Summer Came!

Unknown beauties from the Evil Store (OSJL) - they always have stuff you didn't know you needed 'til you get there, and you exit with a car-load of stuff. Always. No matter what you went for. And it's almost always stuff you're glad to have!

 

We’ve kind of skidded over into summer as the solstice kicked in, from weather that really was more like early spring. We went from 36-40-degree nights and 60-degree-or-less days, to 70-degree nights and 80+-degree days – and humid – over less than a week. Last night I made the Husband put the air conditioner in my bedroom window, and got a decent night’s sleep for the first time in a few days. No fresh air, but the fresh air is heavy and wet, so I don’t really care so much. And it cuts out the noise from the idiots who think 7 am is a good time to use the chainsaw, or take down an old shed.

Potato flowers

 

The weather’s having a crabby effect on most of us northern New Englanders – if you aren’t crabbing about the current weather, it’s a fair guess you aren’t originally from here. I know a few ex-Central and South Americans who are saying, “What! The weather has just finally gotten comfortable!” but what do they know? I tried explaining to one nice lady that when it’s hot, and especially when it’s hot and humid, first I get cranky, then I get angry, then I get a headache, then I get sick to my stomach, and then I turn into a fire-breathing dragon…and she just sort of looked confused. “But it’s summer – summer is really nice!”

Yeah, it’s nice, except when it isn’t. 

Peony bounty this year!

And let’s talk about mosquitoes, and ticks, and blackflies, which have all been out in endless hoardes, all at once this year, along with the no-see-ums (which I can’t usually see so I don’t know how many there are of them), and they all seem to be especially hungry and toxic. Someone I was talking to the other day told about sitting on a relative’s porch, and watching lines of ticks walking across the flagstones. That story kept me itching for hours.

The other things that keep me itching late into the night are the dozens of swollen, itchy bites covering my legs and arms that are, unusually, swollen and itchy for days, and taking forever to heal up this year. 

Broccoli flower

After I found a tick waiting for me on my pillow when I went to bed one night, the cats have been forbidden access to the upstairs, which doesn’t make them happy. They both have pretty thick fur, so it’s not often I find a tick attached to them, and they get the monthly goop that causes any tick that bites them to die; but they’re excellent tick buses and we spend a lot of time daily sitting with them or carrying them around, so the ticks are more than happy for a ride to a nice, tasty human. So far we haven’t had one attach to us – as far as we know – but with all the diseases the ticks carry nowadays, every little sensation presents itself in the brain as a tick crawling on skin, and we spend hours at night checking, checking, checking. I haven’t been in the woods for years because I just-can’t-cope, and using a fan for cooling is an exercise in feeling armies of imaginary ticks crawling across the skin.

Even in the garden, even with all the paved paths I’ve been making, tickiness is problematic. I can’t even run out for a handful of herbs while I’m making supper without doing a tick check before going back indoors.

Thai and sweet basils in a pot

Speaking of all the pavers I’ve installed in the past two years, the garden does seem to love them, and it does cut down some of the weeding. I live in a cold pocket in the middle of the snow belt, and where there are paths of pavers, the beds warm up faster, things grow bigger faster, and there are also lots of spiders. Spiders eat bugs – go, Spiders! Some days (only maybe three so far this year) I can walk across the pavers in the late-day sun, watch the spiders scurry away ahead of me, see the flower borders overflowing onto the pavers, and imagine I’m walking in a Mediteranean garden instead of a cold, windy New Hampsha attempt at a garden. Especially when I come to a spot where the thyme – which has taken over most of the field – is long and draping itself around the rock-like chunks. It’s kinda magical.

New path, between the raspberries and the peas

Thyme in the field

And speaking of the herbs, I’ve been bringing my excess to the local café and the café in my office building for several weeks now, and it makes me happy that the trimmings get used instead of being composted. I haven’t planted dill in years – it’s almost invasive, it self-seeds so readily, and at this time of year I have lots and lots and lots of plants that are all dillweed that need thinning out in places and removing completely in others. I also have a field full of thyme, which in spots grows tall enough to cut; a giant sage plant; way too much marjoram, which is the product of a single plant I put at one end of the garden years ago, that moved itself to the back fence and is constantly threatening to overwhelm everything growing around it. I told it to spread into the field with the thyme and it’ll be mostly unmolested. In spring and fall I have regular and garlic chives. Catman takes care of the catnip, but I have French tarragon, which is a perennial, summer savory, which is a reseeding annual, and this year I put in an annual lemon verbena and a couple of bronze fennel plants to play with. And there are three kinds of mint, and bee balm. I grow basil, too, but there is never enough basil to share. Is it possible to grow too much basil? It’s a perennial question, and one to which I’ve never found a positive answer. This year the basil and the Thai basil are growing in pots I placed on the pavers nearest the kitchen wart – so far, so good.  I also have cilantro, which mostly arises from self-seeding plants I grew years ago, though I added some seed this year; and I always put in some parsley. This year I’m growing it from seed instead of buying a couple of plants, and it’s taking an unbearably long time to grow to pickable size.

