Category Archives: Flowers
A Busy Day of Buying Flowers and Chasing a Chipmunk
For Mother’s Day, my daughters bought me gift certificates to a local garden center, and yesterday I went to buy plants for my gardens and for containers. Because of the shadiness of the yard at the little house in the big woods, I am very limited as to what I can buy, not only for the gardens but also to put in pots. Never mind. I have learned to love what thrives here—begonias, impatiens, and coleus. (Surely there is a lesson in this somewhere.) My front garden even has a relatively moist spot for astilbe, which I never had to learn to love. I was smitten with them from the very start. And, lucky me, snapdragons thrive here. How I admire those jaunty flowers, and I always buy the dwarf variety to put on the edge of the back garden. I also bought herbs and one tomato plant—the fair Juliet, which does well in part sun and part shade.
Even though I knew what I wanted, I spent a happy hour or so looking at the various plants and flowers at the garden center. With the back of the car full of plants and flowers, I headed home, happy and content.
However, as soon as I got home and saw Clif just standing in the dining room, I knew something wasn’t right. When he came out to help me with the flowers, he looked glum, and I knew for sure something was wrong.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There might be a squirrel in the house?”
“What do you mean there might be?”
“Well, I was working in my office, and the cats chased one into the room. It ran into the closet, and I had the devil of a time getting it out.”
“Then what happened?”
“It ran out of my office, and I haven’t seen it since. Maybe it went back outside.”
“Maybe,” I said, hopeful but not convinced. Nothing is ever that easy.
But the squirrel could have found its way back outside. On nice days, we leave the cellar door open so that the dog and cats can go in and out as they please. In twelve years of doing so, this is the first time we have had a squirrel come into the house.
“Was it a red squirrel?” I asked.
“I think so,” Clif answered.
A red squirrel! Those fierce little bundles of Tasmanian-devil aggression and energy. A while back, one got into the house of a friend when she was away, and it did so much damage trying to get out that her whole house had to be remodelled.
“I wonder if homeowners insurance covers squirrel damage,” I said.
“Probably,” Clif replied.
Hoping that it wouldn’t get to that point, we poked around the house and looked for the squirrel. Nothing. Eventually, like the cats, we gave up looking for it. Maybe it had gone back outside.
But a little later, when I was out on the patio, I heard Clif call, “It’s in the dining room!” I went down cellar, grabbed a broom, and headed upstairs to help Clif.
“Where is it?” I asked.
“Behind the bookcase with the cook books,” Clif said, nudging it with the broom he was holding.
The little creature leaped onto the window sill, and “That’s not a squirrel!” I exclaimed. “That’s a chipmunk!”
As a rule, I am not a huge fan of rodents. I am not afraid of them—all right, big rats do freak me out—and I wish them no harm. I just want them to stay outside where they belong. However, I must admit I have a soft spot for chipmunks, those mild, unassuming but very cute rodents who, as a rule, never try to come inside. (My theory is that the cats chased this one inside.) When I saw this chipmunk, I smiled, and the dread I was feeling went away. I knew we would be able to get this little creature back outside.
“Open the dining room door,” I said, and Clif did so.
Taking the broom, he nudged the chipmunk, and I stood with my broom, blocking the way to the rest of the house. The chipmunk leaped from the window sill, and glory hallelujah, it rushed out the open door.
“Success!” I yelled. “Chalk one up for team Clif and Laurie.”
Such are the goings-on at the little house in the big woods. We have our moments of failure, but we also have our moments of triumph.
Now, let us hope there are no more cat and rodent shenanigans for the rest of the summer.
Wild Flowers at the Little House in the Big Woods
As regular readers of this blog know, I refer to our home as “the little house in the big woods,” a nod, of course, to Laura Ingalls Wilder. (As a child, I loved her books.) Yes, we have neighbors, and yes, a road goes right by our house. Nevertheless, our home is tucked into the the woods at the edge of a watershed that protects the Upper Narrows Pond, which is used as a source of drinking water.
Many years ago, a college friend of my daughter’s came here to visit. Because he arrived at night, he really didn’t get a sense of the lay of the land. The next morning, my daughter found him looking out the dining-room window into our backyard.
“I have never seen so many trees in my life,” he said. As he is from Long Island, from a tight neighborhood, I’m sure he wasn’t exaggerating.
Because we are so much in the woods, my flower gardens are a constant challenge, and when you add dry shade to this, it is easy to understand why I frequently grumble that I have the worst yard in Winthrop in which to garden.
