A CELEBRATION OF GIFTS

 

I don’t usually make a big deal of my birthdays – and this year, it seems my brain was about a month behind schedule and I managed to forget a couple VERY IMPORTANT birthdays (note: head hanging in shame) for which I will be apologizing for at least a year… BUT I mention this year’s birthday, not because there was a RADICAL number change (not yet) but because the celebration was unusual for me. I don’t do the party thing very often. Almost never at my house where parking can get tricky… and my parties are always non-alcohol events (no buzz dust or smoke, either) and so I pick my companions carefully. I am fortunate to have some wonderful friends. You can visit the Frog and PenguINN’s blog to see what we had to eat! (http://thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/2010/09/birthday-time.html) And I might mention, in passing, due to the hatred being spewed forth by certain individuals in the “news” – my guests represented Catholics, Methodists, Buddhists, Muslims, a couple agnostics, even a Baptist, and all the races were represented except Chinese or Japanese. (They tell me Oriental is not PC anymore.)

My friends also know, not all gifts come in boxes wrapped in paper, and even though I did get a number of them, in spite of stating, I thought quite firmly, “NO GIFTS!” the point of this posting is to share some of the OTHER gifts. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know I consider a beautiful sunset a gift, or a butterfly… or coming over and plowing my garden for me, or building me a Stand Uppity Garden… Those are all great gifts! A friend came by with his weed whacker and cut the grass and weeds out in front of my house that the town has decided to no longer cut. There is a drainage ditch in  the middle of this, so mowing is not an option.  They have trimmed alongside the roads for years, but the new mayor decided it is VDOT’s job. Is this a mess or what? VDOT cuts along side the roads once, maybe twice a year. So the town looks like crap now because the mayor apparently does not take pride in how the town looks, just in being Right. “It’s NOT our job!”

Another friend came by and saw how the culvert under my driveway was blocked… again, a problem for VDOT. But, being a practical man, he also knows the serious cutback in VDOT jobs and knows it may be another year before VDOT gets the job done, if then. So, he asked if I had a shovel, and in 5 minutes cleaned a load of mess out of the pipe. Before it was weed-whacked, you couldn’t even find the pipe!  OH, see the autumn leaves? 

Still another friend volunteered to come by and cut back the branches on the redbud  and a birch tree where the small branches and leaves were hitting the roof. Check out the pile of branches!  It is over my head again!

One gift was a work of art for my refrigerator… though I can’t decide which side to show, so I change it periodically. This artist is 3 1/2.

And then there are those friends with a sense of humor that is more wicked than even I could imagine… Imagine coming out of a restaurant with a friend and finding a parking ticket under your wiper!

It’s the time of year when critters tend to wander – guess it is the cool crisp mornings we had… can’t be much else, my boys have been “fixed” – heck, they don’t even spray around the yard. Anyway, they disappeared for a day and a half. I walked up and down the road, called and called… nobody in sight, not even at mealtime. So it was a “sight for sore eyes” as my grandma used to say, to see 2 little boys out in the back yard on the morning of my birthday. What a gift! Hmmm, they hate strangers and loud noises, so maybe they took refuge in my neighbor’s garage when Mike came with his chain saw????? Maybe they got locked in?

Mother Nature gives me a gift each year – every year, right on my birthday, the first fall camellia blooms. It has not failed since it started to bloom 20 years ago, though I wondered about this year with the drought. But! There it was! Right on schedule! Am I honored or what?

What can I say? Can there be any better gifts than these? 

ODDS and ENDS

 

OTHERWISE known as miscellaneous whatevers…

If you listen to the news, they have all proclaimed the end of summer, and I for one will be glad to say good-bye to almost 40 days of 90 degree temps. I didn’t mind the heat when I lived in Turkey, because I did not have the Eastern Shore’s humidity to deal with. But, when you live 2 miles from the Ocean and 2 miles from the Chesapeake Bay, it tends to get a bit humid! So, if you want to say summer is over on Labor Day, OK, but I, personally, will wait until September 22^nd or 23^rd, depending on the calendar you look at. On the other hand, the mornings are cooler… a morning in the 60s sure beats waking up to the 80s, phew! In fact, it has been so cool in the mornings, the Rat (Rascal) is now looking for a spot of sunlight first thing in the morning, claiming it as his own.

While it is true the leaves have been falling since July because of the drought, they have not had any autumn colors… and there it was, the beginning of the Labor Day week-end – the first autumn looking leaf in the middle of the driveway.

Hmmm, maybe I should have called this ends and odds, since I seem to have started with ends. On the other hand, calling a cat the Rat probably qualifies as ODD, and indeed, Rascal is truly odd. He is a hair stylist in his spare time. Definitely odd, that little boy.

Anyway, in the odd department is this little guy, sitting on the grill cover     – I personally think of him as being beautiful, but everyone else who saw him did the Eeeeeeeewwwwwww sound. One great macho friend wanted to squash him. (He did not get the chance.) I thought it was like this little guy was wearing gold jewelry. Really, now, isn’t he pretty? (or she? I have no way of knowing) So far I have not found him in my Butterfly/Moth Field guide… but then I have not looked thru but 2 of them.

Another End – this is the old Bailey’s Florist shop… it stood down town for as long as I can remember, not long by European standards, very new by Middle East standards… anyway, it is now gone, there is just a big empty spot where it used to stand, bare earth covered with hay. I will not get into the political mess involved in the purchase of the building by the Town or the triumph of the current mayor who had it destroyed. Torn down does not seem to be the correct word – destroyed is.

RIP – Rest In Pieces.

