Food for Thought, Nature

The Cusp of Summer: Memorial Day Weekend, 2016

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In Maine, despite what the calendar says, we are on the cusp of summer. In less than a month, we’ve gone from darling buds to nearly full-grown leaves on the trees. May is like that.

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The same is true of the ferns.

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Except for my beloved purple irises, the front garden is mostly foliage. Strangely enough, I love the gardens at this stage, when the slugs and snails have yet to launch an assault, and the Japanese beetles are a month away. The leaves of the plants look so green and fresh and new. While the garden is more beautiful with flowers in July, it is also more tattered.

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Spring wild flowers continue to bloom on the lawn and on the edges by the wood.

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In the United States, this is Memorial Day weekend, a time when we remember those who have passed. Usually, this involves some kind of gathering, often a barbecue. This year, we will have a small get together with friends, and unless it is pouring, Clif will make his legendary grilled bread. Whatever the weather, I will be making homemade strawberry ice cream.

And I’ll certainly be thinking of loved ones who have passed—my  mother, my father, and my dear friend Barbara. They all died too soon, but my love for them continues and will do so until I die.

In this most beautiful of months—for Catholics, the month of Mary—it somehow seems very appropriate to remember those who have passed from this green, green world.

Books

A Regency Bonbon: Friday’s Child

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Friday'sEvery once in a while when, say, the political season just drags me down, and I simply hate the thought of having to choose between the lesser of two evils, I find myself turning to Georgette Heyer and her Regency novels for some relief. For the uninitiated, Georgette Heyer wrote Regency novels, lots of them, from 1932 to 1974, but according to Wikipedia, she also wrote thrillers, detective,  and historical fiction. In fact, Heyer is credited with creating the Regency romance genre, and she is well known for meticulous research and authentic period details. (Officially, the British Regency began in 1811 and lasted until 1820, and Jane Austen’s books were published during this period.)

All right. Let’s clear the air—Georgette Heyer was no Jane Austen, who while writing about love and the upper class, delved into the condition of women and the cruelties of the British aristocracy.  Heyer, while not ignoring the excesses of the upper class, blithely skimmed across them. Simply put, Austen is deeper than Heyer. Also, Heyer’s writing style is not as fine as Jane Austen’s. There, we’ve gotten that out of the way.

But what fun Georgette Heyer’s novels can be, and sometimes, fun is exactly what a person needs. Recently I came across Heyer’s Friday’s Child in my bookcase, and I decided it was exactly the right book to distract me from the political season. And so it was.

Friday’s Child is equal parts romance novel, farce, and screw-ball comedy,  and Heyer whips the reader through the first months of the improbable marriage of the very young Hero Wantage and the self-centered Lord Sheringham (aka Sherry). Hero and Sherry have known each other from childhood, and when Sherry comes upon Hero, a poorly-treated orphan who is down in the dumps because her guardian and cousin is insisting that Hero go to Bath to become a governess, well, Sherry does what any high-minded young male of the Regency era might do—he proposes marriage. (An added inducement is that Sherry won’t come into his large inheritance until he marries.) Hero, who has been in love with Sherry since she was very young, immediately accepts the proposal.  In today’s parlance, it is a win-win situation.

Off to London the pair go, where Hero gets into one “scrape” after another. Hero, who falls into the category of the adorable but naive heroine, must be schooled by Sherry and his friends, well-meaning but imperfect and hilarious teachers. Most of Hero’s mistakes involve making the wrong sorts of friends and going to the wrong sorts of places, thus opening her up to public shame and snubbing. However, on a more serious note, both Hero and Sherry run up huge debts while gambling.

Unlike most romance novels, the central concern of the story isn’t whether the two protagonists will end up together—indeed they are married early in the story. Instead, the plot revolves around Sherry, who must learn not to be so selfish and to fall in love with his sweet but hapless wife. I must admit that as I chortled my way through Friday’s Child, I wasn’t particularly worried about this. With all such novels, the destination is never in doubt. Instead, it is the delightful journey that matters.

