Summer in the Garden

Holy Smokes - well, it's been awhile since a gardener has checked into Halfmoose. Even so, you can't stop nature, and even if it hasn't been thoroughly documented, the green things are doing their grand work, and then some!

2012 was one of the hot years. Hot and dry, and the farmers sure did moan. We're all crying now as the prices still soar from last year's woes. But this year, lovely half-over 2013, is cool and WET. Maybe not torrential downpour wet (although we've seen a few barn-busters) but the skies do seem to open up for a bit every day or two.  Normally by July we're pretty much done mowing the lawn, as the grass begins to  brown and the garden hoses unwind to freshen the perennial beds. The lawn mower in July and August only comes out in mid summer to trim the weeds which seem to be the only things growing. Hoo - they're growing well, no change there, but so is the Kentucky Bluegrass. It's thick and lush and wonderfully cool in your bare feet! Yes, 2013 is one of those years to remember.

I do love the mornings off in the warm months, when I can brew a cuppa and walk out into the Twisted Gardens with my pooch and a grass stained pair of untied sneakers. We'll stroll the brick paths and note the new buds or maybe a flower preening on its vine. Sometimes I pluck a spade and comb the lawn plucking Toby's poos and tossing them aside for the moment, to collect later. This morning I was lazy and scooped a small pile and chucked it under the William Shakespeare Mulberry. His trailing branches were so long they lay in heaps upon the bricks, making one section of the pathway seem more like a jungle passage then a suburban retreat. The mulberry has tremendous green leaves and looks like Cousin It's rainforest cousin.

"Ach! Niggity poo-addled bums!"

Ah. That would be the Little Man in the Garden, I presume. It's mid July already and I'm surprised I haven't seen him yet, but the garden is so full - almost overgrown - that it makes sense. Under the Mulberry was once a more open space with ground cover and some wispy coreopsis waving little yellow blooms. Now the place is shaded and dark as deepest Africa. I push aside some branches, wet with dew, and see the Little Man waving his walking stick at me from the mulch littered river rock. OMG, he is wearing a pith helmet. He has built a small enclosure by the Mulberry's truck, whose girth I haven't noticed yet this season.

"Shite an' carbuncles, ye idiot brainer, sheep and walleyes, kerbliggitty jo! Der be poop 'n me hippo pen!"

What? I see no tiny hippos, but the preparation seems to be under way. There is a nice paddock and shallow pool for a diminutive hippo in any case. "I see you're expanding from merely spreading weeds in my yard and garden, into zoo keeping?" Why not.

"Ack, Billy an' I, yer weedness, sup an' have de odd hand o' cribbage here, ya ol' bent whiskery dolt. Knock about an' toss yer savage beast's brownies 'n der bin, poo-handler! Knack-kneed goldarn anklebiter 'n 'is gobber-head goober! Uncle-dee-dunkels!"

"Sorry," I say. I guess I'll get a bucket and walk the lawn for now on. I wouldn't want to disturb 'his weedness'. Feckless little imp that he is.

It's July, well beyond the 4th when the skies light up and blasts of gunpowder send the beasts upstairs to cower under beds. The trees, all of them, are shooting up over my head and filling the air above my garden with gentler type of fireworks. The Maple towers now over the roofline. Its shade will make the deck much more pleasant than previous years, and now the ferns will last though the hottest of the summer. The Twisted Filbert is as dense as a neutron star and its gnarled branches are lost under the canopy. Purplish red Smoke Tree is resplendent in her plush and drying blooms. Soon the cloudy wisps will fall and cover the grass and blow into corners. The newer Chokecherry is poking ever skyward with deep red, almost black leaves, highlighted with newer green shoots. Tiny little berries, turning nearly black,  dangle like jewelry and are horribly astringent - good only for the birds. The Indians harvested them and made Chokecherry jelly. There are others, but I'll save them for another day. For now, another cup of tea is needed, and maybe buttered toast on the bench. We'll sit awhile and just look at the plants and birds and scurrying chipmunks. Toby will growl and chase them into the bushes. Soon enough I'll grab the spade and clean up poo and weeds. Morning is the time to take it all in and whistle at the red-winged blackbirds. Happy Summer, all.

Ye can check in HERE for last year's Little Man sighting. He's been happily (begrudgingly?) spreading weeds in my garden for many a year. Little asshole.

