That Magical Light

There is much written about the quality of light here on Cape Cod. Because we are surrounded on three sides by water, there's an extra reflected light that plays across everything. This is particularly evident in Provincetown, where the water is so close on every side.

It was this light, after all, that inspired the modern impressionist painting movement that took place in PTown in the early days of the last century, which in turn was one of several factors that transformed that fishing village at the very tip of the Cape into an artist colony.

Every now and then, I come across a bit of this magical light and it seems to transform every image I capture with the camera into something almost unreal, too beautiful.

My photographs end up looking more like paintings than more realistic depictions of the world around me. It's pretty amazing.

Today was one of those days, morning and evening, when the light was just incredible and I was a little dumbstruck at some of what I found on my camera's memory card at day's end. You get the best effect when you enlarge the images, so go ahead and click 'em.

By the very nature of it being June, there's tons going on out there in the garden. Although that blasted "witch grass" is staging a massive comeback almost everywhere, there are also plenty of other seedlings taking hold.

Every morning I spend at least a few minutes carefully teasing at some of the grass, trying to get rid of it. It will clearly be an ongoing project.

Meanwhile, here's one of a number of bachelor button seedlings I am seeing here and there. I've tried to be extra careful about weeding out the grass too fervently, as these guys are a little thin and strappy in their early stages, and I've been known to accidentally weed all but a few out in early June purges in past years.

In the past two days, I've noticed that some of the snapdragon plants have doubled in height, surpassing that lower fence rail as flower buds appear at the top of their stalks. It will be interesting to see which color is going to bloom first. I suspect it will be the yellow ones, but the next few days will tell.

In addition to a few more milkweed seedlings, I've also spotted a few rosettes of evening primrose foliage. It's sort of weedy around these parts, growing wild here and there. Last year I had some good luck with chopping it back fairly hard to get it to branch out more, so I'll try to remember to do that sometime in the next day or so. I've noted the oregano plants are ready for that, too.

On the chosen fence posts, the morning glory seedlings are doing quite nicely, making some nice headway in their climb toward the sun.

In the bedroom window are a last six or seven of them, started later for a second wave of bloom as the summer progresses, which are ready to be planted out adjacent to these.

On the side of Mount Dump-It (that lumpy little hill in our backyard that houses the septic system), several massive clumps of tickseed are thriving, their golden flowers glowing in the bright morning sunshine, bobbing easily on the gentle breeze.

In another part of the forest, more of these red roses open every day. I'm just thrilled with the way this rose bush has responded to being trained along the fence. I've mostly read about working/playing with roses and rarely had the conditions to really see what they could do, which makes this season kind of exciting to me.

Also, between these and those ubiquitous little white roses, the air is so strongly perfumed this week that it almost makes me a bit giddy to walk out into the front yard, morning or night. Isn't it fascinating how this product of attracting pollinators in turn makes us all a little gah-gah, too?

The season of love, indeed.

If you enlarge that shot above, you can see in the background some big shiny leaves just above the top rail of the fence...which would be the sunflower seedlings. They are really too big now to be reasonably considered "seedlings", but they are still my babies.

Monday morning I took a photo of them to show you they had almost come level with that top cross rail...but by the time I got home in the evening, the photo had become obsolete, as the seedlings were by then several inches taller than the rail of the fence!

Don't get too close!


Not far from that rose, in the shade of a clump of shasta daisies creeps this itty-bitty (it's maybe a quarter of an inch in diameter, if that)orange flower.

Somewhere, I have an old wildflower guide book from the 1950's, which has been pretty helpful for me in the past, in identifying the tiny blossoms like these, which are often a little too obscure for other more general plant guides.

However, that old book is MIA just now, likely displaced during last winter's move and not yet resurfaced. I'll have to dig around, though--I'm pretty sure it'd help me name this one.

On one of the five mounds which are home to the Three Sisters garden project, the first bean seedling burst out of the ground this morning. I noticed by flashlight this evening that several others came out during the course of the day.

It makes me happy to see this coming along so nicely. Once a few more of those have emerged, it'll be time to add the squash seeds...and then the game will be truly afoot.

