Posted tagged ‘garden’
June 27, 2020
The morning is lovely, but the day will be hot. It is already 78˚. I expect to have the AC cranking so the house will be nice and cold when I get home from errands.
The weather in Bolgatanga, Ghana was extreme. It was divided into the rainy season and the dry season. The rainy season was hot and oppressively humid. The dry season was sweltering. Strangely enough, though, it actually got chilly in early December, down to the 70’s at night from around 100˚ during the day. I needed a blanket for my bed. The worst of the dry season, the harmattan, began after Christmas. The Harmattan is a dry, dusty wind that blows from the Sahara desert. It hangs around for a couple of months and envelops everything in a cloud of dust. The sand covers the sun. I remember chapped lips and split heels on both feet. The Sahara sand, looking like a large brown cloud, has been blown here. It is the Harmattan.
Halleluia!! I have a list. I needed a list to get me moving. This morning I used the back of my t-shirt to dust shelves in the kitchen while the coffee was brewing. I haven’t done that in a while. Most of my list is for outside, for the deck and garden. I never did my errands yesterday; instead, I stayed home and did stuff around the house and on the deck. The errands are first on my today’s list.
When I was a kid, my father was in charge of outside while my mother ruled inside. The outside was easy: cut the grass and water the flowers in summer and shovel the steps and free the car in winter. My mother cleaned, cooked, washed clothes and took care of us. She was always busy. She was the one who had to discipline us. When we got older, she threw things at us. I remember the dictionary whizzed by my head and hit the wall. Next were her slippers. She’d throw them at us and tell us to bring them to her. We knew better. The slippers weren’t just projectiles. She wanted to whack us with them. She seldom caught us.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: errands, garden, Ghana, harmattan, lists, Peace Corps Ghana, sand
Comments: 9 Comments
June 8, 2018
richI saw lots of sun and hoped it was warm, but the breeze makes the day cooler than I expected. It is only 65˚. The high will be 71˚, and it will go back to the 50’s tonight. I’m still hoping the predicted heat wave will make an appearance, maybe tomorrow.
Skip, my factotum, is here and has a long list of chores ranging from replacing fence posts to cleaning deck furniture. When Skip is done, everything will be ready for the warm days of summer.
When I was a kid, our house had only a small front garden. It was anchored by bushes, and the flowers had to be planted around the bushes. My father was a perfunctory gardener. He planted geraniums and pansies, all of one in the back and all of the other in front. But my father was a master when it came to his grass, his front lawn. That square plot of green got all the attention and care the flowers never did. He mowed and fertilized and watered that patch of grass. I remember it was always lush and green. He allowed but didn’t like the kiddy pool as it squashed the blades of grass. He always yelled when I rode my bike down the small grass hill which bordered the sidewalk. He could see the tire tracks.
My father used a hand push mower and a hand trimmer which sort of looked like scissors. The trimmer clicked and the mower whirred, the two sounds of summer I most remember from my childhoodI . My father never went to a power mower. He did go to electric trimmers, a Father’s Day gift from me.
I can remember summer weekends visiting my parents. My father always gave me a guided tour of his yard. On Saturday I’d sit on the front steps while he mowed. He went back and forth in rows, never deviating from that pattern. When he was finished, he’d ask me how it looked. I always told him the lawn was beautiful. He never said anything but he did smile.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 65˚, breezy, cool, garden, grass
Comments: 6 Comments
August 1, 2017
The day is beautiful but warm and getting warmer. Gracie and I spent the earlier morning on the deck. I read the papers and watched the birds. Sometimes, though, I was so taken I put the paper aside and just watched. The chickadees are the most numerous. I saw two chasing each other. I don’t know if they were amorous or angry. A few nuthatches and tufted titmice also flew in for a few seeds. They waited patiently on branches for the chickadees to leave. I could hear a woodpecker at a pine tree. The fountain, filled with water, splashed and burbled. Gracie thinks it’s a bubbler, a water fountain, so I have to keep filling it. The loud sound of a mower from next door broke the magic of the deck so Gracie and I came inside.
I have to leave the house today to do three errands. I’m hoping they won’t take too long. I have mapped the route, a summer necessity to avoid traffic though today is too nice a beach day to expect tourists on the road.
It will be hot today. It is already 82˚ but won’t get much higher. Tonight will be in the 60’s. If I controlled the weather, I would make today just the way it is and the way it will be tonight.
I brought my camera with me to the deck and took pictures of the deck and the birds. The flowers in the clay pots are blooming. They are mostly on the long rail, but a few big ones are the deck where it ends. I love the look of the clay pots and the wooden flower boxes planted with herbs which are on one smaller rail. When I sit at the table, I can smell basil.
