whose flower and fruitage is the world..."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My garden is beautiful.
I love spending time here.
In light of my last post I thought I would elaborate. I am in my garden, enjoying a pleasant summer evening. There was a brief rain storm right before I was supposed to leave work, and now, while the air is humid, there is a wonderful breeze and it feels very comfortable.
In my garden, I have sunflowers. Lots of them.
Last summer I discovered I was allergic to them. If I brought them in to my kitchen table and sat there eating or working, very quickly I would start sneezing - violently. This was a very sad realization. I love having cut flowers on the table and the sunflowers especially.
This year I vowed to only plant the sunflowers without pollen, the teddy bear sunflowers. I saved the biggest and most beautiful, planted the seeds, and let nature take its course.
Now I am confused. I do not have teddy bear sunflowers. I have quite a variety:
These are too tall.
And I have these:
and of course, there are the sunflowers in the first image. I planted all of these seeds from the same flower - what gives? Are they like apples? Where every seed is it's own variety? I guess it would make sense.
I also have hollyhocks:
These are a favorite of the big bumble bees.
New for me, I have marigolds from seed.
These are so much bigger than what I've purchased at the gardener. This is the first bloom.
I have cosmos - all orange:
The indoor plants outside are thriving:
From left to right - violets that didn't bloom, parsly, thyme, and a big rosemary in one planter, patchouli, a funny catcus, and petunias.
The Morning Glories have begun their performance:
There are unwanted, but adorable, guests:
My tomatoes are fruiting:
and Cherokee purples.
But all is not perfect.
When I returned home from Melanie's a few weeks ago I noticed that something was missing. An entire bush was missing from the front of my yard. It didn't take much to put two and two together to equal Mr. El. Yup, Mr. El decided that the forsythia I had planted in the front had penetrated the foundations of his cellar and had to go. Interesting that the ugly hedge that has been there for years didn't merit the same ruthless hacking. Just the forsythia. He claims it is the reason his basement is so wet. Ahem, well. no. The forsythia has only been there for two years, and his basement has been wet every summer since I moved here 7 years ago. And it's always a different reason. First I watered my lawn there and that's what made it wet, now suddenly its a forsythia. sigh. So I confronted him and the bottom line told him, I didn't mind that a plant might need to go - it's that he just came into my yard and cut it down without talking with me about it first. ! Seriously! He felt honestly guilty. Even Miss Mary said he felt guilty. But I wasn't really too upset. First of all it's a forsythia and they are darn hard to kill. Its already coming back (the bright green little bush right in the middle). Quite frankly, in the big picture, I actually think its funny that he did this. Snort - for one thing, if he was trying to get rid of the roots in his foundation - he didn't.
For another - allowing Mr. El to hold on to the notion that this is his yard, has it's perks too.
About a week after I discovered the vanished bush, Miss Mary told me that she and Mr. El chased some guy out of my the back yard around 4:30 in the afternoon. This guy sauntered in, alerted the dogs who barked, parked his bicycle on the cellar door and started to do - goodness knows what - when they both started yelling at him. Mr. El kept yelling until he left and then ran down to the side walk and told him not to go into "his" yard again. The following weekend Mr El, his daughter and I were talking over the garden gate, and the same guy walked by. Boy if Mr. El didn't make a stink about it in front of everybody. "That's the guy! That's the guy that was in your yard Miss Terra! That's the guy - see him with the bike - that's the guy!!!!"
I'd be surprised if this guy ever walks up this street again. Fine by me.
Because... I don't think this was the first time he was in there.
The same week, my blueberry bush up and died. Just the blueberry bush, nothing else.
Why?!
The other one didn't. Just this one, all fruited and everything. Just like my azalea bush last year. I think someone peed on it. Just like I thought last year. I don't get it. There is an entire empty lot right up the street. If they have to go that bad - just go in there! But in my yard? Where I work so hard to make it beautiful?... why?
"...man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots,
whose flower and fruitage is the world..."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
No comments:
Post a Comment