Face To Face

Sometimes, you just can't go wrong with some beautiful zonal geraniums for annual color. These are potted up in the greenhouse section of the restaurant dining room, where Leslie's been doing a great job of bringing some seasonal color to the decor with container gardening.

It was a long restaurant day today, too, with a breakfast event getting me there at 7:00 and a lunch to follow shortly after that. No worries though, really: it wasn't one of those weather days you minded missing particularly, what with the damp, almost-raining-all-day quality and the temps barely hitting 60 (It's 55 now...).

I'm not sure if I've never noticed these two doing this before, but I had it in my head that the roses and the azaleas didn't bloom at exactly the same time, usually. I suppose I ought to have been paying better attention.

The day went well and fled before too long. I made a sidetrip to the nursery on the way home. I needed (not wanted, but required really...)a sixpack of portulaca for a particular spot and since I was there, I picked out a young golden sage plant to replace the one that passed on last winter...and they actually had a pot of verbena bonariensis.

I'll hit you with some photos of mine later and no doubt throughout the season - this is another of my Top One Thousand Absolute Favorite(you can make me choose, but you can't make me choose just one) Plants, with it's squarish stems and pointy jagged foliage and lovely little deep purple blossoms! I squee a little just thinking about it.

I countered the grey weather with some showtunes in the car: Showboat today, and it was "Old Man River" that had me taking the long way around our circle to get to the house (you just don't shut off OMR before its through!), when I had to stop short for a pair of cardinals...possibly juveniles, who came crashing onto the roadway, seeming to wrestle with one another, more at play, I thought, than any real show of agression. There was a tiny purple finch on the scene, too. A referee, perhaps.

It was positively Disney-fied.

Which perhaps set me up for what would come next.

As I was changing, I looked out the bedroom window and saw Him. My Nemesis. The Nibbler By Night. The Hungry Hare. The Bunny Bane of my tulips and crocuses.

And damn if he's not adorable. Of course, I knew he would be.

However, he also wasn't in the garden itself, except in the way that British folks refer to the whole yard as The Garden (which I rather like, while we're being tangential and all...), but peaceably grazing on the diversity that is our "lawn". I snapped the first photo through the window, but then finished changing and went out to sit on the front step.

He (again I'm assuming gender...but what's wrong with boy bunnies, anyway?)regarded me with frozen concern at first, retreating to be closer to the shelter of the hedges if things should turn ugly.

After a few pics, I set the camera down and let him see my hands were empty and I meant him no harm, because really, I don't. Provided he's not eating all my bulbs, it's kind of an honor to have him visit. It didn't take him any time at all to dismiss me as a harmless rube and return to the grazing.

Perhaps there's something to this "Liquid Fence" stuff after all. Or maybe there's just something really tasty growing amongst the grass. I'll have a look-see in the morning.

After he'd gone and I got something cooking for dinner, I went out to plant my new additions, and also to do some more weeding and seeding, this evening adding the rest of the everlasting strawflower seeds, a packet of Pacific statice and teensy pack of red poppy seeds.

As for earlier seedings: the allyssum seedlings, the first to be scattered in early April, are now approaching blooming size, and are adding more tiny white flowers to the lowest edges of the garden bed. There are sunflower seedlings popping up all over the place and possibly the first of the bachelor buttons. The seashell cosmos have now begun presenting their true leaves, so they are well on their way, as the garden as a whole seems to be.

In The Rain

The rain didn't hold off this morning, already falling lightly when I woke up. Only a single cup of joe was needed to get me out there, though. With a possible three days of rain ahead, it'd be a crime not to take advantage of it.

It wasn't raining hard and it was still relatively warm (64), so I didn't mind getting a little damp. In fact, its one of my favorite times to be out there messing around in the dirt.

I had just started selecting the right locations for those orange marigolds (which really brightened up even a pretty rainy and gray morning as this one), when word came via one of our dog-walking neighbors, Snoopy the min-pin's dad (I'm amused by the fact we don't know each other's names, only the names of our dogs), that there was a big turtle come up from the pond and in another neighbor's yard.

Of course, I set my digging tools in out of the rain and grabbed my camera for a little walk around the block, where I found this snapping turtle (probably almost two foot from nose to tail)slowly heading up the driveway into someone's back yard.

