Cripes, Suzette!

The Labor of Labor Day

You would have to know the history of this space to appreciate these photos. We pulled out 20+ year old landscaping twice from this space (once from the previous owners; once from our own efforts). This one bed has been empty for about 4 years. Even Bing maps shows it as barren, except for a hose reel and some concrete stepping stones.

Oh, but baby look at me now:

 

This is an awkward collage shot from the bedroom window. It is the culmination of my 4 year long planning that had to go on hold because (1) Sami didn't follow my directions for the shape of the bed so I had to pout about it, (2) he installed a sprinkler system that would have to be dug up in part in order to reshape the bed and (3) my knees gave out and I couldn't dig to plant anything myself.

Finally, all the elements came together over the weekend and I was able to make my vision come true via the efforts of unwilling others. Look at it from another angle where i can explain the whole thing to you:

I forgot to explain that the fabulous chicken statue is now illuminated by a solar powered rock light,  which adds that extra something to the whole layout. The dwarves and pygmies will grow tall enough to obscure the foundation and the hose reel, the chicken will be surrounded by a solid wall of tiny dark green leaves and the whole thing is anchored by taller specimens at the end.

The block platform under the hose reel needs work - it's only there at all in it's unlovely state because my labor force slipped it in after I left the scene.

Breathing Fresh Air - I Recommend It

Your faithful reporter is tired, very tired. AND my hand is all screwed up from clutching the mouse for 14 hours a day. This work business is really very burdensome. Some days, I don't even get outside at all. Last night, at about 7pm , I made it a point to go outside on the deck to enjoy what was left of the evening.

actual backyard of Suzette

Remind me to go outside as much as possible until the weather turns. I'm not one much for direct sunlight in the middle of the day but I do like a good twilight. The impending change of seasons makes enjoying the sunsets at this time of year all the more precious and I made appointments for myself to see as many as possible. If that doesn't work, I'm going to activate a pop-up reminder in my Outlook calendar. What is technology for, if not to serve us?

How To Dress For Ted Kennedy's Funeral

World Famous Fashion Icon and Busy Mom™ Michelle Obama has interrupted her vacation among the elites to travel to Boston for Ted Kennedy's funeral service. Short of cash after buying fried seafood and short of time after bicycling in the dune grass, the clever fashion-forward first lady, unafraid to re-wear her designer threads,  shook out her pope dress, strapped up her boobs with her trademark chest belt and jammed on her size 14 kitten heels to make the trip over to Boston to attend Ted Kennedy's funeral service.

World Famous Fashion Icon and Busy Mom™ Michelle Obama was not the only first lady in attendance. Hillary Clinton (First Lady of Arkansas 1979-1992 AND  First Lady of America 1992-2001) also made the trip. She delivered a heartfelt message she had been composing for Senator Kennedy since January 27, 2008.

Ex-wife Joan "The Dish" Kennedy wore a trout pout and the cumulative lifetime burden of ever being married to Ted Kennedy.

The only Kennedy even more of a pig than Ted, Ethel "The Uterus" Kennedy, has hardly been been in camera frame at all. Nobody loves a good-old fashioned Catholic ritual more than our little Ethie. Ethel wore a conservative suit and accessorized with a whackjob offspring better known for reckless driving and consorting with South American dictators.

UPDATED: Ethel, you big old freckle - we luvs ya. I must say, Ethie, you have managed to maintain a tradional and classic wardrobe right up into your 81st year. Lost your hairbrush, though - didn't you?

Sunday Morning, Third Week in July

UPDATE - 2:00pm: Scroll down for a very sad development.

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1. Reminder for next year's deck pots:

• marigolds good;
• petunias bad;
• geraniums a lousy selection for supreme court justice (So-So).

2. Deck birds: wireless illuminated flamingo and cranky looking robin babies.

3. Rose garden recovery:

 

The formerly barren rose bushes are once again producing velvety red roses instead of dried out brown flower buds. I credit Bayer Advanced 3-in-1 insect Disease & Mite Control spray for the comeback. Of course, it could be due to the simple reappearance of the sun after the month long rains here in NJ.  There's still some blackspotted leaves here and there, but at least the buds are opening instead of shriveling up before bloom. Surprise: some of the blossoms have a full grown beetle in the center when they open.

4.Traumatic trip down memory lane:

This is the only surving picture of the same flower bed at the end of the patio in 2007. Those Black-eyed Susans  were started from three small pots about 12 years earlier. They filled in and thrived all that time and were maintainance-free! until the bastard deer or the bastard muskrats or the bastard rabbits or the bastard whatever they were chewed them down to their extermination.

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UPDATE - 2:00pm  Some of the pieces from my vintage wooden patio furniture collection needed a little touchup to the green finish. I asked Sami to tighten up the bolts before I started the painting. He turned the rocker in the top photo over and the rocker part came off in his hand. Rotten. It was all rotten. The whole thing was rotten through and through. Now it's gone to meet Walter Cronkite.

