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.

Weekend Jumble

So here's one of those honeybees who were so elusive at summer's start. This weekend, I've been seeing them everywhere...so I'm happy to say that reports of their death may have been somewhat exaggerated. That's a flowerhead of Autumn Joy sedum he's dancing about on, only just coming into bloom as Labor Day weekend gets underway.

Yes, it's that last weekend of the summer, here already, proof that Time doesn't only fly when you're having fun.

I want to say thanks to all of you who've written me your comments or private emails of support, in regards the situation with Owen and I.

I can only really skim the surface of letting you know just how much it means to me...and how important its been to hear from you.

This is probably the last thing I ever wanted to happen; ten years is a long time to be with someone and I know and love him in ways that I don't know many people. Which makes it sadder still that he knows so little about the way my brain works and what has value in Life to me.

You might guess I would be quite happy for us not to have reached this point. And that wish makes me want to be swayed, won over by the somber attitude and thoughtful demeanor I have been subject to this past week. But I know from past experience, and from other peoples' too, that this is a temporary fix...a band-aid on a bigger problem. And thankfully, every time I start to get a little weak in my resolve, one of your comments or emails appears, just in the nick of time.

I really don't want to beat a dead horse, I'm not even sure I'm prepared to declare the horse dead...but there was something else I wanted you to know.

The gardening it seems I've always done...and the blogging started just to show my long distance (and local) friends what I was working on in a secret garden not easily seen from the road...but as you all have discovered it in the last year and come back to visit over and over again, this blog has truly helped me to remember that I have a voice worth listening to, that I am important to the world, in some small way. And that, as much as everything else, has encouraged me to seek a little something better for myself.

So when I say thanks, I hope you know I mean it.

Now sweet Jesus, can we please talk about the Garden again? I am so sick of being on the edge of tears lately.

Here's a Nursery Spider we found in the kitchen sink the other day. I don't believe we have much to fear from them, which didn't mean we both weren't startled to the ceiling when it jumped over a foot to get away from us.

Yikes...

I have made a mental note that next year, zinnia seeds should be started indoors before the season gets underway, or at the very least, planted in the ground the week before Memorial Day weekend.

These guys are only just beginning to reveal their first flower buds and while they are pretty wonderful, there could be so many more by this point.

To the left is a photo taken on Friday. Below is the same flower as seen on Saturday. The whole idea behind the Jumble thing starting to be more clear?


Here are some of those fancy marigolds I bought for the lamp post garden in the spring. In the background there, you can see one flower still bears the distinctive red coloration that caught my eye in the first place.

However, it seems the rest of the plant is a little weary at this end of the summer (I wonder if it needs more water, or maybe some fertilizer), since so many of the other flowers are just plain yellow now.



I don't know what these bamboo-ey like plants are. I know there are a great many of them growing on the side of Mount Dump-it in our yard in Harwich; I see them out our back windows.

Today I noticed this cluster of the same plant out behind the restaurant, in between dumpsters...and noticed for the first time the spectacular clusters of tiny white flowers.



They aren't memorably scented or anything like that. But the flowers themselves are tiny, but kind of exciting when you look at them up close.

Perhaps you don't agree, but there was a crowd of bumblebees and honeybees who couldn't get enough of them





Here's one of the center pieces last evening's custo mers brought for the tables at their Rehearsal Dinner.

I think my favorite arrangements are the ones that don't hold to a particular color scheme, but instead engage all the colors there are. These did that wonderfully, and featured a terrific assortment of flower varieities, too.

I do enjoy the Gerbera Daisies and was a little disappointed that my budget dried before I had a chance to pick up a few for the border this summer.

I used a few as bedding plants in my first garden on the Cape all those years ago, and the effect was pretty terrific.

I have no idea what that orangey-thistly flower is, but it sure interests me. I hope to stop in at the responsible florist and see what I can find out sometime this week.

In just a little more time-travely-ness, here's what the sky looked like over Not Wisteria Lane this past Friday evening.
Thinking of everyone in New Orleans this weekend, as the third anniversary of Katrina's devastation comes and goes, marked mostly by a new evacuation in the face of a much more terrible looking storm called Gustav.

Everyone down there on the Gulf Coast (not to mention all those lives touched by this storm already as its passed through the Carribbean) has my thoughts and prayers for their safety...and hopefully yours, too.

Gardener's Blues...and Other Colors

Just checking in so you don't worry, but I'm not sure I have so much to say. Actually, I think the opposite is closer to the truth, but I don't trust I'll find the right words just yet. For now, a few random notes:

* I've gotten lots accomplished in the last day or so, not all of it at work or in the garden. I feel kind of good about that.

