NEWEST BFF

YEP, WHO'D A THUNK IT? To be honest, I would not believe it if it hadn't happened to me. As I said in my last post, I have bunches of dragonflies this year... maybe it is because it has been so hot and dry and my place is shady and has several birdbaths, I dunno. Maybe they like all the stuff planted here... whatever. Here they are, and I am loving it! Yesterday, I cut some grass and got the weedwhacker out. It is electric, maybe something in the humming of the motor? Who knows... whatever it is, this one little dragonfly followed me around the yard. I choose to think it is the same one that follows me when I am watering things - I thought it was that he (she?) was attracted to the movement of water, sound of it, the coolness close to the water coming from the hose. As you can see, I have spent considerable time wondering about this. But yesterday, I had the hoses set up in their respective garden areas, careful to not water the Punkin patch snoozing in the last remaining potato bag, while I was weedwhacking in a different part of the yard. I must have been 50 feet away from the hoses, well 100 feet from the hose on the beans, and 40 feet from the cats snoozing or scratching (the ticks have been BAD!) and there he was, buzzing around my head. When I sat down for a little break in one of the Adirondacks, the little fellow came and sat on the arm of the chair across from me. My camera, of course, was in the house. So, I came in and grabbed the camera, returned to the patio, and, of course, no dragonfly on the chair. So, I headed back to the barn and the weedwhacker, and crackle, crackle, zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttttttttttt, there he was. He sat down on the edge of the wheelbarrow, and I reached into the barn for the camera. These close up shots are NOT telephoto or enlarged by a photo program. The camera was not much more than a foot away. I did not use any color enhancing program, tho I wonder if something might have helped bring out the beautiful soft blue on him, or the turquoise of his eyes. I really wondered if I could slip a finger under him and pick him up, but I did not want to frighten him away.
It is drizzling this morning, so I am not working outside. I wonder where he is hiding. The camera and I will be heading to the Train Station in a few minutes, hopefully to record the hanging of the second half of the Big door. I guess I won't be painting the inside sections to the HVAC fence, since I do that outside. So I guess I will just be a Step-n-Fetch it, or maybe just the photographer. I am glad it is cooler and grateful for the minimal rain. Every drop helps. But I will go looking for him when I get home... or maybe he will find me!

CATCHIN’ UP

LIFE HAS BEEN BUSY here on Possum Lane. I don’t do well when it is too hot (read humid) to breathe, on those days I would like to curl up next to Hadji and his catnip pillow and take a nap. Move over meeses, make room. But, I have never been able to sleep during the day anyway, so all I would accomplish is several relocated catnip mice and a disgruntled cat. Speaking of cats, as I came home from the store the other day, I noticed my lump of gold (read Punkin) curled up asleep on my potato bags. Remember my great “farming” experiment with potato growing bags? The growing bags were about $11 each and took 2 BIG bags of potting or garden soil mix. I got the seed potatoes from a friend. I doubted it would work, but I followed the directions. After a while, I saw leaves! I was excited. It has been a long hot dry summer so far – we are under an extreme drought designation – so it meant watering faithfully. They looked OK when I went to PA to see my Aunt, but they were dead as anything when I came home. So, I stopped watering them. Did I mention I know NOTHING about growing potatoes? I figured they were dead. $40 out the window, or something like that. Shoot, I could buy a lot of potatoes for $40! So, while Punk found a new bed in the yard, I waited for a cooler day, dragged out my potting soil storage unit ( read trash can) and got the shovel. After a few good scoops of dirt, the shovel hit something! Well, what do you know? I put the shovel aside, having just split what I figured was the only potato in the bag, and scooped with my trusty potting soil scooper (read cool whip container) and what do you know! Or as one of my former students used to say – Viola! Yes, that is what he said – I know what I spelled. As I dug thru the dirt, I found some decent sized redskin potatoes. I also found a bunch of little potatoes starting to sprout… they were too tiny to bother with, so I replanted them, watered them, and have one bag out there to see if I get a second crop. This batch weighed in at 5 lbs, and that is after the dirt was washed off and tiny ones replanted. Punkin is not happy having a soggy bag out in the yard, but that is too bad. He will find another spot. And so I made some potato salad today. Lunch was awesome. My own potato salad, my own tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. Does it get better than this? OH, and by the end of next week, my second crop of string beans, yellow wax, and Italian flats will be ready to be picked. Who said I'd never make a good farmer? Oh, right, I did. Who'd a known?