Wooden Rocker
~1945 - 2009

Filled With Birds

News from the garden:

 

:(

Thank you, you big old Month of Constant Rain, for murdering my new rose garden with your mold-inducing constant precipitation. I have buds that go pale and turn brown before they ever get a chance to open. It's a fungus called Botrytis Cinerea. Or maybe it's an infestation of rose midges. Lord luv the internet. Whatevs! I'm going all Love Canal on the garden  this week. Luckily, I'm up on all my respirator mask technology.

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The morning glories in the deck pots are thriving and have produced flower buds. I credit the Ortho Bug-B-Gon Max spray that got rid of the little black baby bugs that were sticking the new leaves together. I know a few sickly roses that need to be introduced to that particular leetle friend.

I gave some shaggy pygmy barberries a haircut this morning. Inspired by the ease of my success, the oak trees got the same attention. I defeated them but then I had to take a nap.

What? You mean I showed you these last year? And the year before that?

Tina, I forgot to mention that I don't have any orange day lilies but I do have three others. Forget digging up the free ones and get some fancies from the garden center.

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Great Wall featuring Mr. Sami

My magnificent Great Wall of Rhododendron which nobody likes but me remains unbothered by Mr. Sami. It's filled with birds. I have no delusion that if I die before him, he'll be out there with the chainsaw before the dirt settles over me. That is why I plan to outlive him. That, and the fact that I'll be able to achieve my decades long ambition to throw out all of his garage shit.

Speaking of birds,  a robin has built a nest in the plastic basket where we keep the dog tennis balls. Now it has three eggs in it. She flies in and out a hundred times a day and doesn't seem to mind anything we do except for the Fry Daddy event yesterday. (Score one for Team Oh No You're Not)

,,,,,

I admit that he looks a little bit hungover but I swear I did not share my martini with him. He's pretending to look away from it, but he  has that knucklebone on his mind every minute.

Before It Starts Raining Again

We have achieved rositude.

I sure hope everything I've read about the toughness of these Knockout roses is correct because they were pretty much manhandled into that arrangement. A big public thank you to Mr. Sami who did the job -dog fencing included - almost single handedly.

Here he is informing me that "this is a work area" and not fit for photographing. I know it's a work area - who do you think was holding the other end of that roll of wire? The rain can begin again at any moment and I wanted see my garden without puddles all over the place.

My intention is to keep that little fence up until a certain canine dirt-digger wises up - maybe a year or two. He also does a pretty good high-speed chase pushing a big ball around the yard and I think the wire fence can withstand that . I know for sure that the roses don't stand a chance without it. In the worst case, thse are shrub roses so if the fence has to stay forever, I think the plants will shrub out right through the openings, hiding the wire.

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden That Would Be Finished In One Day

Hey! Guess what I got for Mother's Day?* A rose garden. Here it is:

That's 28 linear feet of future beauty right there. Something about rain-soaked  ground, shaking the dirt off of all the plant roots that turned up in the tilling and "maybe tomorrow." I don't know.

There are also roses, currently lounging around on the deck. These are Double Red Knockouts, advertised as the perfect rose for lazy gardeners. Which hello? Have you met me? I can't depend on this Mother's Day goodwill to last forever, you know.

Finally, there's a little bundle of wire fencing to keep out little dogs who like to dig and eat dirt. That aluminum ladder was standing on it's side and fell over with a clatter. The noise freaked the dog out and he won't go near it, so we're leaving it there as a dog barrier. 7 pots of delicious dirt with some annoying plants sticking out of them. Stay away, little dog. You know who you are.

I hope to see all of these elements put together sometime soon. "Maybe tomorrow."

* Also, people pulled out poison ivy vines, dug up hostas and sawed them in half,  and then planted them elsewhere, thus sparing the old mother much present effort and future itching.

Tomato Surprise - A Confluence of Events In the Garden

If you think the Latin Kings are bad, you should see the gang of muskrats that live in the creek at the back of my yard.

I used to have a magnificent bed of Black Eyed Susans� that bordered the concrete patio, 3 feet wide and 24 feet long. Keywords: used to. As soon as the tender green shoots made their appearance this spring, the muskrat herd lumbered across the yard and chewed them down to the roots. Then they did it again, obliterating the plants forever.

I used to (a) be upset about it and/or (b) think this might be a good time to put in the roses I've been wanting or (c) even to go all Martha on myself and plant blueberry or raspberry plants. And then Little Yoo-hoo showed up, limiting the chances for any peaceful plant raising in that particular spot, at least for this year. He does seem to enjoy thrashing through the tall weeds.

No harm there - imagine if I had gone through with my plan to put in the roses there and he repeatedly thrashed through them. I would have been dissatisfied.

Despite my master garden plan to do the required hard work to set up care-free plant arrangements tend themselves, the weeds, they overcome me. On the sunny side of the house, I put in a few carefully chosen shrubs, mulched them heavily and left them to flourish on their own. Things were ok until this year, when massive amounts of tall weeds took hold there.

I'm very busy! Too busy to be pulling weeds every day! So by the time I got around to it, the weeds were as high as the bush and were concealing several volunteer tomato plants. I don't know how they got there. Could have been squirrels or birds - maybe the muskrats brought them over to apologize for razing the flowers. But there they are, almost ready to be harvested.

