Friday Garden Report

I spent most of last night's Vice Presi dential debate coverage muttering as I sponged paint onto the living room walls...it's still a work in progress, so no photos of the finished look yet...but I did catch a few images yesterday I wanted to share with you.

During our early morning breakfast event at work, we had a bit of a sunshower, which gave us the barest glimmer of a rainbow in the northwestern sky...it was already fading by the time I had my camera ready, naturally.

But what's a rainbow, anyway, but a fleeting and intangible promise - like a kiss really - of sweetness and beauty in the future? Who doesn't love a rainbow for that.


I always think there's somethingi cool about it raining while the sun is shining...maybe its two of my favorite elements, water and fire coming together in such a spectacular and sparkly way...I really liked this photo taken under the pear tree outside my office.

After our early morning, I spent a little time in the office, mostly doing unsatisfying battle with my office computer. When it became clear I was about the headbutt the monitor, I decided to take a break for a little time at home and some banking...with a plan to return later on.

High tide was flooding Boat Creek Marsh as I drove through, and when I spotted a blue heron feeding with some gulls in the rising waters, I couldn't resist stopping for a photo or two.

I'm sorry to say the heron disagreed with my idea, and fled at the first sight of me and my camera...of course there was also an unfortunate amount of traffic driving along Bridge Road just then, so perhaps it wasn't all my fault the great bird fled.

But I was pretty pleased with this silhouette shot as it flew out of sight. Also, I loved the contrast of these white asters blooming against the background of some autumn-reddened Virginia creeper.

I took a painting break before dinner and the debates and made it to First Encounter just in time for the last rays of sunset. Actually, I didn't stay long, as there was a pretty powerful wind coming off the bay and it made me downright shivery...so much so that even the Image Stabilization feature on my camera couldn't save all but these two images.

Things are good in the Midnight Garden, and I promise I'll have some more painting photos as the weekend progresses. I hope this finds each and every one of you doing well, with fun plans for at least some part of the weekend!!

Rainy Daze

As it was so many places in the Northeast, yesterday on Cape Cod was all about the rain. It's funny, how much more accepting of the rain I was when I had a nice big garden to benefit from the watering. Of course, that'll be the case again before long...but for now, the rain was just an annoyance, a difficulty in the day, the cause of perpetually wet sneakers.

Since my injured eye continues to be slower than expected in its recovery, my eye doc sent me off for a second opinion, which meant half an hour's ride through the heavy rains in plenty of traffic. Since the blurry vision in that eye also seems to be a sort of mental trigger encouraging me to want to sleep, the driving was a bit of a challenge. Happy to say I am still here.

This second doc has prescribed me a variety of drops, as well as some nighttime goop, to help heal my eye. In addition to the abrasion, which is healing, I also have something called corneal dystrophy, which she likened to being similar to when the grout that holds your tile in place loosens up...except of course, we're talking about my FREAKING eye.

And also, ironically, I have dry eyes...which just seems like final proof of the uselessness of the emotional tears, which have been in abundance the last few weeks, but seem to be tapering off a little lately (most of what remains may probably be attributed to the Nicodemon's little tantrums--after all, it's now been 71 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes and 53 seconds!!!).

Anyway, hopefully all that will help my vision to clear up as things heal. Meanwhile, the rain let up for a little while as I was headed home from work last night and although I wanted to get home to see what I could of the Debate, I also was happy to pause at Rock Harbor for a few minutes and stand out in the fresh sea air and snap a photo or two.



Once I was home and had some dinner, I stenciled a few leaves onto the living room walls, before settling down to call it a night. It's starting to look pretty cool...I wonder what I'll be able to accomplish on Sunday, my next day off.

Meanwhile, tomorrow, the laundromat calls me on the way to work...and it will be a full evening at work as we host a Comedy Night fundraiser for the local Pop Warner Football. There's someone billed as a "sports comedian"...so there'll either be jokes about football (oh, yay...), or perhaps its his delivery of the material that's athletic; we'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure I'd remembered to tell you that the cool ceiling light fixture in the living room does indeed work, though I will be picking up a little putty to tighten up the loose light sockets. Just a utilitarian bulb in there now, as I work on the painting, but will be in the market for something a little more interesting later on.

There's a break in the Raining just now, though it appears that may be our theme for much of the next week. Tomorrow, we are to be enjoying some more storminess, as Tropical Storm (possibly by then, hurricane) Kyle will be passing by us, hopefully safely east of our location.

Fingers crossed.

