garden — Page 189

This or That?

May 13, 2015 at 8:09 am by Claudia

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The temperatures dropped over 20 degrees overnight and today will be in the sixties. Then, back up to the seventies – maybe we’ll get a week or two of actual spring weather?

I’m in a bit of a quandary at the moment. I’d planned to go to Hartford on Thursday to watch a final dress rehearsal with the orchestra in the afternoon. Then one more visit on Sunday afternoon to watch a preview. Everything was planned and written in my calendar. Then in the mid-afternoon, Don read an email to me that said he’d been cast in an episode of a new series that would be filming on…Thursday. (He will also be in two more episodes that will film in the coming weeks.) Good news, yes, but you see, we have one car. And we have a dog who needs one of us around most, but not all, of the time.

Don has to have the car on Thursday. I, therefore, cannot go to Hartford. Should I go today, when there really won’t be run-through? If I go tonight, I have to drive home late at night because Don needs the car early tomorrow morning. I don’t want to be making a two hour drive home at 11:00. So, do I go this afternoon and hang around for part of the evening? Or, do I go on Saturday, for example, watch the evening preview, stay the night, and then catch another preview on Sunday?

I sent off a flurry of emails (too many) to the Stage Manager and her response today was what I knew it would be and should be: It is up to me.

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Most of the time, having one fourteen-year-old car is fine. But at times like these, it’s a pain in the tush. I comfort myself by acknowledging that even if we had two cars, both of us could not be away for a long period of time on Thursday. No can do. Little Scout needs one of us around.

Sometimes making a decision like this one is extremely difficult for me. How do I do my job to the best of my ability? I owe them two more days of work. How should I handle it? How can I best serve the actors? And then my head starts spinning.

I remind myself: in the end, it’s not an earth shattering decision.

I’ll probably go hang out there today.

Or maybe not.

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On top of that, I had to look at timetables, etc., and figure out if I wanted to take the train or a plane to and from Chautauqua. I did both last year and each has its advantages. The train trip is five hours long and arrives in Buffalo and then there is an hour and a half trip from there to Chautauqua. Some planes arrive in Buffalo, some in Erie. If the flight goes to Erie, the commute to Chautauqua is much shorter. But all plane trips involve connecting flights which total about five hours flight time and, let’s face it, flying is a hassle, plain and simple.

I went with the train.

One decision down, one to go.

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And then Don has to sweat whether he can take the bus into Manhattan on Thursday or whether he will have a very early call and have to drive into the city.

When you freelance at our age, you’re faced with lots of days of ‘leisure’ and then you’re suddenly thrown into a whirlwind of activity and decisions that have to be made and you’re driving or flying here and there and you’re worrying about how many hours you are away from Scout and you work hard and then…it’s back to slothdom.

Sigh.

Happy Wednesday.

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Lilacs At Their Peak

May 12, 2015 at 9:19 am by Claudia

On Sunday evening, after a day where the temperature hit 90° – yes, you read that right – Don and I ventured out to the porch and sat for a while on the glider. We’d visited our local nursery earlier in the day. I’d been feeling sad this Mother’s Day, so we decided that the nursery just might bring a smile to my face, and it did. I came home and potted plants, adding some hanging baskets, and the porch was now adorned for the season.

There’s nothing prettier than the view from the glider; lush green everywhere, the sugar maple arching over the big garden bed, and the lilac bush blooming in the distance. Birds were calling back and forth, a breeze had finally kicked up, and we sighed with contentment.

This is what we wait for in the last days of winter, when spring seems an impossibility.

Of course, temperature-wise, we’ve sort of skipped spring. Yesterday was 87 and humid, today it will be 89. But tomorrow? Back into the sixties. What a bizarre season it has been so far!

I did some more work outside yesterday until the oppressive heat, along with the pollen that is everywhere, did me in. My cough came back and I realized that I have to lay low today until tomorrow brings some relief.

