If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then this post is worth 6,000 words. Wow! I didn’t realize I had that much to say today!
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.
Today was a day of unplanned joys. You can’t plan such a day. Well, you can I suppose, but too many things have to come together, and some of those things — such as the weather — can’t be counted on. But today, the weather was perfect. Truly a joy.
Despite the lovely weather, I wanted a change from my typical morning of weeding. Not that the weeds were all gone — they’re not, and may never be gone, though come winter, they should go dormant along with almost everything else. But I needed to do something different, so I decided to clean my house. There was only a thin veneer of dust, but once that veneer was gone, it became apparent just how dingy the floors and furniture had become. But now, what a joy! Everything sparkles like new, or as new as a 94-year-old house can be.
Still charged with energy, I took a brief walk — also unplanned until the very minute I put on my walking shoes and headed out the door. When I came back, a friend came to visit. Admittedly, the visit had been planned. Because of her health issues, I hadn’t seen her for a long time, and we needed to catch up. We sat out in my gazebo, enjoying each other’s company, the lovely day, and the cool breeze. It was great seeing her, and even greater seeing how well she’s doing. (That part was one of the unplanned joys since I had no idea what to expect.)
After she left, I took a brief break for lunch, and then I got a text from another friend who wanted to know if this was a good time to visit. She and the woman she looked after had been wanting to come see my yard and try out my gazebo, but the weather has been a problem — too windy or too hot or too rainy. Well, today was none of those things, and so they finally were able to come.
I enjoyed showing off my yard and flowers, trying (but not succeeding) to disregard the areas of dead grass. I know I’ve said I won’t let those brown spots bother me, but it’s hard not to notice the dullness in comparison with the bright emerald green of the healthy areas. Luckily, my friends only looked at what was there, not what wasn’t.
Before they left, I showed them around my house. Which makes me wonder — did cleaning the house today somehow put all these unplanned joys into effect? Or was it merely a happy chance that today of all days, I felt like cleaning? Not that it matters — it just felt good to know the house looked its best.
And now, here I am, visiting with you. That, too, is a joy, though a planned one.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.
I spent several hours this morning clearing out weeds and weedy grasses. I didn’t even make a dent — the growth (except for some things I want to grow) is overwhelming. I can’t imagine living in a climate where it rains all the time, though this past week where it’s rained so much (and yes, it did finally rain last night about 1:30 AM), I’ve had a glimmer of what it would be like. There would be a lot of good things about it — no time spent watering, no coaxing plants to grow in the arid climate, no dealing with plants dying because of a single day’s neglect. And it would be a lot cooler. Maybe. But keeping on top of weeds and such? Yikes.
My current plan is to do what I can, and when the annuals start dying off this fall, dig up the whole area where the weeds are now too deep seated for me pull easily, and replace them with a different sort of plant. I’m finding that I prefer clumps of flowers, like echinacea, New England asters, and four o’clocks, to single flowers because they are easier to weed. They also tend not to be as weedy, so that helps.
The wild four o’clock is blooming, mostly when I’m not around, but I did capture a couple of the flowers late yesterday afternoon. They are pretty, and when blooming in masses, must be awesome.
I hadn’t planned to write another gardening post so soon, and I certainly didn’t want to bore people with talk of the weather, but this morning’s exertions wore me out, and so there’s not much else in my head to blog about.
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll have some wisdom to impart.
Or not . . .
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.
I’ve been playing a new game lately called, “Will it rain?” It’s a simple game, with no rules, no challenges, no rewards. All I do is track the possibility of storms with a weather app. You’d think it would be simple, a quick check to see what the day’s weather would be, and then the weather happens.
But not here, not now. Last night when I went to bed, there was a 75% chance of it raining in the early morning hours. It didn’t rain, so I checked the app when I got up, and it said there was a 95% chance of rain before noon. Again, it didn’t rain. So I checked the app again, and it said there was a 50% percent chance of rain by 3:00 o’clock. Not only did it not rain, but the sun came out and the temperature shot up about ten degrees more than was forecast. Now the app says 15% chance of rain after 7:00.
So, will it rain? Apparently, no one knows.
It wouldn’t matter what the forecast is, but with so many rain days that turned out to be non-rain days, I should probably water my lawn, but I certainly don’t want to oversaturate it. When we were getting rain, I got mushrooms in my lawn, and the brown spots where the grass died didn’t get any less brown.