A NOT QUITE SUMMER MORNING

The calendar tells me that it will soon officially be summer. The thermometer says it is here and has been for a week. The refreshing chill of the morning is history, it seems. I miss needing long sleeves first thing in the morning. My world, so drab not too long ago, is now a contest of greens – each plant is trying to out-green the other. This is about as green as it gets – the end of May. It does not take long for the heat of the summer to dry things up, coat the leaves with dust and make folks grateful for their air-conditioners. I have a love/hate relationship with my air conditioner. I am grateful for the comfort it brings, but I hate to have to use it. I long for my Pocono summers and dream of the Maine island summers of my youth. I have been so fortunate to have spent my summers sampling the climates of many different areas. How lucky is that?

The desert areas of Turkey are about to go back to being deserts. They have been blooming like crazy this year, so I have been told. It is a long, long time since I lived in Turkey, a long time since I saw the beauty of the desert in the spring. Interestingly, I did not mind the dry heat at all, so different from the stifling humidity here. The normally dead looking brown earth gets covered in blankets of beautiful colors and delicious fragrances. If you have never had a bit of desert experience, you don’t know what you’ve missed. Ok, backing up – I am not talking about what my father called “the serious desert,” the sand deserts, the huge blowing, shifting dunes, but the miles and miles of “scrub or barren” land, land that looks like it would not grow anything most of the year… land with cactus, sage, the tumbling tumbleweed type of landscape. Oh, but that month in the spring, sometimes it lasts a bit longer, but that month of awesome flowering, of color, is a month of pure magic.

Here, far from the desert, the air is heavy in the morning with fragrances from so many sources. A visitor once said it felt like you had to push your way thru the sweetness in the air just to get to the car. We have magnolias in bloom, honeysuckle, and the locust trees are just finishing. Even holly trees are fragrant during most of May as they pollinate and make new holly berries. The air is also heavy with the sounds of birds, baby birds begging to be fed, parents fighting to protect their nests, robber birds like crows scouting around to steal eggs or even unguarded babies. Then there are the grackles, the noisy, noisy grackles squawking at each other in the mulberry trees, bragging about what ever grackles brag about – or perhaps they are complaining. Is that what it is? Their noise sometimes grates on my nerves; I hate to admit it.

The grass is wet with dew; strings of pearls hang from the bushes as the spiders wait for breakfast to blunder by. My shoes get soaked as I wander thru the yard in the morning looking at all the beauty around me… late peonies, irises, roses. Even the honeysuckle, a truly invasive “weed” in most cases, is beautiful in the early morning light. Delicate. Beyond fragrant.

The Mountain Laurel has been blooming. I am always amazed that it has survived another year. Friends laugh as I have brought rocks from PA to put around them to make them feel more at home. (We have NO naturally occurring rocks here on the shore. But you can now buy them at garden centers!)

The garden is coming along. The bees are having a good time with all the flowers on the squash, zucchini and cucumbers. I spotted my first cukes of the year this morning – about the size of a kosher dill. They will be ready to pick later this week. I have my first tiny tomatoes, not much bigger than a pea, but there they are. I can almost taste them. I ate my first homegrown lettuce the other day. Best salad I ever had! And we cooked MY peas for supper. I wonder why that gives me such a high!

I guess it is good that having this garden does give me a high, because the work is almost too much sometimes. But I keep in mind the fun of going out and picking enough beans for dinner. And then picking beans (or cukes, or tomatoes) to share with others. And folks covet my produce. They know I do not use any chemicals – no pesticides, ever!

This morning, when I opened the back door, can of Tuna in my hand for Punkie and Spook, I was hit with the almost over powering scent of almost summer. I had to walk out into the yard and just breathe the smells in. I thought of folks in cities who breathe in the fumes of vehicles, exhaust, garbage, that tarry smell of black top in the sun… I thought about the sounds that they hear as I listened to my birds fussing, begging, or just singing their morning songs. Are they thanking their idea of god for another day? Did someone just say thanks for the drink in the bird bath out in the yard?