It wasn't clear to me if she'd have a clear shot at the woods going that way, but I wasn't about to attempt to give her directions, either. She was following the beat of her drummer, and so after taking a photo or two, I headed back to the garden to listen to my own cadence a little longer and she made her way up the driveway toward the lawn and whatever place she decided was appropriate for laying eggs.

After finding the right spots for each of the marigolds, I managed another round of seed planting in a variety of recently-weeded sections of the garden. This morning's mass sowing included the second half of those bachelor buttons, as well as some more cleome(*) and allyssum, chamomile and tall sulphur cosmos.

This meant another chance to draw patterns on the soil, but because of the rain, I used a stick today and not my finger. Hard enough trying to keep the seeds from sticking together without having muddy hands.

The rain was getting heavier as I planted and although I've more seeds to plant, I'd exhausted the free time I had this morning and it was time to get ready for work. But not until I'd enjoyed a long lingering look at the way the garden's shaping up.

* So, I have a confession to make. I did a bad thing recently, not something a gardener ought to do, and I'm feeling a little guilty about it. Remember those lovely and strong looking cleome seedlings I had in the bedroom window? Well, I've grown accustomed in recent years to having partially shaded/protected garden beds, which gave me latitude to be a little casual with some of my plantings, as the surrounding trees offered some security against the stronger winds and even some mild frosts.

But for this new location, with it's direct sunlight and gusting winds, I really ought to have taken an extra day or two to accustom my little babies to life in the Big Bad World (You may recall me having some misgivings after the fact that evening, actually.)for little bits of time before the big planting.

Instead, I just split them up and put them out there in the ground.

Some, I'm sorry to say, simply fell over and died. A few turned a little white, but look like they'll recover...and there's still a third group who took just enough shelter from nearby perennials that they are doing quite well.

Still in all, I ought to have known better. Bad gardener.

There's another look at those yucca plants I showed you the other night, their flower stalks another foot taller than on Sunday. I was mistaken, actually: all three plants are doing this. What a show it will be!

The best reason for today's rain being a good thing is the way it's washed the pollen off everything.

I thought I saw a humpback whale in this pool of pollen, but then it seemed more like a dove maybe. Now I think it looks like Heath Ledger as the Joker, but that might just be me anticipating the new Batman movie this July.

Have you seen the trailer?

Holiday

Obviously, I started the holiday morning with some welcome reading time. It was another beautiful day, though a bit windier than yesterday. Since I'd gone to bed uncharacteristically early last night (around 11), I was up pretty early this morning, despite my best efforts to pull the covers over my head and nestle in a little longer.

Still, a good second choice to staying abed was the idea of taking a cup of coffee and my book out into the backyard, where the only sounds were the raucous morning antics of the birds. I enjoyed the chance to take a bigger bite of Love in the Time of Cholera and fell headlong into the reading experience.

Much as I might've liked to while away the whole day thus, I did have other plans, too. And by mid-morning, I was planting my cleome seedlings (quick discussion/survey: do we call them CLEE-OHM, or CLEE-oh-MAY? I tend towards the former, personally) out in the warm sun of the front garden.

They are so tiny and the world seems so big there, with no tree cover of any kind. I hope the best for them...and I hope they are unattractive to the Mystery Nibblers.

Once those were planted and watered, I began weeding /forking the bed along the street-side of the fence. The recent floodwaters had made of the garden soil a sort of hard surface that I broke up and churned a little, working carefully around seedlings I'd planted a while back (allyssum, mostly) and teasing out some new grass seedlings who'd found their way in.

Once that was taken care of, it was time for some seed planting. The rest of the sunflowers seeds, along with two kinds of bachelor buttons, some everlastings and some more cosmos were planted this afternoon.

I always think this is a fun moment that carries a little bit of ritual for me. It's the gardener's chance to make a mark on the land, to lay out a pattern of some kind. Straight rows have always been a little boring for me, so I took the opportunity to play, making different troughs through the loose soil with my finger.

I traced curls, squiggles, chevrons, zig-zags in the gaps between larger plants, writing in the dirt the secret language only the gardener's heart can understand. I filled each mark with the seed of choice, before pushing the soil back over the tiny seeds as I murmured words of encouragement and then sprinkling on a bit of hope from my watering can.

