Looking back on this gardening season
I just took a look at the 10-day forecast for our area. It looks like the honeymoon’s over, for we’ve not just frost forecast in the next few days, but freezing temps. *sigh* This is always a bittersweet time of year for the gardener in me, and this year’s no exception.
On the one hand, I am usually ready to put the garden to bed for the winter. Once we get a few hard freezes, the garden is officially dormant and I can look out the window without thinking, “man, those thistles are killing me. I should be out there weeding.”
In years where I’ve not let my gardening eyes get bigger than my gardening stomach, I’ve controlled my plant hoarding tendencies; in these sensible years, I don’t still have languishing pots of both annuals and perennials by this time of the year. Each year finds me being a little more realistic, tempering my spring and early summer enthusiasm with a harsh dose of reality acknowledging my tendency to poop out come mid-July. And that’s when I haven’t been in a car wreck!
This year, I have a few things still in pots out back by the shed, but they are hardy things like ornamental grasses, daylilies and some sedums. My favorite tropicals are already in the house, already being gnawed by cats and deposited in slimy piles of upchuck on the floor. Oh, yes.
On the other hand, I am sad to see the temperatures dip, dismayed at the leaves falling. Howie and I spent a lot of time outside this year, only turning the AC on when the mercury was forecast to be in the 90’s for days on end and the night air fails to cool down. Without the AC, the gazebo-shaded patio is cooler than our living room come mid-afternoon when the sun beats down on the picture window.
But now we’re closing in on a season of closed-windows and the thrum of the furnace, of dry air we must artificially hydrate with a humidifier. It’s a time of shorter, grayer days. The gazebo’s canopy is coming down soon - this weekend, I suspect - and that marks the end of summer to me. It goes so quickly!
So, yes, I am a little melancholy today as I see that forecast. I feel like I lost so much of my summer to my car accident and the subsequent shoulder surgery. When I see the weeds in the yard I feel both frustrated by the limitations I had this season and guilty for my inactivity toward those things I could do. Truth be told, my heart just wasn’t in it.
Now the time’s flown by and it’s time to put the yard to rest and hunker down for winter. Part of me is relieved by that, the forced respite from watering, weeding, planting and maintenance. Part of me is always relieved by that! But this year it’s a little different.
I look back to spring, when I was so thankful to even be able to do things in the yard. Howie shoveled the mulch into small piles in the beds and I hand-spread it as I planted. I planted tomato seedlings in the rain. I had such plans! And now it’s time to close up shop, and it’s too late for this year. Maybe I didn’t accumulate more plants than I could care for, but I built up unrealistic expectations of how I was going to keep the weeds under control and keep what we have looking nice.
But you know, even with the weeds, this year was our garden’s best year. The neighbor’s cherry tree bordering our yard not only bloomed, but produced of cherries for the first time in the 9 years we’ve lived here. There were thousands of cherries on those branches! Our climbing rose was loaded with blooms in late June. The butterfly bushes had large panicles of healthy flowers for much of its blooming season. And the coneflowers, bellflowers and daylilies were fabulous. A lot of this has to do with the extended spring freeze we endured last year, I am sure; the plants, unable to produce flowers and fruit last season, worked doubly hard this time around.
This makes me think, just now, that God had a hand in making our garden its most beautiful for us in a year when I was the least able to contribute to that beauty. Now, that’s something to think about.
Sleep tight, little garden. Rest up, for you have big things to do next year.
Camping: Day 3, waiting for water
The water’s still off at the campground. Howie and I wish we’d showered yesterday afternoon, but we didn’t have any way of knowing the water would have to be shut off. I’ll be a lot more inclined to take a walk and meet the neighbors once I can wash my hair and get clean.
Our friend Francie called this morning to see if we knew how bad it was up there. She said they’re without power and probably won’t have it back on until the weekend. School’s been canceled for two days now. She wanted to know if we wanted her to go check on our house for us, which was so nice of her. Our friend Mark called Sunday as he walked around our place checking for damage. It’s so good to have friends. 
From the sound of it, everything’s okay at home. Amazingly, the gazebo’s canopy did not shred — we still can’t believe it. The wind must have been blocked by our neighbor’s mock orange bushes and our house. Thank God the huge sycamore and fir trees didn’t fall.