Summer. It's hot.

For some reason or another I cannot comment on anyone elses blog. I know other people have had this problem from time to time, and it's probably only because some setting on my computer has been changed for no particularly good reason...if anyone has an answer for me, I'd appreciate it...
Anyway, here are some recent pictures from days gone by...

a small piece of the mural on the Hyde Brother's Bookstore.

Toby, or should I say, "Mooch"
sidewalk chalk, at the Three River's Festival
night flowers.

Driving around town and looking out the window and merely almost nearly existing in Indiana over the winter months is a dreary drag , and OMG ! winter has only just started . Scraping frost off the windshield at every corner as the ice-rain mix frosts a view of the road , i begin to see things that cannot be -- hallucinations of warmer times impinge upon my better judgement and i plop into a snowbank where i reminisce of warmer , happier moments ... ( dream sequence blearily fades in as my goofy face waggles into a mishmash of crazy radiosignalizationwaves )
...when I discovered this golden raintree at Lakeside in Ft. Wayne . The globe came along a bit later and after a chat about the state of affairs of globes ( you know , global warming , globe trotting , globular physics and some other mathematical globlidigook that i'd only understand asleep ) i asked if the globe would pose by the golden raintree blossoms and it said 'yes' . I was surprised to find this raintree as they are something you rarely see around here . In fact , this is only the second raintree i've ever seen in Ft. Wayne ... One was at a friends and it was sitting on the porch having a beer . It was nice that the raintree was there because it was sprinkling out and its branches kept us all dry and kept our wet drinks from getting watered down . The raintree there didn't have a globe with it and wasn't really all that talkative ... probably it was a sullen drunk . As a funny aside , i now have two raintree seedlings in my garden . Isn;t that funny ? Someday i will be able to sit out in the yard and drink a beer with them , and maybe we can invite a globe , too .

...and then i entertained thoughts on a tribe of terrapin :

I think they were laying eggs ! This seemed very strange to me , but i suppose it's all part of life and that kind of stuff -- the noble turtle , some refer to her as a shell-back-creature-from-prehistoric-epochsesis-or-from-a-strangely-different-world , or just a hard-thing or in your case a ( insert your name for this odd animal-like-creature here or where ever convenient ) , seems pretty even tempered to the point of being non-existent ; in fact , turtle-thing may be from another planet : notice the shell ; my theory is that it's a self-sustaining life-supporting capsule , not unlike a flying saucer , that the turtle will travel between the stars in -- so ; obviously the turtle can live for unheard of ages ; many lifetimes of human-types or owl-types or even the especially long-lived forest newt-types ; Shakespeare may have mentioned them (turtle-space-aliens ) in a sonnet, as i believe King Richard had a few intergalactic-acid-revelations .

Enough of alien nature and supertronics : i have decided to put up some pics of big bugs ... this here big bug I actually snapped at Turkey Run in Indiana ... it is hard to take a picture of these big bugs as they flap their little wingy thingys very fast and move and flit and don't sit very still ... see how he is a wee bit blurry ... i believe these big bugs live in another dimension that somehow coincides along with our own , and only an astrophysicist could explain that notion .

These mega-huge bumbling bees love Snapdragons -- which have a vicious bite i warn you -- but i am beginning to loathe Snapdragons for they seed like wild things prowling the wild unexplored undergrowth's . I have taken to picking most of the seedlings , leaving only a select few to flourish in their hue and splendor(isnish) ... they are like a weed , or several .

After he frightened me , i sat down and had a conversation ; it went like this : "Why hello , you sort of surprised me there , Mr. Mantis .""Oh , snick snik , i am sorry , snik . I am looking for a bug to eat , but if you lay very still i could maybe eat some of you .""That is a bad idea , Mr. Mantis , for if you start to eat me then i will surely squarsh you , just as an involuntary action , you know .""Snik snik ... ok , if you see a bug let me know , for i am hungry . Snik . You can call me Bob ."That was all of that because i became distracted by another big bug ....

This big ugly bug should be against the law ... it is way ugly ; but by those standards i would probably be locked up forever myself . See how this cicada is looking at me with its big black eye and thinking , "Gawd , what an ugly big thing ! I sure wish i could lay my eggs in its wonderfully curly hair ! Then i could die happy !"