I’m still watching shark movies on Syfy. With most television programs being reruns, I watch baseball or sharks. The Sox won last night and so did the sharks until the end of the movie. We get to watch them devour people before the sharks are blown up which seems to be the only way to kill dinoshark, atomic shark, ghost shark, ice shark, roboshark and so many others, all man eaters. That five headed shark, Sunday’s movie, shared the victims. One head ate a half while another head ate the other half. The front end of the shark had four heads so I felt gypped until they showed the fifth head on the tail. It never seemed to eat but its jaw kept opening and closing.
Jaws was made in Cape waters, and when the first great whites showed up off the coast, there was a sort of Jaws frenzy. Last year 68 various kinds of sharks were spotted off Cape Cod. If they ever start feasting on tourists I may do nothing, but that could prickle my conscience so I’ll explain from my Syfy experience that blowing them up is the only solution.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 82˚, basil, birds, bubbler, burble, camera, chickadees, clay flower pots, cool night, deck, errands, fountain, garden, mower, Nuthatch, route, shark movies, Syfy, titmouse, traffic, weather, wooden flower boxes
Comments: 10 Comments
June 12, 2017
The flowers are all bought. My trunk and backseat floor were filled with plants. I needed to take out a second mortgage to pay for them, but I am pleased with all the different plants and their colors. The perennials will go out front, the herbs in the wooden deck boxes and the other plants in a variety of pots, mostly on the deck. I also bought one hanging plant for the deck. I am a sweaty mess from pushing the cart and wandering through the flower rows in the sun. I’m not a pretty sight.
One of the things I love about having the herbs in the deck boxes is going outside to snip the ones I need. I always feel a bit like Julia Childs as I snip a little basil, some rosemary, and a few chives.
It is really hot and is already 87˚, which will be the high for the day. It will get down to 66˚ tonight. My air conditioner is on, and the house is pleasant. I have to go out later, but I’m waiting until late afternoon hoping it will be a bit cooler.
I never used to mind the heat, but the older I get, the less tolerant I am of the heat and the cold. My furnace cranks all winter, and my central AC is on now. I have become a creature of comfort. I make no excuses. I think I deserve it.
My plastic flamingo and my Travelocity gnome are still here in their winter quarters. They will be the last two summer decorations to be placed outside. I do wish I had a small band to play John Phillip Sousa’s music as we march to the deck. The Stars and Stripes Forever would do just fine.
I’m still wishing I had a tree house in the backyard. It would be my summer vacation spot. I’d make sure Gracie could join me. The skylight would let the stars in. I could lie on my back and look for the constellations or watch the summer meteor showers. A small heater and an outside light would let me watch the snow fall. That would be glorious.
I do love summer on my deck. Soon enough it will be my favorite spot. We’ll have movie nights. We’ll eat barbecue and potato salad then much on popcorn and movie candy as we watch some great movies and some B science fiction films which always make us laugh. In winter I am a bit of a hermit. In summer I am the consummate hostess.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: 87˚, AC, annuals, Barbecue, creature of comfort, deck boxes, flowers, furnace, garden, hanging plant, heat and cold, movie nights, perennials, plastic flamingo, salad, skylight, sweaty mess, Travelocity gnome, treehouse
Comments: 8 Comments
April 10, 2017
The morning has been a bit trying. Nothing I did made Gracie happy. I walked her down the stairs to the yard twice. I gave her treats three times. I patted her until my hand was tired. She wasn’t impressed. She sat beside me and stared. When I ignore her, she gave me the paw on my arm. When I continued to ignore her, she continued to put her paw on my arm. She drove me crazy. Finally, she got on the couch, got comfy, and went to sleep beside me. It is amazing how much my dog rules the roost.
Spring is happening all around me. Colors are coming back into the world. Hyacinths are blooming in my front garden. Purple, pink and red flowers are popping from circles of small fronds. The daffodils in the flower bed closest to the house are sun bright. Every morning when I get the papers, I see something new in the garden.
I have no energy today to do anything. I didn’t make my usual list of chores as I’m generally compelled to finish most of them. My logic insists if there is no list, there are no chores.