Then I heard another noise… a soft leaf rustling sound and the snapping of tiny branches. I quietly walked out a bit further. There was a doe standing on her hind legs pulling a branch down from the mulberry tree, chomping down as many berries as she could while the birds fussed at her for eating all their berries – like there isn’t a whole tree full? Or maybe even several trees? The mulberry trees are so heavy with berries this year, I actually had to cut some branches off where they were hanging down into my garden. I stood there, barely breathing, glad the wind was blowing in my direction watching the doe eat when I noticed movement closer to the ground. She had her fawn with her. At first I thought it was my cat, Punkin … no wait, it WAS Punkin, oh where is my camera when I need it! Punkin sat there and watched the doe eating from the tree, the fawn eating (?) the berries that had fallen to the ground.

The bad news is that this year’s new supply of mosquitoes has arrived. I am SOOOOO allergic to bug bites. I hate using sprays, but I pay a huge price. Yesterday, I tried working out in the yard in long pants and a long sleeved shirt. I didn’t last very long. I had to wait until around 7 to go back and cut grass and finish my chores.

It is hard to believe that there is still over 100 inches of snow on the ground in some mountainous areas out west. From my CoCoRaHS coordinator this morning:

As of a few days ago we still had some CoCoRaHS volunteers with snow
left on the ground. Two of our stations in CA, where snowfall had been
so great that it buried residential power lines, still had over 100" of
snow remaining on the ground earlier this week. Here in Colorado we're
waiting for the warm weather to finally arrive and when it does later
this week -- look out. We have huge amounts of snow left in our
mountains -- from 25 to as much as 90 inches of snow water equivalent
(SWE) still up on the slopes in the northern portion of our state --
much, much more than usual. With the sun nearly overhead and the summer
solstice right around the corner, the snow will be melting fast (1-2" of
SWE per day when it gets warm) and the rivers surging.

Friends out in the Midwest can’t even get into their gardens – the land is just too soggy.

Here on the Shore, we are in a state of moderate drought. We don’t need the floods others have been having, but we sure could use some rain. Go figure. How is your garden growing? Still have snow? Is your garden under water? Or do you have to go out there and water every day?

IT ALWAYS SNOWS ON THE DAFFODILS

I HAVE PROBABLY POSTED THIS TITLE BEFORE – because it always snows on the daffodils, and  that makes for some fun pictures. In PA where I went to college, this is called the Onion snow, because onions sets are usually in the ground by now. These are my onions, I put them in last week. 

But, here in VA, when it snows in the end of March, it snows on much more than the onions, or daffodils, but the good thing is, the snow does not hang around. Often it barely covers the ground. So, I have learned to grab the camera early because sometimes the snow is gone by the time I hit ‘publish.’ So, I will share a bit of last snow beauty.  

It is the time when many of the camellias are in bloom. Pink Perfection is probably my absolute favorite and I don’t remember seeing it in the snow before.

Red Emperor… Pink Precious… One of my own hybrids…     

White on white (this is a 12 footer)… Snow on the forsythia… See the peonies coming up? Pansies…

Know what this is? Snow on the PussyWillow, up about 15 feet. The Redbud is starting to bloom, these will be flowers next week. And I love the pattern of snow on these branches.

When we flew our first flights over Libya, I bought a new Peace Rose bush as my prayer for Peace. I hope it does not fall on deaf ears.

The snow filled Buddha’s lap as he sat out back and reminded me to think thoughts of love and compassion, and it fell on St Francis as he watched over Spook taking a drink from the slightly slushy birdbath.

May thoughts of Peace and Compassion fill your heart this spring day. (Guess what? It is all melted – just that fast.)

SPRING – for NOW

AND THE YARD WORK STARTS IN ERNEST. They tell me spring is here. Well the daffodils are blooming, that is a serious clue. The buds are popping on the trees, and the birds are getting scrappy as breeding/nesting time draws near.  The forsythia is in full glory, the camellias are a sight to behold. Onion sets are already sold out in one local store. I had to drive 40 miles to get some Vidalia onion sets. My peas are ready to go in the ground. It was a temptation to put them in as it was 78 degrees on Friday. However, the morning temp is supposed to be 28 by next Friday, so I guess I will hold out for another week or so.

But, the blueberry bushes have been moved. They got little sun in their old space as the pine trees grew.They were only about a foot tall when the bushes were first planted. But first, this azalea had to be moved – it went in a hole left by a blueberry bush.  The fence was taken down, rolled up, the net removed, and the posts pulled up. I did have help moving a couple plants and then putting the posts in the ground. Fortunately I had my own shatters (Eastern Shore for pine straw) to put around the bushes for weed control. This is the old Blueberry garden with the netting covered in snow. Honest! Isn’t that amazing? The center pole kept it from collapsing.  

