Signs of fall

 

 If that doesn't say fall...the basket went on the porch with my giant Costco mum. 

 

I planted the 75 new tulip and hyacinth bulbs this week and did some light tidying up in the yard, taking advantage of the last nice weather. 

In Pennsylvania, we always called it "Indian Summer" which is politically incorrect now. The American Meteorological Society suggests "second summer" instead, which sounds dull. In Europe, they say "St. Martin's Summer." 

At any rate, who doesn't love these lingering days of summer. Life is getting pleasantly busy again, with things look forward to over the next 3 weeks: overdue visits with friends, the first Symphony and a short trip to Calistoga in the Napa Valley (mineral water therapy.) We're curious to see if our old stomping ground changed, other than sticker shock. 

And I'm squeezing in a trip to Twisp tomorrow and will stay through this weekend. My brother is joining me for a couple of nights and it will be fun to have some company. I'll host a dinner on Saturday night. John is staying home to work on a plumbing project. I'm happy to be out of the way for that.

 

 

The chores shift

 

  

 

Other than the arbor, I don't put up holiday lights on the back deck, so this fall tree is a first. It looks pretty from our kitchen window and the sidewalk. John has it set up on clever timers so we don't have to fuss around with switches. 

 

That's a Lemon Cypress tree I bought several years ago at Home Depot. The poor thing got knocked over by the wind, so it's a bit lopsided in the pot. I have it tied now to the deck railing with some flimsy Velcro tape, and will see if it survives the first windstorm. 

 

On Friday, I dug up a bed of iris. What a job. I'm taking the root starts over to Carlton for Amanda's "wild" garden. They call it wild because it is filled with tough pioneer flowers planted decades ago. They discovered the wild garden coming up through the weeds in front of the house. The previous owners put all their efforts into the pear orchard and the landscaping was ignored. 

 

We were into iris for years and collected some special expensive varieties. I'm over it. They outgrew their little patch and I'm converting it to a spring bulb garden. Yes, that means more new tulip and hyacinth bulbs. Maybe I like making work for myself.

 

Or maybe a crisis reminds you of what is important.  

 

I'm getting closer my previous activity level. When I got out of the hospital a month ago, I could barely walk a block from the joint pain, drug overload and fatigue. Of course at my age you wonder and worry if you can ever completely recover from that kind of trauma. But yesterday was a milestone-- I did my old 2 mile loop around the neighborhood. And I'm back to the gym, slow but steady. 

 

Charlotte, our resident kitchen window spider, has also been working hard. I accidentally tore a hole in her web while deadheading geraniums, and we've been watching her rebuild a perfect new web, one miracle strand at a time.  

 

She was never shown or taught how to do this, she just knows. 

 

Quote of the week: 

 

"Stuff your eyes with wonder."  Ray Bradbury

 

 

 

A nice problem

 

Too many tomatoes...I picked at least six bowls from the one potted Roma plant, on top of that, hundreds of cherry tomatoes, most of which were gobbled up in the yard. 

In the old days of Seattle gardening, when summers were much cloudier and cooler,  you were proud to get a handful ripened by September. Everyone had green tomatoes sitting around in the kitchen in the fall. And there were only a few varieties to choose from then, none good for this climate. 

The tomato cross-breeding and hybrid selection over the years has really increased the short season varieties and yields. 

Anyway, a sad day in this house when the tomato bowl runs dry. I've made a delicious fresh sauce a few times-- just a big pile of rough chopped extra ripe tomatoes, generous olive oil, garlic, basil, salt, pepper flakes. And to top it off last night, a grilled hot Italian sausage. How could this not be good for you? 

The most popular American vegetables are: Potatoes, Corn, Broccoli, Garlic, Carrots, Onions, Green Beans, Tomatoes.  Really, tomatoes #8 on the list? Maybe because supermarket tomatoes are so bland and watery.

In the no-so-good food news category, "Gary" and "Blackie" the two Carlton farm drakes, were killed this week, probably by coyotes. They had a dandy summer, running free in the orchard, without a care in the world, but they got too wild and stubborn to go in the chicken house at night with the hens and roosters. Life is sure fun on a farm, until that day when you become someone’s duck dinner. Well, we all have to eat, but that's an expensive morsel for a coyote. 

Cute memories, although I have a feeling Amanda is out of the duck business next year.

Old Sparky

If Charlotte the Spider knows what's good for her, she will stay outside the kitchen window...

I gave John a battery operated insect zapper racket (Marshall's impulse purchase) for Father's Day. He loves it. We call it Old Sparky. 

The poor fly or spider doesn't just peacefully drop down dead, it gets electrocuted with a loud snapping, sparking noise. The bigger the insect, the bigger the snap. It is quite satisfying and fun, in a gruesome way. Living proof that even the nicest people have a mean streak buried in there.

Speaking of spiders, this is the time of year when the biggest ones start showing up in our basement. Old Sparky might need new batteries soon.

And while we're on this spider creepy binge, a hideous illustration from a hideous Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale about a wicked girl who was so vain, proud and cruel she steps on a loaf to avoid dirtying her shoes. Germans were big on old fairy tales, and this book used to scare us to death when we were kids. 

 "Great, fat, sprawling spiders spun webs of a thousand years,
round and round her feet."
from, The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf

Small and wormy

Which is par for the course with "organic" homegrown apples in western Washington. These are destined for the yard waste pickup bin. That's where Seattleites throw everything from chicken bones to dirty pizza boxes to diseased plants. 

One reason why I don't use municipal compost. The other being, it smells sour and putrid and contains bits of white plastic, sometimes even glass chips. They have a nerve selling that poor quality stuff back to us after we pay to have it hauled away. 

Anyway, the garden has been lush the last few years without winter compost or fertilizers of any kind. I leave most of the cleanup until spring now, partially out of laziness, and also for the sake of the insects and birds. Who knows? Maybe the rotting foliage helps put nutrients back in the soil.

OK. Carlton cute pet alert!

 

Yoko and Nica playing a gentle game of tug while Nova supervises. 

And the weenie one now weighs almost 5 pounds. The furry lump that looks like a discarded floor mop is Millie relaxing on her back. It won't be long until the pet menagerie moves from cool kitchen floor to the Russian stove hearth. 

 

Last bloomers

 

 

I was in the garden yesterday scrounging a few vase flowers and finding slim pickins, but this old L.D. Braithwaite rose decided to bloom late. 

The plant was developed in 1988 by the British rosarian David Austin. He named it after his father-in-law, which was either a sweet or suck up gesture (if you're cynical.)

The poor thing is struggling along now in a dry and shady spot, because trees and shrubs grew up around it over the last 20 years. 

But such a beautiful flower. I've noticed sometimes, when under stress, plants suddenly give their all to the reproduction effort. I should transplant it, but where? And it has especially wicked thorns. 

That's something you don't think much about when just starting out. Then the decades hand out good and bad gardening lessons for free. 

The mornings are suddenly so dark! At 6 am, there was a perfect view in the east of Jupiter hanging off the tip of the crescent moon, just as it was starting to get light. 

Another sure sign of fall-- Charlotte the Spider has set up her web again outside the kitchen window. More on that later.