Weekend Wrap-Up

This coneflower rudbeckia was apparently a new seedling in the Harwich garden, as it was only just coming into bloom last week when I went back to move a few plants. That was all the encouragement I needed to pot it up and bring it along on the adventure.

Same goes for this chrysanthemum, which is just now sporting buds. Both of these, as well as the coreopsis seen in the background above were planted just outside my new front door, alongside the driveway...not far from that pink rose hedge.

Sunday was a rainy day, though not as much of a rain-out as Saturday had been. It was a day off for me...the first true one since the move and I spent most of the day painting in the bedroom. Still, there was a break in the showers around noontime and while the clouds lingered throughout the day, I couldn't resist a little ramble around to explore the new yard a little more closely.

Here's a shot of the nest from the back yard, the deck-balcony clearly visible.


Found a nice stand of goldenrod at the back of the property. I just love this stuff, it's bright yellow festooning our days just as other plants start to think about winding down for the season. It's always a nice flash of gold on a gray September day.

I also wandered over to the gardens at the property next door. They are primarily summer residents, so it was cool to be able to walk around in their yard without feeling like an intruder. Pretty gardens, too.



Ah, but it's the painting you'll want to hear about...and I will admit that this was one of those parts of the project where I wasn't sure it was going to come out as I'd imagined...and it took a lot of control not to second guess myself, as I began applying crazy, curly-edged flaring stripes of the purple Field Of Heather over the base coat of Cape Cod Gray, which is sort of a blue-green, turned a little more greeny by the close proximity of the purple tones for contrast.

I wanted the vertical stripes, to give the room a little more feeling of height, but the curly edges soften the rigidness of the stripes...plus making them uneven in size and flared a bit toward the ceiling also gives the room a slight illusion of being a little bigger than it is. All justification, when really, I got the idea for the un-uniform stripes by considering the idea of being inside a flower blossom.

Anyway, once the whole room was done and dried, I liked the look a lot more. There's a sort of whimsical "Dr. Seuss designed me some wallpaper" look to it that I think is sort of comforting for a sleeping room...and anyway, this is just stage two. I think you'll like it when it's closer to finished, as I am liking it more and more as I continue to work on it.

As the weekend drew to a close, we prepared to welcome the latest full moon. Here's a shot of it from the deck/balcony, as the wind drew thin wispy clouds quickly across it's face.

(Yes, I'm still running a little behind here. There's more of the painting project, and other household news to share, but we can leave that as a comfortable source of suspense until next time, eh?)

Rainy Weekend Snapshots

Just Another Day

The annuals really own the garden this time of year. Most of the big ticket perennials have come and gone. Of the fabulous lilies only green leafy stalks remain. Just a few of the former multitude of daisies are still showing their cheery faces. There is still some phlox to tease the eye and scent the air.

But the day belongs to the hardest working residents in the garden: the allyssum, the marigolds, bachelor's buttons and sulphur cosmos.

The other cosmos still have not joined the show yet, though there are buds forming. I can't believe they are waiting so long this year. I think there's some reason behind that I've not quite figured out. The seeds were certainly sown early enough. Perhaps the soil is too rich for them. The plants are tall enough, some of them topping off at nearly four feet.



I hadn't thought I was going to show you any morning glories this morning, though there were plenty in bloom. And then I spotted this bumblebee tight-rope-walking along one of the twining stems, clambering over tomorrow morning's flower buds.

And this pale pink morning glory was a bit of a surprise, since I've not seen any this color before today. At first, I thought it was actually a bindweed flower, but a closer look showed it to be another color of glory heard from.

Pretty, eh?
Here's something for the Big Book of the Minorly Weird: at work today, one of the waitresses was cutting lemons and discovered this lemon with another lemon which had grown inside the first.

Hardly a sign of the coming apocalypse, but vaguely interesting nonetheless.

We heard of a severe storm warning around 1:00 this afternoon, and within minutes it was swirling in on us, thunder echoing in the distance to the west.

In a matter of minutes, the clouds billowed out of nowhere to obscure the sun and the sky grew very dark. It was sort of amazing how quickly it happened. I learned late tonight that there was actually a microburst causing lots of tree damage not far from the Cape Cod Canal at about that time, which explains the speed with which everything was moving.


As the thunder continued booming and lightning flashed across the sky, the gusty winds arrived first and then the rain. At first, it made a sort of fog as it came in contact with the hot pavement and evaporated.

Then suddenly it was falling in sheets and making visible the great gusts of wind that were blowing in a variety of directions.

