THE GARDEN IN MAY - JUNE

THE MOST AMAZING thing about the garden in early June is the fragrance. I won’t bore you with pictures of the honeysuckle, we have all seen more than our share of honeysuckle, I am sure. In the winter, on warmer days, I can spend hours pulling it out of the camellias, off of trees, out of the gardens. It truly grows like a weed here. But, depending on the severity of the winter (northern people – stop laughing, right now!) the world smells so wonderful starting usually the beginning of May with Honey Locust, the Fringe Trees, honeysuckle and magnolias. What a joy it is to step outside on a still cool morning and breathe in the sweetness of the southern air. I realize every morning of my life how blessed I am to not be in a city, not be caged in an apartment, to be free to walk on my small acreage, fill my eyes with the beauty planted there and to even enjoy the weeds – or at least the weeds we call honeysuckle. Better than that, I have the joy of growing my own food and each day I love to go out and see how much bigger this is or that… maybe pick some strawberries, blueberries, or later on, some beans, cukes or tomatoes. It doesn’t get better than that.

This year i decided to indulge myself with some plantings I normally don’t have the time to mess with… i doubt they will winter over in my little greenhouse, but who knows? Every year is a new experiment. Here are a few of my plants and a lot of my weeds.

 

This hosta is so big, a neighbor argued with me and insisted it is an elephant’s ear. That is a yard stick  standing in it… so it is nearly 4 feet tall. Behind it is a blue hosta which is almost as big, but not quite.

Right in front of that hosta are these plants and the new birdbath. i finally found a couple straggly strobilanthes… that’s it behind the pink Astilbe and Heuchera.

In the back yard, flowers grow in and around the veggies. On the left, just below the Adirondacks, are some potato bags. All the way on the right is a 4x4 space with cukes and tomatoes.

potatoes (in the pots) tomatoes, basil, peppers, and pansies. Qwan Yin and geraniums are tucked in the huge English Daisy plant. Who’d believe I cut that better than in half a2 years ago. On the right, potatoes (redskins), miniature roses, violets, iris, pansies and dianthus.

 

From the other side, this shows the clematis. Finished blooming under that is a deep red peony and not blooming yet, phlox. Out in the side yard, a rhododendron is in bloom.

Out front, the window boxes have impatiens that wintered over, geraniums (ditto), new coleus, and a couple new blue things – i can’t think of their names. And a close up of the mountain laurel.

I have a hanging petunia and a hummingbird feeder (being filled) in front of Rusty’s bedroom window to keep him occupied when he isn’t watching puffins or hummers on the computer. Pix of that on the next posting!

Hope you enjoyed my garden, disorganized as it is… but it is fun and something in bloom in every direction. Yes, it is a lot of work for me, but I can’t describe the joy I get from it. The lilies are just starting to bloom!

PLAYING CATCH UP – SPRING GARDEN

OK, OK, I know I have been unbelievably busy… and yes, I must admit, I am slowing down. A lot. SIGH. But I promised several of you pictures from the yard this spring. This has been a very different spring… the winter stretched itself out longer than usual and colder than usual, so that meant camellias that normally bloom in the winter – start in December, actually, were blooming at the same time as the later spring camellias. It made for an exciting spring but a bleak winter. I am used to having fresh flowers on my table just about all winter long. Anyway, here are the plants in the order in which they bloomed. Some of the shots are more to show the size of the bushes than to brag about the beauty of the blooms. And many of the blooms this spring were tinged with just a hint of frost bite – but it took a real close look to notice it.

                         

So there you have it… these were taken one month ago. did I mention I have been busy? OK, next, the azaleas a couple weeks later. Note - PP= Pink Perfection, 2 variations I and II.

the COLORS OF NOVEMBER

The leaves changed suddenly this year. One day they were green, 2 days later the yellow was blasting away from the tree tops making people stop and look as if they had never seen those colors before.