Have you ever seen a Pussy Willow this tall? The tree stump on the left is 4 feet tall.

I love to see the daffodils turn into glowing spots of beauty in the early morning sunlight.

Because of the unusually cold winter, the camellias are blooming out of sync. Red Emperor is blooming early, this hybrid is blooming late. All around the edge of the woods, there are bushes filled with huge blooms.  

Aunt Alice is pretty much on schedule. It is one of my favorites.

A friend gave me a present – a reddish violet. No not a house plant or African violet, this is supposed to grow just like the others that grow like weeds in the yard. She has a huge patch of them.

And, Ginnie, this shot is for you.

SERIOUS ICE!

ICICLES are rare here on the shore – might be because we can go for years without snow, ya think? So, I suppose folks from snowier areas must think it strange to take pictures of icicles – but even for someone who has lived in Maine, I thought these were pretty spectacular… or maybe have I just been in VA too long.

Anyway, I just had to share these couple shots with you.

Storm update – we have 8 foot drifts. Most of the back roads here on the shore are closed. The Testosterone Cowboys with 4 wheel drive have been trying to blast their way thru the drifts, just for the fun of it, but, DUH, many of the drifts are a half a mile long, not those little 2 foot wide piles of snow they use in that commercial. So, they get 50 feet into the drift and their 4 wheel drive will not take them any further – NOR does it get them back out! It is difficult to even get out of a vehicle when the snow is up over your hood, over the windows, or even, imagine, up to the roof. So, many of our roads are blocked, not just with snow, but with abandoned vehicles.

Some of the excuses the tow truck operators are hearing are amazing… “I had a hankering for sausage, so we were going to Wal-Mart.”

“We ran out of toilet paper.”

“I dunno, we got bored and I got 4 wheel drive…”

“I was going to go dig my girl friend’s driveway out. (Does she have to go somewhere? Is she a nurse or something?) No, she invited me over for dinner. Gonna have spaghetti. I’m bringing the wine.” (well, that explained one or 2 of the bottles… maybe, but not the open beer can)…

Yep, this one will go down in the record books for us.

On VACATIONS…

Numerous friends have been on vacation lately, most of them going pretty much to the same place – Maine. Maine is definitely in my top 5 list of places to go on vacation, and state-side, is probably #1.

I find different people’s ideas of vacations interesting. There are those who go hiking, camping, head out to the more remote parts of the world sometimes hiking miles for that perfect moment, that perfect view that so few ever get to see. For some there is nothing more enjoyable than the smell of coffee brewing over a campfire, a morning dip in the river or a shower under a waterfall. Then there are those who leave the getting there to someone else, have meals prepared by a chef and sleep in a bed they did not have to make, let alone roll up and tuck into a back pack. Somewhere between the cruise people and the back packers fall the majority of us.

In my old age, I do like the convenience of a bed at night, a flush toilet and a hot shower. I am ashamed to admit, the last few times I went to our Powwow, I did pitch my tent… but I slept in a motel a few miles down the road.

I have been blessed by being able to have some wonderful vacations. It would be hard to say which one was the best… but probably at the top of the list would be the spring we spent in Egypt. I was young and brave enough to try anything, go anywhere, including places no longer allowed, like climbing to the top of the pyramids. Riding camels around the pyramids was fun, great shots for the family photo album, but racing the stable boy on a white Arabian thru the desert was breath taking. God! Was I ever that young? Really?

Having lived in the Middle East, I had the good fortune to be able to go to places most people only visit in a text book or on a PBS special. Many of those places are not there anymore – or I guess I should say are in ruins or have been rebuilt like Beirut, Baghdad, or are off limits like Tehran. When people around here brag about something that was built a hundred, two hundred years ago, I nod and smile, but after being in Istanbul, where the University was founded before Columbus even set sail, I tend to not be real impressed. If you’ve wandered the ancient streets of Ephesus or Bergama or Troy, 200 years is just yesterday. Probably my favorite camping out experience was camping in a cave in Cappadocia. (google it!)

For many years we went to Montserrat, in the British West Indies, spending weeks at Vue Pointe, now closed forever under a dusting of volcanic ash, and hanging out in Plymouth which is now buried under tons of volcanic ash. So, even though the island is still there, much of it is buried today, and that breaks my heart. I enjoyed the other islands, but there was just something special about Montserrat.