It bums me out just a little that the peonies won't be blooming this year, due - I believe - to the trauma of moving. They would be making their own heady additions to the perfumey air this week, if they were, their hot pink flowerheads lolling and bobbing on the breezes.


Another aspect of June has things a little busier at work, but fortunately, I'm still able to steal the odd moment here or there to wander into the garden and catch a few images of the magic happening there.

The purple irises have never been more prolific than they are this spring, it seems. Actually, I'm hearing from a variety of people that irises are having a particularly stellar spring. But still, their time will have fled before too long, as they clear the stage for other flowers to have their moment in the spotlight and I couldn't let that go without another look at them.

Here you might note some of that rose grandiflora (I think that's the name of those little white guys I keep talking about, though it could be multiflora), and this particular plant is a good indicator of how vigorous they are.

I've worked at the restaurant for seven years now. When I started there, this particular plant--now better than two feet high, equally wide and smothered in blossoms--didn't exist there, but has arrived via the birds and taken hold rather quickly. Kept in check, it's not a bad addition to the garden.

Did I mention the fragrance?? I do hope you are all seeking out some nicely scented roses to thrust your noses into this week.

It's also fun to realize how much this spirea has grown in that time. I'm wondering if it is the same variety as the ones I have along the fence at home, which are not quite blooming yet.

Those, if memory serves, are a little darker than these, though they have also grown in some high shade areas in recent years. Their colors might've been a little richer for that. We'll see how they do in this year's full sun.

I transplanted these wild daisy plants at the base of the pond wall about four years ago, and they have filled in the whole area quite nicely.

This is their first wave of flowers, but with deadheading, they'll continue to blossom right through the summer. Who could ask for anything more?

I took a longer route home this evening, allowing me to pass by the overlook of Wychmere Harbor, not far from our house. I knew the full moon was low in the sky and was hoping for some decent reflection to play with from the water. I hadn't thought to be lucky enough to find things so nicely lit.

There was also some sort of celebration going on down by the water, with the happy, lively sounds of people and their merriment echoing brightly across the harbor in the dark.

The golden power of the sun, the heart-tripping scent of roses and the goony glow of the moon, could there be anything more magical?

Muggy Monday

I think this might be my favorite of all the dianthus (although each strain has qualities that make it special. Joe, I promise, I'm gonna get my nose down into them in the next day or so now that so many of them are coming on strong, in order to report on fragrances, if any!). There's just something about the maroon fringing and red patterns, and those tiny white stamens. Plus it seems to be one of the hardest to photograph, so maybe I like the challenge.

It stayed rather warm in the overnight and I slept on the couch in front of a fan not far from the computer...Badum curling up nearby, but discouraged from his usual cuddling nature by the heat.

By 8:00 a.m., it was already in the low eighties, so that first cup of coffee was a bit hurried so I could make sure everyone was well hydrated out there by the fence.

This morning, before I could do that, I also spread out some of my favorite fertilizer, the delightfully named Cock-A-Doodle-Doo (amusingly enough, I always think it ends with Poo, leading me to regularly be corrected by nursery staff), which is, essentially, chicken sh*t in pellet form. I suppose I ought to have worked some of this into the garden soil earlier in the season, but it took me a while to track it down.

I'd only ever seen it in milk carton-sized packages, so you can imagine my surprise when the nursery only had the big bag of the stuff. It was on sale, though, so certainly more economical than the smaller containers, which I'd probably have needed a bunch of, anyway.

Anyway, every part of the front gardens got a decent top coat of the pellets, and then a nice solid watering to help them start to break down into the soil. When I get around to weeding again (after the heat breaks, I imagine...), I'll work it in. With so many seedlings coming up though, it will be careful work when I can devote the quality time to the task.

The blue/ purple Siberian iris was seriously nibbled a couple of weeks back, and I hadn't expected there'd be more to that story this season, since irises (except the new reblooming hybrids I've only read about in catalogs) are generally a one-and-done flower. However, it seems the nibbling stopped short of whatever it was the plant needed to thrust up this single flower, which appeared this morning.

This photo will enlarge, if you're inclined to click it. This clump of pink dianthus is blooming quite merrily, as you can see. Also of note here is the agastache seedling beside/behind the marigolds to the lower left, which is all that remains of a once large plant, a sideshoot rescued when the larger plant died off.