However, nature often compensates. What it lacks in one way, it provides in another. For the shady yard at the little house in the big woods, this means spring wild flowers, which bloom in modest profusion on the lawn and by the edges of the woods. These flowers are not bright and showy but are nonetheless lovely, and I look forward to them every spring.
There is Jack-in-the-Pulpit, the pride of the backyard.
Violets, of course.
Yellow Clintonia, or the much prettier name, blue bead lily.
A closer look.
Dandelions also pop up here and there, They are considered a weed, I know, but the bees love them. And if bees love them, then so do I.
We also have a small patch of wild blueberries. I hope they spread.
More wild flowers are on the way, and as they bloom, I’ll feature them along with my garden flowers.
Silent Sunday: Van Gogh in the Garden
May Day, May Day: Jack in the Green
Today is May 2, and while May 1 is traditionally May Day, I figured the second day of May was close enough to honor the upcoming season of fecundity and the bounty of summer But I must thank Sophie from Agents of Field for not only bringing May Day to my attention but also for providing additional information of the celebration, information I did not know.
May Day, of course, started as a holiday in many pre-Christian European pagan cultures, and it marked the first day of summer. May Day was a time for frolicking and folderol, a time to cut loose after winter’s confines and, I expect, its food scarcity. (Let’s just say that in Maine, May 1 is barely the beginning of spring, and between the cool weather and the blackflies, there’s not much inducement for frolicking. Nevertheless, I admire the spirit!)
In her post May Day Festivities, Sophie writes about “sprinting onto the lawn in my pjs and smearing May Day dew on my face which, according to ancient folklore, will guarantee lifelong beauty…” That was a new one for me, and although it’s probably too late, I sprinkled dew—all right, rain drops—from the cedars onto my face after I took a May Day picture of a hyacinth in bloom.
Then Sophie went on to write about Jack in the Green, a pagan character dressed in a cone of greenery. She tried to get her partner Ade to be Jack in the Green so that she could chase him up a hill and beat him with twigs. Apparently, Ade turned down the role, and after reading more about Jack’s leafy character, whom I knew nothing about, I understood why Ade was reluctant to play this fellow of the foliage.
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. From Agents of Field I skipped to Jack in the Green May Day Festival in Hastings, UK, where I learned about Jack’s dark fate. In Hastings, the Jack in the Green Festival is an annual event and ends with “the slaying of Jack, to release the spirit of summer for this year.” (Readers, if you have a chance, watch the short video of the parade on the Hastings’s website. Looks like quite the parade and one worth seeing.)
Oh, the merry month of May! In Maine, even though the weather is not quite as warm as we would like, it is a month of green beauty trimmed with a veil of flowering trees. It is a month in which to rejoice.
My friend Burni sends May greeting cards. What a lovely thing to do! If I can get my gardening under control, maybe I’ll do the same thing.
And I’ll watch out for Jack in the Green. Perhaps, out of the corner of my eye, I will catch a glimpse of him, streaking through the countryside as he is pursued by a fair woman ready to beat him with twigs.
Bright Colors for a Gray Day
Yesterday was all golden light in central Maine. Today, just the opposite—gray, chilly, and rainy. Clif has started the first fire of the season in the wood furnace in our basement. (In the winter, we mostly heat our house with wood. In the fall and spring, we use either electric or propane.)
Today would have been a perfect day to make the first apple pie of autumn. Indeed, that is what I had planned to do, and I had invited our friends Judy and Paul to come share pie with us. However, along with the gray weather, we have an uninvited guest—a cold. Right now it is visiting me, and I have no doubt that it won’t be long before it visits Clif. Couples are good at sharing such things.
Therefore, this morning I called Judy to cancel our pie get-together, and I promised to reschedule when the coast was clear, so to speak. A cold is a minor illness, but why spread germs when you don’t have to?
To make up for the gray day and the cold, both inside and out, here is a picture of red dwarf snap dragons—such a plucky flower!—and a red leaf.
I am reading Gladys Taber’s The Book of Stillmeadow, and I’ll conclude with the opening passage of the October section: “The special gift of frosty gold days comes now; time to lay down the household tasks and shut the door on routine. For every October, when I see the trees over the meadow, I think, ‘I shall not look upon her like again.’ And every October is different, strange with new beauty.”
This was true nearly seventy years ago, when the book was published. And no matter the weather or where the cold is, inside or out, it is true today in New England.
At least in Maine.