One patch of self-seeded dill

But the garden is starting to look good, in spite of the weird weather we’ve had. The clematis was gorgeous; the peonies are better than they’ve maybe ever been. For the first time ever, I was able to grow decent lettuce, and the garlic I planted last fall actually grew – I picked scapes this evening, which is the very, very delicious long, curling stem the garlic puts out with a flower bud on the end. Leeks and onions and shallots and Egyptian onions are all looking really good; the California poppies are in full brilliant bloom; the alliums I planted last fall pretty much all bloomed, and the drumstick allium are making buds now. Johnny-jump-ups spread themselves happily around, squashes are getting bigger, and the pepper plants and tomatoes, while still short and stunted-looking, are blooming…I hope they get bigger or I’ll be picking miniature fruits off them. All my beans are up, my peas are flowering, the carrots need thinning, the parsnips are up, the beets are coming, and even the corn experiment in the field might be fruitful – I planted eight hills, with squash on the sides, and the earliest four plus the squashes have germinated and are ankle-high.

The corn-and-squash experiment, in the field behind the back fence. Cloches cover newer plantings.

Now is the bending-over-and-yanking-stuff time in the garden: thinning carrots and eventually beets, pulling weeds, thinning parsnips, pulling weeds, pulling weeds, and, oh yeah – pulling weeds. There’s enough time to do some manuring and mulching, for fertilizing the new raspberries and the old raspberries and blueberries and peach trees, for piling up wood chips as mulch around the fruit trees, and for standing and just looking with amazement at the beautiful spread of blooming wildflowers in the back forty. So much is blooming now – devil’s paintbrush, wild forget-me-nots, daisies, clover, flea bane, yellow hawkweed/king devil, white violet, wild strawberry, wild chamomile, purple vetch, heal-all, buttercup, cinquefoil, dandelion, yarrow, and common chickweed, the current bane of my existence  – the field is a jumble of yellows and reds and whites and purples, and it’s just lovely. And a tick-haunt, as the Husband keeps reminding me. 

Carrots and beets.

One leek, shallot and onion bed.

I’m seeing lots of box turtles and painted turtles on the roads, crossing to lay their eggs in hot dry sandy patches of earth. We’ve started looking out for Old Lady Snapper, and haven’t seen her yet. It’s possible we’ve missed her – she does an excellent job covering up her nest, so if we don’t happen to look when she’s in the process of egg-laying, we’d never know she’d been there. But the weather is slower to warm this year, and the trek through the thyme from the marsh and her cool, shady wet home is long, so I’m betting she’ll show up some day soon. The Old Barkie Boys would have announced her arrival, but the Furry People stay far away from her, so this year we’ll have to rely on our own chance sighting.

Egyptian onions - reproducing via top bulbs.

Unless Catman Dog figures out how to bark. His latest dog stunt has been hopping into the car with me to take the short ride from wart-side where I leave groceries, to put the car away in the garage. He looks slightly bemused afterwards.

I'm expecting to hear a bark from him any time now - maybe after indulging in too much catnip.

California poppies in bloom around the bird bath.

For the blog, 28 June 2019

All photos Debra Marshall

Self-seeded daisies and biennial Lunaria (money plant).

 

Weather Update: My Garden

Flax

 Tomorrow is summer solstice. I’m still sleeping on flannel sheets, and there are still three blankets on my bed. I don’t use them every night, but I did three nights ago. We aren’t safe yet.

There are still black flies, which are voracious; there are mosquitos, which are voracious; there are ticks, which are voracious. My legs and arms and neck are covered with itchy, swollen mosquito and black fly bites; every day I spend in the garden, I pick at least a handful of ticks off myself.