The grasses are all shooting up nicely, as the tulips' foliage continues to fade out. This is the downside of tulips: you have to leave the foliage once the flowers have faded, as the leaves are the plant's solar panels, collecting the sun's energy and storing it in the bulb for next year's show. The trick is to plant them near things that distract the eye or grow tall to conceal the fading foliage.

At the feet of the dianthus, to the right (and also one dead center on its own), you'll find a tiny forest of allyssum seedlings about to begin blooming.

Here's one of the chrys anthe mum's, which I've been regularly pinching out the center leaves of, to encourage branching and more flowers for the garden's final autumn moments. There's a little marigold foliage coming into the image from the right...but let me call your attention to the branchy little seedling right beside the mum. That's a cosmos seedling, but it's not anywhere near the seashell cosmos seeds I put out.

I suspect that this is a seedling self-sown in last year's garden, which hitched a ride with the mum during the move. I'll be keeping an eye on it to see if proof for my suspicions develops.

Meanwhile, here's the better foliage of the golden sage plant I promised. I'm a fan of the texture and the variegated patterns on the leaves of this plant, and in the past I've had them grow into little shrubs, if offered some mulch as winter protection. Plus, it's a tasty herb with chicken on the grill or sautee pan.

This pair of blackbirds flew in while I was filling the bird bath. I think that was their original destination until they spotted me.

They landed on the fence, and the female hopped from one side of the flag post to the other, a steady stream of chatter going between them, warbling noises that were liquid and musical and sounded like real talking.

After a few moments of this, they must have decided to visit another birdbath in the nieghborhood, or at least wait for me to leave, as they flew off right after I took this photo. I tried identifying them from my bird guide, but that suggests that they were Brewer's Blackbirds, which are actually found in the Great Plains states...or so the book tells me. (Patrick, do these look like birds you knew back home?) Weather patterns being what they are lately, I suppose it's not impossible for a pair of them to have found the coast...it just seems more likely they are something more local, misidentified.

IDing is often a tricky business. I only got this brief look at them, which can make matching the memory against images in the book a little tricky. Birds fascinate me so that I have to actually remind myself while gazing at them to make note of particular characteristics so I'll remember them later. The photo helps, but I wish the male (to the left) was a little clearer.

Is it any wonder why I let my mind wander into the garden these days...or that I tried to save money by growing so many things from seed this year? I hadn't been to the gas station in about a week...and while I've heard the news of the latest price hikes on radio and television, this was a still a bit painful.

The President doesn't think it's a problem, so I guess I'll just suck it up. But don't you wish he had to pump his own gas and buy groceries, too?

Fortunately, the garden at work had much to soothe me with, as the afternoon heat began to fade a bit. These yellow daylilies always put on a nice show--they are a different variety from the yellow ones currently in bloom at home.

These old fashioned English roses are just amazing to me. I think they are David Austin hybrids. (I've just requested a catalog so I can drool at my leisure.) Not only are the flowers visually magnificent (and they come more or less all summer long), but their fragrances are absolutely delicious and intoxicating. It's nice to know there are still many roses being bred with concern for form and fragrance.

Someday, when I'm done moving around and finally got my bit of earth, I shall have several of these, to ogle and coddle(though they seem pretty hardy, based on the minimal care they get at the restaurant garden)...probably one of each of these, to start. Then just the ones that are named for various characters from Shakespeares works, although that'd limit me to only about fourteen. Do check out Heavenly Rosalind.


Really, though, the best news of the day came when I realized that the first of the great (by which I mean quite large, easily bigger than my fist) dark purple irises had begun to bloom. There's a number of other flower stalks with deep purple/black buds to follow, but today there was just this one, perfect specimen.

I did get my nose right in there, and didn't notice any particular fragrance, just that quiet green smell that so many plants have.

It sure was catching the light well, though I think it was less blue in reality than appears here, owing to the angle of the late afternoon sun. The truer colors come in the places where the petals are lit from behind, I think. I'll take more photos as their blooming continues.

It's cooled off this evening again, down to a comfortable 66 degrees. The fans are still pleasant, though...and tomorrow they promise we'll finally pass the 90 degree mark, a rarity around here.