���

So, these two events have got me thinking that I need to return to vegetable gardening next year. The former flower bed is in a nice sunny spot and I'd have the satisfaction of seeing the vegetables develop right under my nose. Now that the dog is in residence, I expect a sharp decline in muskrat activity as soon as he stops chasing butterflies and rolling over for belly rubs every 5 minutes.

Maybe the Foxes, Mink, Great-horned Owls, Herons and Hawks Will Be Able to Resist the Squeaky Rubber Hamburgers and Get Down to Business

I could have told you that muskrats are the enemy of mankind. Just ask my former flowerbed . What used to be a glorious 24 foot stretch of Black-eyed Susans is now just a memory. In it's place is dirt, weeds and a giant sedum that must not taste good.

The muskrats come up from the creek and eat whatever they please in my backyard. What pleases them most this year is Black-eyed Susans. They ate every single one of them down to the roots and when the flowers tried to sprout up again, the muskrats came back and chewed them down to the ground. I left the bed hoping that the muskrats would move on and the flowers would come back. Didn't happen.

Well now I see that the muskrats are responsible for the collapse of the levees along the Mississippi. I didn't need to read the whole story to know what happened.

Our old dog used to do a pretty good job of keeping the backyard free from the tresspass of muskrats as well as cats, squirrels, rabbitts, birds, chipmunks and blowing  leaves. Now the new dog is busy with his rubber hamburger and the small wildlife has taken over. He already had a dozen meals since he got here and I'm not feeding him without expecting something in return. The internets say that muskrats natural enemies are foxes, mink, great horned-owls, herons and hawks. I haven't seen any of those around here but I'm not sure that even they could resist the siren call of a good squeak toy.

How Nice to Have A Corgi That Poses, More or Less, Under the Hosta Again

   

For those long-time readers who look forward to regularly recurring features here at Cripes, Suzette!, I'm pleased to be able to accommodate you with the 2008 version of "Corgi Under The Hosta." I'm proud to share this photo with you all because it's the first shot where he doesn't look like a mildly deranged freak with a giant head. Which he isn't!

Hosta fans are excused for the remainder of our session; corgi enthusiasts, puppy people and lovers of big ears are invited to view the extended entry.

Archives:

Corgi Under the Hosta 2005 version

Corgi Under the Hosta 2006 version

"Works With Any Elongated Squash"

This morning's spin through the blogreads started with this discussion about watering cans and led to a scan of the Gardener's Supply website where I found these totally unnecessary items:

  squash kitty 

    butternut bunny

 pumpkin rooster

At first, I thought hey were vegetable holders, but now I see that they are Mr. Potato Head-style body parts with which to impale the produce. The pieces are made of iron instead of plastic, so they have the double appeal of being nostalgic and dangerous - triple appeal if you count stupid.  Other  items in the series are: Zucchini Dog, Watermelon Pig, Rutabaga Ducklings, and Cabbage Hens.

If this is the kind of thing that appeals to you, they're all on sale now for the reduced price of $6.99. I guess you could use these as a kind of head-on-a-pikestaff warning to animals along the line of this is what happens if you invade my garden. If they had one that was muskrat-shaped, I'd probably give it a try. Otherwise, this stuff strikes me as a waste of food, time and money.

Pots of Glory: Contraption

The thing I like most about the stringification of the glory pot is that it's an actual contraption. You don't see too many contraptions these days. I like to do my part to contribute to society.

It's still a contraption that only exists mostly in my mind at this point but I think you can get the idea from this morning's picture. We are going full swag with this. I think of this as a large-scale plant installation and sooner or later, you will too. The elements of the contraption are:

• string,
• plastic gutter clips
• one set of plastic rings that hold a six pack together.

So far, I've got the string thing down. As for the other elements, it's not going quite so well.

We spent the morning assigning blame for the failure to locate more than three gutter clips from last year's Christmas lights. Someone may have thrown them out. Also, do they still make those six pack rings? Or did those Save The Birds people cause their extinction? I hope I can find some - preferably around the tops of Schweppe's Tonic Water cans-  because they are integral to my sideways trellis design concept.

 

Strings of glory. 6-14-08

Pots of Glory

I cried because I had no morning glories until I met a man who had no twine. Amend that to say "married a man who had no twine".

Last year, the morning glories that I planted to cover the side fence were an embarrassing disappointment. This year, I tried growing them in a large deck pot which resulted in a plentiful and abundant crop. There are a few moonflowers in there, too.

My plan is to use twine as a vine support  by tieing it to the black wire stand and running it up and across the rain gutter. I'm a few days past implementing that plan due to the aforementioned lack of twine and today, I'm starting to fret that the 5 " per day growth rate is going ot get ahead of my procrastination and the vines will wrap around each other and ruin my whole plan.

I am powerless to do anything about it today - even if I did have twine - because it's Thursday and you know what that means. I am not available. So just like the rest of my garden, if the flowers on the deck plan on surviving, they will have to take care of themselves.