Our side of the street did not lose power when the storm came through Sunday, but it did go off yesterday afternoon around 4:00pm. Maybe the power company turned it off to work on neighboring areas. My poor mother-in-law Nancy spent the whole weekend “prepping” for a colonoscopy, only to receive a cancelation call Monday morning as she was on her way to have it done. Their power was out! They canceled on her once before, but called on a Saturday morning before she’d started the down-and-dirty part of the cleanse. I know they couldn’t help their power being out, but what awful timing…Spend the whole weekend camped out in the bathroom, and for nothing.
Howie called his mom again this morning to check on her and she said our power finally went off around 4:00pm yesterday and is still out. My only immediate concern is our crayfish. They require circulating water to survive, and when the power goes out, so does the mechanical filtration and circulation. The last time we lost power, I fished her out of there using a metal strainer and put her in a Tupperware pitcher with a little water. They are fine out of water as long as they have about a 1/2″ in the container so they can keep their gills wet, but still raise up above the surface to breathe.
Someone on Crayfish Mates forum said he puts some of that craft plastic in the tank, which allows the crays to climb to the surface and breathe. We don’t have any of that at home, so I told Nancy to drape a towel in the water so it touches the bottom, but to close the tank’s lid so she can’t get out. When Howie talked to Nancy this morning, she said the crayfish was still alive, so she must be able to get to the air. It’s funny how we can get attached to critters, even crayfish. The fish in our pond are also a bit endangered since there are quite a few (they had babies) and the pump is not on. I hope all our aquatic friends survive the outage.
Camping: Day 2, now with power!
The power came back on around 1:00pm, right as we were getting ready to go to the Wal-Mart in Hopkinsville. Woot!
We couldn’t find some things at the little local stores, things like a spatula. Oh, and Sudafed. Not that joke they put on the market called Sudafed PE. That stuff is worthless for sinus pain and my sinuses were bad from the time I got up and nothing helped. So, we had to make a 36-mile drive for the federally-locked-down-stuff-of-meth-labs-near-you kind of sinus decongestant goodness. It was absolutely worth the $16+ in gas (!!) to get some. Darned if I was going to spend the week lying in bed with a pillow over my face!
We also got a 17×23″ dry erase board and some colorful markers. I was going to make a poster for our group shot, but when I saw the dry erase, I thought that would be really cool. This way, if I make a mistake, I can just erase it. We can also use it for playing games with everyone. And when we get home, it can go in the office.
Howie’s made a couple of talkie blogs and posted them - be sure to watch both at his site and mine for those. He’s better at getting them uploaded in a timely fashion.
Ohhh, and I forgot to mention that, though we have electric now, there were two major water line breaks and the water’s out. It should be restored sometime in the morning, though. We brougt our own drinking water, so that’s no big deal. We’ll just have to wait to shower.
Dave’s Garden people are the best!
Dave’s Garden people are the best! Howie and I have known this for a long time, since 2001 as a matter of fact. When Howie had his life-changing back surgery at Johns Hopkins in 2006, it was DG people who buoyed our spirits in the forums during the months leading up to his surgery and for months afterward. It was DG friends who took us into their Maryland home like family while he recovered. It was DG people who watched a continuing thread I updated right from the waiting room while he had his surgery. It’s a stellar group of people there. It’s family.
Today, I learned of another member, Tracy Pruitt, aka aggiegrl, who witnessed this kind of community support this month. In response to her post regarding her family having to vacate their rental home, she witnessed gardeners arriving at her home from all around Texas, all to help her move her beloved garden. The story was picked up by NPR and All Things Considered aired a story about it. Go give it a listen. It’ll do your heart good.
It makes sense that the people at a gardening website would be nurturing, giving people. A true gardener loves to share!
They’re not just for bee-reakfast anymore
I was taking pictures of the various flowers in our birdfeeder bed when I looked down and noticed this crab spider had caught herself a nice dinner.Crab spiders, in the family Thomisidae, are fascinating creatures. They secret themselves away in the shadows and jump out to catch their prey.They can change colors to match their surroundings. I’ve photographed white ones on pink flower and yellow ones on yellow flowers. I don’t think they can turn pink, but that didn’t stop this one from catching a juicy bee.
