Labor Day, Minus the Hurricane

It was hard to capture the light that was pouring through this particular stretch of woods: almost "Thomas Kincaide Bizarrely Highlighted by a Master Highlighter". I don't think I achieved the hallucinatory quality (drat!) but the scene is certainly still pretty! All the wild asters are crazily in bloom and you can't top them for flowering in dry shade, competing with poison ivy. Tough little bastards. This path is right behind my newish shade garden...
A rambling post! Bob and I entertained our good friends Don and Elizabeth for two days. They left early this morning, trying to stay ahead of Hurricane Hermine who doesn't seem ultimately destined to make much of an appearance. We ate and drank and hung out for two days; taking a long walk, going to a flea market, playing with Robin the Good. It was restful but we're still tired and I have to go back to work tomorrow! (Bummer!)

Here's a shot of the Clematis arbor that Bob made me for my birthday. The Clematis paniculata is just coming into bloom: also white and close by another large drift of those woodland asters... quite the nice, effortless spectacle! This arbor looked amazing even before the flowers started to erupt, but now it's really beautiful. Bob painted all those little silver dots on the web so they resemble dew. It's hard to photograph but so detailed and delicate. It surpassed my initial request (a couple of years back) for "some sort of structure; maybe like a spider's web". I had imagined a pretty basic bit of metal work, but Bob imagined a lovely piece. This photograph doesn't do it justice.

I'll try again in a few of days when more flowers come out. But in the meantime, here's abigger picture to show how it embraces the tree trunk:

Not much better, I'm afraid. But the shadow underneath was nice...

Hooray for Rain!

Well, yes, the rain is a good thing except that it came in buckets and piles and droves and gigantic, epic cascades. I was outside, attempting to plant some of the many plants and seedlings that need attention, making decent progress when it started to rain. I ignored it for a few minutes, being already muddy and soaked through. But the thunder came and the rain got harder and harder and even Jules wondered why we were still outside. It's a good thing I sought shelter when I did because the rain was heroic and continued for the entire evening. And into today! I even left work a bit early as it was slow, thinking I could return to my gardening tasks but it started pouring on my way home and I was washed out again.
But there are some early (for me) garden high lights. The above Clematis "Elsa Spath" (apparently also called "Xerxes") was a rescue. I bought it- on clearance- two years ago at Walmart of all places) for (gasp) $1.50. It consisted (at that point of a badly bent stem, all of about eight inches long with this one giant flower. I admit it, I didn't have any real hope of its survival; I just felt bad for it. But here's one grateful clematis! Great color, too. I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a good shot of the dark purple smoke bush (Cotinus) behind the Clematis as they really are spectacular together. Here's a closer shot- these flowers are huge!

Of course all that rain has probably shattered the flowers; I know it's making a mess out of the peonies! Gardening has its frustrations. Too bad we can't all put out multiple buckets and collect all the extra rain and send it to California.

How about a cheesy shot of fiddleheads? I took this a couple of weeks back on my walk. I know people eat them- and they're delicious! but they're so early to come up that it seems a shame. Not much else is green then. And now suddenly, so many things are blooming!