Side note: how many plants do you suppose a pot like that can support for the summer? It's 16" wide and 12" deep. I'm thinking 2 moonflowers and 5 morning glories. Should it be more or less?

Come On Summer

The decorative elements of summer:

Unplugged. Originally a windspinner, then an outdoor lighting fixture, now a windspinner again. Soon to be electrified once more. This whole thing looks a bit crooked, doesn't it? In person, it looks fine if you just slump to the side in your chair. Try slumping in your desk chair as you look at this - it helps a lot.



Plastic frog makeover. Lazy Sunday + shoebox full of acrylic paints + shabby pot feet = voila! The old resin froggy pot feet are looking mighty fine now, don't you think? Never one to leave well enough alone, I'm considering highlighting the toes, eyes and mouth with a light rubbing of chartreuse paint. As a general rule, just mark me down for excess.

Potential. Picture if you will, the big empty urn holding vines of morning glory and moonflower making their way up a twine trellis until they reach the rain gutter and then making a sharp right. Good idea, Gregor! You can see that I've already lost my nerve for this and installed a pink geranium for insurance in case the vine thing doesn't work out. Today I found three little sprouts poking up from the dirt and I feel fairly confident that the rabbits won't get to them up here. Squirrels are another story, though.

When The Cat's Away, the Mice Will Play. Also, the Robins and The Muskrats.

We're back from California and just in time, too. My house is reverting to nature.

Robins have set up housekeeping on the deck buffet table and a colony of muskrats come up from the creek every day to feast upon my what used to be my bed of Black-eyed Susans. Remember how magnificent they were? Now there's only stems - not a single leaf remaining. A carpenter ant crawled across my keyboard and we found a cat in the garage. It's been in there since the last time the garage door was opened which is who knows when?

Wildlife! Who needs it?

Mercifully, the squirrels seem to be laying low, but you never know with them, do you?

On the other hand, Nature has also kindly delivered bountiful rain to New Jersey while we were gone. The lawn looks like green velvet and the (non-tasty) perennials are bursting with vitality. The beautiful new gazing ball, which looked forlorn and out of place before, is now surrounded by complimentary hues of maroon and blue-green.

Agenda for today:

• fill the deck pots
• resist looking at work email
• drink wine
• chill out

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California Vacation Report: Very fun! The career move seems to suit the boy, his apartment is spacious and comfortable and puts me in mind of the California canyon setting where Joni Mitchell and CSN lived in the 70s of my imagination. Laguna Beach is funky and beautiful - who knew that the Pacific could be so aqua clear and  appealing?

We made a side trip to an Armenian section of Los Angeles to stock up on mid-Eastern foodstuffs for the boy and somehow* purchased a hundred - one hundred! - spicy meat pies (lahma bajeen), 25 of which made the flight back to NJ with us.

Goodbye to First Class flying for the foreseeable future and beyond - we made the most of our last trip in style. We drank many Bloody Marys, ate all the warmed mixed nuts and took advantage of the ice cream sundaes they built according to our preference. We'll be transporting our meat pies in the economy section from now on, but for once, we lived it up.

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* Mr. Sami.
Need I say more?

New Gazing Ball: Inauguration Day

Gazing Ball 8:30am. I haven't gotten around to doing much yardwork yet this year, and the little I did wasn't anywhere near this spot. The new gazing ball really jazzes things up doesn't it? That birdbath base never had a top. The birds are on their own as far as I'm concerned.
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Well, I meant to post three more pictures as the light changed during the day, but I got distracted. Let me just say that this is the third gazing ball we've had. The first one was a huge 15" green mercury glass ball. It lasted about  6 years before it exploded and we found it in pieces on the ground. The second one was a 10" red glass ball that had some kind of shiny coating that got hazy as time went on. Now I realize that it was accumulating moisture and it just exploded one day. So far so good with this one at the end of one day.

Saturday Morning 10 AM

Breaking News:  Fallen Limbs After NJ Storm

Why did it have to be the Hula girls? So many salty days ahead, so many nights yet to be peppered up. (Breaking news, get it? I crack myself up. Crack, get it?)

Recovery Zone

 

Then 7/24/07                                      Now 8/11/07

All That And Three Bags of Pine Bark Chips

The "all that" being weeds, neglect and Black-eyed Susans in disarray.

Step Away From The Hostas

Is this not the most fetching little hosta?  This is the third or forth season that I have it and it never struck me much before, but this year I can't take my eyes off of its chunky little booty.

I bought two of them as an almost-out-the-door impulse purchase at Frank's Flower Time. It was late in the season and Frank's was already going downhill.  The most polite thing you could say about the place during that time was that the plants looked listless, but there was a rack filled with black pots of hostas pushed out onto the sidewalk, waiting to be burned by the sun and then thrown away. I picked up two of these and one other type even though I didn't really have a good place to put them.

Maybe that's why I haven't paid much attention to them all this time. They were kind of slapped into a bed that didn't do much, didn't get much attention and didn't really make much difference one way or the other. Every now and then I'd cook up some half-hearted plan to center them in the bed or perform some other non-specific act that would produce garden glory but it never happened.