Here are some other photos taken in the same flowerbed today. The sunflowers are volunteers, gifted to us by birds who visit the hopper feeder. We have a few unnamed sunflowers, northern sea oats, purple coneflowers, bronze fennel, globe thistle, high mallows, and circle flowers in this bed.
I’d rather be steaming
Since it is going to be in the 90’s and very humid for several days running this week, we finally broke down and put the AC on in the house Wednesday morning. I don’t know if it is related, but Wednesday night I developed a migraine and sinus headache and spent a restless night alternating between getting up to ease the sinus pressure and lying down because looking at a computer screen or trying to read just didn’t work with the light sensitivity from the migraine. The cold also made my shoulder and hands really ache. No fun at all!
Flash forward to today. It’s again forecast to be 90° with “brilliant sunshine” (gotta love AccuWeather’s descriptions). Instead of holing up in the climate-controlled house, I am outside. Get this: I’m just too cold in there!
So, I am outside in the heat, kicked back on the patio with my laptop and the wi-fi. I just watched Sarah stalk something in the shade bed by the patio. She sniffed the leaves of the chelone and snuffled the mulch beneath them, ears perked with interest, and eventually snatched something into her mouth. I never saw what she caught…I just know it crunched. Loudly. Cicada?
The birds are singing and chattering, butterflies are visiting the flowers all around me, the waterfall is burbling into the pond, and there are flashes of gold as the fish swim near the water’s surface…It’s nice. I do little odd tasks like pruning spent blooms off roses or pulling up weeds here or there, then I retreat to the shade of the gazebo to cool off. Believe me, when you’re out in the brilliant sunshine and walk into the shade, it feels pretty darned good just to be in the shade.
Yes, I’m sweating, but God made us sweat for a reason: It cools us down. Anyway, I’m not going anywhere and don’t need to worry about makeup or anything like that, so who cares?
Our attempts at saving electric costs the last few years has resulted in us being pretty comfortable in the heat, as long as we’re in the shade and have a breeze. Fortunately, we have a gazebo on the patio, and we’re blessed with a great breeze the majority of the time. Plus, when the AC isn’t on, it is cooler outside than it is in our house come late afternoon. I just love being outside now. Since the accident, I get very achy if I’m in the cold, so the heat actually feels better to me.
When we do run the AC, we must have the thermostat inside at about 70-72° to keep the house at 78° when the sizzling part of the day hits and the mini-blind clad front windows are nonetheless baking in the sun. Back in 1999, we just went with the recommendation of the heating and cooling guy who put in our AC unit; unfortunately, the unit is not up to the task, especially since we added a vent to the ductwork when we made the walk-out basement into a mother-in-law suite for Howie’s mom.
We really should upgrade to a larger, more energy-efficient model central air unit, but that will wait until we are out of debt. We may decide it’s just not that important. In the meantime, it’s no biggie. As long as it’s in the 80’s during the day and cools off at night, we have the AC off. We’re fine as long as we can sleep comfortably with the window fan blowing on us.
At this point I’m rambling, I know. Maybe it’s the heat. 
Bada bing bada BOOM
Wednesday night found us listening to the snaps and booms of firecrackers in our neighborhood. Around 11:00pm, we heard a succession of loud booms. We assumed someone had put some big firecrackers in a trash can, for these explosions had that kind of muffled sound. Seconds later, however, our power flickered and went off. It came back on for a few seconds, then all was dark again. Finally, it flickered back on, but we observed the other side of our street was still shrouded in darkness.
One of our pets, an Australian red claw crayfish (Cherax quadricarinatus), requires special attention in the case of power outtages; they can’t survive in a tank of unaerated, still water. They can breathe air and require their water to be oxygenated if they can’t climb out of it; the water’s surface area has to be disturbed by air bubbles or a filter’s flow. If a tank loses aeration, the crayfish must be removed from the tank, put in shallow water deep enough to keep the gills wet, but shallow enough it can raise their heads out it.
So, assuming the power situation was tenuous, I caught her (no easy feat - thank goodness I have a net) and put her in a Tupperware pitcher with just a little bit of water. It’s a good thing I did this, for the power did go off again. She suffered a 3 foot fall when she wriggled out of the net before I could grab her and get her in the pitcher. Other than losing a few small legs, she’s in good shape now, thank goodness.