I’ve decided worrying about the lawn is a foolish occupation of my worry time. Not that I schedule a time to worry, you understand, it’s just that there always seems to be something niggling at me. In the fall, I will have to reseed a few areas where the grass has receded (it hasn’t just receded, it’s flat-out disappeared, but I liked the reseed/recede homophone). I will also have to dig up the Bermuda grass that is launching a full-scale attack on the finer grass, so it doesn’t really matter if I have five spots to reseed or ten spots. So, since it’s already in the schedule, it’s not worth worrying about.
I had been wondering about when to mow with all the rainy days we were supposed to have, but today, when the sun came out, I went out and did the chore. I also took photos of flowers, which I’m sure comes as no surprise to you. The dark purple petunia with the pink highlight is one of the petunias that grew itself from last year’s petunias, though those petunias had no pink highlights.
Tomorrow looks as if it will be a repeat of today, starting out with a 68% chance of rain, so lucky me — I get to play the game again.
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.
I was surprised, many years ago, to learn that Colorado had a monsoon season. “Monsoon” always made me think of places like Thailand and Singapore with their afternoon deluges that brought traffic to a standstill, and Colorado seldom gets that sort of rain, which makes “monsoon” seem a strong word for the weak rains we sometimes get in July and August.
Although most people associate “monsoon” with deluges, a monsoon is actually a shift in the wind. In the case of Colorado, that wind shift brings moisture from the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Mexico into the state. According to the Colorado Climate Center, the monsoon “usually happens when a strategically centered high pressure (with clockwise flow around it) and low pressure (with counterclockwise flow around it) settle in over the region.”
The erratic and unpredictable nature of this North American monsoon is why the forecasters seem unable to tell us when or where or how much it’s going to rain. There have been days recently when they predicted 10% chance of rain, and we ended up with a steady downpour. Other days they have predicted a 90% chance of rain, and we ended up with nary a drop. And some days the forecast changed so frequently, no one and nothing had any idea what was going to happen, not even the weather itself.
This week, rain or no, we seem to be centered solidly in the monsoon wind pattern. The days are still and dry, but most evenings we have at least a splattering of rain. A couple of nights ago it rained for several hours, the longest rain we’ve had all year. It rained a bit last night, and after a respite of — perhaps — no precipitation tonight, there’s a chance of rain every evening for the rest of the week.
I have learned a couple of things during this monsoon week: 1) the browning of certain areas of my lawn isn’t due to lack of moisture, and 2) this is not a good time of year for hanging baskets. I’ve had to settle those hanging plants firmly on the ground so they don’t take flight in the late-night winds. By the time the winds are gone and I hang up my plants again, it will probably be too late in the season for flowers. Still, plants are nice, wherever they are.
Well, some plants. The rain sure is making the weeds spring up! And it’s making the already sprung-up weeds grow horrendously fast. I’ve cleared out the tallest weeds, though my garden patches have been neglected. Luckily, as you can see, I still managed to find a few flowers to photograph.
Incidentally, all the white flowers pictured are volunteers, planting themselves where they’ve been assured a warm (and wet) welcome.
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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.
A girl asked an artist how he knew when his painting was perfect, and he answered, “It’s never perfect, so I’ve learned to celebrate the small perfections.”
His response resonated with me because that is how I’ve learned to view my garden (as well as the rest of my life). When people drive by my house, they might see the finished art piece of my yard, but I see all the problems — the patches of brown grass and the encroachment of weed grasses in the lawn, the insect-nibbled flowers and the annuals past their prime, the overgrown areas and the undergrown areas, and all the other issues that make a landscaped yard less than picture perfect.
Celebrating the small perfections keeps me focused on what I can control. Not that I can control what blooms and what doesn’t, but there’s way too much that is beyond my control —weather, weeds, and insects being prime examples.
I can control the work that I do, and I can appreciate the results of that work, whether it turns out to be what I hoped for or not.
At this time of year, when the tomatoes seem to be wildly overshadowing all the other plants in their vicinity (even though I thought I allowed enough room, apparently, I didn’t), and when it’s obvious what will have to be changed for next year, it’s important for me to celebrate the beauty that I find in various nooks and garden spots.