An August Walk Up the Narrows: Or, the Various Aspects of Anne
Yesterday, Clif, the dog, and I went for a Sunday walk up the Narrows Pond Road. It was one of those beautiful August days that was so perfect—so warm, dry, and sunny—that I wished I could hold onto that day and just keep it for use whenever the weather is bad, which it often is in Maine. But alas, good weather, like good times, cannot be held.
Up the road, on the right, there is a small meadow that is full of August wild flowers—black-eyed Susans, purple loosestrife, golden rod, and Queen Anne’s lace. I knew the light would be good, and I brought my camera along. When I go for walks and take pictures, quite often I am alone with the dog, and I have to put the retractable leash between my legs while I take pictures. I must say, it is much easier to take pictures when Clif has the dog.
I came to the little meadow, abloom with flowers. Clif and Liam continued walking while I took pictures.
The other day, I was taken by Susan. On this walk, I was taken by Anne. I didn’t plan this, and I was reminded of Gabriel Orozco’s “The poetic happens when you don’t have expectations.” I’m not sure if my fascination with Queen Anne’s lace was poetic, but I certainly didn’t have any specific expectations on this walk. There was only a general sense that I wanted to take pictures of the wild flowers. But on this day, Queen Anne’s lace took center stage.
On another walk, it might be something else.
It seems to me that one of the best gifts we can give us ourselves is the freedom to notice. And from this noticing, who knows what will happen?
I’ll end with a quotation from the great essayist Verlyn Klinkenborg, who was writing about the eighteenth-century naturalist Gilbert White. “He recorded what he noticed and in the pattern of noticing lies the art.”
We can’t all be be great artists, but maybe by noticing we can bring a little art into our lives.
The Various Aspects of Susan
Every day, I think, “I’ve taken so many pictures of my yard. Surely I won’t find anything interesting this morning.” But it seems I do. And the other day, it was the unfurling of the black-eyed Susans. They are at various stages in the garden, and how curious they look before their petals open.
Until finally, voilà!
Always something happening at the little house in the big woods.
Finally, Finally!
I know. This is supposed to be wordless Wednesday, but when I downloaded my pictures this morning and came across this picture, I just had to share it on a second post. (I usually limit myself to one post a day. After all.)
I finally got a crisp picture of both the bee and the bee balm. No easy task when your camera is a little point and shoot and the subject refuses to pose. This is definitely a case where where persistence paid off.
What a way to start a beautiful day!
This Last Day of July
Yesterday, it was so hot and humid that I barely had the energy to move from my desk to the kitchen to make a vinaigrette for our supper salad much less dust the bedroom. But I did indeed accomplish both tasks. My reward? A lemon popsicle and time on the patio—where it was a little cooler—reading Village School by Miss Read, aka Dora Saint. (Read was a family name.)
Each year, as an end-of-summer treat, I reread the Chronicles of Fairacre, an “omnibus edition, comprising Village School, Village Diary, and Storm in the Village.” Even though I look calm, I am a jittery person, and Miss Read has a way of calming my jitters. All three novels follow the main character, also named Miss Read, who teaches in a village school in the Cotswolds. The books are not great literature—does all literature have to be great to be appreciated?—but Miss Read’s love of the natural world, her shrewd yet sympathetic take on human nature, and her humor never fail to delight me. Dora Saint has won praise from both the New Yorker and the New York Times, and with them I shall let the matter of her reputation rest.
Next to the patio, the bee balm has been knocked akimbo by the driving rains we have had each afternoon this week. Last Saturday, when our friends Paul and Judy came over for cocktails, the bee balm stood tall and proud. Now it looks as though a large, heavy ball landed in the middle of the patch. Such is the force of the rain. But the bees don’t care—straight or akimbo, the bee balm is irresistible to them.
While I read, I took many breaks to watch the goings-on in the yard. Next to me, a daddy longlegs skittered along the phlox, still in bud. Birds called as they flew from the trees to the feeders, and occasionally, a large dragonfly would zip by.
Last night, the weather broke, and today is fine and hot with a bright blue sky. A good drying day, as my mother would have said, and I have two loads of laundry ready to be hung on the line.
With this last day of July, which will have a second full moon this month—a blue moon—we are officially two-thirds of the way through summer in Maine. I love August and the hot, dry weather it often brings along with the loud buzzing of grasshoppers. I love the black-eyed Susans, the Queen Anne’s lace, and the golden rod in the fields. But August is also a sweet, sad month, the last month with nights warm enough to sit without a jacket on the patio.
To borrow from my friend Burni, who squeezes more joy out of an ordinary day than most people manage in a whole month, I will squeeze every bit of delight out of the golden month of August.
