Photos With a Few Words

We have at last experienced two whole nights and two days when it DID NOT RAIN!

The long spell of rain, humidity and heat broke on Monday evening.

Prior to that, nightly torrents of rain accompanied by rumblings of thunder have disturbed our sleep.

The air has been so heavy with moisture that it seemed one could reach up and squeeze it out

--like wringing a sponge!

Mornings brought little relief from the sense of heaviness--swirls of mist rising from the creek, trees and garden plants bowed with the weight of too much rain.

My brain has felt befogged and slow; threads of thought have appeared only to skitter away when I tried to pin them down with words.

Squelching about in my boots I discovered that the 'garden spiders' as they are locally called, have made their webs this year in the nandina bushes which march along the east and south sides of the house. I haven't pruned them this summer and the dense growth appeals to argiope aurantia.

I am not an insect lover, but these large handsome spiders intrigue me.

Their webs have a characteristic 'zig-zag' stitch down the center. Often the spiders rip apart a portion of the web and rework it overnight.

This is the first year I have planted cleome, growing both a white and a rose variety from seed.

Note the whiskery bits.

Both butterflies and hummingbirds find the pink flowers attractive.

Willis the cat is partial to this hump of grey rock on the front lawn. 

He sprawls there with the pink blossoms a fitting background for his grey tweed suit.

Butterflies on zinnias.

A zinnia unfurls on a misty morning.

The sunflowers with bronzed petals are my favorites.

When I went outside two weeks ago to find the sunflowers flattened, stalks bent, I thought of cutting them down to clean up the area.  I was deterred by yet more rain.

The sunflowers, valiant things that they are, have bloomed from their horizontal positions.

The tumble of sunflowers, cosmos and zinnias against the welcome 

blue skies of Wednesday morning.

I have pulled up yards and yards of naturalized morning glory in our previous three summers. 

There is always more of it.

The persistent vines clamber up the sunflower stalks and the blue blossoms peek out.

There is also a very invasive plant--visible in left center of the photo--it puts down roots where ever the stems touch soil.  It is a nuisance plant [I don't know its name] in spite of the tiny bright blue flowers.

My father planted morning glories near the side porch of his Vermont home for many years. 

He put up strings for them to climb, fussed over them, fumed when at nearly summer's end they had gone up the supports and turned back down again without blossoming. 

Perhaps these find the Kentucky climate more conducive to bloom.

I have to admire their 'heavenly blue' even as I scold over their persistence in appearing where they aren't wanted!

I spent a long morning yanking weeds from the lower perennial strip--the area so laboriously cleared at the end of June. It is mostly grass that invades, along with a wiry stemmed plant of the legume family.

Stems are lank and watery, the ground revealed when a handful is pulled away is soggy.

After several hours I was hot, sweaty, muddy-kneed, and impressed that I am fighting a weary battle this season against weeds and wet weather.

Nellie loves to burrow beneath the plants and spring out at the butterflies which I disturb with my flailing about.

The sunflowers still upright are way taller than I am--although they were labeled as 'dwarf.'

These are from saved seed, the originals were planted in 2010.

J. has been mystified all summer by the power to the garage cutting out at intervals.

He and Matt have fiddled with breakers, jiggled things trying to find a bad connection.

Tired of the outages and not finding the source of the trouble--most likely an underground 'short' in the line--J. consulted with old Mr. Rogers the last owner of the place as to where he had strung the power line.

Haskell Rogers at 97 is still very much in his right mind. With his directions as to the location of the original wiring, J. has disconnected it and laid a new 220 cable that leads out of the basement and across the yard to the garage--new breakers have been installed.

The new cable is buried along the inner edge of my herb garden, beside the concrete block retaining wall.

J. was able to carefully lay the cable with the minimum of disturbance to the lavender and woolly thyme along the wall.

J. rented a 'Ditch Witch' to get the trench deep enough for the electrical cable.

The cats were, of course, fascinated at the fresh earth turned up by this process.

The trench made a perfect 'hide' for mock battles, the moist dirt was a cool place to rest after exertions and also needed to be used as a temporary cat latrine!

I close this rambling post--the recollections of a scattery week--with this spill of cosmos.

These are also from saved seed.

They don't seem to mind their weedy space or the fact that they have been flattened by wind, rain and toppling sunflowers!

As Seasons Come and Go

The pattern of our days hasn't changed greatly since my last post.

It is too warm and humid [85 F] this week, and I wonder if the rather cool, wet July has let us in for unusual heat in August--as if the expected patterns of weather have been reversed.

The zinnia row is spotty this year--and I miss the solid bank of bright color which enlivened the gardens of the past three years. 