The plastic stakes in the pots identified this type of hosta as "June". Look at how bewitchingly low the flower spikes are, how they appear to be in danger of succumbing to their own weight and damn sturdy at the same time, how they are in perfect proportion to the mound of leaves. It's the most beautiful thing in my garden. (That might explain why I'm so taken with it this year as never before - the rest of the place looks like ass this year.)

The third pot I picked up got stuck behind a lilac bush because I didn't have any shady spots left and I wanted to protect it. This year I moved it into a section I call the  I Don't Really Mind A Few Weeds bed. I don't remember what kind it is - the closest thing I could find on the internet is called "Independence" or possibly "Minuteman", but I think if that was really the name I would have remembered that. The plant has potential but I'm not as enamored of this one. However, it is a survivor of my abuse and neglect, that those are ideal traits for suiting my gardening style.

It's kind of ragged and the less than ideal location resulted in a bit of a sunburn, or possibly that's some snail munching going on around the edges, or maybe it just couldn't hold its own against the weeds. It hasn't flowered yet, which fits the timing of the independence bloom so maybe that's what is is after all. Maybe when they show up, it might help to narrow down the identification.

The Sadness

My morning glory vine has produced a bloom. What is the opposite of  "glory", because that would be a more fitting appelation for what's going on here.

I'm glad to see anything at all, but remember that this is the fruit of an entire packet of seeds: a single vine with runtish foliage and a tenuous hold on survival.

The whole area of that garden bed seems doomed. In the lower photo, its not accident that it has been framed to appear to possess exhuberant vitality, but you can see that the area directly in front of the vine is headed for that scorched earth look. A sad cleome, a plant well known for its weed-like vigor, has stopped blooming and is listing.

Thanks goodness for weeds. At least I can still produce a very  impressive weed. The white phlox in the foreground is hosting a pickery vine  and as long as I see weeds, I know that my dirt can support plant life. Not the plant life I want, but plant life nontheless.

Is it August yet? August is usually the time of the season that I give up hope for this year and start talking big about "next year".

The fence looks good though, doesn't it? This is the look that I was envisioning when we put it up for dog-corraling puroses. A venerable, weathered cottage fence barely visible behind the abundant plants. I have to  work harder on the "abundant" part - next year.

All Creatures Great and Small

The small animal deathfest continues. Victim of the day:  a 2 foot long snake.

It must be a slow recovery from college graduation these days because our daughter was so worn out from hers that when I asked her to do a simple task in the back yard, it was a full two days until she could get the energy up to get off of the couch to go outside. The task was simple indeed: straighten out the dirt under the fallen birdbath so the thing wouldn't fall down anymore.

I suppose one could say that I was the root cause of this incident, since I am the one who dug up clumps of iris and left a gaping hole near the base. When the rains came - or maybe it was just a matter of time - the bird bath, stem bowl and all, fell down and stayed down because I had other more pressing garden things to do. Also, it involved a bit of digging and I'd rather save my knees for other more enjoyable activities like standing up without holding onto anything for balance. So the girl was pressed into service and the two days came to pass. Her first and last act was to pick up the bowl. That's where it ended because when she picked up the bowl, a 2 foot long snake was looking up at her.

I happened to be on the phone with Sam who was standing near her at the time. I heard her vocalize something that sounded like this: nuhn nuhn nuhn nuhn nnuh nuhn nuhn. Superdad lauched into action and grabbed the ice chopper from the shed and commenced to chop the thing into four pieces, which he then pitched into the creek.

Small animal death toll for one week:

• one nest of baby birds
• one chipmunk family (too gruesome to relate here. Tales of arson in a downspout would definately bring on the PETA people.)
• one snake

the only good bird is a concrete bird

Kill The Wabbit

It's not so easy to grow morning glories, you know.

• It's about 90 days to bloom time and they have to be set out after the frost date.
• You can't start them in pots because tranplanting disturbs the roots and that's the end of the whole thing.
• You have to nick the hard seed pod - not too much - and soak them overnight and then plant them into peat pots if you want early blooms.
• I find they do much better for me if I plant them directly in the ground, but you only get one chance if you do it that way.

So mine are now sprouting up and I have big plans for the way I'm going to train them along the top of the picket fence. Alls I'm saying is that if those damned rabbits come around again this year looking for tender shoots, I am going to shoot them in their tender ... never mind, I don't have a gun.

But I do have a shovel and if even one of those plants goes missing, the pod of tiny bunnies under the shrubbery gets it. BAM!

It's A World Of Laughter, A World Of Tears

My world is small this week. The bed, the deck, yard, the sofa. And that's great. It might not sound like much of a vacation to you, but to me to have time to decompress and shake off the soot of the last smoldering months is just what Doctor Suzette ordered.  I broke out tonight because Sam took out to celebrate Mother's Day. It was my request to go tonight instead of on the actual day, because none but the thickskinned and dimwitted would go on the actual day itself. It was pretty good - we ran through the rain then rewarded ourselves with adult beverages while he recapped Fox News for me and I did impolite impersonations of people he doesn't know.

