Mixed blooms

As previously noted, back in the spring or thereabouts I hastily planted a couple of little packs of seedlings, labeled only as mixed zinnias. You don't have to be a deeply experienced gardener to have learned that "mixed" in this context can mean anything from "our own uniquely tasteful blend" to "color unknown", and to suspect that spindly little seedlings in an inexpensive pack fall into the latter category.
As it turns out, the seedlings from the first pack, planted behind the house, are all a vivid hot pink bordering on magenta--except for one white one. The ones from the second pack, planted in front, have been paler--a weak pink, white, a faded salmony orange--except for the most recent one, which is taller and hot pink like the ones in back, and attracted a hummingbird this afternoon.
We have had at least two hummingbirds in and out of the yard lately, sometimes arcing towards each other as they fly upward. I don't know if this is some sort of territorial challenge, or courtship, or play.

Vicissitudes of suburban life

If you live in a suburban house, however small, you almost certainly have a lawn, which must be not only mowed but also (especially if you can't quite mow up to the fence or flower beds) trimmed or edged in some way. People used to do this manually, of course, or their gardeners did, but the modern standard suburban "I don't have time for this" approach is to use a string trimmer.
Our current electric trimmer is the latest in a succession of unsatisfactory helpers. Purchased a month or so ago to replace an earlier model that literally went up in smoke after tying itself up in daylily leaves, it initially showed great promise. It had a new feature that fed 2 filaments instead of just one, by some magic we admired without feeling that we needed to understand it. That blissful ignorance ended today, when the self-feeding spool stopped feeding, leaving the trimmer with just a single 2 inch bit of filament and an unhealthy whine in its voice. I got it open and thought I had succeeded in advancing the filament manually, hoping to at least finish the front yard tonight. But moments later the spool exploded out of its housing, leaving me with this:



The only solutions I can think of, short of digging up the lawn, are to buy another spool (because this 2-ended version can't use the spools left from its predecessor) or to buy another trimmer. It all makes a kind of sense when you realize that the manufacturer needs people to keep buying filament, or trimmers, or ideally both.

Neighbors

Start at the back door to see:
--Tiger swallowtails and a monarch sharing the butterfly bushes and a hot pink zinnia.
--By 8 a.m. sun like a spotlight on the orangey red zinnias, cosmos, blackeyed susans, and echinacea in the back corner. (The year is turning around: A few weeks ago the sun arrived at 7:30.)
--Hummingbird swooping past the butterfly bush and up into a hemlock two yards away
Moving to the front yard, don't miss the bumble bees, and an occasional honey bee (suggesting a nearby beekeeper?).
Head down the street to the next corner and startle goldfinches who rise, twittering, out of a neighbor's mass of echinacea going to seed.
Further down the street, pause to admire the Sri Lankan monks' peppers and beets growing neatly at the feet of a statue of the Buddha meditating tranquilly in a 50 year old American suburban lawn.

Blooming volunteer

It started out looking small and weedy. It survived in a thin patch of soil, and bowed to the mower without losing its head. Once I recognized as a zinnia, I protected it with a leftover bit of wire edging and waited, hoping it would prove to be a true zinnia in color, and not some bleached pastel. It began to show a nice bit of yellow on August 8:



And here it is today:

Butterflies

Stayed home today. A monarch visited the large hot violet pink zinna. Later I got to sit in the shade on the back step, sipping my tea and watching four tiger swallowtails on the white butterfly bush.

Eating Summer

Thursday evening, on my way to meet my knitting pals, I stopped at the Penn Quarter Farmers' Market and bought nectarines, peaches, and green beans from Maryland and Pennsylvania farmers.
Saturday morning I went off to the Kensington Farmers' Market again. I came home with tomatoes, eggplant, yellow squash, peppers, blueberries, and more peaches, all from Maryland. Then I went to MOM and got some local zucchini and mushrooms from Pennsylvania, as well as some Maryland Cherry Glen goat cheese.
I've been eating peaches, nectarines, and/or blueberries with Greek-style yogurt and a little granola every morning. I had a tomato and some goat cheese for lunch.
Tonight for our dinner I'll make some version of ratatouille, perhaps with polenta, and some garlicky green beans on the side. (And a little California wine!)

More about the Zinnias

The first two are the ones finally blooming from the early seedlings I planted. The third is a volunteer, presumably selfsown from last year's mix of Dreamland and State Farm. Can't wait to see the color!

• Salmony Orange
  
  


• Hot Violet-pink
  
  


• The Volunteer
  
  
  

Volunteer

It started out to be the year without zinnias. Hopeful early visits to the nearest garden center were disappointing, and travel cut into my home gardening time. Two little market packs of spindly zinnia seedlings distributed between the front of the house and a spot in back near the fence grew slowly into discouraged-looking plants with no buds in sight.

The discouragement wasn't only local. The slightly larger plants purchased and planted in my parents' garden were beaten down by Maine's wet weather and devoured by slugs.

Not until the end of July did my plants begin to show buds, with two of them blooming this week: a pleasingly hot violet pink in the back and an anemic salmon orange in front.

Meanwhile, a stocky mystery plant had begun to grow on the edge of the back walk, or rather (because it hasn't actually been edged in quite some time) in the meager layer of soil gradually building up on the edge of the aging pavement. Curious, or perhaps unconsciously recognizing a familiar form, I let it grow. Now it has a bud, and is clearly a zinnia. I can't wait to see what color it turns out to be. Will it be one of the hot zinnia colors I love, or a weak pastel? In either case, it tells me that next year I should just plant some seeds.