It’s especially important to celebrate the small perfections when the rains and cool downs don’t happen. A garden is a collaborative effort between the gardener, nature, and the environment, and when one of those collaborators falls down on the job (what I view as their job, that is), there’s not a whole lot I can do about it.
Gardening is a learning experience — a growth experience in more ways than one — and while I am learning how to perfect my garden, I still manage to find some small thing (or several small things) to celebrate every day.
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.
This morning I was outside before the sun came up — I needed to water before it got too hot to be outside — and I noticed that my wild four o’clock plant had buds.
I came inside and set my alarm for four o’clock so that I wouldn’t miss the blossomed flower. When the alarm went off, I braved the heat (105˚ F), but alas, no flower.
Aha! Daylight savings time! Maybe the four o’clock plant is now a five o’clock plant! It’s five o’clock as I write this, so I peeked out the window, and still no blooms.
According to a couple of articles I stopped to read, the plant won’t flower in the heat, so it waits for the temperature to cool off a bit, which means it could be a seven o’clock or even an eight o’clock plant. Or it might not flower at all. In fact, although I got the plant almost three years ago, this is the first year it even came up, so I’m grateful for that, anyway.
Luckily, the heat will break tonight, and next week will be considerably cooler, with some highs in the eighties and some around ninety. Most days even come with a possibility of rain.
I am so looking forward to a bit of cool. The searing sun is not at all pleasant. The only things I know that appreciate the heat are tomatoes. And zinnias.
It’s funny to think that not that long ago I was thinking the cold would never end, and lately I’ve been thinking the heat will never end. (Just because the seasons have always changed doesn’t mean that they always will.) Luckily, if the weather forecasters have any credence (which up to now, I haven’t seen much of that), it will cool down for a few days anyway.
Then, perhaps, my four o-clocks will bloom.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of intriguing fiction and insightful works of grief.
I spent the morning outside. I hadn’t really planned to. Since it rained last night, I didn’t have to water today, and I figured the ground would be too sodden to weed my flower gardens, so I thought this would be a good day to take it easy.
Still, I had to go outside to toss out the furnace filter I’d just changed (after being very careful going down those old basement stairs), and I needed to reattach a motion-activated light that had somehow become unattached from its perch on the side of the house (I was especially careful going up the ladder since I’m not sure it’s something I should be doing), and because I was outside anyway, I pulled a weed or two.
A couple of hours later . . . Yep, that weed or two turned into a massive cleanup of one of the two uncultivated areas of my yard. It’s not as if the area needed it — the weeds were only waist high. (I’m being ironic here, if you can’t tell. Not about the weeds being waist high, because they were, but about the area not needing to be weeded.) I would have to clear it out eventually — I will be ordering some purple echinacea and Goldsturm black eyed Susans to plant there this fall, so this gave me a head start on the project.
Speaking of which, the echinacea that I planted last year came in a five-inch pot, and they did well. The price has gone up quite a bit, so I’m considering getting plants in three-inch pots, which are half the price, but obviously smaller. Would that be a foolish economy? Obviously, for the same budget, I could get twice as many of the smaller pots, so if a couple of the plants died, I’d still be ahead of the game, but am I sabotaging myself by getting the smaller ones? Or does it sound like a smart choice? I sure don’t know.
But I’m getting off the topic of spending the morning outside . . . After I finished my chores, I took a few photos of flowers. I love how this morning glory turned out — as if the sun were rising from its center!
About then, a friend stopped by and we sat in the comfort of my gazebo (me with dirt still under my fingernails) to chat for few minutes. Next thing we knew, the church bells were tolling the noon hour. Yikes! Those hours do tend to disappear on a person.
We said our goodbyes. She headed out to finish her errands, and I went to harvest my cherry tomatoes. All three of them!
And then finally, I went back inside.
What a nice midsummer’s day!
Only it isn’t a midsummer day. It’s merely a day in the middle of summer. A quick Google search to find out when midsummer really is told me that midsummer is celebrated around the summer solstice, which we call the first day of summer. So confusing!
Still, whatever you call it, I spent a pleasant — and unplanned — summer day outside.
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.
I had a wonderful surprise last night, and you’ll never guess what it was. Aww, shucks. You guessed it. And here I thought I was being subtle and crafty.