Here is the death defying menu: mussels marinara, lobster tail and cappelini with clams shrimp and scallops - a trifecta of potential spoilage and virus incubation.  But it's ok because  we sanitized ourselves later with  espresso. It's all about balance.

I should get out more - the local place that I remember as a cafe/pastry shop is now a full-fledged restaurant and apparently has been that way for years.  Nice dim atmosphere, Italian opera on the sound system - it was kind of Brooklyn. They were lovely to us even though all we ordered was coffee and cake - if we knew, we would have had dinner there instead of the worn out regular place we went to.

Tomorrow: I pull the leetle weeds and try to avoid the leetle poison ivy. Look how sneaky it is:

In the red circles is a dopey wild strawberry vine that I have to battle every year. It starts on the neighbors's property and since they were lovers of  "natural beauty",  there was never any hope of having them exterminate it*. In the yellow circles is the poison ivy. See how it puts its small leaves next to the smaller strawberry leaves and its big leaves next to the bigger strawberry leaves. It wants you to touch it.  Sneaky!

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* Hope! We have new neighbors now, due to move in on June 1st. They are already looking for local tree serices to chop down some of the more offensive/dangerous specimens over there. Here's my plan: whenever I see them in the back yeard, I'm going to start a friendly conversation and lower the volume of my voice so that they are enticed to draw closer and closer to me. Then I'll go "Uh-oh! Watch out for the poison ivy!" even though it's a wild strawberry vine. ( They're from Staten Island. They won't know. ) They will be alarmed and get rid of it. Even The Coyote couldn't come up with a plan as good as this one.

Can I Paint Anything Green for You Today?

         

    

photos courtesy of

The Society for a Second Chance
for
Wooden Patio Furniture 20 Years Past Its Prime

I'm not just the founder, I'm the only member. Another way to look at it is that I'm New Jersey's premier preservationist of this stuff. And why not? Go on with your flimsy plastic and wanna-be cast aluminum gaudiness.  Sheeple! Open your eyes to the quality (while ignoring the rot.) Swoon over the curved and routed arms. Admire it.

I do have one unpaid employee, though, whose mission it is to be on call for when I spot curbside discards. People don't understand what they are throwing away!  Throwing away!  He understands that he must rush right over to beat the garbage truck so that we can bring it back to the preserve I have going on here, or at worst, harvest the springs and slats for my bank of replacement parts.

Next up: an afternoon of flowerbed clean-up then  cushioned comfort on the newly-stained deck, Prairie Home companion on the outdoor radio, and sharing a bottle of wine with a special visitor from the West.

Ah, the internets - where else could one document mundane details as if it were breaking news? Come back later tonight as I will be posting an update to this entry and reveal whether or not I was able to get the cork out of the bottle opener without using my teeth.

UPDATE: In the battle of man vs. machine, the winner is ... man! Oh yeah. The OXO cork pull, so magnificent in its smooth operation in removing corks from wine bottles, ususally gives me a good fight by holding onto said cork by hiding it deep within its smoky plastic recesses. But not tonight.

In other news, the special visitor from the West is my son, flown  back this weekend for a job interview because he does not care for bad California but instead prefers the goodness Home Sweet New Jersey. Of course, we want him to be happy but we were kind of planning that he get happy in a better location than this so that we could sell our pile of lumber in Monmouth County and follow him. I would say that now our dreams of escape fall onto the shoulders of the family's newest college graduate, our daughter, but she's headed back here as well to do her graduate work at Rutgers. If that's the way it has to be, I'm hoping that I can at least get a little lawn mowing and vacuuming out of her.

Beginning

We have new neighbors now. The gangly trees still lean over my flowerbeds and suck away the water that the nourishment that should rightly go to my blossoms, but I never did get around to cutting anything down. It doesn't seem as important as it used to.

They haven't moved in yet, the new ones, but they're buzzing around every day all excited to get in and start their suburban lives together. 40-ish newlyweds, Staten Islanders. He's got a long pony tail and drives a Scion - probably a Democrat. And he's very peppy and full of energy.

I look around at my flowerbeds with last years dead stalks still waving over the new growth, Sam's collection of 5-gallon plastic  buckets surrounding his shed like  luminaria in Tim Burton's nightmare. Right now there are pieces of wooden patio furniture scattered around the yard in varying stages of drying paint, grass growing wildly around them. We're the neighborhood bums.

But hope is not lost. We have time to get it together before nature gets too far ahead of us. Maybe this is what we need - some degree of comparison and its resulting shame to keep us on our toes. I can see laugher-filled evenings on the deck, the Bajas playing on the stereo and wine and Bug Juice flowing freely. But nobody is going to come over  if people think we're the Kettle's.

Time's awastin'. Lets get busy around here.

