Sunday Garden Report

I have completed the Dragonfly Trifecta!

In July, Patrick danced with dragonflies and Joe had cocktails with one. Today, one of these garden visitors decided to stop teasing me and posed on the faded head of a plantain flower. And what a chance to see what the new camera could do.

Do click to embiggen and admire those wings!

Yes, there's a new camera. It's been a tax-free weekend here in Massa chusetts and I'd been saving up some money saved from not smoking (30 days today!!) and such since my old camera went on to its reward back in the spring.

So now I'm experimenting with something new, an Olympus FE-310. So far, I'm having a great time with it, though I'm not sure I'm interested in the photo program that came along with the camera...my PhotoPlus 6.0 does all I need it to for developing purposes.


The first tentative photos were taken at that house party I visited last night. To the left are Vera and Chicao, two of our hosts...and down below is the whole bunch of us.

There had been other guests earlier, whom I unfortunately missed, but it was still fun to hang out for a while with everyone who was there when I arrived after a long night at work. Good tunes, a little dancing and Vera's special Brazilian potato salad!

Mmm mmm.


Here's me with Maria Paolo, Rocio and Katerin, who are all here on work visas from Columbia this summer.

By day, they are working as chamber maids, but in the evenings, the make the best team trio of dishwashers our restaurant has known in years! Plus, they're funny and sweet and great to party with!!


Despite the late night (it was around 2 a.m. when those pictures were taken!), I was up pretty early this morning, since I couldn't wait to get the new camera out for a spin in the garden.

A fresh round of bachelor's buttons provided some nice camera fodder. These little flowers - each one's about an inch across - just keep coming and coming...and in a great assortment of colors.




I just love the blue ones, but there are many of them up and down the fence garden. Naturally, I'm being won over by the purple ones in the color range, which were part of a range of about five different colors, so they are fewer in number.


The dappled sunlight behind this pair of purple pals is pretty delicious, too.



There's lots to learn about the new camera, so eventually I will have to sit down and have some quality time with the manual, to make sure I'm making full use of everything.

But I'm happy to say that its also pretty intuitive, and I've been having fun exploring some of the different settings.

As you might guess, my favorite, and one of the most appropriate to the Midnight Garden, is the macro-focus...and this camera also has a super-macro focus, and to celebrate I managed to stalk a few bees who were visiting the border this morning for your entertainment.


As you can see, sunshine made a full return to the Cape today and it really felt like summer. Looks like that'll be staying with us a for a few days, which is a comfort, since it's clear now the summer season is in decline.

In a moment typical of the sort of Charlie Brown-y moments which punctuate my life, last night I finally discovered my official cocktail for the 2008 Summer Season.


It's light and refreshing and mellow enough to enjoy more than one without falling down on my face. Being a frozen drink, the only real danger is a brain freeze from speedy consumption.

And no sooner did I victoriously hoist that Midori Colada in the air than leaves began falling from nearby trees, signalling the end of the season.

; )



Howdy, pardners! Life brought a straw cowboy hat my way this afternoon at work, when we hosted the annual un-birthday celebration of a local family.

This year's theme was cowboys and they were all appropriately attired, a wonderful Cape Cod mix of cowboy boots and flip-flops...and there were hats for all the staff who worked the party, too!

And just in time for Carnival Parade.

As I tried out the zoom feature, I caught this sunset-illuminated jet plane high overhead. It was flying east, out over the ocean, so I assume it was an international flight, though it occurs to me it might just have been circling around to approach Logan Airport in Boston from that direction.

In between pictures, I managed some serious dead-heading of the garden tonight. As always, lots of spent marigolds to remove, some more allyssum to trim back...a few faded bachelor's buttons here and there.

More of the daisies had gone past, so they were taken out and some of the coneflower rudbeckia was thinned a little, to encourage some late season reblooming.

I also took shears in hand and addressed the business of the now- tower ing spikes of evening primrose, pruning them back to something lower growing.

We'll see how well they respond to this sort of treatment; my suspicion is they will get bushy and stay a little shorter--I wish I'd thought to cut them back earlier in the season.

Once again, I unwound a great many morning glory vines around the re-captured flags on the fence, so for at least the next few hours, they should be able to flap with abandon on the occasional sea-breeze.


With nightfall coming just a little sooner, the deadheading turned into lighting candle lanterns in the garden and before long it was dark, leaving me free to head inside to sample that first Early Girl tomato.

There were two, actually, but I discovered that the second one had a nasty patch of mold growing on the bottom of it, so that one was jettisoned, but this one sliced nicely and was very tasty.