Lank grass has moved into the flower strips so laboriously weeded at the end of June--and the ground has often been too wet to work.

Disheartened with the garden upkeep I've turned to a marathon of quilt making.

I've pieced three in the past month, setting myself a challenge of working from my extensive 'stash' of fabric.

The three completed tops please me.

The 4th one, nearly done, is less color-coordinated as I found I didn't have enough of certain fabrics to create the color progression I tentatively planned. 

These are very simple quilts--slice and stitch the fabric--no marking or trimming and fussing to fit various components together.

I have been hauling out armloads of fabric, finding a few treasures that had gotten 'lost' in the tippling piles.

A good sorting is in order!

My boy cats are intrigued by butterflies and are too clever at leaping into the air and bringing down a fragile creature with a swipe of the paw.

Finding the butterflies, frayed of wings and near death on the doormat or front steps, I tell myself that perhaps it is only those that are exhausted and near death that are vulnerable to the cats.

The dooryard birds have finished raising their families, so we are no longer rushing to rescue fledglings and hauling the cats indoors to save the birds.

Our sweet corn has done well in spite of needing to be propped up twice after summer storms swept through and flattened it.

We spent a hot and sticky day last week freezing some of the harvest.

The large black and yellow spiders who make beautifully intricate webs are not in residence near the front steps this August.

They were partial to the huge over-grown clump of sedum which I removed from that area.

[It had flowers of a nasty bubble gum pink and sprawled very untidily.]

I spotted this egg sack just around the corner where the front porch roof meets the side of the house.

Daylilies have made a brave showing in spite of being battered with frequent rain.

Mine are only common [inexpensive] varieties, welcomed for their hardiness and color.

We've had another morning visit from the wild turkeys!

These were pecking about near my clothesline where the mowed area of the dooryard meets the rougher area of the back meadow.

Nellie and Bobby having a tussle on the lawn.

I snapped a succession of photos--all flailing, pouncing welters of tails and paws.

The hummingbirds are still with us.  I think  their nest is hidden in the branches of the maple beyond the carport. They whizz about when I sit with my coffee on the front porch, indulging in an interaction that doesn't look entirely amiable.

Both are on the right side of the feeder in this photo, blurs of movement.

Mornings have been damp and misty.

Cut grass clumps on my boots as I go about the morning routine of dealing with cat litter boxes or taking out coffee grounds and eggshells.

On several recent day

s we have found tins pulled from the trash bin in the garage and strewn in the driveway.

J. reports that some creature, a raccoon, perhaps, has flung the dishes belonging to the barn cats and knocked over the container of kibble kept on the shelf.

Possums have begun raiding the melon patch.

J. caught one--a youngster--in the Hav-a Hart trap on Sunday night, loaded it into the back of the truck next morning and carried it off to an area a goodly distance from houses and gardens.

Pebbles the Horse climbed over her pasture fence on Sunday night and again on Monday night.

When I got up on Tuesday morning she was strolling past the garden fence and out toward the old pear tree.

By the time J. dressed and put on his shoes, she had marched across the road.

She comes meekly enough to J.'s whistle and follows him back to her enclosure--where the electric fence has been amped up.

She is dreadfully greedy and obviously feels dumpish and unwell for at least 24 hours after each episode of gorging on green grass.

She is taking her detested 'pill' in an ear of corn, having resisted J.'s attempts to hide it in apples, carrots, grain or peanut butter--all things she has regarded as 'treats' in the past. 

The elderberry bushes have grown heavy-headed, leaning into each other to create an arch.

J. continues doggedly to mow the grass between rains.

Last year at this time we were dragging out hoses every night to water the gardens, in the midst of  a prolonged drought.

This summer we squelch about, clambering over cucumber and melon vines which have gone rampant.

Each year brings something different in the way of gardening challenges and successes--we work at the garden, try to make changes in what is planted and when--we can never second guess the variables of weather and seasons.

To quit gardening is unthinkable!

J. roared through one of the lower veg strips yesterday, scattering rinds of over-grown squash and cucumbers that had lurked in semi-rotten squalor beneath tangled vines. The mower bucked and stalled in places where the vegetation was heavy and wet.

If we are to have a 'fall garden' the strip needs to be tilled and prepared for replanting--very soon.

Showers overnight and in the early morning mean that the tractor and tiller would compact the soil.

The perennial strip in the foreground is ragged with spent flowers--only some of which I've cut back.

A few sunflowers survived the blow-down last month.

They are meant to be a dwarf variety, but the ones still upright tower over my head!

