Last Weekend...And This.

Last weekend, you may recall, I went off to Chatham for an afternoon, touring along Main Street and enjoying the sense of anticipation that was building in the crowd for the arrival of the Budweiser Clydesdales. It was a beautiful day, I had a wonderful time and discovered a lot of lovely late season gardens to share with you all, as well as the horses.

I also discovered later than day that I'd reached my upload limit at Blogger, and was unable to share those photos with you. It's been a long week, and surely you've moved on to other things, but I finally had the chance to put together a slideshow of some of those great images...which I present to you here...while I'm off having a completely different weekend.

I hope your weekend turns out to be everything you hope for and more. Here in the United States, it's Columbus Day; in Canada, it's Thanksgiving.

Whatever your occasion and however you are celebrating, I wish you beautiful days, warm and memorable evenings and so many smiles that your face hurts a little by Monday!

Tuesday's Gardens

I wanted to show you a little of the detail from my work on the living room walls. I was really pleased with the tiny purple flowers down near the baseboard.

A very important accomplishment today: I finally got myself over to Orleans Town Hall and made sure that I was registered to vote here in town...and learned where the polling place is, too.

Don't we have a nice looking town hall? I learned this year that Orleans is one of 3,310 communities designed as a Tree City USA. Here are the criteria for the designation.

After I'd tended my business inside, I poked around with my camera, enjoying the grounds a little. There was some beautiful blue and purple cranesbill (aka, perennial geranium) blooming just outside the front doors.

It's possible it's looked better than it did today at this end of the long growing season, but that didn' t stop this bee from visiting as I snapped my photo.

There was something about this big patch of clover in the lawn that really tickled me...or would've, if I'd actually stopped to roll around in it...but hey, I just moved to town, a little decorum can't be a bad thing.





I stopped at Friends Market today. I was getting something for lunch, but also looking to bring a little fall flower color to what was mostly a gray and dismal autumn day.


I sure love these red and rusty chrysanthemums.



I also noticed they've got some pansies on special. I thought about picking some up, but I want to make sure they are at the beginning of their lifecyle and will continue to bloom through the winter (or at least resume when the winter passes). It sure is nice to have some of those cheery little faces around.

The sun did make a veiled appearance at the end of the day. Here's a shot of the sky from the deck earlier this evening.


Tonight, I discovered that the door to the deck, which appeared to have been long-ago painted white, really only had some sort of residue on it from being exposed to the elements.

Once I started rubbing it with some polishing oil, the white film vanished and the door's frame turned a nice chestnut color...a great contrast with the peachy-orange dining room walls.

Tonight I also decided that the pair of snapdragons needed a little context for their frivolity, so I painted these flower silhouettes onto the walls.

I swear, these are the last elements I'm adding to the walls. The next step will be taping off the radiators and woodwork, so I can do the final sponge coat of the top color of the room.

Weekend Wrap-Up

This coneflower rudbeckia was apparently a new seedling in the Harwich garden, as it was only just coming into bloom last week when I went back to move a few plants. That was all the encouragement I needed to pot it up and bring it along on the adventure.

Same goes for this chrysanthemum, which is just now sporting buds. Both of these, as well as the coreopsis seen in the background above were planted just outside my new front door, alongside the driveway...not far from that pink rose hedge.

Sunday was a rainy day, though not as much of a rain-out as Saturday had been. It was a day off for me...the first true one since the move and I spent most of the day painting in the bedroom. Still, there was a break in the showers around noontime and while the clouds lingered throughout the day, I couldn't resist a little ramble around to explore the new yard a little more closely.

Here's a shot of the nest from the back yard, the deck-balcony clearly visible.


Found a nice stand of goldenrod at the back of the property. I just love this stuff, it's bright yellow festooning our days just as other plants start to think about winding down for the season. It's always a nice flash of gold on a gray September day.

I also wandered over to the gardens at the property next door. They are primarily summer residents, so it was cool to be able to walk around in their yard without feeling like an intruder. Pretty gardens, too.



Ah, but it's the painting you'll want to hear about...and I will admit that this was one of those parts of the project where I wasn't sure it was going to come out as I'd imagined...and it took a lot of control not to second guess myself, as I began applying crazy, curly-edged flaring stripes of the purple Field Of Heather over the base coat of Cape Cod Gray, which is sort of a blue-green, turned a little more greeny by the close proximity of the purple tones for contrast.

I wanted the vertical stripes, to give the room a little more feeling of height, but the curly edges soften the rigidness of the stripes...plus making them uneven in size and flared a bit toward the ceiling also gives the room a slight illusion of being a little bigger than it is. All justification, when really, I got the idea for the un-uniform stripes by considering the idea of being inside a flower blossom.