Friday’s Child, like all of Heyer’s Regency novels, is a bonbon of a story.  As it is with many rich sweets, one is definitely enough, and it will probably be quite a while before I read another of Heyer’s books. (Richard Russo’s Everybody’s Fool is waiting for me at the library.)

Still what a delight to read a book that made me laugh out loud.  And while Friday’s Child certainly falls into the guilty pleasure category, the New Yorker’s blurb on the back of the book gets it exactly right: “Nimbel, light-hearted…Almost too good to be true.”

 

Animals - especially dogs, Flowers

A Busy Day of Buying Flowers and Chasing a Chipmunk

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IMG_2622For 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.

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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.

 

Flowers, Nature

Wild Flowers at the Little House in the Big Woods

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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.

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Our wooded backyard

 

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.

Jack, the pride of the backyard

Violets, of course.

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Yellow Clintonia, or the much prettier name, blue bead lily.

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A closer look.

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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.

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We also have a small patch of wild blueberries. I hope they spread.

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More wild flowers are on the way, and as they bloom, I’ll feature them along with my garden flowers.

Nature

Iris at Twilight

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Because of insomnia, I am not a morning person, which means I will never be up at the crack of dawn taking pictures. Never mind! Not only do I get a lot of reading done well past the time when most sensible people are asleep, but I also have the light of twilight for taking pictures. As twilight’s light is very beautiful, this more than compensates for my inability to get up when the sun rises.

Last night was such a golden night. As the sun set, the newly-opened Irises positively glowed. Out came the camera and snap, snap, snap. Within minutes I had taken thirty-six pictures.

Afterwards, Clif and I sat on the patio and had drinks.

“The blackflies aren’t too bad,” I observed, and Clif concurred.

As if that weren’t enough, a hummingbird whirred to the new feeder and then whirred away.

And earlier that day, a blue heron flew overhead, the first sighting of the season for me.

Ah, May!

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Nature

Firsts, Firsts, Firsts

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One of the things I love most about May—indeed about spring—is how it is a month of firsts. Item (to borrow from Shakespeare): First hermit thrush singing its pan-pipe song. Item: First hummingbird whizzing past the shrubs in front of the house. Item: First Iris bloom in its rich purple glory.

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After the first sighting of the hummingbird, I figured it was high time to get out the hummingbird feeders—the one on the right I bought new this year. In a pan  I mix one part sugar to four parts water and let it boil then cool before filling the feeders.  So far there haven’t been any visitors, but soon there will be.

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Yesterday temple dog, aka Mei Ling, came out for the first time to guard the garden. She takes her job very seriously, and this year we added a little solar light to help her with her work. Her turtle friend Terrance also keeps watch.

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Today, more garden ornaments will be coming out, and I will continue my task of sprinkling ash and organic fertilizer on the beds. Next comes the compost, which we get at our transfer station, and this adds a rich cover to the dirt.

There will be more firsts. We haven’t heard the first loon call or seen the first fireflies or heard the first thrum of June beetles against the screens in the windows. No dragonflies yet. Or butterflies.

But soon these things, along with other new blooms, will be coming. And I’ll be waiting with camera, pencil, and notebook.

Nature

More Down and Up

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This is the time of year when the velocity of change outside is breathtaking. Exactly a week ago, the ferns by the edge of the garden looked like this.

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Today, they look like this.

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Who can blame me, then, for bringing my camera with me when I hang out the laundry? I just can’t resist taking pictures every day, especially as it almost seems that if I sat in one place and stared long enough, then I could actually see the plants grow.

It was on the ground for me to take this picture of violets, a feather, and little white flowers whose name I do not know.

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And to snap a shot of baby Jack.

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Then, off the ground and a little higher to take a picture of the budding irises. (When they are in bloom, I will be back on the ground as I lie on the patio and try to get a good shot underneath.)

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After that, I went from flowers to birds, a real challenge for my little camera. Even though I took pictures of woodpeckers and chickadees, the only decent shot I got was one of this mourning dove.

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Finally, higher up to get a picture of sky, sky, sky and the fringe of budding leaves. (If I stare at this photo long enough, I swear I can see the clouds moving across the sky.)

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Readers, stay tuned for more pictures.

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