MIZ 'PIDEY, BUDDHA and MORE

THE END OF OCTOBER

My little visitor was here again the other day. She wanted to know where the ‘pidys go when it rains. So we went over to where the spider web used to be. The storm had no doubt torn it apart. We had had winds a bit over 40 mph and 2 ½ inches of rain. Grandmother Spider was tucked up under the leaves. She had kept herself dry and out of the wind. One day, one of the cold mornings, she had spun her web around the leaves drawing them close together and kept herself warm. Smart girl. Her webs are smaller now. But I check on her each day. FYI – her correct name is Marbled Orb Weaver or Araneus Marmoreus. Personally, I like Miz Pidey best. Apparently each time her mom drives by, Selena yells “WooHoo, Miz Pidey!” and begs to stop to check on how Miz Pidey is doing.

The leaves are falling. Some of them are turning to pretty yellows. Many of them aren’t getting a chance with the high winds. They are being ripped from the trees green. There are a few reds every now and again.








It has been rainy. The grass is growing! Sigh. Another job to be taken care of this week.













It is time to put in the winter pansies. Well, this is early for me. I know they will get buried under the leaves, but I will dig them out. Maybe, just maybe they will get bigger and stronger before the cold weather hits them. And if it is not a real bad winter – they will still be blooming in the spring. I thought this pansy was especially beautiful. The ground was really wet, so I did not spend a lot of time photographing pansies!

More pansies later!

'PIDEYS AND BUDDHAS AND THINGS

An autumn day at Possum Lane



My little visitor was here again the other day. She wanted to know where the ‘pidys go when it rains. So we went over to where the spider web used to be. The storm had no doubt torn it apart. We had had winds a bit over 40 mph and 2 ½ inches of rain. Grandmother Spider was tucked up under the leaves. She had kept herself dry and out of the wind. One day, one of the cold mornings, she had spun her web around the leaves drawing them close together and kept herself warm. Smart girl. Her webs are smaller now. But I check on her each day.

The leaves are falling. Some of them are turning to pretty yellows. Many of them aren’t getting a chance with the high winds. They are being ripped from the trees green.

It is time to put in the winter pansies. Well, this is early for me. I know they will get buried under the leaves, but I will dig them out. Maybe, just maybe they will get bigger and stronger before the cold weather hits them. And if it is not a real bad winter – they will still be blooming in the spring. I thought this pansy was especially beautiful. The ground was really wet, so I did not spend a lot of time photographing pansies!

CATHOUSE Part II

OCCUPIED
OCUPADO?

Spook has moved in. Good thing, too, with the wind chill factor down in the 30s. We have been having some serious wind - gusts in the 40 mph range, sustained in the 25 mph range. The cats hate it. So... Spook has tucked himself into the nest by the steps. It is his favorite sleeping place when he needs to be warm.

Yule Tide has started to bloom. Can you see the bloom way up in the tree branches? That bloom is about 8 feet up. Soon the bush will be loaded.













The rose bush is trying for one last bloom. I have noticed the Peace rose has no pink on it when it blooms in the fall. Does yours? It looks nice with the the fall azalea next to it.









And the Dogwood just gets better and better down here at Possum Lane.

CAT HOUSES AND SUCH

CAT HOUSES AND SUCH......

Sorry to disappoint you, but this is about: Greenhouses,
The Cat Houses and Other Autumn Projects. Oh, bummer.

It is that time of year. Some chores just have to be done NOW before it gets seriously cold. That seems funny to say when Friday afternoon the temps reached 75. However, they say we will soon be down in the mid30s at night before too long. So, top priority goes to cleaning, rebuilding, and hopefully improving Spook and Punkin's winter sleeping houses.

Well, actually, only one is the cat house – the other is more of a nest, but both of them are warm and cozy in the winter. Both are lined with carpet samples, both have insulation on the outside, covered and hidden for the most part since Spook seems to like to chew on Styrofoam. Go figure?!? Both are open to a vent – the cat house vent opens straight to the furnace room and the nest has a vent open to the heat under the house. It is quite warm under the house in the winter as I have hot water baseboard heat, so the hot water pipes run under the house keeping it surprisingly warm. Outside and then inside, showing the vent in the furnace room wall. The plumber thought I was nuts when I asked him to put it in here. Oh well....... I guess he is right. On top is an unheated kitty "apartment."The Nest - next to the kitchen door with a vent opening under the house.

That heat pipes also keeps the greenhouse, small as it is, warm enough to keep the plants from freezing. The coolest I have ever seen it is 40º in there. It keeps the geraniums green and blooming and the aloe has never frozen. There is an extra sheet of heavy plastic that covers the greenhouse in the really cold winter – part of it is visible on the part next to the steps. Last year, I kept 4 pots of impatiens blooming all winter in there.