Sun Day

Despite last night's cooldown, it was hot from the get-go this morning, as we hit 81 around 9:00 a.m. I got right out to the watering before that, to make sure all my green friends were prepared for the day ahead.

This patch of dianthus is one of those flowers where it's hard to capture the flower color correctly, depending on the light conditions. It's actually, to my eye, just a little more toward the orange than the pink side of the spectrum, as reds go...but I'm having a heck of a time getting it right. Ah, well...lovely just the same.

I was happily surprised to see that this cleome seedling has developed so quickly. I think it's benefitting from its location along the route of the soaker hose, not to mention the hot golden rays of the sun.

Here's a pair of seashell cosmos seedlings at the feet of a clump of veronica (left). I'll need to transplant them so they're a little further apart, since they both look like good healthy plants.

Now, in the fish pond, you may have noticed we have a potted iris. You'd probably just have noticed the sword-like leaves coming up out of the water, really, but you might have guessed iris.

Anyway...the thing hasn't bloomed for us for about five or six years, as it seemed to have gotten pot-bound...and also didn't have a good strong sun location to thrive in.

When it bloomed last, it looked something like this, so you might imagine how psyched I was to see a pair of buds on the plant last week.

I didn't mention it here, because I figured it'd be a great Purple Flower Surprise to spring on you (get it? 'spring on you'...heh) when the time came.

Except, that time came this morning, and as you can see, the result was something different than anticipated, though clearly, there was still a surprise.

I'm not entirely sure what happened here. Plants rarely just change their mind about what they're going to look like, after all. (Do they?) The results of my online searching have suggested that both are most likely Louisiana irises.

I wonder if maybe we got two different kinds of roots at the nursery and when I divided the overgrown plant a couple years back, I gave more room in the pot to a root which hadn't been blooming before. Which makes me wonder if we'll still see the blue/purple one.

Anyway, lovely, isn't it?

Here's a look what everyone else at our house was doing as I headed out for an afternoon at work.

No, it wasn't exactly my first choice for a location on a Sunday afternoon, but there were things to be done and also, air conditioning!

The clematis vines on the lamp post really are an eager bunch. I wouldn't want to try to untangle them at this point, that's for sure. And they are covered in flower buds, which should be fun to watch over the next week or so.

It being June and busting out all over and such, there are plenty of things to see getting ready to show off just about now, like this foxglove flower spire, which is climbing and beginning to reveal its flower buds. It looks like there'll be several other flower stalks rising from this same patch. Yay!

In another part of the border, the sweet William is showing its spikey little flower heads now. Have you noticed there don't seem to be many plants named after guys? I mean, there's this William guy, and of course, Narcissus...and maybe Stephanotus (am I spelling that right?) but who else? I'm not thinking of any others off the top of my head just now. The rest, I'm pretty sure, are all girls' names. Doesn't seem quite fair, does it?

In other news, look at this sunflower seedling. Remember when they were crowding my bedroom window, what seems like forever ago? This one is also very close to the underground route of the soaker hose, and clearly thriving for the regular moisture to its roots.


Not far away, it gives me great pleasure to point out that this carnation plant, which managed to avoid being nibbled by my long-eared friend, has some lovely flower buds bobbing on curling stems. The plant that did get nibbled, though, also seems to be giving it another go, since I also see some lower flower buds appearing there, too!

And here's another look at that new arrival, the verbena bonari ensis, and it's flower buds. I love these long, thin jagged leaves. And there really aren't enough plants with square stems.


Meanwhile, summer seems to have arrived on Not Wisteria Lane. You can tell because these siberian irises down the street are now suddenly blooming. But there are other signs, too.

Now that everyone's windows are open to catch the breeze, it's become clear that almost everyone on the street watches "Jeopardy", since you can hear the Ding tone that signals a correct answer in super-quadraphonic sound when you're out in the garden after 7:30 p.m.

Also, the hard-of-hearing lady two houses down and over, watched Airport '75 last night. I know because I was able to sit inside our own house and listen to all my favorite Karen Black and Helen Reddy scenes quite clearly. ; )

Oh, and the most important sign of the change of the seasons: the Ice Cream Man is COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm always eager to have a new photo of me, but am rarely happy with my results.