Beyond our boundary fence the neighbor 'bush-hogged' part of his pasture--the rest has gone wild with a vigorous stalk-y weed for which I have no name.

Desultory Days

Desultory:  lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful.

Luna moth, clinging to the trunk of the sweet gum tree.

I like the adjective, 'desultory.'

Its not a word I commonly utter in conversation; it is one that frequently pops into my mind as a way to describe a string of days in which weather and activities conspire to create a rather blurred backward glance of unjournaled time.

[Did we drive to Casey County's whole foods store on Tuesday--or was it Thursday? Which of several days were marked by afternoon showers which halted our outdoor tasks? Did I really spend every evening in my downstairs sewing room--or does it only seem that way?]

We've had visits from family and friends over the past month or so, jolting us from our fairly predictable routines of 'active retirement.'

The weather of this summer season--our 4th in Kentucky--surely deserves to be noted as 'fitful.'

Grass, weeds, flowers and garden plants have grown rankly, stems watery and soft with the frequent rains;  temperatures have hovered in the humid mid 80's F rather than the more usual mid to high 90's expected in July.

I have crawled about on soggy ground, cutting back flopping clumps of achillea, daisies and veronica, noting in frustration that areas weeded three weeks ago have been invaded yet again with grassy roots which defy the layers of bark mulch.

Frequent rain showers have dictated puttering with plants on the front porch 

The three large rosemarys which had become shabby and root-bound have responded to larger quarters and fresh soil lightened with the addition of some coarse builders' sand.

I trimmed several inches from the tips of the prostrate rosemary and it rewarded me by producing a cloud of tiny blue-white flowers.

The herb plot by the carport is the one garden where I put down landscaping fabric.

The main exposure is toward the west, with sunlight filtering through the trees from the south. 

The herbs are not as happy this year--even this sheltered spot has caught more moisture than woody sage and lavender enjoy.

I've several times trimmed wilting lower stems from the three sage plants--have pruned away some of the twiggy mat of stems underlying the thyme. 

The back corner of the herb garden has been dominated by an invasive marjoram cultivar--very lacking in flavor and aroma. I discovered it, along with several clumps of lemon balm, just beyond the box hedge on the south side of the carport and unwittingly encouraged it to flourish.

I don't mind that lemon balm sprawls about, dropping seeds which sprout into tiny plantlets.

It responds cheerfully to severe cutbacks, raising fresh crinkly leaves until blackened by a severe frost.

The marjoram, however, needed to go.

This left me with a bare corner which tends to go dry. I've tried achillea there--it flops over the retaining wall not minding the dry soil, but quickly growing scraggly.  I moved it after one season.

I could simply allow a rampage of ajuga to cover that area.

At the moment a lone foxglove is struggling there, its companion uprooted by a naughty cat.

While 'digitalis' fits with the theme of a herb garden, I'm sure if it survives the winter it should have a home in moist shade.

The spring was so prolonged and chilly that I didn't plant up the wooden tub to basil and cilantro.

I have a collection of lavender seedlings on the porch, too fragile yet to put in the ground.

Is any garden ever finished?

July is the month when the cicadas emerge, leaving their bronzed crackly carapaces caught in the bark of the dooryard trees.

The 'shells' are complete with legs and eye sockets giving the appearance of empty armor. 

Their scraping sound is loud in the evening dusk.

I stepped outside early on Friday morning and noticed an adult turkey eyeing me warily from behind the garage.  The flock had gathered and was trundling determinedly toward the woods when I returned with my camera.

Turkeys are not at all cooperative subjects for photos.

These are two of my better zoom shots.

In one photo I counted 17 turkeys, there may have been several more.

The youngsters scudded along, heads close to the grass.

The 'bully boys' were underfoot as I walked across the back yard, although they were wary of accompanying me as I paced up the field for a closer view of the turkeys.

Bobby scrambled up the sweet gum tree and maintained a watchful surveillance until the turkeys disappeared into the cover of the woods.

Willis the Cat takes his duties as guardian of the dooryard very seriously.

He watched the turkeys stroll past, then claimed occupancy of a comfortable folding chair in the carport for most of the day.  He was present while I ate a lunch time sandwich on the front porch and noted the pair of goldfinches bouncing and pecking on the head of a dwarf sunflower only a few feet away.

He strolled behind Jim on his rounds of the garden, bringing up the rear, keeping an avuncular eye on the antics of the boy cats, administering a disciplinary swat as needed.

It would seem that a fellow could have a few moments peace on his favorite rock without the farm threatening to go to hell in a hand basket!