It’s raining, again; the cats are kind of permanently damp, and sometimes look like they fell into the pond. The lettuce and onions and leeks and shallots and garlic and broccoli are loving this weather; and with the help of cloches, the tomato plants have grown some, corn has sprouted, squashes are beginning to look like real plants. The beans all finally got planted last weekend, and most are up. I need to fill in holes in the beet and carrot bed, but not all the seeds washed away, so some are growing. The basil and savory and cucumbers seem to be enjoying their experiment, being planted in pots near the south on the south side this year. The potatoes are big and lush and gorgeous. 

Catnip, Allium, Johnny-Jump-Ups

And in spite of all the strange weather, there are some really gorgeous flowers. Lilacs and the first flush of dandelions have gone by, azaleas are done, but rhododendrons are in full bloom, day lilies and iris in front of the house are in full glory, and there are patches of lilac-colored Robin’s plaintain, purple harebell, yarrow, pink clover, daisies, little tiny pink somethings I don’t know what they are and can’t find in my Spring Wildflowers book, white violets, Indian’s paintbrush; and Mom has a big patch of hoary alyssum, which is quite lovely. 

Robin's Plantain and Harebells

The birds are singing happily every day, though I haven’t noticed any making use of my birdhouses yet this spring-almost-summer. Buzzy Boy has chased me in from the garden several times when I’ve been out too late according to his Rules for Humans. I’ve seen bees and butterflies working amongst the flowers, and there’s nothing prettier than a big yellow butterfly perched on a purple chive blossom having a drink. 

Catmandude’s new catnip plants seem to be doing well. I’ve shown him where two are and he’s had a good chew on them, but he hasn’t discovered the third yet. He still hasn’t forgiven me for yanking out his great big plant, but the asparagus crowns I planted in that bed are doing well. Peas and fava beans are up and climbing; bee balm and marjoram and sage are about to bloom. The rhubarb plant is gigantic, and the sorrel has already gone to seed. Still waiting to see if the perennial seeds I planted will sprout – the annuals (cosmos, calendula, amaranth, love lies bleeding, salvia) are up, the self-seeding California poppies and lunaria – ok, that’s a biennial - are getting lush, and my clematis – yes, that’s a perennial -was beautiful. An iris I hauled out of one spot last year, which hadn’t grown and never bloomed, has an absolutely exquisite bloom on it this year. And the peony bed is about to break into bloom, and the bleeding hearts are bleeding beautifully, as are some perennials I planted last year and the year before that have lovely blue flowers and pink flowers on them, and I have no idea now what they’re called. I wonder if that’s why I struggle with perennials.

Iris and Lilies; yes, needing weeding...

I don’t do particularly well with perennial flower plants. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes I accidentally weed them out in the spring, mistaking them for grass. I’m never really sure. For years I’ve been trying to get Oriental poppies to bloom – I had a great bed of them when we lived in Maine: just dug up a patch of grass, threw in some seed, a few weeks later – voila! But here I can’t get a single seed to sprout. So last year I broke down and bought three very expensive potted poppies, which were settling in nicely, and then the damned chipmunks tunneled under them and chewed off their roots and killed them.   

I used to like chipmunks.

Perennial border pinks

Maybe I should try planting a slice of poppy seed cake and see what happens.

My new peach trees and cherry bush, and six of the nine new raspberries, all look pretty good. The final living limb of the old peach succumbed to frost this spring, which was very disappointing. It was covered with leaf and flower buds that were just on the edge of opening, and then, overnight, dried up and gone. Not a one opened. We sadly cut the limb off; but this winter, we’ll think we’re pretty nifty, maybe the only folks in northern New England burning peach wood in their woodstove. The garden looks very odd without the peach tree blocking my view across it.

I dug the solar lights out of the cellar the other day and put the big, color-changing ball back out in the garden, lined up the color-changing and plain white mason jar lights on the wart railings, and when I look out at night, my French-Canadian heart just thrills to the gaudy show. Earlier this week there was a moment – and I was there to see it – when the full moon hung directly over my color-changing ball. It was totally satisfying.

Annuals on the wart; Petunias and something orange

We haven’t erected the tent-on-the-wart yet – it’s been too windy, too rainy, too too too.  Too bad – it would be a break for Catman, who really wants to be outside in his chair this time of year, even when it’s raining, so he can survey his domain and have an excellent nap in the fresh air; and it would be great for me, so I could de-tick after being in the garden without entertaining the neighbors too thoroughly, and also not get chewed up by mosquitoes as I strip down and – well, you know. Full clothes and nekkid body searches, vigorous hair brushing, muddy hand and foot washing. (Hi Glen! Hi Darlene! Thanks for the fireworks show last weekend, we enjoyed it! Better viewing than what I’ve been giving you as I come in from the garden!)