* The Olympics are winding down and due to work schedule, I'll only catch the late night stuff now 'til the end. Ah, well, only two years 'til the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.

* 2010. That sounds a little weird, huh? Where are those flying cars and rocket jet packs, anyway? I'd happily settle for a few more windfarms.

* It turns out that two weeks of somewhat immersive coverage of the Olympic Games, enhanced by substantial sleep deficit was just the right combination for me to have committed to memory the entire NBC Fall Schedule of programming. Well, at least I've made note of when HEROES is starting up again. I really like that show.

* Thirty-five days since my last filthy cigarette. I know I've probably made it sound easy this time around. Nobody's more surprised than me. I attribute this both to my blasted optimism, which annoys even me sometimes, but also to no small sense of determination. I don't want to be a smoker anymore. (All of your encouragement and cheerleading hasn't hurt, either...so thanks for that.)

* Now that it's been a while since I took the smoke, I am noticing some improvements in me. I'm breathing easier, and I find that singing's a little easier, too. Well, the act is. I'm not feeling lately like I have a lot to sing about...but that's also possibly the reason I've been doing so much of it.

* Unexpected Carnage! A moldy and long-forlorn mousetrap in the cabinet beneath the sink here in the computer room sent a good-sized mouse off to his reward just moments ago. (We bow our heads and wish him well.) I'm blogging about it now, but it will be less creepy to address the larger issue of actually removing the body by morning light.

* I don't find that I like the wintergreen Altoids as much as I do the spearmint.

* As always, I find the garden awfully good for what ails me. Lately, there is almost always an undersong of crickets, but especially in the evening. There's quite a buzz at noontime as pollinators of all shapes and sizes ply their way from one flower to the next.

The goldfinches have been visiting the sunflowers regularly. I saw the hummingbird again this morning. And the bunnies are never far away, it seems.

Each day there are new colors, or fresh combinations of different flowers grown together. As I explore, I slow down and breathe a little easier, as a piece of my stress burns away in the golden sunshine. I can think of no better things than these tiny wonders and it's nearly impossible to be glum in their company.






"And that evening, while he was playing, a brown leaf, the first leaf of the fall, blew into the station and landed right next to the cricket cage. Now this leaf had come from New Jersey. A playful gust of wind danced it over the Hudson River, and up Forty-second Street, and whisked it down the subway entrance."


"Chester was in the middle of a song when the leaf came down. It was such a shock to see this little reminder of all that was happening in the country that for a moment he couldn't continue. But then he realized where he was and forced himself to go on."

- The Cricket in Times Square, George Selden, 1960.

Seventh Day

It was another beautiful summer morning, this seventh of September, with temperatures climbing early into the 70s. I understand it was much warmer away from the sea, so I guess we were benefiting from those great ocean breezes. Nice to see that the warm days are not all past us yet.

And it was a delightful showcase for the red sedum, and the re-blooming lavendar beebalm.

I was only trying to capture a picture of the lacey wonderfulness that is the flower of Queen Anne's Lace. It wasn't until I saw this pic on the computer that I realized I'd captured a whole team of pollinating beetles in action. Well, for the moment, I'm assuming their performing some beneficial role. But as always with insects, I'll keep you updated on what I learn of their identity.

These marigolds and hostas are blending nicely together.

And in the windowbox outside the kitchen door, that cut-leaf coleus has decided to be great friends with some of those pink petunias I'd planted out front earlier in the season.

On a more personal note, I'd like to take a moment to wish a Very Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad! Congratulations! Hope you're having a great day!

September Sunshine

As the calendar page turned, the rain clouds slipped off shore and it was a beautiful day.

On plastic pond shores, frogs basked.

The late-seeded cosmos are coming into bloom, like this pale pink one.

And the morning glories, finally begun, continue their daily show.

A reminder of the sliding season, the Autumn Joy sedum began its pale blooming today.

Temperatures were cooler today, in the mid-sixties. But the sunshine was still warm enough for a little sunbathing, as this dragonfly will attest.

Pink sedum. 

The nice thing about working at home and at work on similar projects simultaneously has been that I've been able to swap some divisions back and forth between the two places. An assortment of things have found their way to the restaurant garden, while I've also been able to acquire a few bits of things to expand the variety here at home. This pink sedum is one of those, along with a clump of white siberian irises, and a few small divisions of daylilies.