Arrivals and departures of neighbors demanded supervision; 

Jim's trip to the upper garden to pick sweet corn for supper prompted Willis to tag along, diving into the rows of corn, popping out between the stalks, making sure that no beast, bird or insect lurked undiscovered in the rustling green leaves.

Edward [who can no longer be designated as 'Little Edward'] takes no responsibility for the welfare of the farm or its occupants.

He is lazy, very stout, companionable and utterly charming.

I intended to cut down the toppled sunflowers, but didn't accomplish that between the frequent showers that pelted down last week.

Oddly, although the bent stalks are cracked and split, several of the damaged plants are opening blossoms even as they sprawl prostrate across the neighboring cosmos and zinnias.

Sunflowers are intriguing in bud, in full bloom or as the tightly packed seed heads mature.

As the hours of Friday dwindled into evening, we declared our work week done.

I sank gratefully into the chair in the carport, my lap immediately appropriated by Edward who landed there in a weighty, purring sprawl.

Jim let down the tailgate of his vintage pickup and sat there, feet swinging.

In the back field Edward's brothers, Nellie and Bobby, trolled through the rough grass, pouncing on fireflies, turning to chase each other madly.

Nearer the dark line of the woods, Charlie-cat prowled recklessly, his pale-furred shape unmistakable in the growing dusk.

Thinking to avoid the usual late evening round-up of cats, I called them.

All three turned and raced, pell-mell, down the field toward the carport.

Low overhead a cronking call brought us all to attention.  Willis rose on his tweedy haunches, ears pricked. The call came again, accompanied by a soft beat of wings as the blue heron who lives across the creek cleared the sweet gum tree and flapped homeward, long neck stretched in front, slender legs under-lining his tail fathers. 

In the darkening field a rusty brown shape slid into view, ambled along the shallow ditch, pausing to sniff.

I handed Jim the binoculars which we keep on the porch.

'A coyote,' he announced, confirming my thought.

I looked at my cats who had so recently been in the field, surely vulnerable to the wiles of the coyote.

I rose and bundled the boy cats hastily through the kitchen door.

Willis sat alert and watchful, yellow eyed, lean, wise with his seniority of three previous summers.

As though satisfied that the dooryard was, for a time secure, safe from prowling coyotes, low-flying birds and invading turkeys, Willis landed gracefully in my vacated chair, rested his pointy face on his tweedy paws. Beyond the circle of the dooryard light fireflies danced, tiny lamps flashing, and the rasping whir of the cicadas welcomed the night.

Summer Storms

The pink hibiscus at the edge of the east facing garage wall doesn't seem to mind the heat.

The leaves may droop but each morning brings fresh bloom.

The plant dies back with hard frost and I cut the dry papery stalks to the ground.

The leaves begin to emerge in spring only when the days and nights are well warmed.

The Double-Red Knock-Out roses have resumed their bloom after a brief exhausted rest.

I meant to shear them back, but there were more pressing garden tasks.

A mid-August pruning should give us a late flush of September blossom--the 'last rose of summer' effect.

One plants the vegetable garden in spring, longing for the taste of freshness.

Suddenly there is a glut of cucumbers; we've tired of green beans for every dinner.

I picked the last of the green beans on Tuesday morning, uprooting the spent bushes as I went along the row.

I was out before 8 A.M. to do this--but was exhausted and dizzy from the heat before I finished an hour later. Temps this week have been in the high 80's F.--climbing to 90 by afternoon.

I don't flourish in the height of summer heat--feeling heavy-limbed, light-headed, generally out of sorts.

Much of G. and M.'s garden has fallen victim to the heavy rains.  [They are on lower ground a mile away.]

Gina, with a resurgence of energy after her 'event planning,' has wanted to make pickles.

She went home with a basketful of our excess cukes to make refrigerator pickles.

Between showers J. 'turned' the hay and it dried enough to roll into bales.

The north field, finally shorn of the wheat crop

Tidying the kitchen after Tuesday's supper, I went out with peelings and tidbits for the trash heap.

Hearing an unfamiliar growl of machinery, I crossed the dooryard to have a view of the north field.

'The combiners are here,' I announced to J. when I went inside.

He thumped out of his recliner, abandoning the evening news, and went outside to take in the welcome sight.

[The wheat was ready for harvest at least three weeks ago, but with the incessant rains the farmer who does the combining on shares has been behind. Watching crops 'go by,' immobilized by the whims of weather, is frustrating to farmers of any degree.]

J. was whizzing around on the riding lawn mower, cutting the grass of the front lawn an hour later when I haled him, cordless phone in hand. Turning to go inside I stopped as a mud-encrusted, elderly pickup lumbered up the drive.