Probably my most special vacation was my last trip to Maine… a few years ago when I took my sister and her husband back for one last trip. My sister, 12 years younger than I, had cancer, and it had spread. She wanted to see the place where she was born. All she really remembered was a green door. The last time my sister and I had been together in Maine, I think she was only 4 years old. It was a bitter sweet trip knowing that it would no doubt be the last time we would ever see each other. She was gone 3 months later.

Maine, for me, is the rocky coast, the water, the smells and sounds associated with the water. Though we lived in Portland most of the time, we also lived with an aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins on Peaks Island in Casco Bay. It was on Peaks Island that I fell in love with the sea.

I loved falling asleep listening to the waves lap up on the rocks (no sand on our beach,) listening to the lullaby of the fog horn at night and the clang, clang, clang of the bell buoys.

I have a few of them hanging out in my yard, though today their clanging usually means a stiff breeze is blowing. In the morning, if the wind was just right, we would awaken to the toots of the boats pulling out from the docks on the other side of the point…a beautiful but unreliable alarm clock. There are so many places in Maine to fall in love with, but I am hooked on being as close to the water as I can. I wonder how many islands there are in Maine. We’ll only count at high tide. I remember learning the Maine State Song in 6^th grade. To this day, I remember every word and every word is true. The part I remember best is:

Oh, Pine Tree State
Your woods, fields and hills
Your lakes, streams and rockbound coast
Will ever fill our hearts with thrills
And tho' we seek far and wide
Our search will be in vain
To find a fairer spot on earth
Than Maine! Maine! Maine!

Well, there you have it. that says it all.

Probably my second favorite spot in Maine would be what I learned to pronounce as Arcadia, but amazingly is spelled Acadia and is near the little town of BaHaba, but spelled Bar Harbor and Mt Desert Island, whoops, there you go, another island. I don’t think I would ever get tired of being there, well, um, that is, until the snow started to fall. Oh, I have become such a wimp living here in coastal Virginia. No hills, little snow, flowers in bloom most winters… wimp, an old wimp. But I used to not mind the Maine winters – I was a kid, I didn’t know any better. What can I say? See the Whale Watcher boat just sittin’ and waitin’ and I am not there! (Geddy’s webcam) A perfect morning is waking up with the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks, the smell of a fresh brewed pot of coffee mingling with the fresh salt air. I used to love to walk down to the head of the rocks and watch the morning fog burn off, the city was far away buried in a cloud of soft grey, the sounds of the lobstah boats chug, chugging by. It was so much fun to climb down to inspect the tidal pools, see who or what was there today. Sometimes I would pick wild berries in the field beside the house to put on my cereal. Life was good.

There are so many places to go in Maine. I do believe it is the most beautiful state on the Eastern half of the United States. I am not sure just which part of Maine I like the most. One of my fantasies has always been to rent the Pemaquid Light House for a week. You can visit it here - http://www.pemaquidpoint.org/wc.cfm. Oh, my, I can smell the salt air…

You would think that with my love of the sea I would be a cruise person – but, I am not a cruise enthusiast, and I cannot imagine taking a cruise to Leaf Peep… but plenty of folks do. This big beauty was docked in Portland, Maine. I guess there are advantages to a moving hotel, but, like I said, I am not a cruise person. I HATE the dressing up part, the cocktail hour… I love ships and boats, but I hate the “cruise” scene. If I can’t wear my jeans to dinner, I ain’t goin’! I hate playing dress up! I like the boat small enough I can feel the spray of the waves on my face.

Most ferry lines have island tour cruises, some have light house cruises, but I like just getting on the mail boat and going from one island to the next with the locals, not even getting off, just BEING there. Sometimes you can just bribe someone to take you out for the day!

Then there are whale watching tours and best of all, Puffin trips! But you have to do the puffin tours before late August because they leave about then. Talk about snow birds!

I have promised myself another trip back to Maine, my friends are forever bugging me about going back to Turkey (next to Maine I love Istanbul) but these days I feel lucky to get over to Virginia Beach! (I used to get a room on the ocean front and sleep with the door to the balcony open so I could hear the waves crashing in as I fell asleep.) sigh. Oh well, maybe one of these days. It seems it takes all my energy just to get up and going and getting the dishes done! But, until then, I can listen to my friends, look at their pictures (those kind enough to share them) or read their blogs and keep an eye out for pictures of the waves on the rocks…(surely you must have been to the water’s edge by now!) who knows, one day I might just take off…