Signs of summer

Watching an Eastern Swallowtail on the butterfly bush.
Buying peaches and tomatoes at the Saturday morning farmers' market in Kensington.
Sitting in the shade of a pale lavender crape myrtle in bloom, listening to the cicadas.
Buying a few last plants for the summer garden and deciding that it was too hot to stay outside and plant them.
Reading the forecast for Sunday and hoping the rain doesn't start until after I've planted things in the morning.

Cleaning up, continued

We had a nice sunny day. I put in another 2.5 hours digging in the south west corner, prying up weeds, dividing and redistributing daylilies and siberian iris, and dividing and replanting bulbs as I came across them. I also worked in the 75 small bulbs from a bag I bought at Hardware City on impulse, while we were in line to buy a space heater after the furnace died. It seems that perfection in the flowerbeds, or at least satisfactory improvement, is only about 24 hours away. At this rate, I'll finish in February. At least I'll have a nice new furnace to keep me warm between digs.

November Morning Glories

The morning glories on the fence keep blooming, even as the weather shifts. I've noticed a shift in color on colder days towards an overall pinker tone. Perhaps the shifting weather explains the occasional pink blotches in yesterday's display, which stayed in bloom well into the afternoon.

November butterflies

As mentioned in my previous post:
Painted Lady:

Buckeye:

Cleaning up

Yesterday afternoon was another installment in the flowerbed cleanup saga. This time I worked on the back (south-west) corner. Accomplishments included removal of the big old dead deciduous azalea, digging out a lot of poke weed, and generally digging up and replanting (rearranging) the daylilies in that corner, and the bulbs hiding in their toes. Weeds and weed roots (couch grass, poke weed, and bind weed) filled 2 county-approved paper yard trim bags.
That limited area at least is a lot better but I was rushing. I need several days I don't have to finish and really think things through.
While I was working 3 butterflies came to the purple butterfly bush: 2 painted ladies and a lovely buckeye.

H2O end of season notes

Just to summarize and catch up:
10/19 I met the water quality program coordinator at what used to be Site 5, where I started out. It seems much as I remember it, but the water wasn't moving much. We took photos and measured out the distance a site must cover under the new protocols. Probably this will be used as a training site.
10/26 We met again, with a team of fairly new monitors, at Site 8. It went well but took so long that I(with my Zipcar) had no time to stop at Home Depot on the way home. Again, I took photos which I'll add later.
This was my swan song as a team leader. I just don't want to deal with the scheduling and logistical obligations any more.

Catching up with Fall

Last Sunday, before I went out and cut down the asters that were going to seed, I saw a small bird among them. After some hunting for the binoculars I got it in sight just as it flew up onto a branch, where it sat posing and bobbing its tail. I'm not positive but I think it was a palm warbler in fall plumage.

We have had some cool nights--not a hard frost, but there is a white dusting on the grass in the morning. I'm guessing that the temperature change explains the morning glories' color shift: the brilliant blue blossoms now are paler and have a purple cast.

Zipcar

The older of our 2 cars died several weeks ago, and we've been unenthusiastic about shopping for a replacement, but we've been having occasional weekend logistical conflicts. In the spirit of experimentation, I became a Zipcar member last week and reserved my first car for today. It was a shiny red Mazda 3. Just press the membership card of the person who reserved it to the sensor on the wind shield and the door unlocks. Gas is included! For local short hops there are several advantages over "conventional" car rental--no trips to the office during office hours for paperwork, no problem about picking up and returning on Sunday. This could allow us to put off car shopping for a long time. The only issue for me--as with any rental--is having to return it where it was picked up. I understand why they require it, but sometimes that wouldn't be so convenient. Still, it's a great idea.

After the rain

Saturday it rained--at last!--and now the weeds seem even more overgrown, and there are mosquitoes. But today there are also 2 Painted Ladies on the sedum, along with the crowd of various folded-wing skippers and bees. The goldfinches come in the morning to feed on the zinnias going to seed under the kitchen window.

Summer's still here

Yesterday's excitement was a hummingbird's extended visit to our butterfly bush. I think she might be nesting nearby. The last caterpillar disappeared on Friday. I am hoping that they all went off to pupate safely and will emerge later this month as 5 lovely butterflies.






Meanwhile, the yellow squash (Early Prolific Straightneck) keeps producing. The one plant is about right for our squash-eating pace.

Summer in the backyard

I've neglected this blog, but I've been inspired to revisit it as part of a convergence of interests: knitting and ordinary nature. By "ordinary" I mean what's here next to us wherever we are, visible every day if only we look.
So where does the knitting come in? Well, I've started reading Michele Rose Orne's book Inspired to Knit. Her designs are a bit frou-frou for me, but her process intrigues me enough that I've joined the related knitalong. The idea is to create our own seasonal "mood boards", starting with summer, with a view to using them as inspiration for our own knitting designs . She suggests collages of things torn from magazines, found objects, etc. I just took my coffee out to the back step and sat a while.
Here's what I've noticed so far:

• Summer here is hot. The strong sunlight calls for strong colors--zinnia shades, not sweet pastels.
  
  
• At this point in the summer everything is overgrown.
• There are beautifully striped black swallowtail caterpillars on the bronze fennel, and all sorts of bees on the mint blossoms.
  
  
• Butterflies in flight include Eastern swallowtail, Cabbage white, Buckeye, various skippers.
  
  
• Flocks of goldfinches (more black and yellow!) visit the zinnias for the seeds.

Spring bloom report

Daffodils:

• Earliest ones are almost done
• Midseason ones are peaking
• Later ones are starting in sunniest areas

Lilacs: Yes, they both have a LOT of buds this year!
Tulips (Gudoshnik etc): just open
Azaleas:

• earliest red out front has a few blooms near the ground.
• Both of the oldest deciduous (red, gold) still look dead--probably are.