THE GARDEN STATE: SURVIVORS

From Our Department of Try And Kill Me:

1.Black-eyed Susans
I wasn't kidding when I said that you don't need any gardening talent at all when it comes to these things. I planted them under the kitchen window earlier this spring and then the bastard rabbits ate them down to the ground. Three times. And still they have enough will to flower. Sure, they're not those showy tall flowers, but even so, if you saw them when they were just stubs in the mud you never would have imagined they'd even have leaves again, let alone flowers. All hail the world's best anti-rabbit device, courtesy of the dollar store.

2. Mint
In the smallest corner of the back yard, behind the steps and away from sun and shower, where the only thing that rains down is dryer lint, up springs the mint. This enjoyed a brief star turn as a potted birthday gift 5 years ago. I put the pot in the corner for the winter and somehow, it crawled out and claimed some turf for itself. Now it muscles out the weeds and comes up behind the old umbrella base, between the cinderblock cracks and around the rusty garden ornaments. It's a crop - flavor for iced tea and perfume to rub on your hands. I'm like a farmer.

HOSE REELS ARE THE NEW LAWN MOWERS

First, let me tell you that we only have 2 outdoor water faucets on this house. Why then did I find a 5th garden hose reel in the yard? The red arrow in the photo indicates that the handle is broken off. This can only mean one thing: Mr. Sam has harvested it for parts to use when he repairs our 4 other hose reels.

And so the hose reel joins a long line of primary objects of desire that Mr. Sam cannot pass by on garbage day. In chronological order, his focus has been:

• gas grills
• fans
• vacuum cleaners
• lawn mowers
• blenders / food processors
• wheel barrows

Mercifully, he concentrates on only one object at a time and each item gets 2 or 3 years in the spolight. This is not to say that he won't capture the occaisional electic wall clock or dufflebag, but those things are just pleasant happenstances. Mr. Sam's driving force is that "they don't make 'em like they used to" and he would rather repair a sturdy thing made of metal parts than purchase a new plastic thing that breaks sooner than you think it should.

It used to bother me a lot that he would have multiples of the same object cluttering up the garage and shed, but these days, I don't mind so much. I have to admit that there is no shortage of working fans around here. And it certainly comes in handy to know a guy like this because now I have my own area of special interest when it comes to things you can't buy anymore: redwood lawn chairs.

 

The Garden State: AUGUST GARDEN

This is the time of the year when I emerge from my air conditioned haven and survey the results of my negligence in the garden. Crabgrass has taken over and we are thrilled about it. It filled in the dirt field that used to be our front lawn. It's thick, its green and all it requires is a little clipping back where it spills over the edges of the driveway curbstones - I don't see why people are so down on crabgrass. For us, its a step up.

The flowers are a different story. The deck pots are where the delicate ones reside - the ones that need a small amount of water every day, that need dead-heading and bonsai-like pruning - but down in the garden,these are my old friends. Only the tough survive and by that very act, they are given more space to thrive and show the others how its done. My garden is filled with Black-eyed Susans (so easy to grow that you can't even call yourself a gardener when you plant them), sedum, phlox, lillies and coral bells. this year, I'm making room for the Green-Eyed Monster.

What is this thing? When I bought it, it seemed to be the same size as the Black-eyed Susans in their pots at the garden center and the odd green center attracted me. I took it home, stuck it in the ground and then went indoors to wait out the heat wave. Look at how it took off, standing three feet above the fence.

Click the thumbnail to see the rusty bell near the gate where wasps have climbed inside and made their home. Observe the bluebird house on the tree near the fence line- it falls off every three weeks and needs nailing back up. The giant yellow flowerbush is in the corner near the dead shrub. It gives me great pleasure to drive up in the evening and lay eyes upon this sight because I like that little grey fence so much.

The fence is in its prime now. Aged enough to look like its always been there, still sturdy and sound with just a slight foreboding of the decline that will happen in the years to come. The fence is so non-suburban. All of my neighbors have taken out their woooden fences and replaced  them with shiny white plastic panels, 8 feet tall. But not me.

This little fence does more than mark off the backyard - it adds undeniable charm, it begs for someone to peek through the slats or lean over the top and it is part of my fantasy life. Whenever I look at that fence, I think I really should get a big straw hat with a graceful ribbon on it - maybe a woven basket to carry around my shears leather-palmed gardening gloves along with a few stems of dewey flowers. The reality is that you can find me out there pulling out weeds barehanded, dressed in tatttered old scrubs and strips torn from an old t-shirt to be transformed into a Rambo headband. But one look at the fence and I imagine myself in a white gauze dress, opening the gate and welcoming visitors to admire the garden. It inspires me to continue pulling out the weeds.

It is, of course, the dog fence that was installed to contain the mighty chaser of squirrels. What garden entry would be complete without a photo of a corgi next to the plants? Here he is, guarding the birdbath and waiting out the chipmunks hunkered down in there. I caught him in a good mood when he was willing too pose for me - a very rare thing these days.

The Garden State: Hosta!

I know that I post this same shot year after year, but please do not deny me the pleasure. Of all the plants I have ever planted, tended, cut back, divided, transplanted, pruned or nutured, this one is my lifetime favorite.

It's a big blue called "Big Daddy". It is one of the decendants of the original H. sieboldiana 'Elegans' from which all blue hosta are derived. This one has  leaves that are heart-shaped, corrugated and huge. Click for closeup of this 12" wide leaf.

