flowers — Page 221

Mother Nature is Playing With Me

October 22, 2015 at 8:58 am by Claudia

10-22 leaves

In the middle of my hours spent with the leaves, a rake, and a tarp, I thought I saw something.

10-22 tiny yellow flower

A yellow flower. On closer examination, a yellow day lily. What??

10-22 tiny yellow flower 2

The particular plant hasn’t bloomed in about 2 – 3 months.

Mother Nature is playing with me. An early frost, dead plants, and then this.

10-22 tiny yellow flower 3

It looks like there might be at least another blossom waiting to open.

What a treat! Especially in the middle of raking an endless amount of maple, black walnut, and giant catalpa leaves. I must have filled the tarp up 9 or 10 times. Then Don came home later in the day and filled a few more tarps. The leaves were deposited on the edge of the woods, where they will decompose and nourish the soil.

Tired, of course. But we got a lot done.

10-22 clematis

This is what the clematis looks like late in the season. Beautiful, don’t you think? Like little feathers swirling in a circle.

Later in the day, the UPS truck pulled up with a box for me. I have a separate twitter feed for Just Let Me Finish This Page and I follow a lot of writers and publishers. One day a few weeks ago, I really can’t remember when, Random House tweeted that they were having a contest in conjunction with the publishing of Ruth Reichl’s newest book, My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life.

Reichl was the Restaurant Critic for the New York Times for a number of years before moving on to the Editorship of Gourmet magazine. When Gourmet suddenly folded, she found herself trying to deal with an enormous sense of loss. She coped by going into her kitchen and doing what she loves – cooking. The book chronicles that year and offers up all sorts of recipes, as well.

Well, I quickly entered the contest, then promptly forgot about it until I received an email the other day telling me I was one of the winners.

10-22 ruthreichl win

Goodness! I received a copy of the book – can’t wait to read it – and six tins of a special edition Ruth Reichl Apple Crisp tea by The Republic of Tea, and three mini cocottes (damn that autocorrect – it spelled it as coquette – it’s cocotte as in casserole) from Le Creuset.

Wow! I rarely win contests, so this was a wonderful surprise. I’ll be having some Apple Crisp tea this afternoon. A big thank you to Random House!

Happy Thursday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Meanwhile

October 20, 2015 at 7:30 am by Claudia

Meanwhile…

10-20 hollyhock

The hollyhock is still standing.

The buds look healthy. The flower isn’t wilting. This volunteer that appeared out of nowhere is still hanging in there.

The porch plants are all back outside and the temps are going to be nice and warm for the rest of the week.

I know that it may be difficult for some people to understand my sadness about losing everything in the garden so suddenly. I get it. “It’s Mother Nature’s way.” But I’m not just a dabbler in the garden, someone who plants things and then moves on. I absolutely love gardening and flowers and plants and watching things grow. Recording the changes that happen on a daily basis in the gardens is one of the great joys of my life. I watch everything. Every bud, leaf, bug, bee, butterfly – everything. I know it intimately and it’s my baby.

So it is a big deal to me. And it broke my heart a little this week. I was short tempered yesterday and more than a bit blue.

I’ll get over it, of course. But I’m sad. No doubt about it.

I have to go into the city today for a bit more work on the show, so this will be short.

Happy Tuesday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Let’s Hang On

October 17, 2015 at 8:59 am by Claudia

10-17 zinnia

Do you remember that old Four Seasons song?

Let’s hang on to what we got
Don’t let go, girl, we got a lot
Got a lot of love between us
Hang on, hang on, hang on to what we got.

That’s what I’m singing to my plants today and tomorrow. Yes, the dreaded hard freeze will be here for two nights, not one. Crap. I followed Janet’s advice and watered everything at dusk yesterday. I’ll have to cover everything with sheets around 5:30 pm, as I have to get to the CD Release Party by 6 or so. Earlier than planned, but better to be safe. And I have to bring in all the plants from the porch and there are a lot of them.

And then I’ll have to do it again tomorrow, if all goes well tonight.

10-17 beebalm

The only bee balm blossom that’s still going strong – the others are long gone. Will he make it through the freeze?

Don and Dan (who stayed the night with us) are on their way to the radio station, which is in the Catskills. They’ll be on live from 11 -12 this morning – if you’re interested in listening to them you can catch the program streaming live here.

Tonight is the CD Release Party, with lots of friends coming to celebrate. Some of them will also be performing along with Don and Dan. I wish you all could be here, too! I know we’d have a lot of fun.

Quandary: what does one do when one has a stack of books from the library, among them All the Light We Cannot See, which said person knows she should read but for some reason isn’t very excited about, and an email arrives informing that person that after weeks of waiting in a long queue, Make Me by Lee Child is finally sitting on a shelf reserved under said person’s name at the local library?

(Quite a long and awkward sentence but you get the picture.)

Answer: One drops everything in her own personal ‘queue’ and runs to the library to check it out, which she will be doing as soon as the radio show is over.

I mean, come on, it’s Lee Child. It’s Jack Reacher. End of story.

10-17 wildflowers

Dad is being transferred to rehab today and it is the one we wanted him to be in all along. He had a rocky day yesterday. We finally figured out that he’d been given a sleeping pill in the middle of the night and he was out of it for most of the day. By the time I spoke to him a second time later in the day, he sounded better.

We’re grateful that everything has worked out in the end. Now to rehab and, hopefully, back home in a couple of weeks. Fingers crossed.

Okay. To those of you battling the hard freeze, I wish you luck! Wish me luck, too.

Happy Saturday.

ClaudiaSignature140X93

Mother Nature is Playing With Me

Meanwhile

Let’s Hang On

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

Archives