I saved some of the seed from the packets I opened for later use, so there'll be some continuity in bloom types when I get around to weeding and planting the yard-side of the long garden bed.

The wind and the sun...and the cumulative impact of yesterday's full day in the garden...took the fight out of me as the day wore on, and I decided to quite a little early and take the rest of the day for mellowness. There was a little more reading and some YouTube, and an unexpected late afternoon nap that was pretty delightful.

Nature Handles the Watering Today

It was already raining lightly when I awoke this morning, so I lingered over coffee a little before heading out to do some planting. The forecast showed a big storm bearing down on us, with serious rain and high winds coming for us into Saturday morning.

With that in mind, I didn't dally too long before heading out.

The first to be planted were the new single-flowered marigolds. Aren't they lovely? You just don't see this simple variety often enough and I just love them.

Here's my tip about buying marigold sixpacks. Marigolds tend to seed easily, it seems, and I find the individual cells of a sixpack often have more than a single seedling, their roots all tangled and grown together by the time I purchase them. The trick is to take the time to tease them apart...so you ended up getting more plants for your plant dollar.

This really works best with the shorter marigolds, as they have sturdy little stems that aren't likely to bend or break while you are tugging on them. The trick is to grasp them carefully but firmly as close to the base of the stem as you can, first loosening the roots wound around the bottom of the soil cell, and then steadily, but not sharply, pull them apart.

Or you can just slide them into the ground as is and let them take their own chances, I suppose. I like getting a few extra plants by giving each one the room to thrive...plus it makes the garden look a little fuller for less money.

I also got the snapdragon seedlings planted, trying to give some thought to what colors they were and what colors would be present on the perennials they were being planted near. Of course, one packet of snaps is to be assorted colors, so it's still something of a crap-shoot.

Once the plants were in the ground, I planted some seeds...more sunflowers in assorted locations, some misc wildflower seeds on the side of Mount Dump-it out back and some seashell cosmos at the far end of the garden out front.

The rain got heavier as the afternoon wore on and I moved on to other things, like the trip to Eastham for banking. Today, I also combined that with lunch at Wendy's and a visit to Cape Cod Bay, where I collected some old salt hay and seedweed to spread over the future vegetable bed. When I'm ready to plant, I'll turn it under.

The rain's continued to intensify and the flooding out front, despite my efforts to raise the level of the garden, is nearly as bad as ever...but we have had a LOT of rain, so I guess it's to be expected. The rain's supposed to subside by morning, so hopefully it won't sit there in the garden for too long.

I'd been wondering if the winter flooding had killed the lilies, as I'd sort of expected them to be up and out of the ground by now. The first nub of one appeared just a day or two ago, though, so faith is still a worthwhile endeavor just now.

The wind is picking up now and you can hear the occasional spatter of rain against the side of the house and the windows. They say we may have gusts of up to 50 miles per hour. Wee...

Rainy Day Projects

Through a rain-streaked window, here's one of the cardinals, hanging out on the fence.

He has no doubt seen my plans for this corner of the garden. I need to get the sod broken up from this section of the garden and getting the edging rocks laid properly and then will feature a large bird bath in the center. All that is a project for a drier day than today.

There's plenty of birds around who'd enjoy the heck out of that, besides the cardinals. An assortment of purple finches and sparrows seem to spend their afternoons in the tangle of bittersweet and birch in that corner of the yard, and there are titmice and juncos and chickadees everywhere. I've also noticed that the red-winged blackbirds like to congregate in the big oak tree out back every day.

The cardinals, by the way, seem to be spending a lot of time around the two Alberta spruces at the front of the house. I wonder if they've plans to nest in there.

At the end of last summer, my pal Kelly gave me some packets of sunflower seeds. She loves them, and apparently buys the seeds every spring, but either never gets around to planting them or enjoys only dubious success with the short season of her Adirondack garden. So, I've got these seeds to work with this spring.

I know where Kelly's coming from: I always dream of those spectacular sunflowers which stretch into the sky in high summer. Owen grew a few like that the first summer we knew one another and they were pretty amazing.