Personally, I love the contrasts that we have this time of year… with the camellias starting to bloom, the deep, deep green of their leaves and the bright yellows of autumn on the Eastern Shore. We have very few bright red leaves. Generally bright red warns one of poison ivy here. The red maples of the Poconos and New England are few and far between. So for reds, we seem to have a plethora of berries. Old wives tales tell us that this many berries mean a bad winter. Well, we shall see. The birds definitely will have plenty to eat here! Of course, not all berries are red… the beautyberry bush is loaded with rich purple berries, branches so full they are all the way down on the ground.

   

The St John’s Wort continues to bloom, 2 or 3 blooms at a time. I liked this view with the golden carpet of leaves behind it. Next to the St John’s Wort is one of the few reddish leaves from a young dogwood. A new azalea is in bloom as the pink and lavender azaleas start to fade.

 

The sidewalk is pink from my birthday camellia, the hosta is changing color.a different pink camellia is in bloom, and Ice Angel made the camera take her picture again this time with a yellow tree in the background.

 

With all this color going on in Mother Nature, we started coloring up the old Train Station. We had several days with temps in or near the 70s, so we took advantage of that and finished priming, then painting the track side of the Station. On Saturday then, Niall and Tom climbed up and began to paint our trim. Another coat will be awesome! Paul started the door… Between taking pictures and passing buckets of paint around, I played inside with an N scale train that will be going in the old showcase. See how tiny it is? I can get an entire layout in this 2’x6’ showcase. I just need to decide what I want to do. (A note for Ginnie, it is perfect height for laying it out from a wheelchair!) 

 

LATE SUMMER – ALMOST FALL

This has been an extremely busy summer so far… or so it seems. Perhaps it is just that I have slowed down so much that I don’t ever seem to get caught up. I was reminded a couple times lately that my blog has been neglected and I have noticed that several of the folks I used to keep up with have either quit blogging altogether or post only a couple times a month now rather than almost every day as they did in the past. Perhaps they are slowing down, too. Or perhaps the magic and newness of blogging has worn off. Whatever, the posts are fewer and further between. I do not feel compelled to post about every bloom or bug in the garden or every time I get a tomato on the vine. You will probably never get a post about what I had for dinner and will never see a recipe on my blog. That is just not my thing. If food is mentioned other than what my garden has produced, it is only that I am so grateful to have enough to eat and enough to share… I know I am truly blessed. As a little child my grandmother was always reminding me of the starving children elsewhere in the world who would just love to have what was on my plate (especially if it was ham which I have always steadfastly refused to eat, along with oysters, crabs, and mussels, among other things! I think I was born kosher.) It took a few years before I would know the meaning of true hunger and discovered a cure – get a job in a restaurant!

Over the years I have had folks comment that my blog is impersonal. For those of you who get my Sunday Musings, I make up for it there – but that is not available to the stranger or someone I do not want to share my life with. Perhaps my blog is an escape from my personal life… I keep it mostly free from political discussions or absolute religious statements, tho I dance around those things from time to time. I remember reading in someone’s blog after Obama was elected that, “You cannot be a Christian and vote for Obama!” “He is a baby killer and a Muslim and not even an American!” and things like that. No matter what I think or thought about Obama, I would never put myself out there with such thoughts. No, I don’t share my political anger on the blog. Nor do I condemn anyone else’s religious beliefs. I might not agree with them, but I have learned that we are all in various stages of growing up, even older folks like me, and hopefully our religious beliefs mature as we grow. I accept some folks will never be able to think any differently than they do right this moment, and that has to be OK. I try to use the Serenity Prayer as my guide in life and ask for the serenity to accept with I cannot change. In doing so, life is ever so much easier.

I tend to be a Buddhist. I have taken vows to that effect – I take them daily, and as such I endeavor not to kill, nor take what is not given to me, I try to watch what I say, avoid sexual misconduct, and avoid any intoxicants. Now that sounds pretty easy, but it does not leave a lot of room for excuses. Like not taking a life… this not only means I probably don’t believe in abortion, but it also means I don’t believe in going off to war and killing someone or sitting in a room with a joy stick and blowing up a truck in Pakistan. It also means I am not going to kill a doctor who might perform an abortion for whatever reason… nor would I pass legislation that might send young women to the back alley coat-hanger “doctors.” But not killing also means I do not condone the killing of animals, yet I do occasionally eat meat or else I suffer from protein deficiency. I also feed meat products to my cats as they are definitely not vegetarians! So, in that sense, I fail as an aspiring Buddhist. In my old age, the other 4 Precepts are a piece of cake (sugar and gluten free, thank you.)