Anyway, once the whole room was done and dried, I liked the look a lot more. There's a sort of whimsical "Dr. Seuss designed me some wallpaper" look to it that I think is sort of comforting for a sleeping room...and anyway, this is just stage two. I think you'll like it when it's closer to finished, as I am liking it more and more as I continue to work on it.

As the weekend drew to a close, we prepared to welcome the latest full moon. Here's a shot of it from the deck/balcony, as the wind drew thin wispy clouds quickly across it's face.

(Yes, I'm still running a little behind here. There's more of the painting project, and other household news to share, but we can leave that as a comfortable source of suspense until next time, eh?)

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!

Such Sweet Sorrow...

It's always a little sad to leave a garden. You've spent a year or maybe three tending a piece of earth, encouraging things to grow. You try to give them what they need to thrive. And then you season the ground with dreams and hope, visions dancing in your mind of what they might be in a year or two or three...or ten! And then magic happens.

It's interesting to think of this place next summer, to imagine it when its gone a little wild. It would be fun to come back and see what it looks like, though I'm fairly certain I won't.

I'm sure, from experience, that the grasses will take no time in taking the field, but the milkweed family spreads seed far and wide, too. And I have encouraged quite a colony of foxglove back there, who seem to be doing just fine on their own...and we can't forget the Oregano That Ate Eastham.

A few representatives of each are among the ranks of the moving, tho legions remain behind.

Before work this morning I coaxed a few more of the larger plants into pots, including the Montauk daisies, a seedling burning bush, some chrysanthemums and several pots of Shasta daisies with yellow coreopsis interplanted. Some of these pots also carry some disturbed bulbs (ACK!)(Well, perhaps 'incidentally excavated' is the better description) in the lower decks.

It's always tricky to decide who stays and who goes. On the one hand, you love them all. But taking everyone is really a pretty vast goal, also depending on what sort of garden conditions the next place has to offer. So you end up sorting based on who cost the most, and what conditions at the new site are most favorable for whom, and how much ground is available, too, of course.

At one point we moved into a place with little gardening space, and we transplanted many of the plants into a friend's yard, where they remained--mostly untended, for two years until we moved into a different place with more yard. Some of those plants (or their descendents) are moving with us again this fall.

And there's a part of me that likes to leave some of the garden behind, too. Something to grow on its own and surprise someone in the future, maybe to entice them into doing some gardening or even just to bring them a smile. That's the coolest thing about gardening - its your chance to make the world a better place.

Since I found plenty of loveliness already here in this place, it's kind of fun to leave some addition to that for the next person who rakes the field...or just to give the bunnies some variety of diet.


Even the most positive of moves can bring a little nervousness. There's the upheaval of getting Life into boxes (or pots) and not knowing just where it will all go at the new place and wondering how long you can wait to pack some things...and all that stuff.

Of course, some of us are just thrilled with the boxes.

Flower Puppies

I received this pictures in an email this week and absolutely had to share them.

I've done some checking around online and haven't been able to track down the name of this floral artist and her adorable flower puppy arrangements. (If anyone knows, please fill me in so I may credit her properly?)




Aren't they great?

All Hallows Eve

Autumn Blooms and Some News

Well, even though much of the garden has gone to sleep or to seed (or both), there are still a few pretties to share with you, thanks to our continuing late summer-like temperatures. Today another mum is heard from (one of my favorites!), and here's a shot of the butterfly flower preparing to colonize any open ground.




The cosmos seeds I planted mid-summer are bearing blossoms now, too, though they are on the small side. No less lovely, though.

So, here is the news for you faithful readers. It is now official: we will be moving to Harwich over the course of the next six weeks. Here's a look at the new place (more to come shortly).

While it's not a wilderness preserve like this last place has often seemed, it's still a great place, in a nice quiet neighborhood. There's a nice chunk of conservation land and a kettle pond not at all far away, and the commute to work is about the same, just from a different direction.

We'll miss Eastham, but we think the trade-off for proximity to Dairy Queen and the possibility of pizza delivery makes up for that!

Here's where I'm planning the new garden bed. There's a pair of roses on the fence already and a clematis that climbs the light post, and soon they'll have plenty of company!

We've called the good folks at DigSafe and they are marking all the underground utilities now. If you're moving a garden, or even just moving to a new property, this is always a good idea: its such bad form to get electrocuted or blow up a gas main before you've even met the neighbors!!

Many of my garden pals have been relocated to pots this past week, as I begin the process. We'll be moving later in the month, but I wanted to get these guys relocated before any real wintry danger sets in. We've had a nice warm fall so far, but it can't last forever!

As you can see, these pots are doing double-duty: not only housing some daylilies (actually, these were a recent addition to the garden, from a friend's yard renovation, so they've not actually been in the ground here yet...thanks, Vicki and Craig!!) but also an assortment of solar lights.

Another point in favor of the new location is the closeness to the ocean: we found this view of Nantucket Sound after about a five minute drive!!