to talk with about so many things on each of our minds. While neither of us saw this as one of those transformative, "How Someone Got Their Groove Back" weekends, in the process we may have at least realized that we each should actually have grooves, anyway...being fabulous gay guys and all.

And hosting a guest on Cape Cod always carries the additional pleasure of making one slow down and appreciate the incredible beauty around us.


With the recent frenzy of life, I've done little more than drive to local beach parking lots lately, to hurry up and soak in the sunset and snap a few photos before dashing home to rearrange some furniture or paint something.

What a joy it was to slow down and walk through the marsh with someone, laughing out loud (but not LOLing, for gosh sakes...) and talking about it or just soaking it in...and then actually walking out into the bay as the tide began to lap in around us, blue herons and hundreds of other birds flying about overhead, foraging in the shallow waters for their dinner as we snapped photos.

I should say we weren't totally chatterboxes. An evening like this would be pointless if you didn't know when to be silent and let the amazing world be around you.

The late season songs of the crickets sounding a little sad, but sweetly so, from the marsh grass. complemented by the plaintive and ungraceful blat of the great blue heron as it soars across the bay waters, the honk of a fast-moving duck overhead, the lapping of the water around our ankles. The mystery of what the small unseen creatures were who occasionally dimpled the calm surface of the water from below and the way the color of the sky changes so gracefully as the sunlight vanishes and the stars appear overhead....it was all quite soothing and wonderful.

It was good to have the birds' foraging as a reminder for us, as we are neither of us apparently clock-watchers, especially not with all the nature and talking and quiet to enjoy...but it wasn't too long after that we discovered that the Gardener's Nest is indeed within delivery range for a Papa Gino's pizza.

Not watching the clock while chatting is also how we missed the earlier opportunity to get Patrick on a bus back to NY Sunday...and it was as we dashed for the car and the bus station a little while later that we remembered we'd not done a proper snapshot to prove we'd met...and so here's that.

If you get the opportunity to meet Patrick, I highly recommend it. He's fun and smart and thoughtful and all that you imagine he might be...and a little more, too. P, thanks for your company this weekend, it was really great fun. I hope we'll do it again sometime soon (there's more painting to do, after all).

Now on a technical note, I'm excited about having met Patrick for another reason: as a blogger, I can now be validated, at least to a small circle of other bloggers Patrick has met (and more distantly, through all the bloggers they have met), and am proven to be a real person more or less as represented in Blogland (perhaps a touch more neurotic...).

Pinnochio voice: So, look at me, everybody, I'm a real boy!


I stopped into work on the way home from the bus station, which is how I learned that Danny and Sara were still in town at the end of their week's vacation and they invited me to join them for the summer's last sunset...which you can see above.

Though I expressed to Dan the interest his internet fan base had in a further photo shoot in the outdoor shower, I'm afraid we never got around to that this time. ; )

We were really too busy just chilling out as the last gorgeous moments of summer slid down behind the horizon.

And it was really no surprise to me at all that the sun turned a lovely shade of violet as it vanished.

The Week That Was

So, yes...on Tuesday, the first of my cosmos plants began to bloom with this lovely white offering. It was a pleasure to finally see it. Except, it was not what I had expected. If you look at the photo on the seed packet at right, you'll see (and may recall my mentioning in my anticipation) that I actually planted the seashell variety of the flower...and this is not that.

Now seed sorting is certainly not a perfect or absolute science, so such things are not all that unexpected. You may recall the solitary white cleome that grew from a pack of supposedly strictly purple cleome seeds earlier this summer, in fact.

Not only am I a big fan of the cosmos big beautiful flowers, that once begun will come again and again until Frost, but Owen is, too. They are one of the few plants in the garden he will actually make mention of when they are blooming. And so for both those reasons, I am always sure to include at least a few.

This, as you will see, is sort of ironic.

My friends, I have been quiet with you on a particular subject this summer, as I have spent much time looking into my heart and examining my life and trying to figure out what pieces of the puzzle were missing. There've been a few times that I've alluded to something, or suggested that I had things on my mind, but as I've mentioned time and again, I see this blog more a place to talk about the garden and the good things in life...and I don't imagine you come here to for the Big Bring-Down that Life can be sometimes.

But on Tuesday of this week, I told Owen that I would be moving out. Ten years, I've realized, is a long time to stay in a relationship with an alcoholic who's world view is wrapped almost entirely in his own opinions on any given subject.

I'm not saying there hasn't been plenty of good times between us in those ten years. What an incredible fool I would be, otherwise, to have stayed so long.

But there's also been lots of pain. Not physical pain - that would be much easier to walk away from, it turns out. But the more subtle pain that comes of knowing that someone you care for isn't interested in what you have to say, doesn't care about the way you see the world...or what you think about much of anything.

