garden — Page 172

A Pox on Hard Freezes

October 16, 2015 at 9:12 am by Claudia

10-16 mgbuds

Do you see those little buds? Suddenly, there are morning glory buds everywhere, quite late in the season. I’m sure you will understand when I say I’d like to see them open up and bless us with their beauty.

But…Sunday night the temps are supposed to drop into the twenties. Just for one night. Then it’s back to normal. I’m in a little bit of a panic. The porch plants I can bring inside. The zinnias and morning glories? No can do. I’m already making plans to cover everything with a sheet and hope against hope they hang in there.

Otherwise, I’ll be in mourning.

10-16 butterfly bush

It seems especially cruel when there’s a hard freeze for just one night; it’s like a tease, but not a good one. I know winter is inevitable, but since the remainder of the nighttime temps are going to stay in the forties or high thirties for a while, it seems a shame not to see my flowers bloom.

Dad is still in a rather cheery mood. Meredith and I suspect that some of that is due to the pain meds he’s on. They’re mellowing him. As my dad can be rather irascible, to put it mildly, I must say it’s nice to hear him sound so happy. He calls me to tell me what he ate for breakfast and lunch. He details his conversations with the nurses. He talks about physical therapy. My dad, by the way, is pretty strong for a 92 year old, so I have no doubt that he’ll do well in PT. Tomorrow, they’ll assess his progress and decide whether he goes home or to a rehab facility. I’m thinking it will be rehab, but maybe not for as long as predicted.

10-16 openingzinnia

Don’t you want to see this flower open? I do. A pox on any hard freezes!

Don and Dan will be on The Front Burner radio show on WIOX on Saturday morning. They’ll be playing their music and talking about the new CD from 11 am to 12 pm. The show is hosted by our friends Elly and Dave (who will also be at the CD Release Party later on Saturday.) If you’re at all interested in giving it a listen, WIOX, which is a Public Radio station, streams live. You can find it here. Don’s going to be on another radio show next Thursday evening and I’ll share what I know about that later in the week.

If you have any wise tips as to covering plants during a freeze, I’m all ears – or eyes, in this case. The morning glories and zinnias are right up against and on top of a stretch of the chicken wire fence. Thanks, everyone!

Happy Friday.

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The Defiant Ones

October 10, 2015 at 9:43 am by Claudia

Throughout the garden there are signs of the inevitable decline that comes at this time of year. Flowers have stopped blooming; in many cases, there are dried up stems where once there were beautiful, green plants. I’ve been looking at all of it through the camera’s lens for the past couple of days.

There are, hidden among the fallen leaves and debris, a few defiant ones – flowers that still bloom despite the disarray around them.

All of the purple coneflowers look like this:

10-10 dried up coneflowers

But, almost hidden away in the side garden, I saw this:

10-10 coneflower

The last man standing. So beautiful.

10-10 brown-eyed susans

A few defiant brown-eyed susans.

10-10 rose

The last of the roses.

10-10 butterfly bush

A bloom hidden deep within the butterfly bush.

10-10 catmint

There are some catmint flowers here and there.

10-10 spirea

The spirea is giving us one last burst of flowers.

10-10 phlox

And the phlox isn’t giving up without a fight.

My goodness, there is such a beauty in this decline, these flashes of color amid the fading greens and browns of the Autumn garden. It’s easy to focus on what was, instead of what is. And what is, is completely gorgeous in its own right.

Oh, I saw a Monarch Butterfly the other day! I didn’t have my camera and it was flying quickly around the property. It was gorgeous. Sadly, I don’t see them much anymore, so when I do, I stop and watch it until it fades out of sight.

Today is another beautiful, sunny fall day. I’m lapping all of this up. Tomorrow, I head into the city again to watch a run-through of the show.

I stopped by the library the other day.

10-10 library haul

I’m pretty sure the Sue Grafton books I’ve missed reading are S through V. Fortunately, my little local library had them on the shelf. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Ace Atkins but have yet to read any of his books. This one was on display, so I grabbed it. I had been in the queue for All the Light We Cannot See and it finally came in.

Just as it did when I was a little girl going to the bookmobile every week, a stack of library books makes me very, very happy.

Happy Saturday.

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Chatty on Wednesday

October 7, 2015 at 8:56 am by Claudia

10-7 mini rainbow

• Early yesterday evening I was outside with Scout. I looked up and saw this.

The sun was to the right (out of picture range) and was it the moon glowing under that cloud? I’m not sure, but that little rainbow-like slash of light appeared. Since my eyes are very sensitive to light, I thought maybe I was seeing something that wasn’t there.

But the camera saw it, too.

A lovely little moment in time.

• We bit the bullet yesterday and ordered heating oil. Gas prices are pretty low at the moment, so we thought this would be a good time to do it and sure enough, our oil guy told us that now was the time because prices were soon going up. High or low, heating oil is expensive.

The heavy gold quilt is covering the bed once again. I’m wearing my flannel pajamas.

I’m pretty sure it’s Autumn.

10-7 zinnia with web

Meanwhile, the zinnias just keep on blooming.

10-7 orange zinnia

• Design Sponge, one of my favorite sites, did a Guide to Ulster County, NY yesterday. That’s where we live. You might find it interesting. Grace Bonney, the founder of Design Sponge, recently moved up here – she’s not all that far from us – and has fallen in love with this beautiful area, just as we have.

We’ve got it all here. And this time of the year? Simply glorious.

• Housekeeping: If you’ve noticed the Cookie pop-up at the bottom of the blog, let me explain why it’s there. The European Union has a law that requires websites to indicate if cookies are being used on their site. Cookies, in case you’re not familiar with that term, are:

‘small pieces of data sent by a website and stored in the user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website…Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember information (such as items in a shopping cart) or to record the user’s browsing activity (including clicking particular buttons, logging in, or recording which pages were visited by the user as far back as months or years ago.” Wikipedia.

Every website uses cookies. Ads use cookies. The EU thinks anyone viewing a website should be alerted to that fact. And Google is now enforcing that law. So, any of us who have potential visitors from the EU have to have a ‘cookie warning.’

Blogger blogs already have one. The rest of us have to take care of it ourselves, hence the plug-in I added yesterday (on both my blogs.)

Oy. It’s a bit of a pain in the tush, since anyone who goes on the web for even a minute encounters cookies. You can set your web browser to not allow cookies, if it’s of any great concern to you.

But we do what we have to do, right? I’ve tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible. So, there you go.

I spent a chunk of time yesterday diddling around with all of this and it’s time I’ll never get back. Sigh.

• Book review of X by Sue Grafton on Just Let Me Finish This Page today. Click here.

• Whoops! Forgot to add that The Poisoner’s Handbook (starring Don Sparks) is now showing on Netflix! We saw it listed last night and Genevieve, one of my readers, also wrote me to let me know about it.

Happy Wednesday.

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A Pox on Hard Freezes

The Defiant Ones

Chatty on Wednesday

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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