At the end of our time on the porch, we ventured over to the lilac bush to catch some of its heady, heavenly scent. Camera in hand, I took some more photos of the lilac at its peak. I also took some photos of the flowering quince and the wild honeysuckle (tomorrow’s post).

Here you go, lilac lovers:

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Close your eyes and imagine the scent.

The tiny bush I planted over seven years ago is now just about six feet tall. This year’s bloom has been the best ever. I can’t bring myself to cut any of the blooms. I’m that way with a lot of the garden flowers. I like them in the garden.

For so many years, coaching took me away from home at this time of year, so I never take the sight of any of this for granted. It will take me away again for three weeks in June and early July, but three weeks seems like nothing compared to the ten I used to spend away from home.

I travel to Hartford on Thursday and again on Sunday and then my work on Kiss Me Kate will be done. I can’t wait to see it onstage, with the set and costumes.

Happy Tuesday.

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Lilacs, Mulching & Mistaken Identity

May 9, 2015 at 8:51 am by Claudia

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Mulching in sunny, 87° weather proved to be a bit daunting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the calendar read May 8th yesterday. Too hot – much too hot for this time of year. It looks as if it will be with us for a few more days. Still a bit under the weather, but much better, I unloaded 5 bags of mulch throughout the garden beds; dumping a bag into my new cart, scooping, carefully arranging it so as not to damage the base of already established plants, scooping and scooping some more.

I took a couple of breaks, drank lots of water, stopped for lunch, but let me tell you, I was exhausted at the end of the day. I supposed it was a combination of the heat, a still recovering body, and pollen. Lord, do we have pollen. But I couldn’t let it go much longer or I would have had to thoroughly weed everything again.

All the while, however, the scent from the lilacs kept wafting in my direction.

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Oh. my. heavens. Such a glorious scent. This particular lilac is called the Pocahontas Lilac and it has deep purple blooms. This year, in particular, there are a lot of flowers. I planted it on Mother’s Day in 2008 (not long after I started this blog.) Seven years later, it is nicely substantial. As I was writing this, I wondered just when it was that I planted it, so I searched the blog posts and found my answer. A blog turns out to be a very nice way of keeping track of events!

The two big rose bushes are questionable at the moment. One shows some green leaves coming in at the base. The other, older bush is still bare. I wonder if this winter was just too much for it? The thought of digging it out of the ground is daunting. Keep your fingers crossed. I’m hoping that the late spring is the culprit and that some growth will show itself soon.

The peony shoots are about 10 inches high, so it looks as if we’re right on track for bloom in and around the first week of June. The trees have all leafed out and the catalpa is starting to show baby versions of what will become giant heart-shaped leaves.

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Thank you so much, everyone, for alerting me to the fact that my ‘dogwood’ was really a crabapple! That’s one of the wonderful things about blogging, this sharing of information. I don’t begin to pretend I know everything about gardening, or trees, or rose bushes. And one of the areas in which I know next to nothing is flowering trees, perhaps because we didn’t have any of them in my yard when I was growing up, and we still don’t have them here – save for what turns out to be a baby crabapple tree.

But I’m actually more excited about the crabapple than I was about the dogwood, because I’ve always thought them to be so beautiful. So now we know: dogwoods have 4 petals, which are really leaves/bracts, and my little tree’s blossoms had 5 petals. Once Nancy alerted me, I googled ‘crabapple photos’ and there, staring at me, was just what I was seeing through my own camera lens.

Let’s see, last year I was certain the big bush over by the shed was a wiegela and it turned out to be flowering quince. This year, I was certain my little volunteer tree was a dogwood and it turned out to be a crabapple. We never stop learning, do we? I love it.

Today, maybe some weed whacking. Or wacking. I’m never sure just what it is.

Maybe a trip to our local nursery. Definitely a trip to the grocery store.

Happy Saturday.

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This or That?

Lilacs At Their Peak

Lilacs, Mulching & Mistaken Identity

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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