Sunflowers

Last year in the very early spring, in a fit of hope and optimism after a difficult and very long winter, I went to Home Depot and bought a dozen packages of sunflower seeds, all different kinds. I planted them everywhere on our almost acre of property. I planted them all around the house, in the rear of every flowerbed, in my vegetable garden, and along the back fence that separated our dog yard from the lower 40. For weeks, I walked around in happy anticipation of the glorious riot of happy sunflowers that would surround us all summer; bringing hope and happy visions to all. Well, I guess I brought a lot of hope and full bellies to a lot of birds because not one came up. Not one. For several days I walked around the property thinking maybe there was a scraggly stem coming up in some hidden corner. Telling myself that this really wasn’t a sign of gloom and doom to come, just a sign of hungry birds. Finally, one morning when I thought it was all over, I saw two tall stalks growing in front of the back fence. I didn’t need a whole field of sunflowers for optimism; I would be able to see these two tall sentries every time I walked out my back door. It was enough.

Two days later our gardeners cut down the “weeds” growing along the fence.

This year, along with my very ambitious vegetable garden, I planted just a few sunflower seeds. A couple of days I noted that one of the taller weeds had a golden flower head with a dark eye that follows the sun. I finally have my sunflower.

Lazy, Hazy Daze of Summer

It has been hot, hot, hot and I have been lazy. It is amazing how enervating this weather is. I have not even made cookies in weeks. The only constructive thing I have been steadily working on is my cotton summer sweater. Maybe it will be done before September. And I do have some incentive to finish it. I have a new pattern picked out to make my mom a cardigan for Christmas and I will not allow myself to buy the yarn until I finish the front and back of this sweater and only have the sleeves to knit.

Not one new pictures. Even the hummingbirds are lazy. I was spotting them a dozen times a day coming to my feeder, but since the Rose-O-Sharon in neighboring yards came into bloom, it must be easier to buzz around several big bushes than fly all the way up to my deck.

My garden is still doing great. The tomatoes are so big that they knocked over all the tomato cages! BG kindly pounded in some tall stakes and I tied up the cages and stray tomato stalks so now they are growing upright. While tying them up I found what I thought was a melon vine (my melons are quite healthy) which was growing up one of the tomatoes is actually a cucumber. So one of my cukes escaped the marauding hoards. I also have quite a few either beans or peas. I think beans. I actually picked my first cherry tomato yesterday. And I bought mason jars in anticipation of canning my tomato bounty.

I promise to take more pics today. I spotted several plants that looked interesting and camera worthy, but yesterday I was too lazy!

Hidden Treasure

We are in the middle of a delightful stretch of summer weather, hot, but not too hot, not too humid, sunny. Who could ask for anything more? When wandering around my yard last week, taking pictures of flowers, I came across this tiny perfect orange flower and immediately went inside to look it up. It is a scarlet pimpernel! How cool is that? The flowers are barely a quarter inch across and hidden between some big bushy decorative grasses. My theory on weeks is if it has a nice flower and does not completely take over a flower I planted deliberately, it stays.

Darn These Pictures!

Obviously I do not know how to manage my photos on this blog. The best picture I wansted to post got cut off. So here it is in its very own post. Sophie delicately smelling a hibiscus flower.

Garden Catch Up

I am including a few pictures of my garden and of Sophie, cousin to Ferdinand the bull.

After a week with a combination of rain/thunderstorms, feeling under the weather and stifling heat, I finally got outside yesterday morning. It was cloudy, but surprising cool and no threat of immediate rain. I weeded all my flowerbeds and planted the few last minute pots of annuals I had purchased. I will NOT walk through Home Depots Garden Center again, I will NOT. I was pleasantly surprised to see that several of my tiger lilies, planted this spring, are sending up flower spikes. I did not expect to see any flowers till next year. The best surprise is how lovely the portulacas are. I really bought them because I remember my dad planting them and I liked the fleshy leaves. Well, they are the loveliest little flowers. I looked them up and they are also called moss roses and I can see why. They are bright colored jewels of all different colors. They will be on my permanent list of annuals from now on.

I saved the vegetable garden for last. It was decimated by a marauding gang of ground hogs and their chipmunk flunkies. Then totally overgrown by a week of neglect and rain. I managed to clear out the front section and found rows of flat leaf parsley and cilantro. I planted a pot of each to give the little seedlings encouragement. I found half a dozen carrots that fought their way through the purslane and crab grass. I looked up purslane and it is a very healthy salad plant and it is quite tasty. I am thinking I should just abandon the garden to its whims. However, the tomatoes and hot peppers look like they will march up to the house and demand to make sauce out of me. You can see them in the picture on the far right) I guess that Miracle Grow was worth it.

