Soft, Soft

 It’s officially summer! I did get the rest of the garden planted, by racing out many days over this past month between rain storms – the last seeds went in only days ago, and yesterday I watched a couple of pretty little yellow warblers eating the Love Lies Bleeding seeds I’d planted just two days earlier. But they were having such a grand time, and they were so pretty, I didn’t stop them. I’m hoping they didn’t get all the seeds.

My poppies and irises and lilies and peonies are all abloom, and the daisies – wild volunteers that have taken over the wild places in my garden – and California poppies, which are free-seeded annuals from seeds I planted many years ago – and this year, also volunteers from the annual Bachelor’s Buttons I planted last year, and an unknown but lovely mostly green flower that self-seeded from a rogue plant that showed up amongst the Egyptian onions two years ago, are all in riotous bloom. I even have some rosa rugosa this year, probably because it’s rained so much the Japanese beetles haven’t completely trashed them, as they usually do.

CA Poppy and bug

The heather has started to bloom, as has the yarrow, and the clover this year is tall and gorgeous. Wild columbine has mostly gone by, as have the pussy toes and flax; but there’s always something new about to bloom, and some of the Johnny Jump Ups are done, but others are still vibrant. Chipmunks are trying to kill my remaining delphinium be eating its roots off; but so far they haven’t quite killed the whole plant, and have left all but 4 shallots alone. The cats are on it, but the chipmunks are generally smarter than they are.

Anyway, any of you who have said you’d like to come look at my garden some time are welcome, and this is a great time of year to do so, if you can time it between storms. If you have cats, I’ll send you home with catnip to dry for them; and if you like daisies, bring a jar and we’ll cut you a daisy bouquet; there’s also plenty of mint and marjoram for anyone who’d like some. I’m usually home weekends and Tuesdays, but email me first to be sure: taichideb@tds.net. And you need to be aware that though my garden paths are mostly paved, they aren’t even and you have to pay attention to keep from taking a tumble. I may do paths, but the flowers often take over, so there are clumps to navigate around, and I never tried to make a flat even space and it’s easy to catch a toe on a crack or a jutting brick.. 

A garden path

My peas – at least, the ones I planted earliest – have bloomed! And the beets and some of the carrots and the parsnips need thinning! The garlics have scaped! And I’m going to be dealing with all that between storms, it appears, this next week. One of these days there will need to be weeding, also, but right now the ticks, mosquitoes, gnats and deer flies are strongly discouraging that activity.

Sauteed beet greens and garlic scapes, on rice, was the first meal from this year’s garden. The strange weather (and the cats, and the garden gnomes) have caused some of the beets to not germinate. If I’m clever, I’ll quick look for some more seed and plant a second batch. Beets have a short season, so there’s time, but they do prefer to be planted when it’s cooler.

Wild columbine

The weather has been dry enough for us to hang laundry to dry out on the clothesline only three times this year, so far. I’m covered with mosquito bites. The cats are kind of disgusted with the weather most days, and spend lots of time sleeping in chairs on the porch, or they go back to bed around noontime.  The hummingbirds are managing, and Buzzy Boy has chased me out of the garden at dusk a few times. I’ve explained to him I’m out there sowing the scarlet runner plants he loves so much, but he has rules about when it’s ok for me to be out, and he’s going to make sure I follow his rules. He is a bit of a stickler for his rules.

There have been a few days recently, when the sky was blue, there was no humidity, there was a light breeze and no deer flies – a soft day. I sat out under the porch roof, watched the hummers come to their feeders, smelled the sweet flower smells on the breeze, and listened to the wind chimes: one bamboo, one made of silver spoons and forks and butter knives, a third of copper leaves, the fourth a tuned delight. I pretended to read, and didn’t jump up to spread cedar shavings in the paths, or to top up the potato plants.

Warding off gremlins; whisky in front!

 

I just sat; and it was a soft day; and it was perfect.

 

For the blog, 25 June 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

 

All photos Deb Marshall

Interesting bug

 

Bird, and peonies captured in the rain!