I could offer a long list of my unhappinesses here, but those have already been expressed to him and it's largely a personal matter. Despite living in Massachusetts, one of the few states that recognizes gay marriage, we are not. That numbers among the issues, though just now I am sort of relieved that we never tied that knot.

He was completely surprised at the two and a half hours of things I had to say on Tuesday evening, which just shows you how f*cked communications have been between us. And that alone encourages me that I am making the right decision.

Owen has asked me to stay, to help him overcome the alcoholism and to give him a chance to make it up to me. To his credit, he's not had a sip of vodka since Tuesday night. The apologies, the roses, the dinner and movie (*) are all nice things. But honestly, I'm not sure that I can or should stay.

Coming to this decision and preparing for it as this summer has progressed has been one of the most difficult things I've ever done. I feel a little broken at this end of our relationship. I need time alone, to regroup, to repair, to reintroduce me to who I am. On one hand, this is a sad thing, but truly, I'm also more than a little excited about the possibilities the future holds.

Of course, I have no idea what those will be. I have identified an apartment, a place which will be good for me in a variety of ways. There are some gardening possibilities there, though who knows just what form they may take. More on that another day.

You, my friends, you and your friendships have helped me through this difficult time as much as the beautiful flowers in my garden this summer, whether or not you knew you were doing so. Thanks.

Just a few of you have had my confidence as I quietly explored my heart and laid my plans, and I offer special thanks to each one of you for listening and helping my thought processes and comforting me and encouraging me to be true to myself. Better friends no man could ask for.


I have received a few emails from some of you who were a little disconcerted by my not posting as frequently this week, expressing your concern, wondering if everything was all right. Well, not exactly...but it could certainly be much worse. How am I? I suppose it's safe to say that I am f*cking Smurfy, which leaves things wide open to all sorts of interpretations.

What do you know, Java's right: these mushrooms do look better with a little person of some variety standing beside them.

And look: the canna lily is finally fixin' to bloom!

I haven't really been watching the Democratic National Convention this week. I'm still tired from all that late-night Olympics coverage. And considering all else that's going on, you and the Dems will forgive me. But fear not, our deaf neighbor Ellie's been watching with the volume up real loud, so even though I've been about other things, I feel like I've not missed a moment.

For those of you who haven't seen the new web cartoon from Jib-Jab--you know they do one for every election now--I'll send you off so you can have a laugh at their latest.

(*) In response to one of my lesser complaints that we never do anything together outside the workplace, last night Owen and I saw Mamma Mia at the local cinema. Not in the mood for anything particular deep, or painfully fluffy and pink or explosively action-packed, this was probably just the right thing. The setting is beautiful, the story amusing and of course, all the music straight from the ABBA library (lest you forget, the first record the Midnight Gardener bought with his own money was the single of "Dancing Queen" lo those many years ago...).

Meryl Streep was, as always, pretty fantastic, and has a surprisingly nice singing voice. Pierce Brosnan, too, sort of...though there was one part near the end where it just didn't sound like him and I wondered about lip synching.

Amusingly, I've learned that the "sing-along" version of the movie hits cinemas today, with all the songs subtitled, because, as one wag put it, "You can't do worse than Pierce Brosnan". There was no need of subtitles last night, though, as everyone in our cine-plex seemed to know the lyrics.

It was a great time, at least until we got to Meryl's powerhouse performance of The Winner Takes It All, which sliced a little too close to the bone for me this week. Still, the credit sequence at the end was pretty fantastic, with its flashy costumes and cameo by ABBA themselves...and we got to hear "Dancing Queen" twice!

The crickets in the neighborhood were singing up a storm when we got home last night, so they don't need the subtitles either. But then, this louder voice drowned out all the others. With flashlight and camera in hand, I followed me ears outside and found this katydid in the garden across the street, it's chirruping sound almost deafening.

It seems to come from the vibration of those membranes beneath the wings visible here.

Just for the record, despite everything else, it's now been 42 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes and 44 seconds since my last smoke.

Smobriety, it's a good thing.

* * * *

"I was in your arms,
thinking I belonged there
I figured it made sense,
building me a fence
Building me a home
Thinking I'd be strong there
But I was a fool, playing by the rules."

The Winner Takes It All, ABBA, 1980

Tuesday Snapshots

Sunflower Sunday

I can't resist a little visual deja vu tonight and so I'm starting off with the same photo as yesterday, taken about the same time of day...but with a much more interesting array of clouds in the sky.

Weather-wise, it was another fantastic day, to complete a full weekend of them, with bright sunshine and temperatures in the 70s. Instead of just boring blue skies, we saw a cool variety of cloud types to make things a little more interesting.

Also today, this latest sunflower, now measuring in a little better than seven feet tall, has fully unfurled its giant flowerhead. You'll find I'm featuring it throughout today's post.

Can you blame me?

Down low at the feet of all these sunflowers are an ever-increasing array of bachelor's buttons.