The two men who emerged were sweat-stained, their faces weary; bits of straw clung to their pants legs, their shirts were plastered to chests and backs with damp.

In response to my inquiry, one of them announced that they must talk with Jim about the sale of the grain.

I gestured to where J. sat astride the mower, phone to his ear. 

We made desultory conversation, about the unfavorable weather.

One man lit a cigarette, seeming grateful for a few moments respite from work.

Typical of area men, their responses to my remarks were dotted with the respectful term 'ma'am.' 

'We're finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel,' one said, pulling a crumpled bandanna from his pocket to mop his warm face.  

I left them waiting under the maple, made my way inside to put the kitchen to bed.

J. came in later to replace the phone and pass on the news that due to the rain and the late harvest, none of the area grain was of 'food quality.' Our wheat will go to a milling plant in Tennessee to be converted to chicken feed.

On Thursday J. raked and baled the straw. Joe Yoder appeared to help load the 50 straw bales that he needs for his family's venture into truck gardening. I handed out cookies and lemonade, retreated again to my basement sewing room.

Grandson D. appeared wanting to know the where-abouts of J.

'In the field still, I think.  I can hear a tractor.'

D. clattered down the stairs a few moments later.

'Grampy's not out there. Its a man planting soybeans!'

The phone rang repeatedly. The air conditioner chugged. 

Cats sprawled near the air ducts or lay about limply in my cool sewing room.

G. phoned to announce that she'd had a cooking binge and would bring supper.

I pared cucumbers, sliced fresh green peppers for salad.

Going outside in the stifling heat to dump peelings I was startled by a tremendous roll of thunder 

directly overhead.

As we assembled  for supper the sky darkened and  an angry wind began to stir.

Rain drops spattered as G. and her family gathered themselves to return home.

Washing up at the kitchen sink, I gazed through the window at the trees lashing about. 

Rain broke in a torrent. The electricity wavered, steadied, faltered again.

'Are we having hail?' I asked J., startled by the drumming on the east windows.

It was 'only' rain, blown in force across the front porch, soaking the cushions on the wicker bench, drenching the potted plants.

It was full dark before the storm moved on.

Stepping outside in the relative coolness of Friday morning, the first thing that caught my eye was my shattered row of sunflowers.

As I walked toward them, I noted that branches from the sweet gum tree were flung across the drive. Smaller branches and twigs littered the back lawn under the maples.

The pink hibiscus by the garage was a welter of thrashed stalks.

I went back inside to tell J. of my sunflower woes.

'What about the sweet corn?' he demanded.

'I don't know,' I said.  'I didn't look in that direction.'

Much of the sweet corn had been blown sideways.

J. went through the rows, righting stalks, firming soil around the roots.

This is the second time this corn has needed to be propped up after a storm.

Turning from the upper garden my eyes took in another change, although it took a few seconds to process what I saw.

The ancient apple tree at the edge of the back lawn had toppled.

Close inspection showed that the roots had been in a bad way, the inner stump of the tree riddled with a punky rot.

More than half of my sunflower row crashed, blown over into the zinnias and cosmos.

The sunflowers have been a joy in past seasons, their bright faces turning with the sun, the seed heads luring goldfinches and the last butterflies of autumn.

I miss them already.

I dragged fallen limbs and slender branches to the trash heap while J. labored over his rows of battered corn.

The sweet gum tree seems particularly vulnerable to wind--several good sized limbs were down.

It is the only one on the property, treasured for the rich colors of its leaves in autumn.

Willis and the three 'bully boys' trudged about the yard in my wake, pausing to pant in the rising heat.

Willis flopped in the cool gravel of the upper drive--sprawled amongst the leaves left behind from the fallen sweet gum branches.

Sweat trickled in tiny trails down my back as I worked.

I thought of the many generations who have endured the toils of summer without the solace of air conditioning, without the refreshment of holding a glass under the ice cube dispenser.

I thought of women who have cooked each meal over a wood or coal fired range, heated water to wash the family linens and laundry, while their menfolk tended crops, put up hay, spending the days under the scorching sun.

Summer is an intense season--days and nights of heat, weeks of tending crops and fretting over the weather.

Some crops flourish, others fail miserably to thrive or are caught at their peak by blight or drought or insect invasion.  By mid July, the anticipation of summer has been smothered in humidity, become something of an endurance test.

I do what I can outdoors, return to the house, to a cool shower, to fresh cotton garments, to tall glasses of iced tea or lemonade.

I think about autumn, when the hoped for harvest will be realized--or not--when the front porch is again a welcoming spot to read and the glow of the sun is a blessing rather than a force which prompts retreat.