In the odd department, this red coleus is well over 4 feet high. St Francis is almost invisible in the cover of Strobilanthes and coleus. The bird bath has disappeared.

THIRSTY CRITTERS

A FRIEND HAS HEARD MY COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE COONS MAKING SUCH A MESS ON MY CARPORT and told me about her solution to the problem. Now, it is a rather expensive solution, but, who knows, one might be able to find a second hand swing somewhere…

How to feed the cats and not the raccoons?????

It was a bit expensive and a lot of trouble, but well worth the effort - we bought a swing, a 2 seater, and hung it from the ceiling of the carport. It is really too high for a person to get in without climbing on a crate, but the cats can jump onto it from a nearby shelf. Being a heavy wooden swing, it really doesn't move that much, and we set the food in a kitty litter tray with a water dish which stays clean because the coons can't climb up into the swing, jump over to the swing, or get to the chains hanging from the ceiling that hold the swing.

In order to stabilize the swing, we attached wires from the ceiling to the middle of the back, down under the seat, around the front board of the seat and back up to the ceiling. The swing moves a bit, but does not swing. Put the cats on the seat a couple of times when it is their dinner or breakfast time and let them know where the food is.

At breakfast time, the first few days, we built a set of "steps" with old crates next to the swing to make it easy for the cats to get up and down and get used to the idea. The coons don't come for breakfast, so the crates could stay up most of the day.

The swing is about 4 feet off the floor, an easy jump for a cat, not so for a coon. It is almost 3 feet from the shelf, again, simple for a cat, too far for the coon.

We also leave a BIG water dish on the ground for ALL the critters which we have to clean out everyday thanks to the coons using it as a bath tub! We also have a big concrete birdbath at ground level which the cats drink out of more so than the clean water on the swing. Go figure.

Well! That sounds like a do-able thing… all I need is a swing and someone to hang it for me, and we are in business! I was impressed with her watering story. It matches mine. The squirrels come several times a day now to the ground level birdbath. The possums drink from it every night – or from an old water bowl they seem to prefer. Funny how some animals have their preferences.

It has been so dry here, we are now keeping an old wash tub of water out every night for the deer to drink out of. Last night, we saw the local gray fox almost climb in it to drink just around dusk. I used to use one of the taller plastic garden tubs, but it is too high for the smaller critters. The deer used to empty the white birdbath at night, so I put the big tub next to it. The flower pots? Step stools for shorter beasties. We aim to please!

This is the first year I have ever noticed bees and wasps going to the bird bath to drink. Being allergic to yellow jackets, I take notice of these little guys, but I have never seen so many on the edge of the birdbath before. They prefer the ground level concrete one.

Another sight I have never seen before is a hummingbird following the spray from the garden hose around. I don't have hummer-feeders - see comment about bee allergies - and so have few hummingbirds.

Pictures of watering holes is pretty boring, so I have spared you pix of them all. The cats have 2 stainless steel ones on the carport, and there is another couple tucked in around the shrubbery. This copper one is the favorite of the finches, but the baby robin likes the one on the ground.

Have I mentioned how much we need rain?

HOW DRY I AM

“Lord-a-mercy,” as the old folks used to say. Oh, my goodness, I am now one of those old folks, myself, aren’t I – at least to anyone under 50… But I digress… The Lord-a-mercy I hear in my head would be Grammy (who would now be 120) commenting on the dry, dry conditions we are experiencing – especially after the wettest winter I have ever known. “‘Zamazing,” our next door neighbor would have added.

I have been keeping things wet in the veggie gardens and the little garden where the birdbath is, and carrying water in bottles to the mountain laurel and rhododendron, but some of the plants are just a bit far away from the reach of the hoses, and so, to be honest, I have neglected them. My bad. And shame on me. So, to make up for it, I have spent the day dragging out the extra hoses and connecting them to get water to the nearly dead plants. In some cases, it took 3 hoses to get to the withering plants – that’s 150 feet of hose. I do have a 250 foot hose, and the year I planted my crape myrtle trees, it took the 250 plus the 80 and 3 of 50 foot hoses to reach close to the last of the baby trees. I have a tenth of a mile of road frontage, and I thought it would be nice to have a row of crape myrtles for folks to enjoy as they whizzed by on their way to work or home. You might know I would pick one of the driest years on record to do that planting. Duh.

Anyway, my raspberry bushes are way in the back, back even behind the barns… 3 hoses to get to them. I have had a gazillion raspberries this year, but they have been so tiny, I think I set a record for tinyness… Soooo, today I dragged out the hoses… poor babies!

This is one of the dogwoods… and this is the same dogwood just a few months ago – just before the daffodils bloomed. See that clump of daffodils in the lower left hand side? Just above the baby rhododendron? This dogwood is just inches away from those daffodils – and they spent weeks standing in water. I just noticed, that same dogwood in in the post below, standing in water or ice, and snow. This is the grass on the way to the dogwood – it is underwater in the picture above– and today... crunch, crunch. Guess I won’t have to mow it any time soon, will I?

Here is the hydrangea out front. I just had it on a post a couple weeks ago – it is still blooming, but look at the leaves! That took only 150 feet of hose.

One of the fern gardens…

Punkie rolling over out on the “lawn” – note the hose - on the way to the hydrangea.

No point in showing you any more pix of the dryness… this is depressing enough. Well, except that they say we will be in the 100s next week. So, I am working on my gratitude for a couple cool days and lots of hose, and the water that is still available – AND that I am able to get out and turn the hoses on and keep things from dying.

I bet there are some of you who would like to send some of your rain here!