 

 

O, The Way of All Things

 

Guy with a Mohawk

Day I-don’t-know-what of mostly continual rain. That is not a complaint, it’s been so dry until this rainy spell started that the garden - what I’d managed to plant – wasn’t growing; now that stuff is growing but I can’t get the rest of it planted. And it was so very dry before the rain, that even after these many days of rain, the ground’s still dry 2 inches down. Keep raining, weather gods!

I’ve been trying to plant between showers, but today it’s showering just about every 30 minutes, which isn’t long enough to be productive. All I’ve managed to do (besides get my feet soaking wet and collect more bug bites) is plant some Thai basil seed in a pot on the porch, and take the cloches off the squashes and cuke and pumpkins, because those seeds aren’t getting any of the rain. In one foray out, I discovered that something cut off one of my tomato plants, which I got in the ground 3 days ago between storms (and at the same time got myself covered with itchy black fly and mosquito bites, all over my body); and discovered that the gremlins are digging up, but not eating, the cranberry beans I also planted that day, much like they dug up the fava beans last year. At least the cranberry beans are too newly planted to have sprouted yet. I’ve now erected around them, and the pumpkin seeds I planted in the same bed, a gremlin-confusing structure of old window screen, small lawn ornaments, unfolded tomato cage, and sticks and empty flower pots that I hope will muddle that spot in the gremlin’s mind so they leave it alone. It worked on the onion bed and Rasta Furian.

We’ve had loads of excitement here in the past two weeks. On Wednesday last, there was an earthquake centered next town over, at 6 am – 2.2 on the Richter scale. A few early risers were aware of it; I’m told it was more noise than shake. If my sleepy brain did register it, I would have assumed it was just a pulp truck trundling by on its way to the wood processing plant up the road. 

Then on Friday last, day of many, many thunder-boomers, we had a close lightning strike. The Husband and the cats (I wasn’t home, not sure if I’m glad or sorry to have missed the experience) dove for cover – it seemed to have landed on our garage, which isn’t far from the house – like, maybe 15 feet or so. When they decided they weren’t being attacked, The Husband went out to see if the garage, which has his photo studio on the 2^nd floor (as well as a bird’s nest in the stairwell) was on fire. It wasn’t.

However, next day we had no water. The lightning strike fried our well pump. The well is just in front of the door to the garage stairwell.

Our next-door neighbors thought the bolt landed in their backyard – they lost their tv. Wherever it landed, it was plenty close enough. But as my father used to say (when he was teaching me to drive) “an inch is as good as a mile.”

Well – kinda.

The only other times we’ve been without water have been in the winter, when there’s snow to melt on the woodstove for toilet flushing, and we’re rarely out of power for more than a few hours or, at most, a few days. The Husband and I have found that our brains are wired for winter outages – if we have no water, the brains say, then we must not have electricity, so don’t open the frig or freezers, don’t bother flipping on light switches… it’s a strange phenomenon.

Spring Iris

I’m glad it’s not winter because opening the well and pulling out the dead pump, replacing it with a new one, and then flushing the system of the sludge that process coughs up, for several days, and hauling water, would be a lot less fun in winter. It isn’t fun this time of year, either. The ponds are full of frogs and tadpoles, so water has to come from elsewhere.

We’re still hauling drinking/cooking/toothbrushing/washing water, 6 days later, though we can use the slimey well water for toilet flushing, though it’s turned the toilets an interesting shade of black. And The Husband has to keep draining the water tank in the cellar so that the sludgy water gets flushed out sooner and doesn’t ruin the hot water system or house water pipes. Showers have been something we get at friends’ and relatives’ houses, when we go fetch drinking water; and until the well was fixed, The Husband made many trips to the neighbor’s outdoor hose across the field to fill many buckets, which he toted in the wheelbarrow, for toilet flushing –trips he made in the rain. Irony. Remember “water, water everywhere, and nary a drop to drink”? Yup. That’s us this week.

Dish washing takes place with a tea kettle full of nearly-boiling water we’ve hauled from friend’s houses, tempered with cold potable water so we don’t burn our fingers off, and it’s slow and a pain in the butt, and not totally effective, unless we limit ourselves to sandwiches. Or eggs fried in cast iron – we (that’s the old-timer’s “we”) don’t wash cast iron, we wipe it out so it doesn’t rust. The compost bins are getting a good feed on paper towels covered in various oils, cheese and peanut butter smears, and so on, this week. I was never so happy to go to work as I was this week, so I could easily wash my hands and face in hot water!

