A Practice Weekend

Spent a lovely, slow weekend bobbing in Lake Sequoyah to beat the sweltering heat. In order to fuel all that swimming and paddling we carried a big pot of red sauce made from our Romas. Practicing for our impending vacation in Maine! Staying in the shade this week.

Surprise

Surprise lilies popping up these days. Me thinks if we had a little more rain then we would have a little more surprise.

Where did the Time go?

Whoops, a week jumped past. I've been busy eating peaches, tomatoes and basil. And wondering if there is such a thing as cumulative heat stroke. Weeks on end of heat indexes above 100 degrees will curb the most ardent gardener. At least for a little while.

Baby Buckeyes

Saw these baby buckeyes dangling in the yard whilst taking a morning stroll the other day. Hope they are growing a bunch of luck. Spent a long holiday weekend up in the mountains drifting in a canoe across a lake. Occasionally I'd cast a line.

A Drift of Plumes

Well a drift of plume poppies. These are behind a circle of boxwoods and add an ethereal spray behind the box. A lovely tall gangly plant that will get out of control if you let it!

Treasure from the Stream

I enjoy scavenging, particularly when I don't have to leave my yard. A little stream runs through our property and downtown Athens is built over a portion of it. The stream has been contained in a culvert into which most of the storm sewers on this side of town dump. Plenty of buildings and lots sit above this little rivulet. However, come a rain and we have a raging torrent. I suppose the containment of water in the culvert, when loaded with the flash of runoff or a sustained downpour, pressurizes the water so the trickle out of the end of the culvert where the stream enters daylight and our property becomes a powerful columnar jet. Water will find its way. So after the rain I always walk the stream and I discover loads of freshly tumbled and washed antique bricks piled just past the mouth of the culvert. Where did they come from? Somewhere under downtown Athens I believe. So I stack them and eventually load them up the hill to my workshop from whence they are dispensed to my various projects.

A Mess of Peas

A mess of peas from the garden. Well maybe not a mess but a large bowl. I picked, shelled and ate these the other day. I actually sat on the front porch under a fan in a rocking chair to shell. They were delicious. I remember when I was a kid, box fan blowing from the kitchen screen door, running my fingers deep into the bowls of cool fresh shelled peas. It seemed as if I could have let peas dribble through my hands for hours. I mean it was the seventies.

Cardoon

A nice prickly, dinosaur looking flower for the summer heat. We love these little monsters. I understand a mighty fine soup can be made form the stems.

Summer Time

There are many wonderful things about summer time; swimming, more bike rides, watermelons, veggie gardens, long days, lightning bugs, well I could go on forever like this. But I would say one of the best things about early summer is plums!

Summer Solstice

The longest day of the year. And a pretty damn hot one here. So today we will celebrate with a siesta and then a couple of torpedoes of fine local brew, maybe some bocce, and a lot of staying in the shade. To beat the heat me thinks the drink of choice this evening will be the Cyclist. Half a glass of lemonade, half a glass of cool refreshing ale. Enjoy!

Bocce Practice

The temps dropped a little and I decided to round out my day with a beer and bocce practice. I must refine my toss! Certainly a pleasant way to sip through a bottle of beer, as if that wasn't pleasant enough itself. So as I was practicing I glanced to my left and this was my view...

a new bed of cosmos, zinnias, marigolds and whatever other seeds I could round up with beans running all over the garden fence (made from salvaged wood). All in front of the green house, again made from other people's trash, and then bald cypress standing up through the gap in the tree line, knees down in the little creek. If I were a photographer you could see the bald cypress better. Photographic merits aside, sometimes it is best to do nothing more in the yard than toss the balls around and enjoy the fruits of one's labor.

Toasty

It has been a little toasty around these parts lately with the heat index lounging above 100 for several days. Life is like a sauna when the temps are like this. Still weeds need to be pulled and grass cut, limbs pruned and paths raked. The end of the day beer comes like a knock out punch though. So, staying on the shady side of the street the other day I took this photo of this porch. I've always like the tall simplicity up to the gable. Don't care much for the steeple as it seems like a busy add on. Has a nice garden around the right corner. Usually pass here on the daily stroll.

Basil!

Who knew what loads of chicken poo could do!?! Look at that leaf! And all my plants look like that-and that is a man's hand I might add. The plants aren't tall or huge, but they are full of large leaves. And yes, the leaves are as tasty as they can be. I sure am glad I let those little dinosaurs peck, poop, and scratch their way through my veggie plot. Why go and buy fertilizer when you can have it delivered from inches away, constantly, and turned under almost immediately? A few eggs in the bargain too.

Waterspout

This gentleman presides over the Great Wall of Lee. Or really he is a spout for ac condensation lines that are routed through pipes behind a retaining wall and a gutter downspout. The water spits out above his head, well usually dribbles out, and then falls into a sunken cluster of papyrus before hitting an underground pipe that delivers the water to our vegetable garden.

Now That is What I Call a Zucchini

Who's got the 10 and a half? Actually this zucchini does. We're gonna cook this sucker up tonight. It's a wonder what a little chicken poo can do for a garden.

Down By the Creek

Down by the creek 'round the rock we have an array of little shade lovers skittering, slowly in their own seasonal way, across the granite. These strawberry begonia are creeping out...

and this plant, selaginella, which rings the stream and spreads unobtrusively through out the yard. It seems to be a signature plant for the garden. We love it. Transplants well too.

Bay Buds

A bag of bay magnolia buds. These smell wonderful! tried to make cologne out of them but it was a failure.

Architectural Strolling

Walking down Hancock this morning with little man. I must have walked past this doorway a million times and only a few weeks ago I noticed it. Looks like it could be a London home, particularly with the iron gates around a front basement entrance.

And then further down the block a sidewalk reclaimed. I'd seen patches of this one sticking through so kudos to the city for taking the time to uncover and use what was there. Plus it looks better than concrete to me.

Mace

Well this was one service berry I didn't eat. Not quite sure what is going on with it but it looks like a psychedelic mace to me.

Later

As in 824 miles later. Three days, two campsites, 6000 feet in elevation and innumerable switchbacks, hairpins, ascents, descents, tunnels and long sweeping, leaning curves...

and hardly another soul in sight.

My traveling companion, the Big Nasty.

And me, about to head home from Crabtree Meadows campsite in the Pisgahs last Friday. I would like to happily recommend a trip up or down the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was fantastic to see this wonderful string of state and federal parks blanketing the top of these mountain ridges. And a road that exists not to cram as many cars as possible on the widest ribbon of concrete to go nowhere fast except to tedium, but to simply offer access to beauty and nature. The reward is in the meander, the vista, the silence of a mountain top; not a few minutes shaved, potentially, off a drive. Or simply the thrumming of an engine climbing a mountain (sometimes in 4th or 5th!) scattering turkeys and one bear, wind whistling through your helmet as you skim through tunnels of mountain laurel and rhododendron, no thought in your mind other that how to attack the next curve.

Rocinante

Traversing the Blue Ridge. Away a few days.