I heard the kids playing this morning around 8. There are 6 boys in two houses, and they are loud. They communicate by yelling. They go out to play before the school buses come. Most times they wake me up but not all the way up. I hear them, register the fact in my brain then turn over and go back to sleep. When I was in Ghana, I did the same thing with the call to prayer. A mosque was down on the street below and across from my bedroom during Peace Corps training. The mosque was small and was sandwiched between two houses. Arabic was written at the top of the smallest ever minaret. From that mosque, I could hear the muezzin sing the calls to prayer. The one at 3:30 or so used to wake me up then I got used to it. I listened knowing when it would end so I could go back to sleep. It was the same with the dawn call. Being awakened twice by a muezzin had become commonplace for me. I could never have imagined that.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: call to prayer, colorful world, daffodils, Dog, dog treats, garden, hyacinths, list, logic, mosque, nap, paw on arm, Peace Corps Ghana, spring, to do list, trying day, yellow
Comments: 8 Comments
August 21, 2016
Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day! It is cool and sunny with that clear light of morning. Last night I didn’t even need air conditioning. Tonight we’re getting rain, but not just rain; we’re getting a thunderstorm. I don’t even remember the last time it rained.
I have noticed the darkness creeping in earlier now. We are losing two and a half minutes of light every day. According to the weatherman, a couple of nights this week will be in the high 50’s, a warning that cool nights and crisp mornings are getting closer. They are harbingers of fall. I love when it when late flowers color the front garden. The white clematis are starting to appear on the sides and tops of the front fence. Black-eyed Susans are still in bloom. A white flower whose name I’ve forgotten is budding in the garden next to the house. Soon it will bloom. That unnamed flower has spread across one whole side of the garden. When it blooms, it looks so lovely with the green house as a backdrop.
Tonight we are having our first movie. I have chosen Dick, but it is on order from Amazon prime, and they are saying by eight tonight. I’m hoping for sooner or we may have to choose another movie. The main dish for this evening is hot dogs. I have a hot dog machine which rolls the dogs over and over and also warms the rolls. It needs no tending. I’m going to pick up an appetizer or two, popcorn and some movie candy. We have birthday cake for dessert. I’m hoping my friends find Dick as amusing as I do.
I have two errands to do which makes this the third day in a row I have joined the outside world. Goodbye to comfy clothes.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: beautiful day, beautiful morning, clematis, cool, Dick, flowers, front garden, garden, hot dogs, movie candy, popcorn, sun, sunny
Comments: 13 Comments
April 8, 2014
The morning has already been a full one. I think I’m ready to join Gracie in a morning nap. I had my library board meeting, stops at the pharmacy, Stop and Shop and Ring Brothers, my favorite store for almost anything. I’m shortly going to get into my cozies and while away the day. Right now it’s pouring. It rained during the night, stopped so I could do my errands then started again when I got home. I love rainy days like this one. The house is dark except for the light in this room, my comfort, warm and cozy, a refuge from the rain.
My yard is spring ready. My landscaper and two of his workmen raked the lawn, edged and cleaned the flower beds, blew the debris from my deck and cleared the backyard of all its fallen branches. The lawn also got fertilized. Sebastian, my neighbor and landscaper, wanted it done so the rain would soak the fertilizer into the grass. Once the garden is cleared, I get itching to flower shop, but I know it is way too early. I’ll just have to buy a few pansies for pots on the front steps to hold me in the meanwhile.
My flamingo and my Travelocity gnome winter here in the house. All summer they stay on the deck and enjoy the sunshine. The flamingo dresses for every occasion. Right now he is wearing rabbit ears and a jaunty jacket. The gnome has no wardrobe but is content in his blue coat and conical red hat.
I used to think fireflies were fairies, relatives of Tinker Bell. At night there were so many in the field below my house they seemed to lift the darkness. We’d run and catch them in jars but keep them only a while. They were always one of the best parts of a warm summer night.
Spring and summer are wondrous seasons for me. The world is fresh and new in spring and every flower is welcomed after the drabness of winter. Summer is gardens bursting with color and it is late nights on the deck. I sit in the darkness and watch the fireflies flitting in my backyard among the pine trees, and I still point and yell and watch until they disappear into the next yard.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: dark, errands, fireflies, flamingo, flowers, full morning, garden, meeting, pnsies, rainy, spring and summer, Travelocity gnome, yard clean-up
Comments: 8 Comments
April 7, 2014
It must be spring. I can hear blowers cleaning yards, and I saw my landscaper with his green spreader fertilizing a neighbor’s lawn. Good luck to him with mine. It is covered with small branches felled by that last storm with all the wind. My backyard too has fallen branches but large ones from the pine trees.
Color is returning to the world. The male goldfinches have their bright yellow chests and are beautiful against the backdrop of the brown, bare branches. In my garden are yellows and purples and stark whites. I am back to my stop and look at the garden routine when I get the papers. I don’t want to miss a single new spring flower.
Yesterday I treated myself to my favorite sandwich: an avocado, bacon, cheddar cheese and spicy mayo panini. I also bought a whoopie pie. They were my reward for doing errands.
