Musings

Today.

Yesterday.

In one hot and humid twenty-four hour period, the bud became a fully opened bloom. Insects note the progress.

Posted at 5:33 PM | Comments Off on One day

Ya leave for two nights and the critters and varmints and infestations set in. Aphids are sucking the juices out of (a minority, I admit) the lupines. Arrgh; it’s tough to be a human molding the world. [Hello, Anthropocene.]

Posted at 8:43 PM | Comments Off on Just that fast

Saw lots of green growing plants outside the car windows today, row crops to forests, with several kettle moraines for good measure. Here’s a yucca from the garden we ended up in.

Posted at 11:07 PM | Comments Off on Ate too much Chinese food

Here’s another garden escapee that is surviving in the tall (unmowed) grass: bachelor’s button (BB). Our specimens all look like this, which is like only a minority of the photos that Goo summons up to a search for BB. Perhaps it fell out of favor in the gardening community?

Posted at 8:15 PM | Comments Off on Minority cultivar (?)

I’m still enjoying the lupine lusciousness in the orchard…and I’m “sharing” it with you.

Posted at 8:58 PM | Comments Off on Apologies for the repeats

I’ve undertaken a program of frustrating milkweeds that are near the cottage; don’t fuss—plenty to feed the monarchs are untouched in the field. This operation means I’ve been walking in close patterns searching out offenders…and coming across other species mixed into the grass…like this campion.

Meanwhile, in the basil ringfort, despite the chill temps, the basil leaves are getting larger…although they’re still at the two-leaf phase.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Small plants

Let’s stick to a hyper-local news cycle: we got more rain, and it lasted a while, but it was so light I wouldn’t call it a soaking rain. That surprised me; on the other hand: what do I know.

Posted at 8:25 PM | Comments Off on Out the window

I know of Impressionist paintings. This looks like an Impressionist photo…same vibe anyway.

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Not my field…oops, my field

The lupines are just so lovely. I like this bicolor specimen, and I’m not a huge fan of pink. It’s okay, even lovely, but not usually a favorite. Perhaps its the pairing with magenta that sparks this for me….

The BBC published this map showing wildfire data from NASA and “firms” data from the first eight days of June. There’re far more fires than I gleaned from news reports…they’re all over…well not ALL, but many scattered places.

Posted at 9:38 PM | Comments Off on Pink/red

Finally, we got morning rain…not much and not a soaker, but more than nothing…enough to cover the bottom of the rain barrel a couple of inches deep.

[Note that the barrel is indeed tilted, so that overflow will be on the side opposite the cottage.]

By afternoon, the “wild”flowers seemed to have renewed energy to push toward more than two leaves.

And the black raspberries are in bloom, and the bees busily visited (not pictured). I admit I’ve been watering these, hoping I’ll get a couple of ripe berries before the birds take them. Time will tell.

Posted at 5:18 PM | Comments Off on I wanted to dance