Tonight I was playing around with the bug-repellent tiki torches as a light source, and I thought this didn't suck.

Hi everybody!!

I was still dripping a little from a brief visit to the hot tub, which, surprisingly, did help me cool off a little.

Great cloud formations at sunset this evening. This one caught my eye. It almost looked like there was (Great Hera!!)an Invisible Jet swooping down out of the sky.

Although I began this entry well before midnight, it's now 12:28 and the temperature is still 74 degrees, so the sea breezes seem to have abandoned us. It looks like there's a slight chance of a storm overnight, which could be kind of fun.

Meanwhile, I think I need another ice cream sandwich.

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.

Saturday

Saturday morning began with the first blooms on the Easter cactus, their fuscia tones almost too vivid to look at.

Nearby, my bedroom window is suddenly crowded with green. In the plastic bin in the lower left, you'll see all the cleome seedlings, their more ornate leaves beginning to show. There's also a few recent morning glory sprouts closer to the window ledge.

On the right side you'll see a quartet of tomato plants I picked up at the nursery yesterday...where I also acquired the two sixpacks of tall marigold seedlings you see on the window ledge, flanking the larger morning glory seedlings.

Those older morning glories suddenly put out long whip-like stems today, and I'll be happy to get them out of the bedroom before they strangle me in the night.


With a head full of fond weekend reunions from Memorial Days past, good friends are always on my mind this time of year. So it was great to get the call from Beth and Joe this morning saying they were on Cape and headed in my general direction.

We met at the restaurant and had a great visit over lunch. It wasn't nearly as long as we'd have liked, as I had an afternoon of work ahead of me, and they were staying in far-off Falmouth and had plenty of vacation-type plans. Still, we enjoyed what time we had!

Had to show you the beautiful bluebells of our neighbor in Harwich. I really need to get me some of these!


In was an exciting day in our yard, as Owen's work completing some comprehensive network of fencing allowed Em to wander freely around the yard for the first time in years. She's not what you might call "trustworthy" on the subject of staying nearby, so she's always been on a run or a leash when she's outside, for her own protection and that of the World At Large.

But now she's got some open space where she can roam free (though neither you nor she should think we aren't watching her every move, just to be sure!) and not feel so much like a prisoner. Although, to look at the way she lounges carefree in the sun, you wouldn't think that was foremost in her mind.

That's quite a tongue, isn't it?

This little montauk daisy plant is one of my accidental garden triumphs. When I bought the big plant a few years ago, it got jostled in transit and the tip of one of the branches was broken. The stem appeared to have pre-root bumps (perhaps I mean nodes) along it, so I took a chance and stuck it in the ground not far from where the larger plant was located.

To my surprise, the little stem survived and even bloomed at it's appointed time. Today, it's grown into this. Don't get too excited, though; this doesn't bloom until just before Columbus Day.

Meanwhile, here on Not Wisteria Lane, the irony comes from the fact that I simply chose that as a code name for privacy's sake. However, it turns out there's actually a hell of a lot of wisteria growing on our street, like these vines just down the street from us.

The deeper purple of the buds is a more obvious color at a distance. Once the flowers open up they turn a lighter blue which is one of the most difficult flower colors to read from far off. They're not so much to look at as you drive past.

Fortunately, I wasn't afraid to get right up close.


Down the street in the opposite direction, this treetop echoes with the unison cries of baby birds demanding dinner. I didn't spy any adult activity, so I can't name a species, but it's always an exciting sound.

There's lots going on in the bird world, though. Passionate swarms of orioles and cardinals swirl past through lilac-scented air. A pair of starlings chased each other between us on the back porch this evening.

In a treetop down the street, it appeared the flickers might be educating young ones in things aero dynamic. Bluejays and catbirds rustled around in various thickets of underbrush.

Every now and then a gull or two made a pass by overhead from nearby shores.



As darkness fell, I was out in the garden, lighting some tea candles in the lanterns I've got hanging on the fence and heard a familiar buzzing.

I didn't have a flashlight with me, but the camera's flash revealed the arrival of those dumb thugs of the bug world, the May Beetle...soon to be known as the June Bug.

The graceless way they arrive on the screens of early summer almost always makes me laugh...though sometimes that low buzz can be a little disconcerting.