The cats have spent most of the last week abed – smart thinking. I did find Rasta Furian perched in the dry end of the wheelbarrow earlier today, though. He’s been using it, pre-showery days, as a nice napping place. He was a little surprised when he hopped in today!

It is possible to make soup and bread in spite of the circumstances. But The Husband, who’s been trying to sauter something or other in the cellar having to do with water pipes all afternoon, just muttered something incomprehensible about needing to put bread into the pipe he’s working on.

I don’t think I want to know.

 

For the blog, 8 June 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

Photos Deb Marshall

In the garden, looking for trouble. Garlic in the background to the right.

 

Home from F-FL: Part 5

 

This god-awful mess, if it were in a room instead of my garden, could be one of my F-FL Hoarder Friends’ constructions. See, I learned something useful while I was down there in the Land of the Damned.

This construction is the third or fourth attempt I’ve made in the last few weeks to keep Rasta Furian, that eminently creative and not-easily-alarmed beast, from digging up my pea and onion bed, which he’s done at least 4 times and I’ve replanted at least 4 times. 

I think I finally got it covered (partly literally), and I’ve put the scary-looking bird, and a big solar light, and a metal frog in the three potato bags that he was also digging up (and tossing potatoes out of so I had to replant those, too) – at least I think it was him. The Husband found him sitting in one of the bags looking guilty one day, but I’m fully aware that the perp could have been the garden gnome/gremlin, since the potatoes were sometimes tossed 4 feet from the bags. Whoever was doing it, since the garden junk got put into the potato bags, there has been no more potato digging.

The problem child, looking for trouble    

However, someone has dug a big hole in the rows of okra and cilantro I seeded two days ago. I’ve only got so much garden junk and old window screens and they’re all pretty much in use, now!

I have a big f-ing garden, and two chest freezers in the cellar. Into them go most of the vegetables we eat all winter long, plus fruits we grow, and local meats we buy locally. On a good year, I also make zucchini relish, tomato juice – unless you’ve had home-made tomato juice you have no idea what tomato juice actually is! – dilly beans, curried summer squash pickle, and whatever else I’ve got time and energy and enough veggies for.

We grow, as well as the vegetable garden and the perennial borders that surround it and the annuals I scatter amongst it (always calendula, nasturtiums, cosmos, bells of Ireland, amaranth, and some morning glories), herbs – dill that reseeds yearly, a massive sage plant, Egyptian onions, which are perennials, French tarragon, thyme, bee balm  – which has taken over most of the field, marjoram that I’d love to eliminate but it spreads like crazy, bee balm, basil, catnip, sweet woodruff, borage, and winter and summer savory – the latter reseeds itself annually, the former is a perennial. There are also tarragon and yarrow and masses of daisies that have planted themselves, Dame’s Rocket, a biennial that reseeds itself all over the garden, Johnny Jump Ups that do the same, sunflowers for the birds, milkweed for the butterflies, and often a few unknowns that are sometimes very gorgeous.

Clematis against black house

In the field around the garden are peach trees, a sweet cherry bush, a pie cherry tree that the birds always beat me to, a pear tree, and apple tree, and raspberries and blueberries, as well as a giant rhubarb plant that my father dug up decades ago from an abandoned homestead in the woods somewhere, planted in his garden, and when we built this house he divided it and gave me half. It’s now even more decades old, and twelve years ago after Dad died and was cremated, some of his ashes fed the rhubarb. They apparently like each other because the rhubarb is huge and near the pet graves bed (Dad loved the critters) and it gives me a focus when I’m muttering curses out in the sometimes recalcitrant garden. So far, he hasn’t answered back, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover he has something to do with the garden gnomes/gremlins that have raised havoc the past two years. He had a sense of humor like that.