The Christmas cactus will stay in the greenhouse until the buds are big enough to tell the color of the future blooms, then I will bring them in the house and put the rest of the geraniums in their place.

When the serious cold weather gets here, the top gets covered with old rugs and cedar panels – pieces saved from cutting out the windows in my barns. Not much gets wasted around here!

The leaves are changing color, here and there. The dogwood is especially pretty this year. Soon it will be time to put in the winter pansies. My favorite plant! I know, I know, I say that about almost every plant, and I mean it… well, what I mean is I love so many plants (that is why my yard looks like a jungle) but certain plants just hold a very special place in my heart. How about you? Don’t you have favorites?

The pink double camellia is starting to bloom and Yule Tide should start soon. Yule Tide is the last of the fall camellias to bloom and will last way into the spring no matter how cold it gets. Yule Tide is now about 8 feet tall, not that that is surprising around here. Most of my older camellias are 8 feet tall, maybe more! But Yule Tide had to go thru the trauma of being moved – she got way too big and was blocking the secondary driveway and blocking access to the electric meter and phone connection box on the house. It is risky to move such a large plant, but it doesn’t seem to have done much damage.

Did I mention the Euonymous americus lately? It is so pretty right now, for a spindly thing out in the woods. I put some pics on wunderground.com, I just had to.

Let me try to get these pics on here and get back to my daily chores and maybe I can take more pictures. Oh, wow! I just saw a red bloom open out front, it is Yule Tide! More later……….

A 'PIDEY WEB

A ‘Pidey Web!

I had company yesterday – brief – as company goes. She ran around the yard going “Ooooo and Ahhh” at every flower. Then she saw the ‘pidey web.

“Ohhhhhh, wook!” she yelled in her baby voice.

“Wook at the ee-norse (enormous) Pidey web! And her beautiful wearing a lullow an bwack shirt!”

And then she was back in the car and gone before I had a chance to get the camera. But I did get the camera after my friend and her bundle of energy left – and took these pictures of her Pidey web, and the 'pidey.

Later that night, I went back out just to see what Mrs. Pidey was up to. There she was, waiting for company, no doubt – a midnight snack, perhaps.

OCTOBER DAYS

I love autumn mornings, especially now that I don't have to go to school! But, more than that...

I think October must be my favorite month. I mean, I love spring and the promise of warm days, I truly do. But the summers have become ordeals lately. I hate the heat and mosquitoes. At least in the winter, I can put on a jacket and go outside and walk around a bit. Sure, there are a few days when it is just too cold and or nasty. There are Nor’easters and all that. Sometimes there might be a bit of snow. Ice storms are scary but no more so than hurricanes. But the summers lately have been so hot day after day that I have hated to go outside. I hate it when I feel I just cannot even breathe.

Of course, I am spoiled – was spoiled. August, at least, was always spent in the Poconos, sometimes most of July. We returned “home” for the beginning of the school year and then back to Pennsylvania around my birthday to take ERM back up and get her settled in. I never missed more than one day of school doing that, so it was mostly a long week-end, but it gave me a peek at the beginnings of the awesome foliage in Pennsylvania and a touch of needing the fire in the kitchen stove to take the chill off the house. I would take the bus back up the first week-end in November to close the house and to drive “Miss Daisy” home. So in a sense, I had the best of both worlds – I missed out on the extreme heat in Virginia and the extreme cold of Pennsylvania in the winter.

September arrives with the promise of cooler days or at least cooler nights. The air conditioning gets turned off, windows get opened, I can breathe again. Slowly but surely a few leaves flutter down. The color doesn’t really change much here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, the most brilliant reds come from the poison ivy that has climbed the trees. A few people have planted the bright maples from up north but none have the awesome reds found in a Pennsylvania, NY, or New England landscape.
But in October, our colors pick up their pace a bit - still nothing to rival the states to the north, but enough to tell that something is happening.
The local geese have figured out how to fly in formation and have moved on – somewhere – making room for the new geese traveling through. Soon the sounds change to the call of the snow geese, many of whom will winter here.
The hummingbirds generally have disappeared by September 15th though this year I saw one on the 18th flying around my bird feeders. He obviously was not a “local” or he would have known I do not feed the hummers. I love them dearly, but their feeders attract wasps and yellow jackets and I am deathly allergic to their stings. I don’t know if the hummers can get anything from the fall azaleas that are coming in bloom or not, but that, phlox, Rose of Sharon and zinnias are all that is on the nectar menu here at Possum Lane until mid-October and I have never seen a hummer partake of any of them.
By October first the camellias have kicked in gear, the spicy magenta ones first, then the pinks and finally the white/pink blush camellia. The Rose of Sharon, also known as Althea around here, starts to fade. The mums out front are bright and cheerful their amazing yellows sending a warning that the next flowers to bloom out there will be daffodils.