Now, back to the story. Flash forward to 4:30am Thursday morning. We were awakened by the raucous sound of chainsaws and the rumble of chipper/shredder machines, courtesy of Asplundh Tree Expert Company. Nice. I’d been up until about 1:30am reading in bed, so this was an especially rude awakening for me. At about 5:30am, Howie and I gave up on trying to sleep and just got up.
It seems the tree branches in our neighborhood caused the transformers to blow. Hmmm, ya think? My neighbor Mandi tried a few months ago to get AEP to trim the branches along her property; they were resting on the lines and causing them to spark. She was told they were not trimming “pole to pole” this year. Evidently, they’d rather wait until the trees are so bad they cause a whole section of town to lose power, then send out crews to trim all the branches.
Please note that I am not disgruntled with Asplundh, but with AEP.
Before I got up, I used my Dash to send my next-door neighbor Mandi the following e-mail. It was tongue in cheek, a feeble attempt to make lemonade from the morning’s lemon crop:
Good morning, neighbor! This comes to you hot off the presses despite the fact that our power is still out. Thank goodness for wireless phones.
Please forgive any grammatical or typographical errors; I am writing this on my phone and am sleep-deprived. I wonder why…
—————————-
Fellow naturalists MO and KB had an unexpected opportunity to witness a flock of reclusive chainsawed AEP boobies early Thursday morning. The boobies’ enthusiastic cries echoed through the trees in a bizarre duet that drowned out native birdsong and set teeth on edge, yet afforded the friends a rare glimpse into boobie behavior.
When present, boobies play an active role in suburban forest ecology, thinning tree branches and keeping them from damaging high voltage power lines.
Despite MO’s persistent efforts to lure them to the region with the promise of a veritable feast of forestation, the boobies are reluctant visitors, an extremely rare sight. Formerly suspected extinct, their unexpected appearance heralds what MO and KB hope is the boobies’ return to the tree-clogged region of south Newark.
When asked if their return made the pre-dawn wake-up call worth it, KB rubbed her reddened eyes and replied, “I’ll have to think about that one.”
– Sent from my phone. –
Again, it’s not the Asplundh guys who are the boobies — it’s the people at AEP who let things go for so long. Asplundh just did their job, which woke us up.
It was interesting to watch them work and to talk to the guys who were waiting on the sidelines before doing their tasks. And I really wished I could go up in one of those cherry pickers and get pictures of the house and yard from 70′ in the air! I have many photos of the tree crews at Flickr.
One of the guys told me he’s worked for the company seven years and the lines behind our houses are the worst he’s seen anywhere. He also said they’ve not trimmed our neighborhood’s branches during that time (that I knew - we’ve lived here nine years this month). Thanks again, AEP!
It’s AEP’s policy to leave branches and logs behind when trees are removed due to weather emergencies. So, my neighbors have large piles of brush in their yards, piles the must dispose of or pay someone else to dispose of. Fortunately for us, the branches they took from our trees were left on the school property behind our lot.
Mandi and the neighbors on the other side of us are having the crew come back and remove the trees which the crews said are likely to cause future issues. Now’s the time since this will be done at no charge to the homeowners. They’ll leave the unchippable branches and logs, but disposing of those is minimal compared to the cost of having those trees taken down by a tree company.
We may have a large chokecherry tree taken out if AEP will do it along with the others. Additionally, Mandi’s having one of the guys who does tree work on the side come out and take down a few trees in her yard. I hate seeing big old trees taken down, but I can understand why she’s doing it; they’re messy trees that drop a lot of limbs, plus are old and on the decline. She’ll be able to use the greenhouse behind the house, too, since it will finally see sunlight again after who knows how many years in the shade.
Our huge old sycamore isn’t being touched, nor are our two large firs. We’ll still benefit from their shade on these hot summer days and enjoy the sycamore’s mottled white bark glow in the gold light just before sunset. I do, however, hope to have the tree guy trim a few of the branches back on the tree row bordering our property in front if we can swing it. The shade they cast is just enough that many of the sun-loving plants in our front yard grow sort of sideways, reaching for the light. I call the plants in those beds by their botanical names, followed by horizontalis.
A special note to Jen from work: Aren’t you happy I not only told dozens of customers about the chainsaw serenade at work Thursday afternoon, but now written about the transformers? I’ve even posted pictures! Now you’ll not only want to jam pencils in your ears, but your eyes as well!
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