gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos gardening 21:01
I was wandering through the pictures in this blog….I didn’t realize that the daylily border is now four years old, no wonder it needed weeding this spring!
Here it is the first year:
And last year:
This year promises to be similar, although not quite as tall. The early drought stunted their growth some. This photograph from the second year shows them to their full effect:
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gardening and Modern Photos gardening, roses 21:26
Prior to this heatwave, it had bloomed very nicely. I hope it manages a re-bloom in the fall, it may. I deadheaded it to encourage that, even though it tends towards big, red hips. Nicely fragrant as well. Whether it behaves as a true climber or not remains to be seen, but it is certainly a nice addition to the pergola. Now if I could only figure out why one of the clematis (the biggest, most vigorous one) suddenly went belly up….
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Uncategorized 08:41
Uncategorized 13:52
I do wish that the robin nesting on the porch outside the library would figure out that it does not need to fly every time I come into the room and walk past the window. This is getting old. The mourning dove down on another porch is apparently a smarter bird….
Windy day, rather pleasant in some ways, but almost chilly. It always puts me in mind of the coast somehow, the big house on the hill, a white ship on a green wave.
Uncategorized 20:08
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of watching them in the late June nights. Something more magical than the passing airplanes’ guiding lights, the high ones bound for Europe, the low ones bound for the sprawling cities of the East coast. No, the fireflies can’t be mistaken for those, nor for the high, remote grandeur of the stars. Yet, there is a magic of life in the those lights in the trees, drifting down and across the meadow. Made, perhaps, even more so by knowing that in the day, they are truly unprepossessing bugs.
In today’s world of manicured, short lawns well sprayed with God knows what and trees conjured from the architect’s rendering, fireflies are ever rarer. That I can watch them from the porch, that is a rich gift and not a small one. They launch from the great vastness of the Magnolia, the Tulip tree, the oaks, and the hedgerows. Out, out into the wide space of the meadow. What a journey for that tiny spark, not knowing what lies ahead, but the promise of instinct and of life.
Uncategorized 18:53
I could write about gardening, about hay, about the weather
I could write about Brexit and the aftermath, this editorial sums to up nicely: http://spectator.org/brexit-democracy/
But, I’d rather listen to this utter nonsense, brought back to my attention by another blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN5dAQLYYrs
Uncategorized 15:17
Remarkably there are still a few hayfields in this town, including ours. One good thing about this continued dry spell is that it is ideal weather for cutting hay. Ours is half cut as of today.
The challenge is when and how….hay is a very, very weather dependent crop. You need a string of days without rain in mid June. Thunderstorm season. That was fairly doable when the people making hay were full time farmers. Not so much these days. The man doing our hayfield works a full time job and cuts hay, mostly for his cows, on the side, in between, nearly at night, by himself. His fields are scattered up and down two hills on both sides of the town center, as are the fields of the biggest operation in town. I have to give him full credit for his determination and willingness to work hard. I suspect he took today off to do some cutting and he doesn’t work the sort of job that exactly hands out vacation time.
So, as a PSA, for next few weeks in New England, mind the blind curves….there may well be a tractor with a cutter bar, or a tedder, or baler, or a string of wagons taking up the lane.
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gardening vegetable gardening 21:47
I can actually see the advantages of gardens, especially commercial, in regions with dry, warm, not humid climates. The garden is doing very well at the moment, though the soil is fine dust. Why? Well, essentially no rain and no humidity (this is subjective: no humidity for this region in this season, quite a bit of humidity I am sure for the desert) These conditions tend to equal no mold, mildew, or bugs. And that leads to healthy plants, at least, as long as it is coupled with a good well and a drip irrigation system: the roots are wet and the leaves are dry and clean. The bean, chard, and brassica families love that. The peas don’t seem to mind either.
Now, of course, areas without that drip irrigation system….well. It is interesting to observe what works in gardening and just how far we have pushed the plants out of their comfort zone and into one requiring artificial conditions for maximum production.
This all rather ignores that one nasty issue: water and the availability thereof. And that is a challenge….but it gets one thinking about some of the trade-offs. How much fungicide and insecticide would be required to grow the same crops here, in a wet year, as are grown in a drier climate? Could one even?
I think about water an awful lot these days it seems!
Uncategorized 20:39
It doesn’t seem possible that tomorrow is the longest day of the year….It seems that summer is both early and late this year. There has been in my life a sense of both lost time and the living wonder of present joy, that perhaps accounts for the sense of being slightly jetlagged and out of step.
It is funny how we visualize things. I saw the first fireflies last night, deep in the trees and the moon lit shadows of the road. The heavy, languid heat of summer brings them alive. They belong to those velvet nights. I couldn’t picture them in winter or in spring. Like lightening (which is always so weird in a snowstorm), they would be entirely wrong in winter. Their bright spark would be lost in the sharpness of a winter night when the stars rule the sky, but in the soft summer night they fit as a counterpoint to the, for lack of a better term, denser darkness.
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Acair Fearann 