The English daisies are in full bloom. They look nice next to the yellow mums.



The brilliant blues of the hydrangea have faded to a soft pinkish color, a color so muted the blooms almost become invisible even though they are as big as the bright blues and purples from July and August.

Speaking of purple, the Beauty Bush is, well, beautiful! And the colors seem to do quite well with the fall blooming azalea next to it.

The Strobilanthes isn’t far away and is just magnificent!

A walk thru the woods brought me to my patch of Euonymus americanus. Google it and see pages of this fascinating plant. I don’t know why I like it so much, but I do.

The last roses of summer are gone replaced by the last hurrah of October.

The veggie garden is not pretty anymore. There are dead leaves hanging off the tomato plants. The squash plants have been pulled up but the strawberry plants that were buried by the squash are now enjoying the sunlight for a change.

The feeding patterns have changed at the bird feeders as the bird population changes. Some of the birds are year-round residents and some migrate if only for brief periods of time but return to the yard year after year.

Soon the ground will be covered with leaves, natures way of keeping the ground warm in the winter. The trees will be bare and the sound of the wind will change. Pumpkins will show up on lawns, kitchens will once again smell of apple pie, pumpkin bread, homemade cranberry sauce.

My Punkin will have to search out the sunbeams where he can keep warm.

ISTANBUL

FAVORITE PLACES - ISTANBUL!

ISTANBUL
I realize I said I was going to put my favorite places on a different site - but it is not working out... the blog prep page does not let me see my pictures - just gives me a bunch of computer jumble so I have to keep going to preview and on and on. So......... until I get a better site for that stuff or figure out how to change things, I will continue on here. I seem to be having the same problem on this site - so I guess that will limit my blog drastically. I am too visual to do it this way! I cannot move or rearrange the computer jumble around like i could the pictures. I will put on what I can manage - maybe more later... Inshallah!


As part of my Favorite Places series I think I will head over to my favorite country, Turkey. I lived in Turkey as a teenager, was graduated from high school in Ankara (’62) and was able to go back “home” for the summer after I came back state-side to go to college.

I went to Turkey to live with my father when it became apparent my step-father was not going to allow me to finish high school after he lost his job in Maine and moved back to NY State. We were living in the boondocks outside Elmira and, so he said, had to pay to ride the school bus into town to attend school. He decided I should stay home instead and take care of his children and get a job at night in the local mom and pop grocery store a mile away. I wrote to my father for bus fare to take me back to Portland, I would live at the YWCA, get my part time jobs back, graduate with my class, and probably join the air force to get a college education. I had it all figured out. Instead, dad sent me a passport, visa, and a one way plane ticket to Istanbul. That was just a few miles away from Portland, Maine, right?!?

Being a teenager, I was not scared of anything, not even of getting on a big old jet (Pan Am) and roaring off into the night skies. I watched the sunrise over Shannon, Ireland. We landed first in London, flew over the Alps, then a few minutes later it seemed we were in Rome. Then it seemed to take days to get to Istanbul.

Immediately, I was fascinated with the architecture, the people, the language, the differences in everything, it seemed. Our driver drove using his horn and his voice screaming out the window of our station wagon at everyone else on the road. They didn’t prepare us for that in Driver’s Ed back in Portland! By the time I got from the airport to the hotel, I was able to swear rather fluently in Turkish! I knew how to say, “Left! Right! Straight ahead! You son of a jackass! (And my favorite) – If you are in such a big hurry, how is it you stayed in your mother’s womb for 9 months?!?” such a picturesque language! I was in love!

We stayed in Istanbul for about a week. I had not lived with my father since I was a baby ( he had spent his life in the Foreign Service traveling around the world, and my mother divorced him when he was in the Philippines and I was less than 2 years old.) Dad had already been in Turkey (which actually means turquoise, by the way) for about 10 years, so he knew his way around. Istanbul was one of his favorite places, too.
If you remember from a previous post, I said I hate cities. Well, Istanbul is the exception, but then, I do not see Istanbul as a city – I see Istanbul as a history book come alive, an art book of unbelievable treasures, a study of cultures, architecture, religion, an enormous museum of many cultures and people that can be found no where else on earth. I swear, a week in Istanbul is worth a year at University. I would love to have a year to spend there slowly savoring every minute, every inch of the city, getting to know its people as best as I could, letting my eyes make love to every building and artifact from the magnificent to the humble, filling my ears with the music that still haunts my dreams and the language that I have all but forgotten. Can you hear that big sigh at the end of that sentence?



