Long Weekend

Not a long weekend as in a holiday weekend, the sort of weekend where you have all kinds of free time to work in the garden, or spend time with friends, or maybe fire up the barbecue.

Goodness, no. It wasn' t that sort of long weekend at all.

What it was was a very busy weekend at work, with all sort of special events and guests thereof to host and manage and keep moving on schedule and when possible, happily so.

Fortunately, the weather worked with us for a change. While we had some heavy showers move through Friday evening (as I took that sunset and clouds photos which wrapped up the last post, actually...), the rest of the weekend has been delightful and sunny, but with reasonable temperatures and not lots of humidity.

Having seen the forecast for the weekend, however, I did manage to get out for an abbreviated watering session in the garden early yesterday, before heading off to get things set up for the day's first event.
I'm really happy with this lantana plant (left), which is doing quite nicely in its hanging basket on the front of the house. I'd grown this once or twice before...or tried to, but with only moderate success, since I was working with lesser exposure to full sunshine.

Of course, all the sunshine in the world isn't helping the Early Girl tomatoes live up to their name, as the first of those tomatoes--looking sort of apple-like, I think--are only now beginning to get the slightest blush of color.





Now of course, it's Sunday and all the business of work (save a visit to the office shortly to address some paperwork) for the weekend is happily behind me.

And it wasn't all bad, really. Certainly, it was a long and tiring string of parties, but for the most part, all of our guests were quite lovely and some very memorable and fun.

The events biz is, of course, rife with uncertainty and the need to adapt schedules and think on one's feet. Like when you have to delay dinner for over an hour because half of the guests speak a language other than English, which you've learned has seriously delayed the conclusion of the wedding rehearsal they're coming from.

And then realizing that same language barrier is making it surprisingly difficult to get across the idea that the party has come to a conclusion and all the other guests have left and "it's time you did the same so we can clean up and go home" without simply turning out the lights and pointing toward the door.

Or dealing with the self-important and drunken guest from a culture that doesn't value women as it should, who becomes angry when you defend your female employee's hard work at keeping tables at his family's party clean and orderly because she may have taken away his last half inch of watered-down scotch.

Which might actually have been consumed by the under-aged guest you've been playing cat-and-mouse with all evening.

But as I said, there are plenty of great moments, too, and for the middle of our trio of parties this weekend, we celebrated/hosted the wedding reception of some of our neighbors from here on Not Wisteria Lane. Congratulations and best wishes to Jen and Kevin!!

In the process, I was able to meet some more of our lovely neighbors here. Of course, now they know what I do for a living, they are thinking I might be talked into organizing the annual fall block party. We'll have to wait and see about that one, though.

It was just nice to get off my feet last night and relax a little with a bit of blog-and-comment reading before falling into bed finally.


All in all, it's been a pretty great weekend, even if the work schedule did mean I had to practice brevity with my earlier blog posts.

That's okay. Sometimes, I really enjoy sitting back and letting the garden speak to all of you, and see just what it encourages in you lovely people who come back regularly to visit the Midnight Garden.

I hope the weekend was a beauty for you and that all your hopes and dreams for what was hopefully a few days off came together exactly as you hoped, or maybe even better!

Before wrapping up, I'll just offer my thanks to my pal Meredith, who worked with me throughout the crazy weekend of ups and downs and kept a smile on my face and a laugh never far from my lips...even if we did have to hear the "Chicken Dance" more than once.

: )

Wednesday Without Words

Early Morning, July Fourth

COMING SOON: Orleans Fourth of July Parade highlights!!

In The Garden

I found some of the benefits of Tuesday's rain out in the garden this morning, starting with this red zonal geranium in our middle whiskey barrel.

It's accompanied here by (some asparagus fern you can't see) a Korean dwarf grass and some blue dayflowers I tucked in from one of the beds were it goes wild.

The multitude of hostas around the house are blooming like crazy as well.

I still feel a little guilty as I think back to hosta blossoms I so gleefully POPped as a child. It was so much fun, but what must gardeners in our neighborhood have thought of that. "Those rotten kids..."

It was, honestly, too bright for a photo of the orchard garden when I made it out there around 11:30. But here it is anyway, looking very shaggy and over-grown. Perhaps I'll get to mowing this weekend.

I'm very proud of that great plume of grass. It was not so very large when we moved in a few years ago...and at the time, I was planting it on the fringe of the garden beds that I'd dug in by then.

Since then, it's grown into this great monolith in the center of the garden. Which is sort of cool.

But it's also starting to crowd the path there, so I've been pondering how many divisions I might get out of it and what new home would show them off to the whole area's advantage. I've got some daylilies that might look cool interplanted with this grass.


Beneath a canopy of wild asters preparing to bloom, this white foxglove at the southern end of the garden has decided to put out a blossom or two.

And not far away, the tall pink garden phlox are reblooming without much encouragement from me!

White Phlox 

Dusky phlox. 

Farewell to August

 

Feels so strange to be grateful for the rain we've had yesterday and today, as the remnants of Katrina make their way northward. Here's a bouquet for New Orleans.

Phlox Surprise

Another happy surprise: some of the tall garden phlox has revealed itself to be white and just a few inches shorter than its pink brethren, so the perfect compliment. Since similar clumps of the two together have appeared both out back and by the house, I'm wondering if the one of them has actually grown from fallen seed of the other, and reverted to original parent. 

Glory's View

 


Beebalm, black-eyed susan, white oregano, marigolds, red snapdragon and purple oregano. 


Stargazer lily, white snapdragons, more oregano, black eyed susan and coneflower. 


Tall purple phlox, campion, marigolds and milkweed. 

Evening In the Garden