Standing on the kitchen deck the other day, as dusk was drawing closer, I listened to the sounds around me and inhaled. I had watered the new extension odd-ball bed I placed in front of the woods boxes. I had to find somewhere to plant the perennials. This time I had mixed the clay soil with the cheaper topsoil after I was able to get the shovel into the ground. I always forget the pick-ax....
I had watered everything that I thought needed it, because despite how green and happy everything is, the rains continue to split around me here on the ridge and go north and to the east, northeast of me. But, the smells were wonderful from my own watering. That rich, earthy smell that water releases so easily.
There is one bird, I don't know his identity, but every dusk,and lately, the early mornings, he starts out his acca pella solo. It literally sounds like "Tweedle ee Tweedle ee" and is very melodious. I suspect it's my little Indigo bunting, but this song of his, whomever he is, is awesome in the late afternoon just before dusk kisses everything.
I started looking at everything around me, and with camera in my pocket, I opened the shutter that I've set the sound to be a chirping bird when I do. Various other birds interject their notes of randomness around the main vocalist up in the trees somewhere, and I start where I am and peer over the railings of the deck.
Wood boring bees are too plentiful this year, and I fear they're undermining me where I stand. The males hover before my face and glare at me and then dart off to conflicts with others, like some flying Samuri intent on combat with another male for territory.
Their glare is obvious. I am not intimidated by them, I don't believe they can sting me, and I'm larger than them and if they twart me too much, I'll shoot them with a blast of pyrethrum. I just wish they'd munch the trees instead of my deck, railings and boards along the perimeter of the house where I walk. My NSSG has daily accumulations of sawdust that blow onto the pink Buddelia giving it a strange dusty look.
My mind starts working on tangient threads...............
There are two new gardens in containers on the kitchen deck. Put there to enjoy the direct southwestern sunlight, they hog the dwindling space where I put the cacti and succulents I bring in each fall. This year as my mind zigs and zags thru horticultural thoughts, I have to place the "Redundant gardens" in different places. That's the cacti and tropicals that reside inside because of my zone that won't support them outside.
Before I realize it, dusk has fallen, and I'm unable to capture any images on the camera, so I pad quietly down the cooling cement dogrun/sidewalk that cuts across the front of my house and behind the raised beds that face south. The BBQ pit/fountain and garden is accumulating those fallen lavender blossoms of the Pawlonia tree, and one pump can't handle all of them. Like huge Foxgloves blossoms, they're filling the ground and water with their spent beauty. Maybe tomorrow--
The next day I came out to look around me and take notice, the Red Eyed Devils or 17 year locusts were making their early appearances. I noticed because there was an allium I was particularly interested in and it turned out to be the Christophii. The leaves resembled the hairy leaves of an agave and before I messed up and pulled it out, I decided to wait and see what came up from the whorl of leaves at the edge of the bed.
Irises I don't remember being in places where I didn't think I had them were opening and wowing me. Not a huge fan of bearded irises, I had ordered the twice blooming ones from Dutch Gardens last year and had potted them up into pots that spent their first winter on the deck off the kitchen. These couldn't be them, it's too soon. And when I bumped the pots of them out and tucked them in here and there this spring, I realized I should have allowed them another season to make more roots.
As I noticed these things, I noticed another. Dried husks of locusts. Quite a few of them. Ahhh, the 17 year locusts are starting to hatch. Already? Wow, the last few days of very hot weather has waken them it seems.
Almost overnight the oriental poppies that I've tucked into the extension bed by the driveway have shot up. First hairy mounds of ferny leaves, and almost overnight, stems with tight fisted green knobs with little hairs sticking out of them. A few are not round but mis-shapen, but there are more blossoms this year than last and I can't wait to see who's revealed. I long for a simple orange one to clash with the red, but it seems they might all be red. I love them anyway. When I come home from work, I see the fairies have tickled the most misshapened one to open up her sheaths and the flower is like red scarlet paper mache that is clasped like folded hands.
Now we can fast forward to when I decided to catch this up and finish it. Saturday. The temperatures reached the low 90's and after all that heat, I knew the flowers would be in fast forward. Irises were popping open, the finished ones were shriveling up faster than I could pop them off carefully above the new buds.
Grab a glass of sweet iced tea and check out what the fairies have given me on Mother's day...................I'll continue this later
madgardener up on the ridge, back in Fairy holler overlooking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36