Almost summer. And yet…

For the blog, 20 June 2019

All photos Deb Marshall

Very Happy Lettuce; and parsley

Scalawag

No Feet On The Ground; Deb Marshall art

Since  Abu Dhoggi died last summer, and Catmandoo has decided that he’s become Catmandog, a friend regularly brings Sherlock the Northumbrian Terrier and Clare the black lab to visit so I can get some doggy energy. No matter how good a dog Catman has become, he is, in spite of himself, still full of wild cat energy, and except when he’s peeing on visitor’s tires or chasing herds of turkeys or deer out of the yard, and attempting to catch and kill other dogs, he acts very much like a very large, very opinionated, mostly benign Lord of the Universe in large, semi-wild, cat form.

Consequently, we have to monitor who’s indoors when doggy friends come to visit. Fortunately, Catman is mostly deaf, so if he’s deep in a catnip-induced cat dream and the visiting dog is able to reign in his curiousity and stay away from that room, no damage is done. Mostly if Catman is out, the dogs can come in; if Catman is in, the dogs must stay out. This doesn’t bode well for me getting a dog anytime soon.

However, I keep the pantry supplied with dog lure (treats) which I dispense freely, thereby buying the affection and attention of the dogs who come visit. I also am good for kisses and long sessions of scratching, so Clare and Sherlock are happy to see me and let me abuse them in wonderful ways. I end up smelling doggy for awhile, which makes me happy, and I have dog drool smears on my pants legs again.

The other day a photo client of the Husband’s came with her Jack Russell terrier, Scalawag. Scalawag is a very busy, very curious, very active little dog, and I watched her range over all our back forty, sticking her nose into everything, finding something odorous to roll in, which she repeated at least four times with a break between each luxurious roll to sniff the spot all over again; looking for mice in the garage, checking out the paths in the garden, investigating the stack of hay behind the raspberries, racing around the perimeter of the field again, her nose going and her tail wagging every moment. She is, to say the least, a very cheerful little dog.

After a bit I heard her at the kitchen door, and as Catman was soundly sleeping in the far room, I let her in. One dog lure in the snoot, a few more in my pocket, and out we went to water the plants on the wart. I was surprised at how curious Scally was, sticking her nose into all the pots as I poured water into them from the watering can. In a moment, I realized it wasn’t really the plants she was interested in, but the water – she started biting at it, and got her head totally soaked, and seemed to be having a grand time. 

Down we went to get out the hose and and water the raised beds closest to the house and refill the watering cans. Hoses are wicked exciting, Scally indicated; and watering raised beds even more so. She darted and bit, darted and bit, getting soaked with water, tail wagging madly the whole time. It was so funny to watch I had to shout to the Husband to come down and see, and he and Scally’s mom came from the studio to see what was making me laugh madly. “Oh, if you put it on stream instead of spray, and move it in a big circle, she’ll chase it,” Scally’s mom said. So I did. And she did.

Watering the garden beds became a switch-off from spray, “wait, wait, wait!” to stream “go get it!” with racing and barking and wagging and total drenching – of me and of the dog, who no longer smelled like whatever she’d rolled in earlier. The best part was this little rascal would wait as I sprayed water into the beds, and take off like a shot after the stream as soon as I switched it over. And best of all, because she’s a little dog she could fit in-between the big bags and pots I grow potatoes in, and watching carefully, wait 'til just the right moment to shoot out from her hidey-spot and grab that stream of water as it raced by, ears flying, tail wagging, up into the air into a mouthful of water!  And then do it again, and again, and again, because – why not? It’s FUN!

We managed to get the close-by beds watered, and the watering cans filled, and Scally beat up the hose sprayer head once or twice when I put it down to move something or pull a weed. That was also fun, especially as it seemed to make the stream come out again when I helped. 

Eventually I had to put the hose away, dispense the last of the dog lure, and go give Catman his morning pills and treats. Scally headed home with her mom and my guess is, she slept most the way, dreaming of waves and water snakes and racing, racing, racing. I’d laughed longer and louder than I have in a long time.

 And fell in love with a soaking wet, wag-tail rascal.

For the blog, 20 June 2019

Happy Summer!