It is hard to believe it is September. It still feels strange to not be in a panic trying to get all the last minute things done before school starts. I hate to confess I do not miss teaching - wait, let me clarify that. I DO miss teaching, but I do not miss what the schools have become. I miss being with kids, I miss sharing the joy of learning, the amazement of their creative minds, but not the sorrow of those minds that have shut down to the good possibilities of the world. Oh there are so many tragic young people out there – products of drugged parents, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and various other kinds of abuse… our wounded babies who will never have the same chances in life as the kid across the street who has been raised with love by clean and sober parents. When I hear the words “We are all created equal…” I think of these kids and struggle with the lump in my throat.

Tomorrow I will see the buses roll by, the little faces at the window so full of hope for a successful new year. For many, it means 2 meals a day that they don’t get in the summer. I watch them roll by and silently wish them well; my hopes and dreams go with them as it went with their teachers who drive by an hour earlier. I know I always had such high hopes for my kids each year. I don’t mean to imply I gave up on them as the year went on, but sometimes the system really does not help. I am not sure I would learn much in the chaotic noisy classrooms of today. “They” have forgotten that some kids need peace and quiet in which to learn and a room with 20 different things going on at once is too much of a distraction for many minds.

  For several weeks now the fall azaleas have been blooming. They are in full flower as I type this and look out the window at them. The early fall blooming camellias are in full bud… in 2 more weeks, they will start to show color. My Aunt gave me these camellias for my birthday at least 20 years ago. The amazing thing is, they bloom their first bloom every year exactly on my birthday. How great is that? In my silly way of thinking I believe that is her way of wishing me a Happy Birthday. Every year people pull in my driveway to ask me what kind of plants they are or where to get them, or just to thank me for having them out there to brighten their way to work or home as they drive by. I have given many baby plants (or seeds) away and love it when folks drop by with pictures of their bushes that I call my “grandchildren” bushes.

A few mornings ago when it was cool enough to turn off the a/c and have an open window, I awoke to a sound that took a minute or two to recognize. The geese are teaching their young to fly in formation. You can just imagine them shouting, “Get behind your mother and stay there!” or “Line your wing tip with your sister’s wing.” “There, that’s better! See how the air flows around you better?” In another month or so, the small flock sounds will be replaced by the sound of a couple hundred geese as they all head south. It always stops me in my tracks as I listen to them and watch them fly over and wonder how many will be back on this same route next spring. I sometimes wonder if I will be here to see and hear them. One thinks these things as they get older, perhaps more so when those NEW numbers appear. My number will change in a couple of weeks. It is very depressing.

  As the seasons change to fall, the spiders seem to start spinning bigger and bigger webs and they seem to be across every path I walk. I try not to break them, but sometimes it happens. I thought this web was different. See the thick white parts every few inches? I looked the spider’s name up a couple days ago when I took the shot but have managed to forget it. Duh.

The back yard is filled with dragonflies. Some of them seem to love to buzz my hair. Did you know some of them make a crackling sound when they fly? I love to photograph them, and some of them are very cooperative, but others, not so much. have you ever watched them dipping into the water? Look carefully! My yard is also filled with butterflies who just seem to love the fall blooming azaleas as much or more than the butterfly bushes. And the leaves are starting to fall!

  oops, sorry.

I am so grateful to have such a beautiful yard and to be able to see the colors and critters. If you look carefully, you will find string beans growing up a camellia, or a tomato plant resting in an azalea. Even tho I have several acres, the sunlight is limited. That limits what grows here. Of course, the lighting changes the colors. The other evening the Strobilanthes seemed so vibrant. What color! My Crape Myrtle blooms later than most of the others in town. It is nice they don’t all bloom at once. Their color seems to blend in with the azaleas. Cool, huh?

 

I am waiting for cooler temps… maybe I will have more energy then… My job list is long. My days are short. My energy level is microscopic! If you are lucky enough to drive by and enjoy my efforts… then I guess it is all worth it.