Good morning!! Well here I am in happy anticipation of Mars tonight (I didn't stay awake long enough to see it last night as it was rising in the southeast). Today promises to be still clear enough to catch it but as I went outside this morning (a split day off today) to water some of the parched containers and see if Sugar had been digging in my flowerbeds (she had.......arggghhhh, the SAME one by the nook behind the Ruby Slippers lobelia I think the pulmonaria is totally lost now. I've replaced the soil about six times and I don't think there are any spring bulbs remaining in the soil. THIS time she had not only relocated over 3/4ths of the soil out of the bed but had uncovered the astilbe I'd planted two months ago.....this is getting outa hand, time to look for the metal piece to lay down on top of the soil in hopes this stops her next time, I'm getting tired of discovering she's redug this one area).
Once I got some spit watering done, put the soil back into the bed cursing and kvetching about the dawg the whole time.......I went back over to the west yard and was looking up at the towering branches of my fig bed. I can't wait until they start ripening I was thinking when I spotted an unmistakable sight......plump, slightly tan and heavy, nestled just at the base of a huge leaf. It can't be....ohhhh but it IS!!! So I stood underneath the branches and traced every branch and every fig until I located six of the lucious, fat and ripe beauties. Only six, but previews of things yet to come as the tree is loaded this year.
Picking the first one proved that it had ripened sooner than I realized. It was lost. I was disappointed as I flung it into the pasture westward,but kept looking for more and spotted five others ready for picking. Careful so as not to tear the flesh, I removed them, searched the tree for more sweet gifts but was grateful for these six I stopped when I realized the rest weren't close. These were the first previews of wonderful things to come in September.
The first one was pure honey. Slightly cooled by the night, despite that it only dropped in temperature to 77o last night, the cooler evening, added with the fog that son said was present when HE went outside to look at Mars rising up this morning was enough to chill the deep pink flesh in the center. I saved the other five to share with Squire and oldest son, and once they took their's, I was allowed to have Squire's, he insisted Ammaretto coffee doesn't go well with fresh figs, son on the other hand got a large one upon rising and was surprised at the sweet flavor. He hasn't had a fresh fig in quite a few years. The rest were allocated to me, and I still have one waiting for me to slowly eat it, savoring it since it's the last one for awhile until the rest start to ripen as these hot days march on.
Outside the day is warming up and threatening to be another blisterer, cicada's are strumming their songs in the trees and the fairies are tucked under cool leaves and rocks to ward off the impending heat.
I have four new baskets of mums waiting to be planted that I fell in love with yesterday that came the night before at work, and yesterday morning we got asters in and three replacement pots stuck to my hands that I'd gotten last year and they dissolved on me. (you have to plant these things into the ground instead of tucking them in the side area near the timber and pouring soil around them to fill in the space. they like to be snug in the ground....I'll never learn). The pots of mums resemble my most loved flower. The composites. I love all daisy flowers and these mums that came day before look like pyrethrum's, burgandy with yellow eye, peach, yellow and creme with spidery petals, deep pink with yellow eye that looks like a darker Clara Curtis, and an orange one with yellow, peach and cream with spidery petals radiating outward instead of the cushion shapes all the rest of them have.
The asters were the same ones I got last year. An almost blue one, a deep pink one and one called Jenny that is a hot pinkish red and double. And I noticed that my Frakartii asters are as tall as they can get where I park the car, and are starting to plump up their buds at the tops, tucked between them on my way back inside with the figs I saw signs of a surviving pysostegia, pink obedient plant I'd plunked into the middle of the asters sometime but had forgotten about, and I left two Soladago's and ripped out all the rest so I'd have a spike of golden yellow to open up when the fields set fire with their own show of them.
Walking down the driveway when I was watering I spotted a nice surprise. I thought I'd lost the purillo or perennial petunia and I saw one lone soft powdery lavendar blossom rising up from the tangle of the sidewalk bed on the west side. Along with Bermuda grasses trying to take over. My work is cut out for me.........
Back in the house I sit at the desk, slowly savoring the sweetness of the fig and see the hummer is taking advantage of the cooler morning and checking out every blossom in my garden. It's time to make up some sugar water for him and his wife and kids.
thanks for allowing me to share this moment with you, I hope you're all safe and not overheated and hopefully some rains will drench the Pacific Northwest and aid in the fire's extinguishing up there.
madgardener up on the ridge, back in fairy holler, overlooking a muggy and hot looking English Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone 7, Sunset zone 36