I'm really pleased with how well they are growing this year and I will be sure to sow some of these seeds every year, now.




Remember last weekend, when I predicted that the seashell cosmos would probably start blooming by the start of last week? Ha ha, well, that shows you how much I know.

I guess I should have started these inside when I was getting the first sunflowers germinated. Perhaps they'd be well-blooming by now if I had.

These guys seem to have been hit with some sort of alien slow-motion ray...and while the buds seem to be puffing out nicely know, I'm hesitant to make any additional predictions.

I'll keep you posted.

Another seed success story has certainly been these morning glories. There've been so many different color combinations and these plants are so prolific and eager to draw everyone and everything around them in to sweet entanglement.

I guess it is late enough in the season to declare that the everlastings and statice were not to be counted among the season's successes.

I was sure I'd seen a few seedlings, but it seems they didn't pass that all-important survival test. Perhaps in a different setting they'd do better.



I spotted this little grass hopper flitting about inside the fence border this morning. While I wasn't able to get close without him leaping away, he did indulge me enough to hit his lighting mark on this shasta daisy leaf so I could zoom in for a better look at him...or her.





Emily and I had an enjoyable walk this evening, after a few nights off due to commitments at work. It was a beautiful night and she was eager to set off on our walk around Not Wisteria Lane.

We saw a few bits of early fall color as we made our way. Little reminders that the season before us is reaching its final days and the changes of a new season will be on us before we know it.

Which is to say it was just the right time for a walk.


A pair of pugs decided to come out to greet us this evening. There's a black one who paces back and forth across his yard as we pass by on a few evening's recently.

Tonight, that dog was joined by a second and it became clear that - while they are little dogs - two pugs is all they need to have together in order to think they can do the impossible. I was sort of incredulous as the two of them came marching out, shoulder to shoulder, to approach Emily (and probably give her a piece of their little minds about having poo-ed across the street from their house).

I was able to keep her back from them - no easy feat - as she would probably consider the little nuisances little more than a cocktail frank. Their person came out to encourage the two of them to stand down and we were on our way again.


Although the sun was sinking when we returned from our sojourn, there was still some nice light to look at a few things in the garden.

The sunflowers are just getting out of hand, now, but it a great way. They are certainly grabbing hold of my multi-colored color scheme and making it seem overly- yellow.

Of course, the cosmos continuing delay in blooming is enhancing that, as well.

I'd just like to point out that in this photo above, the latest sunflower is taller than the sun.

The cleome flowers are wonderful, but I don't find that they last especially long. I have been collecting seed from them for next year, as they have been very easy to grow and I am a big fan of these open airy flowers.

This flower represents the start of a second wave of blooming; you may recall I seeded these guys into the garden in waves back in springtime.

Tonight we saw the flash and the spectacle of the Closing ceremonies of the 23rd Olympiad in Beijing. It really was an exciting and spectacular two weeks of games this year. So many world records broken.

I didn't get to watch much of the coverage yesterday until pretty late last night, as I enjoyed one of those Midori coladas at the restaurant bar after a busy night of work.

I guess it makes sense they save Table Tennis for the last night, but really, that's not one of the sports they could make available online, instead? It felt like a little bit of an anti-climax. I'd be much more interested in the equestrian or kayak/canoe events. But the cross-country mountain bike race was pretty interesting.

I wasn't able to watch the Men's 10M Platform Diving, but I was excited to hear the news that Australian diver Matthew Mitcham won the gold medal. Mitcham is the only one of over 10,000 athletes competing who has declared himself as gay.

I'd like to think his success in Beijing may make it a little easier for other athletes to consider being more open themselves.

Anyway, it was cool news and, I thought, a nice way to bring the two weeks of excitement to a close.

It's a little bit of a relief that the games are over. I don't think I'll have any trouble sleeping through the Democratic convention after all the Olympic late-nights.

Back in the garden, this clump of yellow snapdragons has begun a second wave of blooming, it's yellow flowers sweetly scenting the air nearby with a tasty citrus-y fragrance. I was amused by this tiny spider hanging out inside one of the flowers, no doubt lying in wait for some even smaller insect pollinator.







I enjoyed these clouds as they reflected the light of the sunset these evening. Really fantastic looking, although they are the sort of thing that puts us all - our persons, our homes, our neighborhoods - into perpective, as these grand beautiful moments happen on such a large scale overhead.

Of course, the dusky clouds were a great backdrop for that new sunflower. And the chance of rain in the forecast for tomorrow would be a wonderful boost to all the other sunflowers still only just starting to bloom.

A break from the watering schedule is always nice. I do the best I can, but really, my best efforts just can't compare with a nice natural fall of rain.

Listen To the Garden

"What a pity flowers can utter no sound!
A singing rose, a whispering violet, a murmuring honeysuckle,
oh what a rare and exquisite miracle would these be!"

- Henry Ward Beecher