I understand there was golf-ball sized hail connected with the microburst, but we didn't see any of that in Orleans, just lots of that heavy, heavy rain, sometimes blowing sideways, helping us feel a sort of kinship with our friends and family in Florida who were braving the battering wind and rain of Tropical Storm Fay.

I did download an impressive radar map of the storm's track and another detailing the frequency and location of the lightning strikes...but sadly, I've misplaced those files, so you'll just have to trust me when I say it was a big, unexpected storm.

[EDIT: 8/20/08, 8:20 am: here's a link to more coverage of this storm, if you're interested.]

After work, I stopped by Rock Harbor for a look out across the bay, where it was cloudier than I'd expected, since we'd ended up having a pretty sunny afternoon following the storm. It wasn't until I got home to Harwich that I discovered that they were having a second storm about that time.

It's much cooler this evening, with temperatures dropping down into the low sixties...and now, after midnight, we've slipped down into the 50s. Definitely a nice night for a sweatshirt. I think I'll sleep well for a change.

There's still some fast moving clouds passing by overhead, and I didn't find the right setting to capture those crisply on the new camera yet.

But really, I wasn't so into photography tonight and mostly just sat in front of the TV and enjoyed some more Olympics coverage. Men's diving, women's gymnastics, BMX bike racing, more running and hurdle-jumping.

It's all good, though I am often a little disappointed that, in trying to make sure we see as much of the games as possible, some of the "lesser" contenders don't get their televised moment of glory. We see all those countries' athletes enter the stadium on the first night, and many of them are never seen again.

Succeed or fail, they are all part of the beauty of the Olympic experience.

Heigh-ho, everyone. T'was raining lightly this morning when the camera and I wandered out into the garden. Nice to have a break from the watering duties...and it was a light-enough rainfall that it didn't stop me from having a nice prowl along the fence.

First off, let me just point out that the later morning glories are finally joining the show, which means I'm starting to see more than one color blossom blooming side-by-side, which is fun. A purple cleome has also snuck itself into the above shot.

To the right is one of the phlox plants I mentioned in the meme the other day; that is, its one of my floral pals who's been with me since the garden in the Adirondacks ten or twelve years ago. In fact, I think this was one of my first mail-order purchases.

I also managed to get a much sweeter shot of the agastache plant, which is looking quite handsome as its blossoms grow larger (taller).

There's also daisies, allyssum, and two different kinds of yellow marigolds in there. Behind the agastache, you can see the curly grass holding forth.

As you may have guessed, there's some stuff going on in my life right now I'm not entirely prepared to talk about...which is a lot easier to say than actually keeping the feeling of my turmoil from appearing on the page anyway.

Fortunately, the garden is still a place of calm and peace for me, because that's turned out to be something that's more important to me this summer than some others I have known.

Hopefully, you'll forgive me not saying more just now. I can say, when the dust has settled, I'll be better off. But as is often the case, the steps required to make a better life are not the easiest ones.

But enough of that, let's look at this wild and crazy fence post, which is just crowded with things to see. On the far right, you'll see the white of Queen Anne's lace, while the post itself is concealed in morning glories run happily amok. In the foreground, the pale lavendar is the (who knew?) highly controversial wild thistle flowers, through which the morning glories are also twining.

There's an orange sulphur cosmos around mid-image. The yellow in the lower left is some of that thread-leaf coreopsis and the white opposite that is more allyssum. Finally, down in the center by the rocks, are a few dianthus flowers matching the color of the morning glories above.

And high above, beaming brightly as it can against the rain clouds, is yet another sunflower.

I love how these pansies just keep coming and coming this year. I'm not sure I've ever seen them so eager and productive this late in the season. No complaints, of course--their cheery faces are certainly welcome!

As the work schedule played out today, I ended up with some office down time, so I was able to enjoy the pleasure of seeing to it that the proper colors of everything are reflected as they should be. With the monitor at home, I've been sort of working carefully and mostly just hoping they turned out well.

Tonight I'm feeling a little more confident, since I can actually see how they appear...which is nice. I'll have to visit Staples and see just how much a new monitor might set me back. I don't know how much longer I can go on with the "color-blind" thing. I certainly have a greater appreciation - after a few days of tech difficulties - of those who can't see all the colors the world has to offer.

It's not as apparent in this image, but it was raining pretty hard as I left for work this afternoon. I may not need to worry about watering tomorrow, either!

I hope you all are having a good Wednesday evening!!

A Storm: Four Frames

From Sunday evening, around 8:00 p.m.