For me, this is a full week. I have something on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. It always seems to work that way. I have weeks with nothing scheduled then my dance card fills. I actually resent my time being taken. I moan and groan at having to set an alarm, get up early and be out at some ungodly hour. I’m talking nine here. Everything is relative.
My first bike was clunky. All of them were back then. The brakes were back pedal, and there were no gears. The chain sometimes fell off, but we were all skilled at getting it back on the silver cogs. It was one of the first bike maintenance things we learned out of necessity. Once in a while, my pant leg got caught in the chain, and it would all be greasy and sometimes torn before I could free it. I had a wire basket on the front and a bell on the handlebars. When I’d hit a big bump, the stuff in the basket would bounce and sometimes even fall out. We’d attach playing cards or baseball cards to the spokes with clothespins, the snap kind, and we weren’t riding bikes anymore. We were riding motorcycles.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: back pedals, bicycle, bike bell, branches, clunky bike, color, cras and spokes, garden, goldfinches, landscaper, spring flowers, wire bike basket
Comments: 14 Comments
May 6, 2013
The weather today is the same as it has been in days: sun, blue skies and a temperature in the 50’s. Wednesday we’ll get some much-needed rain, and I’m hoping it will pour.
Every morning when I go get the papers, I check out the front garden. It is filling up with the shoots of flowers, and I noticed some of the flowers I planted last year have spread, and in the garden close to the house, some have already bloomed. It is still too early to plant as the evenings get cold, but that will give the flowers time to fill in so I’ll know if I have any space for new plants. I love shopping for plants. I do need to shop for herbs to plant in the side garden and for vegetables to plant in the garden below the deck. Last year I had tomatoes, cucumbers and beans. I never thought I’d become such a gardener.
Today is a lazy day. I could go get my new dump sticker, but that can wait as the dump isn’t open on Mondays and Tuesdays. I am going to do a peapod order later so maybe that will count as grocery shopping. The end of my book is close, under a 100 pages, so this afternoon I will get comfy on the couch and finish it. I could do some house cleaning stuff, but I won’t.
The Amazing Race ended last night, and I was happy with the results. Three teams were left for the final hour. There was only one team, a newly married couple, I hoped wouldn’t win, and they didn’t. They came in second, and I suspect the results stuck in the guy’s craw for a long time. Usually we don’t know when the race took place, but this one was in December as we saw Christmas trees and lights in some of the cities. They went to amazing places on this race, as promised by the title, including Botswana, a country on my list.
I am not a fan of reality television except for the Race. I could care less who dances or sings the best or who gets a rose or even why a rose is given. I won’t watch people make fools of themselves, and I don’t care who survives. All of these programs got me thinking about the movie Running Man. I wonder how close we’ll get to that reality or even how close we already are.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, flowers, garden, herbs, lazy day, reality programs, Running Man, The Amazing Race, TV
Comments: 18 Comments
April 22, 2013
The sun streaming through the front door is hot. Fern has taken possession of the rug in front of the door and is, as usual, sprawled in the sun. Maddie and Gracie are here on the couch with me. Gracie is having her morning nap. After all, she has been awake for a couple of hours and must be exhausted. Maddie just wants a few pats.
All of us have morning rituals. Fern and Gracie sleep on my bed so when I wake up, they jump up and wish me a good morning. Gracie wags her tiny Boxer tail so much I expect it to become a rotor and for her tail end to take flight the way a helicopter does. If my morning ever becomes a cartoon, that’s exactly what would happen. Fern rolls all over the bed and sometimes has to grab the sheet or she’d roll right off. I pat her and she bumps me with her head to let me know she expects more. After the morning greetings are done, I feed the cats and Gracie and I go downstairs. Maddie is usually on the table in the sun. She gets her morning pats after which I let Gracie out and put on the coffee then I go outside to get the papers, and most mornings I stop to admire the new flowers. This morning there were two yellow and white daffodils which had just bloomed. After admiring my garden for a while, I go back inside, fill Gracie’s dry food dish so she can munch during the day, leave two biscuits in her crate then grab my coffee and go into the den to read the papers. That is my morning just about every single day except Sunday when I go out to breakfast, the only break in my routine.
Soon enough it will be warm, and I’ll be on the deck with my coffee and papers. Gracie will take her morning nap spread out on the lounge, and I’ll stop and watch the birds at the feeders. Sometimes I bring my laptop outside where I’ll write Coffee.
I love my mornings.
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Categories: Musings
Tags: Boxers, cat in the sun, cats, coffee, dogs, flowers, garden, good morning, morning rituals, papers, routine, sunny day
Comments: 25 Comments