Most of our personal pictures are at the house in the mountains or at my father’s in Florida. In those days, we took mostly slides anyway, and I have no way to convert them into digital images this computer can use. I have only my postcard collection and a few shots I found in an old album. But the postcards show some of the unbelievable magnificence, especially inside the mosques – which words simply cannot describe. The awesomeness of it all!!!!! Here are a few of my favorites. I will start with the Blue Mosque... probably my favorite -

Now to St Sophia -

This is St Sophia's - once a church, then a mosque, now a museum - always awesome! Its like going into a world of gold!

The Covered Bazaar - the world's first mall. If I remember right - I think there are about 4,000 shops in the Grand Bazaar, streets and streets of them, some of them tiny - no bigger than my living room - all of them PACKED with stuff. So amazing!!!!!!

Somehow I have lost part of the text and several of the pictures - so I quit. I have run out of time and patience. Maybe more later..................

FEED ME!

Spook in the redbud staring in the filthy window with his starved kitty look.

Sorry the shot is so bad but the windows have not been washed since Ernesto blew thru and covered everything with dirt and leaf pieces. I would not include this shot - but supposedly the big branches are going to be cut off today. Whatever will Spook do then?

A SEPTEMBER MORN

SEPTEMBER MORN

There is something about mornings in September that makes them somehow special but I really don’t know what it is. Maybe it is that promise of a cooler day, that hint of things to come, the difference in the air. There is an occasional crispness that says October is not far away. There is the smell of harvest. Often there is also the smell of leaves beginning to decay – not leaves that were ready to fall, no, these are leaves ripped from their trees in all their greenness in the winds of a September hurricane. Or tropical storm.

Often there is the sound of chain saws buzzing clearing up the storm damage from the usual September Tropical mess.

The yellow buses roll by, their precious cargo yelling and laughing thru open windows, followed by the blue buses blasting loud Mexican music on their way to the fields.

The geese start to fly over, their noisy honking sometimes drowning out conversations. Usually these are the Canada geese moving around from pond to pond to marsh teaching the young ones how to fly in formation. Canada geese are noisier than Snows… or maybe it just seems that way. Maybe it is because there is a wider range of tones, I don’t know. Maybe it is the combination of juvenile voices with the older deeper ones. Whatever – I can tell without looking up if the geese are Canadas or Snows.
The morning bird songs that tell us spring is here have been replaced with crows cawing and the occasional chirping at the bird feeder. Jays still screech every once in a while, but the territorial proclamations have been stilled as nesting ended some time ago. Even fledging is over and the babies are getting their stronger feathers and preparing to travel south with their parents.

Mornings come later, I sleep in longer, happy to have a window open and not the artificially cold air of the air conditioner blowing thru the house.

There are hints of color in the leaves though the color is so muted here compared, say, to the joyous brilliance of the Poconos where leaves start to change in late August.

Long sleeved shirts are worn for comfort and not necessarily to keep the mosquitoes from having a snack. There is a chill in the air early in the morning. And spider webs! Have you noticed how many spider webs there seem to be this year? I walk thru the yard with a stick in front of me to knock the webs down before they get on my face and in my hair. Sorry, Grandmother Spider!

The tomato harvest is less. Pumpkins are not ready but soon, soon. Dogwoods are putting out their pretty berries. The zinnias have taken over the squash garden. The Rose of Sharon is magnificent this year even covered in morning dew and spider webs.

The first camellia of the season blooms. I have to stick my nose in it and breathe in its spicy fragrance. Soon there will be entire bushes of them all over the yard.

The fall azaleas are gearing up - never quite as spectacular as in the spring but a welcome touch of color nevertheless. I planted a beautyberry (Callicarpa americana, family Verbenaceae) bush next to an azalea and hoped the colors would work. I think they did.

I see a flash of bright red-orange up in the tree. The morning sunlight just lit up a trumpet vine blossom I didn’t have the heart to cut down.

Soon the silence of the day will be shattered by the noise of more farm equipment and more chain saws. One of the saws will be in my front yard taking the redbud back a few feet from the house and back from the driveway and street. Who would have believed it was a twig less than a foot tall 16 years ago?

Soon the yard will be busy with the screech of the blue jay as he comes looking for peanuts, the little noises of the cardinal family and chickadees as they get their morning snack. Soon the blue tailed skink will be crawling out on a concrete block to sun himself, saving up warmth for the coolness to come. Soon the phone will start ringing and the demands of the day will shatter the morningness that I treasure more than any other time of day.