34 Big Ones!

Yup! Frost killed the basil on Saturday night and that means it was time for Bob and I to celebrate 34 years on non-anniversary. (I'm considering asking, "Where did/does the time go?" but it's rhetorical and a cliche so I won't.)

Savvy blog readers will notice that the basil is in a small plastic pot. Out basil did so badly that- as noted in a previous posting- we did not have pesto this summer... not even once! One day while at our local supermarket, I happened to spy herb plants (and organic no less!) and purchased the above victim. Pretty sad that this plant was born to be offered up as a sacrificial avatar of our anniversary. But it did its job and here we are.

 

We also bought a nice cheerful little chrysanthemum to celebrate our 34 years of un-married adventures, along with sushi and tempura and seaweed and teriyaki. It was a pleasant evening until we accidentally attempted to watch a comedy which was describing the relationship of two women (one of them ostensibly an asshole artist!!) who would spend much of the next hour and a half beating each other into bloody pulps- and comas- multiple times. Be careful of what passes as "comedy".

And then there was this:

Yes! An amazing full moon (Hunter's moon) that I just couldn't do justice to in pictures. The whole sky glowed and the abundant clouds were tufted and rippled and rumpled. It was pretty spectacular!

Hope everyone got to enjoy it and thanks for the anniversary good wishes!

Unexpected Tradgi-Versity 31 1/2

There was a frost a few nights ago and it killed the basil... you know what that means! Happy Non-Anniversary to Bob and me! Okay, so the fact that our non-anniversary typically lands towards the end of September or beginning of October means nothing when you get a bizarre and unexpected frost that obliterates your only-just-planted basil but every other tender annual you tenderly started from seed... Oh the horror! The horror!
I lost two full flats of zinnia linearis (from my own saved seed!) which are impossible to buy at nurseries nowadays. A full flat of heliotrope (that I started from seed) and a number of individual "premium" annuals that I'd secured for filling containers succumbed, too. I was pretty much devastated but then Bob and I decided to celebrate 31 1/2 years...
So I had to re-purchase the plants that I could (tomatoes, peppers, basil etc) and simply mourn the ones I couldn't (whole flats of odd ball annuals). I lucked onto a slew of calendulas (in the same color range as the zinnias I'd planted) and bought enough to fill the bed that empty. It will look fine by mid-summer but I really LIKE those zinnias I lost!
Here's the replacement calendulas... all things considered, they'll look pretty good quite soon.

There's Maggie in the background. Hello Maggie! (She likes to watch Robin and I plant.)
So other things going on...

Be still my heart! We all know I am crazy for Delphinium; oooooh! This is a long running love affair. And wouldn't you know, I go to Stop and Shop for something and I see- across the parking lot, despite my face mask fogging my sunglasses- a truck unloading flowers at the other door. I make a bee line, but am told they have to unload the truck before they can sell the flowers. (Yeah, it's eight feet up on a huge rack.) So I procure whatever food was I needed, put it in our car (shout out to Trusty!) and immediately reapproach the plant people who have now offloaded. Sold!! I have to go all the way back in to the store, but this Delphinium is coming home with me, baby!

In a heavy mist today, I got a lot done in all parts of the garden, including the Shade Border which looks quite okay despite my sort of ignoring it while I plant many other things. Here's a close up of the Kerria Japonica:

Nice! Single orange blooms, impeccable variegation... this is a winner. Lots of nice things erupting here, suitable for my next post.
And I know you can't smell it from there, but the Abelia is amazing! Loaded with blooms- top to bottomus- and just great:

Also, the lilac that Mommy gave me a million years ago is blooming. I'm so happy about this. This particular offspring is from a white lilac that Mommy had- in Durham!- like fifty years ago is now residing and flowering in my Lilac Border. that made me happy (and a bit sad). But it smells so nice...

Timber!

It's never a dull moment! I was expecting to put up a posting about our recent trip to Vermont, but instead I'm blogging about several large trees that decided to take a nose dive in that storm last night. Driving back from Vermont was wet and a bit windy but when we arrived home, the weather picked up significantly. We even lost power for like three seconds- just enough to disrupt the clock on the stove, the computer etc. I heard that 150,000 homes lost power, so we were lucky!

This morning, I was washing the breakfast dishes when Bob came back in from outside and said, "Go look at the driveway..." I had images of our car or truck smashed to bits or my studio roof being burdened by giant branches. Amazingly, the trees that fell down did minimal damage. (Interestingly, they fell exactly where Bob was saying he was going to drop them as he was planning on cutting them down. Both were dead!) Well, no damage to cars or house but...

One of Bob's sculptures took a bit of a beating, but fortunately, it's nothing that can't be fixed. It really is pretty incredible that these trees fell, missing all of the Japanese maples and a large planter that is located there; the trees even missed the vegetable garden fence. It was like precision landing.
I am surprised that we didn't hear these trees fall, but the remnants of the tropical storm- intense rain, really strong wind- probably masked the crashes of the trees. Nothing like experiencing extreme weather (and on the anniversary of Super Storm Sandy!) to confirm the reality of climate change. What with the fires on the west coast, the drought and extreme heat in California and the multiple category 5 hurricanes, we're fortunate that we received only several inches of rain and some wind...
And we are still waiting to really, truly celebrate our 29th non-anniversary. Even farther north in Vermont, there still hasn't been a hard frost. We keep thinking, "Maybe tonight..."