Last night’s surprise downpour was anything but subtle, though it was crafty how it slipped in past the weather forecasters’ crystal ball. The meteorologists all said there was almost no chance of rain for the near future, and a few hours later — deluge!
I was thrilled to see the rain for many reasons. One, we needed it. Two, it was a lovely sight — and sound. Three, I was dreading today and having to be outside to water when it was so dang hot.
I also dreaded today because I’d signed up to work at the museum, and although I would have liked to help, I simply did not want to go meandering about in the afternoon heat. I lucked out on that, too. Because of the rain cancelling my morning chores, when a friend called and asked if I wanted to go to the “big city” with her (big only in comparison to this town; anyone anywhere else would consider it a miniscule place) I jumped at the chance to get away for a bit. Shortly afterward, I got a message that the time to help at the museum was changed from the afternoon to the morning, but it was too late; I was already on my way out of town.
So the day I dreaded turned out to be not so dreadful. Even better, I got to see my yard from a different perspective (from the street as we drove away from my place), and it looked pretty good for having to survive such a searingly hot summer.
It’s funny that although we are in the midst of summer (“midsummer” sounds much more romantic than it actually is), I only have three months to come up with and to write a mystery for the museum’s October event.
A friend is doing research for me on a tale she was told as a youngster — something about the military, the Cheyenne, gold, a cave, pictographs, and a totem pole. There was also a hanging, but I don’t remember if that’s part of that story she told me or a different one. (Not only did I talk to her yesterday about what she remembered, I also leafed through a book that gave some of the history of this area, and all that input is jumbled together in memory.) I sure hope she can track down some people who might remember the story because it sounds interesting (more interesting by far than this heat, that’s for sure!). If necessary, I could use those same themes to create my own story, but since it’s for the historical museum, I’d just as soon the mystery have some basis in fact.
But for now, it’s a matter of waiting to see what transpires, both with the story and with our midsummer weather.
We could see a few more showers tonight, but since it’s in the forecast, I wouldn’t be surprised if the rain passed us by — those crystal balls the forecasters are currently using seem rather murky and not at all trustworthy. Because I don’t have my own private rainstorm tucked away somewhere that I could trot out on days like today, I’ll just have to hope that everything again turns out for the best.
***
What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?
A fun book for not-so-fun times.
Click here to buy Bob, The Right Hand of God.
This heat sure is zapping any energy I might otherwise have had. I still do my early morning yard chores, but the effort required to slog my way through the heat leaves me without any resources for the rest of the day. Even when I’m finished and am inside with the air conditioner going, I can still feel that lack of interest in doing anything. Except for reading, of course. That I can do anywhere or at any time, though I have to admit, few books can hold my interest enough to keep me awake for very long. Naps anyone?
It’s times like this when I can feel the pendulum swing of life. Here we are, stuck in a slough of over 100-degree temperatures, but it wasn’t that long ago when the temperatures were dipping below 0 on the Fahrenheit scale. On a day-to-day basis, the pendulum of the seasons might not seem as if it is moving, but it is. In another six months, we’ll be back to those frigid temperatures.
Another pendulum I could feel today is the one that regulates how I feel about my yard and the work I’m putting into it. A few months ago, I was enchanted with the way everything looked and how everything was going. Now I am definitely unenchanted (meaning the enchantment is at an end) though the pendulum hasn’t yet swung all the way to disenchanted (meaning disillusionment and disappointment). And perhaps the pendulum might not swing that far. My love affair with my garden was a shallow one, based entirely on its looks. As the old flowers and plants die off and late-bloomers blossom, and as (perhaps) the rather bleak look of midsummer desiccation gives way to a more robust autumn look when cooler temperatures favor cool-temperature plants, such as New England asters, chrysanthemums, and my grass, then I might become enchanted again. If not, there’s always next spring and the inevitable pendulum swing.
I try not to be too influenced by wild pendulum swings because life is so much more comfortable on the fulcrum. I do, as much as possible, try to remain emotionally centered without going to extremes of moods. (Grief was an aberration, an insane one-sided, one-way swing of the pendulum of life, though even then, I tried to find whatever balance I could.) Still, even centered as much as possible on the fulcrum, small daily mood changes can seem immense when influenced by the out-of-my-control swings of nature.
And especially when the heat wipes me out, leaving me without the energy to balance on the fulcrum.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.
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