It would've made a nice tomato sandwich - the kind I've been craving all summer - if I had remembered that we had no bread in the house. But it was yummy just as it was...and tomorrow I'll make sure I'm stocked up to make a proper sandwich with the next couple in the harvest schedule.

It's not quite a full moon anymore--that was last night, but that just means I have a whole month to figure out how to take a great moon photo (no wisecracks, you lot...oh, ha ha...cracks...yah, whatever...) with the camera.

This one's not bad, but you can't see Jackie Gleason's face.

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.

: )

Morning and Night

I know. I probably shouldn't lead with a morning glory two days in a row. But A) it is the first flower to bloom in the morning and 2) go have another look at it. Amazing.

While we've been busy looking at other things, the hens and chicks flower stalk/ head/ alien/ thingy has really gone to town, with all the flowers now open.

It still looks like it could be something from Plan 9 From Outer Space...well, if they'd had any kind of a budget for that movie, that is.

But it's quite cool just the same. I bet this thing will try to seed itself all over the place. I would love that.


Here's the Burpee Big Boy tomato plant and as you can see, there's plenty of fruit coming along and getting bigger by the day. So this one might be well-named.

I'm not sure I can say the same for the so-called Early Girl, which has plenty of fruit, but they all remain green.

We may have to get out the frying pan and make some fried green tomatoes, if this keeps up. Not that there'd be anything wrong with that.

The lavendar beebalm are so calmly beautiful. The color is so faint they sort of fade away at a distance. This may also come due the contrast with the neighboring gloriosa daisy and it's hot flower colors. Still, the bees aren't having trouble finding it.


This morning, this first sulphur cosmos blossom opened up wide and began to dance on the breeze.


There's lots of buds on lots of others of these plants all up and down the fence, so this is a show that should go on into September. I love cosmos for that.

Thanks to some regular dead-heading, some of the daisy plants are putting up a second, lower wave of slightly smaller flowers. Still the happiest bloom I know, eh?

Here's some more sunflowers, standing tall at a little over six feet and putting out more flowers every time I turn around. What fun these guys have been this year!

As the day began to fade, I decided to check out the scene at nearby Banks Street Beach. It's a south-facing beach, which means the sunset actually happens over land, which is not quite as spectak as doing so over the bay, as I have been spoiled to enjoy at First Encounter in Eastham. But it was still a pretty great show.

[Technical difficulties: only now am I discovering that something went awry with the slideshow. Please stand by. Well, check back later--this may take a while. In the meantime: ]


There. That's something, anyway.

Summer Days

Well, the days certainly slip by quickly here in July. I never got around to posting yesterday. My computer sort of reminded me recently that there are other things to summertime life besides blogging. You see, I have this CD burner that is usually pretty reasonable, but every now and then, the software that came with it doesn't recognize the burner...and the best bit is that it usually decides not to see the hardware exactly the week that my photo files start to clog things up and need to be burned to disc. The Laws of Murphy are strong in this one.

Finally, after much futzing, I got the burner working and spent some time burning discs--two of them for the first three quarters of June!!! Anyway, now my hard drive's all freed up and running a little more smoothly...but between this issue and the connectivity thing, I found myself with that time I was looking for to dive head-first into the Wind in the Willows, as inspired by both Cooper and Patrick...and I just never want to stop reading it now!! Blogging, what's that?

I can't remember when I read this book, but it was a terribly long time ago, and so this feels like a brand new thing for me, while also an old friend. You know, you read a book as a child and you take it in on a much simpler level...and then you come back to it later, and you see a completely new pleasure, informed by the years you've lived, experiences you've had, knowledge gained and people you've known. I don't think my pal Bob would mind or disagree with the assessment that he is not unlike Toad in many ways, for example.

I find it's a difficult book to read late at night, not only because it keeps hitting me in the face when I fall asleep, but also because, when I'm not tired from a long day, I'm laughing right out loud almost constantly and I'm a little concerned I'll wake everyone up laughing so heartily. Anyway, if you haven't read this book recently, get a copy, read it for yourself. Read it to your kids. You won't be sorry.

Ahem. Okay, hopping down from my Read a Book soapbox, let me show you this beautiful evening primrose that's starting to strut this week. I didn't plant these guys, though I may have transported the seed in soil from the old garden.

They are sort of wild and weedy in these parts, but I find them pretty well behaved (and easy enough to yank up if you don't like the spot they've chosen) a wonderful bit of height and color in the summer garden, so I'm happy when they show up here and there.

As the name suggests, the new flowers open up as the sun is setting. Yesterday morning there was one, but I noticed around 10 or so last night (by flashlight beam) that these four had opened, sending their scent out across the night air, teasing night time bugs and moths to come taste...which in turn brings the bats out to swoop around.

