Traveling Show

So, I did have coffee out on the balcony this morning, as the sun rose up from behind the trees. It was pretty delightful.

Also, with Lenny's help and wisdom (he's seen many move in and out of this up-in-the-air space...), I was able to get our first piece of cushy furniture into the apartment. Look, we have a chair!!

The interior staircase is narrow and steep, so that wasn't an option for this and other bigger furniture pieces...but we were able to slide it up an aluminum ladder to the balcony (after sufficient coffee, of course), and then temporarily pop off the feet to get it in the door...and voila, the Cat has a place to sit!

It was a full morning, as I finally got around to changing my address with the bank and post office and also arranged for the transfer of Comcast services (phone/internet/TV)--I'm a bit amazed that they were able to schedule me for an install this Thursday morning. I hadn't dared to hope it could be that soon.

Of course, we still haven't a television, though one is coming my way in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, once I've got the Broadband, I'll be able to watch the new episodes of HEROES and Desperate Housewives when they appear on the schedule. Meanwhile, though, I'm quite enjoying the serenity of just NPR on the radio.

There was also a stop at CVS, as I was running low on Altoids (it's been 53 days, 16 hours, 6 minutes and 41 seconds now since you-know-what...) and they have a buy-one, get-one deal...plus I needed a grooming kit, because facial hair waits for no man.

And then it was off to Harwich for a visit to the garden. As you can see, it's looking a bit bedraggled and windblown after last weekend's storm.

I'm sorry to tell you the flags were all snapped off the fence, but that was during a rampage in the rain unassociated with T.S. Hanna - I hope he didn't hurt himself doing it. Oh, but I'm proud to tell you it hasn't slowed the morning glories down AT ALL.

After an enjoyable walk around the block with my girl, I got to the business of disconnecting all the cable equipment, so I'll have it for the install (and to prevent him from ordering any more pay-per-view movies, which I found videotaped on the TV table...)...and then went out to the garden to do a little potting.

Dykewife, the photo above was taken special with you in mind, to assure you that at least some of the fabulous orange calla lily rode shotgun with me as I left town.

I also brought along my favorite heliotrope, and then an assortment of black-eyed susans and mums which were about to bloom. Hopefully the move won't be a set-back for them.

It wasn't nearly as well-organized a move as last autumn's was...but there'd been more time to prepare for that one. Today I only had the car, so I had to choose just a few things...but I hope to make another visit with a friend's pick-up truck on the weekend and we'll see what I get accomplished, then.

One of the fun discoveries came when I realized that the over-grown garden was concealing quite a substantial crop of pole beans and I picked as many as I could find to bring along with me.

There were probably twice as many as seen here by the time I was all done. Along with the latest cherry tomatoes, a handful of crunchy beans fresh from the vine made a nice little lunch as I drove off.

And now, a few shots from the new garden...well, the abbreviated, elevated version, for starters. The previous tenants, upon hearing that I was a Gardener, left behind some window boxes of petunias for me, along with a pensive-looking little gargoyle. I've added a few elves, a pot of mother-in-law's tongue (aka, snakeplant) and a tiny birdbath here.

Here's a pair of pots with some of the marine heliotrope I'm such a fan of, as well as my hanging pot of lantana...and one of those tulip-shaped solar lights (the purple).

Because autumn here on the Cape is so often sort of summery, I did take the time to pot up a window box with some marigolds, bachelor buttons and a zinnia and a snapdragon, too, so I'll continue to have some of my own garden on the porch as the season fades. It looks a little ragged just here, but I think it will bounce back nicely.

Here, my Grandma's elf joins the hanging pot of fuschia, another pot of petunias from the previous tenants, and the ginger plant.

As I finished unloading everything, some great looking storm clouds started swirling and rolling in overhead...and I'd sort of hoped for a real ripper of a thunderstorm. There were a few good booms, but really, all we got was some rain...which was just the ticket for the things I'd just planted and/or moved.

And I didn't mind the storminess, since I'd also stopped by our local Benjamin Moore distributor this morning and they loaded me up with paint swatches and brochures about the nature of color. What fun!!

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.

Spring Storms but Good Times

Today was a stormy day, as it turns out, with a whole series of thunderstorms sliding rumbling by overhead. You can kind of tell that, from the size of the puddle out behind the restaurant. Fortunately, the hail was just a momentary thing and didn't repeat throughout the day.


As you can see, I got a couple of great cloud photos, though I wasn't lucky (or unlucky?) enough to capture any lightning strikes. I was inside for most of those.

As you can see, the weather isn't stopping us from having a good time. Mom and Dad are in town for the week, and Sue and Joe on Cape for the weekend. Tonight we all got together for a fun dinner out.

Although I'm still experimenting with the settings on the camera, you can still see we were having a great time together!