I waited too long in the season to take this photo. The leaf color is fading and the short stalk of white flowers are already done. I was trying to resist the temptation to talk about this plant year after year, but now that you have seen it, do you blame me for showing it again?

Long time readers here know that I like to take photos of objects next to a corgi for size comparison, but I'm afraid those days are almost over, my friends. The corgi in question has decided that he's put in his time and will no longer cooperate for these early morning photo sessions. He's a good looking animal when he's upright, but when he lays around like a big furry baloney, not so much.

Now I'm beginning to understand why Mr. Sam refers to him as a fat bastard with no legs.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BONUS!  Saturday Morning Special: Click here to see the full extent of the dog's Goin' Limp Sixties Style protest technique, complete with tragic canine facial  expression. My heart breaks over this betrayal.

Rhodos In the Rain

Last week, I was in Nashville and yes, they had magnolias in bloom and yes, they were lovely but look what was waiting for me here in New Jersey.

These are the few short weeks that I wait for all year. During the 50 other weeks, I have to defend these magnificent specimens from the chain saw and pruners of my son and husband. They characterize them as ugly, overgrown monsters and want nothing more than to "trim" them (with a chain saw), cut them down to a uniform 2 feet high, or uproot them entirely.

But during these two weeks, they've go nothing to say. Now if only it would stop raining ...

And speaking of weather, can someone please tell me if there was any unusual weather phenomenon going on while I was away last week?  Something along the lines of freezing over? I only ask because ever since I came back, I notice that Mr. Sam has his clock radio tuned in to NPR. Every day. And not by mistake either.  Previously, if he ever heard it on any radio in this house, he would rush to switch the station while mumbling vague curses about communists.

A thing like this means the rest of the world can't possible be the same, so what was it? Ice? Locusts? What?

Inky Fingers

I'm staging a one man boycott of Morganville Flower Farm. This is the place that annoyed me so much last year.  There I was enjoying a nice warm day in early summer, so happy to have found some healthy looking tiger lillies and  I happened to walk past the owner who was on his cellphone saying "Oh, sure -  business is great. The sun shines and the fish come out."

I strongly object to being called a fish and to the notion that I am helplessly drawn to a commercial establishment by anything other than my own will. I determined right there on the spot that I would just pay for the lillies and never shop there again.

It wasn't easy to stay away - the place has an excellent selection of things that you don't see anywhere else around here and they are all in perfect shape. The grounds are clean, the aisles in the greenhouse are wide and there are stong young boys who carry your purcahses to your car and put down paper floor mats so nothing gets soiled. But I maintained my snit and spent the entire summer of 2004 granting my patronage elsewhere.

That was then; this is now.  One of my most outstanding characteristics is that I can hold a grudge longer than anyone else you know, but it does take its toll on one.  So in a bid for self-improvement, I decided to give them another chance. So I wiped the slate clean and  went back  last week and picked out some nice little specialty coleus plants for my deck pots.

I patiently waited in line at the little hut and when my turn came, the girl rang it up and announced the total just as I was extending a 20 dollar bill: $19.02.

Here's where it gets ugly.

She hestitated, looked down at her drawer and looked back up at me. So I looked in my wallet for 2c in order to get a full dollar back instead of a handful of change. "No pennies," I said. "No problem," she said. Then she picked out a nickel, locked up the register and walked over to another check-out to make change. She came back with the 5 pennies, put them in the drawer and handed me 98c change.

I found that extremely annoying. I know what she did was perfectly right, but seriously - is this customer service? No, it is not. So the boycott's back on.

Thank goodness I already had a box full of the most fascinating coleus plants already in my possession - all shades of chartreuse and maroon but in varying shapes and sizes. There's a regular size and shaped one that has little green freckles and edges called Dip't In Wine, one with massive leaves called Kong and one lacy little thing called Inky Fingers.  I chose  one named Alligator Alley, which is all green and has maroon veins in the crinkled leaves and potted them up with a lime green sweet potato plant and a white begonia.

"Dip't". Doesn't that just crack you up? See what I mean about an interesting selection. Ok, so maybe I was manipulated a little bit and bought these based on name alone, but they are quite hypnotic and compelling to look at.

Now I can reinaugurate my boycott without worrying that I'm missing out on something good.

Addendum: Immediately after that disappointing experience,  I went to Bayshore Greenhouses to ook for some Pygmy Barberry shrubs. I was wandering through the rows and rearranging the stock to get tow that were the same shape and size. One of the owners came over and said "Let me  do that for you" and then moved every single container  in that section until he was satisfied that I had two similar specimens. Then he put them in my car on cardboard boxes and left me to my own honor to pay.

At the register, after adding a few mor little things, the total was $54.98. I gave over 60 bucks and said "Please keep the 2 pennies in case your next customer needs them".

That is the kind of person I am.

So from now on I'm a Bayshore Greenhouse girl exclusively. They are plant people, where as the Morganville Flower Farmers are mere business people. And lousy ones, too.