I've had some sunflower successes, but nothing towering. Maybe this will be the year: the full sun the garden enjoys here is ideal.

So...knowing the weather today would be perfect for an indoor project, last night I got out the pot-maker and made some biodegradeable seedpots from an old telephone directory.

The pot-maker is pretty cool(even if it does look enough like a buttplug to the untrained eye that I don't like to leave it just sitting around the house when it's not in use); it was a free gift from the good folks at Burpee Seed for an order I placed a number of years ago. You wind strips of newspaper (or in this case, phone book pages) around it, fold the ends over the bottom, and then press it into the base, which crimps the bottom into a nice little seedpot.

This isn't my first year using the pot-maker, so I thought to fold over the top edge of the paper first, which I think produced some sturdier pots this time around. We'll see.

This afternoon, after a run to the store for potting soil (and a few more pansies... what can I say, I'm weak ...but I also have a plan), I got 26 pots of seeds planted.

Half of them are the Gray Mammoth variety which sometimes grow to sky-scraping heights. Because this variety's seeds are so large, I only put one in each pot. The others are an assortment of other, shorter varieties, and their seeds are smaller, I felt more comfortable doubling or tripling my chances in each pot with more seeds.

After getting the seeds planted and the soil properly moistened, I slide each tray into a plastic bag and voila, instant greenhouse. They're sitting in the re-arranged bedroom window, which is southern exposure and ought to nurse these guys along nicely. Plus, there's a nice view of the garden where they will eventually, hopefully, thrive.

Of course, patience is key with growing from seed. I've already checked them four times since planting this afternoon and still no signs of growth yet!
; )

When I'd finished with the seed planting, I also potted up a fresh ginger root that my Granny sent along recently as an Easter gift. She and I have both grown these before. They put out tall, bamboo-ish stalks and the purple flowers are beautiful.

Palm Sunday Surprise

Well, this is a little more like it!!

The African violet at my bedroom window surprised me with a few delicate blossoms this morning. I had hoped to see some flowers here soon, as the plant's been growing nicely over the winter. I just didn't think they'd come so soon! Yay...

Behold, the miracle! Inside this wierd looking husk lies all you need for some of the most fantastic flowers possible. Just add dirt and water.

I got a five pack of assorted lilies at the Christmas Tree Shop recently for pretty cheap. Especially since this particular five-pack had six bulbs in it! The last one was a little small...so I'll keep my expectations low.

But I remain excited about the bonus and look forward to seeing what colors these will be. As far as I'm concerned, you can't beat lilies for adding some spots of random fabulousness in a border garden.


And it was fun to get out there and dig a few holes in the ground. It wasn't nearly as soppy as I thought it would be with the recent rain, so the drainage seems pretty good, save one patch of clay pretty far down the fence.

I'd already chosen things from the old place which had thrived in similar conditions to plant at that end...so perhaps all will be well.

I also found, during the Move, a packet of sweet pea seeds which Mom and Dad brought me from their trip to England.

They're a few years old, as they'd been misplaced during a previous Move, but I planted a bunch of them just the same, around the fence posts. I have a good feeling about them and it's the right time of year for planting.

If they germinate, I'll make some string trellaces for them to clamber on.

More bits of green are appearing here and there...like these chrysanthemums. I can't be sure, as things got a little mixed up during transition, but I think these are the imperial mums which joined the family last year.

A TECHNICAL NOTE: It's amazing how time flies. As of this entry, I'll have posted to this blog 1316 times since I started in April of 2005. I know this because I realized recently that there hadn't been the option for post tags back when I started and so most of my entries don't have them.

I spent some time today going back and adding tags to about two hundred of the earliest posts. Most of those are just pictures, but still, it will be great to have them all cross-referenced. For example, click on the tag "lilies" and see what you get!

Got those cosmos and bachelor button seeds out there...late, perhaps, any other year...but probably right on schedule for this one. 

Here's a nice blossom shot of the apple tree that borders the back garden to the East. It's in an area currently overrun with grapevines. Some have been trained along the low fence that runs there, but I'll need to address them in some more substantial way sometime soon. The apple tree seems a popular playground for the recently arrived orioles. Must be the sweet flowers that draws them in.