Ah, nature.

In the interests of full disclosure, not all of the photos to follow were taken today, but rather, they represent a melange of garden activity during the last thirty-six hours. Like you care.

I don't know about you, but I can't look at these portulaca flowers enough. Each day there's a new array of assorted colors. I'm so glad I didn't end up with the pack of all one kind of flower that was originally in my hand at the nursery. I'd much rather have all these colors in a random collection.

I'm also sort of tickled to point out a small hedge of about four cleome seedlings in the background, still fairly small, which were born of a second seeding with the remainder of the packet somewhere around mid-June.

While the first flush have yet to actually bloom yet, it's nice to know this second wave will be coming along to bloom much later in the season, possibly as the early guys begin to fade. I've always enjoyed this plant, but haven't had the conditions to grow it well for a few years. It's nice to have it around again.

On the Produce of the Future scene, the Three Sisters experiment is going quite nicely. Here's one of the best hills, featuring a good balance of corn, beans and squash all growing together. You may also note that I should spend some time this weekend doing some weeding around these guys.

You may recall I was eight days late after the Full Corn Moon planting my corn seeds this spring...so it shouldn't be any surprise that it was five or six days after the Fourth when my corn plants began to reach that knee-high benchmark you're supposed to have hit according to the old saw about corn growth, Knee-High by the Fourth of July.

Also, while the title seems a shade dubious, the "Early Girl" tomato is making some promises for a first harvest of fruit sometime fairly soon...but not really early by most measurements.

Now, I try to be good about admitting mistakes, and I am reasonably assured that this lovely red rose which I've been touting as the return of the often-dead Mister Lincoln tea rose, is not at all that plant.

You see, in Spring of 2007, I bought two rose bushes rather inexpensively at the Ocean State Job Lot. One of them died over the summer, but the other did pretty well, though never bloomed to cement it in memory.

This is that second plant, which I think may have been called Proud Nation, or Proud Land, or something like that, and if I recall(or stumble across the label, which I did tuck into some book or other for safe-keeping. Hopefully it was actually a garden related book.), it's actually supposed to grow into a serious bush of such blooms. This would be wonderful, as right now it is rather small.

Now, not only did I recently recall that purchase and the survival of the rose, but also Wednesday, this other, smaller red tea rose began to bloom down at the other end of the fence garden, and I realized that this, indeed, was the real Mister Lincoln standing up.

But sadly, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

I found this lovely purple hydrangea blooming under a tangled clutch of bindweed this evening, which I tore out by the handfuls to reveal this lovely flowerhead. This plant is badly crowded by an azalea and a juniper bush and needs to be transplanted to a location where it can thrive a little better.

Also, it's past time to address the bindweed, which is a little seductive with its pink flowers, but will wrap itself around me and my coffee cup, if I sit for too long in one place. It weaves through all the foundation plantings around the house and will probably completely cover the house one day if left unchecked.

Check out this massive spidery-looking sunflower head. This plant is now just a little taller than my five foot and eleven inch height. I just love the crazy way it looks. This is definitely one of the Russian Gray "giants" who love to get so very tall. Can't wait to see how high we can go with these!

Along the inside of the fence, another shade of African marigold has begun to bloom. These guys (there are also some in a canary yellow color in the cleome bud photo earlier this week) will eventually get to be about three feet tall themselves.

I like this color. It's not that pale bright yellow, but it's not the neon orange. It's a nice golden cross between the two...and a real bridge between all the other shades of marigolds in the garden.

Here's one of the gardens down around the bend here on Wisteria Lane. It sort of amuses me, as I think from a distance that this is a statue of Saint Francis, who welcomed all the animals of the world to him. And the garden in his honor, properly fenced to keep the animals out.

I wonder if this bunny was thinking something similar.

I think I'll post this picture over at BugGuide.net, to see if it's clear enough for anyone to identify the species of pollinator seen here. I don't think there are bees with green heads. It would be a real lesson for me to accept the evil Greenhead Flies (of the painful bite) as beneficial to the garden in the absence of more bees.

[EDIT, 7/12/08: First response to my posting at BugGuide suggests this is a halictid bee...which I'd never heard of before. They are also called sweat bees, which I have heard of previously. Other photos I've now seen indicate their entire bodies are green, sometimes. Join me, won't you, in a brief education on the subject (and some much better photos) here.]

I did see a nice group of honeybees flitting about the roses outside the bank in Eastham the other day and that was a bit of a relief for me. I've still not seen a single honeybee in Harwich. Have you seen this? (Thanks, Curt!)