Chapter 2 – I Paid For These Classes, We Are Going!

I am posting the second chapter of the Luka Chronicles as I had a 36-48 hour bug that knocked me on my ass, literally. I was so dizzy I was bouncing off the walls like a pinball on my way to the bathroom . Fortunately I slept through most of it. 'Nough said. Here is chapter 2.

Acting on the suggestion of several people in my dog obedience class when we chatted across the nylon fence, I took Luka to the dog park for "socialization" on Sunday. Once again the sight of other DOGS put her into a frenzy of baking and straining at the leash. Luka is a smallish (50 pound) Shepherd/Lab/something-odd mix, but she is a
powerful and strong for her size. When she saw a dozen or so dogs behind the fence, she gave a mighty lunge as if pulling a sled out of a quagmire and yanked me off my feet on and dragged me for about 15 feet on my back on the ice to the great entertainment of the entire park. Once we got through the fence and the people stopped laughing, I let Luka off leash and she had a fine time running with the packs of dogs. When I finally called her & snapped on the leash, my white dog was mostly brown. The field was slightly snow-covered, but mostly churned up mud. I did find out something interesting about Luka’s coat. She has doggie Scotch-guard. At home I vigorously toweled her off before letting her in the house. She was only partly clean, but I wanted to go inside. About an hour later I looked at her and she was completely white again. Hmmmmm. Perhaps I could patent this and make up the cost of collars, classes and incidental chewing accidents.

After this fun day I swore I would get her a pinch collar. I did and we walked several times this past week with the pinch collar (on Luka) with reasonable success.

Last night Luka had her second obedience class that I really was not looking forward to. I put on my leather gloves and after dragging me through the store, we were able to actually enter the ring with the rest of the class. I just dragged her out when she started to bark, but she was a million times better. However, she still could not pay any attention to me with all those other DOGS to sniff and jump on. After about 15 minutes, the teacher asked me if I wanted to try a Gentle Leader collar. That is one that has two loops, one goes around the neck and another goes around the muzzle of the dog. I had noticed that several other dogs in class had them, but they just looked like quite dogs with silly collars. Boy was I wrong! The trainer put the collar on Luka, she jumped up twice, pawed at her nose once and then walked perfectly at the trainer’s side. My mouth fell open. She handed the leash to me and said if she paws at it, give her a treat and say, “lets go.” It was like she handed me a different dog. Luka did not pull and paid attention to me (pretty much for the first time in her life) the whole rest of the class. I would not have believed it if someone told me. At the end of the class she asked me if I wanted to purchase the harness. Well duh.

I can't wait for lesson 3!!!

Patty & Luka, the perfect dog

Random Thoughts

This is why I like photography so much. You take what you think will be a nice picture and circumstances and sunlight you would not get at any other time and chance make it a great. This was taken on our deck, under the picnic table. The vertical bars are the deck rail posts and the horizontal bars are the house siding.

Say what you will about smoking, and I am a former smoker, there was something very sexy about a man lighting two cigarettes and handing one to a woman. (Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, Now Voyager). Or a man lights a woman’s cigarette and she steadies his hand holding the match as the flame touches the end of her cigarette. What a potentially intimate moment between two people who barely know each other. Do not get me wrong. I am glad that people in general do not smoke as much and there is no smoke in restaurants. But, an occasional nostalgic glimpse of the past ……

I was looking through some photo albums the other day, one with pictures of my kids when they were very young (and so was I). The other one is one of my favorite presents from my mom. One Christmas she made personal photo albums for my sister and me, each with pictures of ourselves growing up with pictures of various relatives. She gave them to us many years ago, but I now and then pull it out and have a nostalgic moment. I happened to look through both of these albums because I had dug them out from the many boxes of unpacked books in the basement. It seems every time we move that stack gets bigger. Anyway, I was feeling a little nostalgic and talking to BG about it. And that brought on conversation about our kids when they were toddlers. I said that it was pleasant to look at those pictures, but sort of sad. No not sad, nostalgic for simpler times with simpler problems? Nostalgic for just being younger? I couldn’t quite put a word to the feeling. Definitely a little sad, but a pleasurable sad. Bobby told me that he realized a long time ago that no one gets to be 20 for any longer than anyone else. Wow. I never thought of it that way before, Duh, but it is SO true.