Right now we’ve been having stupid weather: too wet then too dry then too cold now too hot. I’ve been planting the garden anyway. I’ve got 9 beds planted, doing various degrees of not great; 3 more beds partially planted; three beds not yet started; and two more to build. The Husband and the Teacher tell me the block I got this year, to build those beds, weigh 33 lbs each. Oy. What I usually use wasn’t available and this is the best I could find. If I disappear some day, you’ll find me having muscle spasms out near the peach trees.

Dame's Rocket, compost bins

This weekend: the Tall Guy is bringing by the tomato plants, which will fill one empty bed and two of the partially-planted beds. I have two perennials that I haven’t gotten in the ground yet; and I need to find a good spot for basil, besides the bunch I planted in a pot near the porch (the “porch” is what used to be the wart, but now it has a roof, I think it’s a porch).

On the porch I’ve added a chaise longue, so I can take a nap from time to time out in the outdoors. My old sleeping bag pad fits it perfectly, but they’re lower than I remember, and watching me get up off it is…..interesting.  The Hoarder hasn’t made contact for 2 full months now, so I figure she and her mass of mess are on their own at the assisted living place; she fired her care-giver, who was going in once a week to help her get appointments scheduled and otherwise acclimated, so I have no idea what’s going on down there.  I do still have lots of books, however, which I stole from her, bought at the 5 Colleges Booksale in April, and accumulated last year from Thriftbooks, a few from the Norwich Bookstore, and three of The Husband’s Christmas books that I also want to read. So I’ve been reading. A lot.

Now books --- books aren’t hoarding, and my F-FLF is proof of that. So, OK, they can be, but they aren’t if you actually read them, and actually get rid of the ones you’ll never read again, and can actually tell the difference. I counted my to-be-read books yesterday morning, and then I made a list because, you know, I LOVE lists and putting lines through things on the list that I’ve finished. I have 75 books waiting to be read.

I’ve also gotten rid of something like 20 or more books in the past two months, so don’t judge me. Some of my patients get books I’ve finished that I know they’ll like – one likes Chris Bohjelian novels, another likes sci-fi/fantasy, a third likes garden stuff and vampires and other oddities, a fourth likes novels about Vermont. The Sailor will take anything with a ship in it, and I know the Artist likes certain kinds of novels, which I send her if she’s interested. The Teacher took an entire box full to bring to his Maine cabin, where he’s spending the summer. 

Calla lilies, on the porch rail

The rest – almost all these books are old books, used books, so not contemporary; but those that are often become birthday or Christmas gifts for friends and family, or parts of the collections of certain authors The Husband and I really enjoy and consequently keep  – the rest, as I was saying, go in boxes to the Free benches at the Tiptop, where all we residents leave things we have no more use for but that other people might. I bring them when I have a box full, and some of the books have been to the Free benches before, because that’s where I found them. When I have one about cooking or food, I make sure to leave it on the bench near the Café kitchen, so the young cooks can find it (or it goes to my ex-nephew-in-law, who is also a chef).  Right now I’m also getting rid of the magazines I used to save for the Hoarder – I made promises not to add to the hoard, and she hasn’t divested herself of the 3+-foot-high stack of old magazines and catalogs she insisted on moving, so I have many months’ of saved magazines, none of them topical news so still very readable, that I’m slowly bringing to the benches, also.

I love the Free benches. We all at the Tiptop love the Free benches. We love finding stuff on the Free benches, and we love giving away stuff via the Free benches. Every public building should have a Free bench or two!

For what it’s worth, all those books are mostly ones that are too old to find in a library, and they also give me a chance to very inexpensively try out authors I otherwise wouldn’t read. I mean – who knew there was a whole series written that the Murdoch Mysteries is loosely based on? I hate mystery books, but these are great. And who knew MC Beaton wrote so many different kinds of novels? I didn’t. 

And for what it’s worth: Iris Murdoch sucks. I’m glad I spent only $2 for that novel!

Flax in bloom! Early this year...

 

 For the blog, 1 June 2023: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall: addendum photos from our friends in Hawai’i!

Addendum:

Bob Toda sent new photos. His grandbaby is not yet crawling, but clearly a happy, happy and, grandpa says, very intelligent boy. And – there’s a new one in the oven!

 

Bob showing off - NOT Portsmouth harbor!

Baby parents

Baby parent and baby parent parent!

Gramps and gramp-child