Colors

swell day. sun, blue sky, warm, breezy.

watered all plants. no groundhog casualties for two days now. sprinkled coyote urine that we regretfully bought last year to see if it will help deter it.

peas are growing quickly now that they've found the fence. lettuce is generous these days. love to water the garden, see how everyone is doing each day. boy alternates between watching the water flow from the hose and hanging himself over in the sling, looking at the ground as i walk, always quiet.

found this eastern black swallowtail when i went to get the mail today, lying on the side of the road. reminds me of one i found on my first day working at a children's home in north carolina.

(i just today discovered how to put text below my pictures. this is very exciting.)
the males are always yellow, but the females can be yellow or black/brown, in which case they're referred to as "dark phase females." the one in NC was in its dark phase, and it was the beginning of my sharing my love of nature with the kids at the home. all but one of them didn't even feign interest, but one little guy could have played outdoors all day with me. we'd build little rock dams in the stream behind the home, he'd catch crayfish, salamanders. once he caught a baby salamander, and went in to show it off to the other kids, whom he was eternally trying to impress. one the of girls who normally couldn't be bothered with nature discovered, upon looking closely, that the creature's tiny, beating heart was visible through the translucent skin of its belly (it was up on the side of the transparent carrier).

also:
in his insatiable love of board games, my husband happened upon instructions for making a "Piecepack." this is the board game equivalent of a deck of cards, in that one can fashion a limitless number of games out of one set of pieces. it consists of 20 tiles, 24 discs, and four dice, all divided into four suits.

while it is possible to purchase sets, we both loved the idea of making our own; we play a lot of wonderful european board games (don't think 'monopoly' - it doesn't compare), and it was exciting to have something simple enough to be able to make our own. the link above gave him directions, and he promptly found a site to order wooden pieces from and set about designing suits for us. we chose the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water, and he combined ideas from the web with our own aesthetic. below is what he came up with. he printed the images onto adhesive transparent paper, cut them out, and affixed them to each piece. it's marvelous!

here he is working at a game. the games we've explored so far are as complex and challenging as the board games we regularly play. we're even working on creating a game of our own.





setting up for "fujisan," a fun solitaire game:

Evening Out

sunny day, warm with a cool wind.

finally planted cucumbers, and the nasturtiums who have been soaking for two days. lettuce, mustard, zucchini planted last saturday are all appearing; no beans yet. groundhog has taken out two more kale and another brussel.

spent much of this beautiful day indoors, art projects and organizing happening there. this evening as dinner cooked on the stove, brought my sleepy, diaper-less boy out to nurse on the back porch as the sun set. beams of light streaming low through the pines, moths glowing as they crossed it, spider webs appearing where the light lay across the grass. a mockingbird who first visited our boughs just last night sat in a neighbor's tree and serenaded the world, endless songs and twitters of every bird it had ever met. sleepy boy knew only warm arms and milk.

Babies

hot, humid again.

swallow baby flew the nest today! clumsy flapping in circles around our deck-limbs, and landed with wings slightly akilter each time. can you guess the baby?


around the same time, two young squirrels came for a visit. the white of their bellies was sharply contrasted with the brown of their bodies - a much more distinct line than in their parents. they had obviously been to our feeder - or someone's feeder - before, because they took to it quite adeptly.


one decided to sprawl out under our deck table after eating.



this one came for a meal a couple of weeks ago. in looking at it more closely again today, i realized that she'd been nursing.

Round Sun

hot & humid again, with a blessing of a breeze. so humid that the ball of the sun hung visible behind the curtain of thick clouds. in the afternoon and again in the evening, i mistook it momentarily for a full moon, so similar in size to the moon, who lets us look directly at her.

chickweed, hawkweed, birdsfoot trefoil, clover, gil-over-the-ground blooming.

a cool breeze quite suddenly graced the land this evening, and now pours in through our bedroom window upon us and our sleeping boy in his blanket.

Lightning Bugs

another hot one, towards ninety.

driving to a friend's, it looked and felt like any hot August day, only the flowers blooming were spring and early summer flowers, lilacs and lupine incongruous with the heat.

lightning bugs tonight. just three of four, speaking to us silently as we walked home in the dark through our yards, after sharing dinner with family. boy watching the dark world quietly, actively.

Wilting

heavy air again today. plants were wilted by noon, even with watering yesterday.

planted pole & bush beans to dry, and some bush green beans. considering installing an electrified fence to keep at bay the groundhog who's been nipping the leaves off our our kale, brussels, and onions.

indoors a lot today, windows and doors closed to hold in last night's cool air. through the window, leaves moving in the hot breeze, floppy and up-turned as it came; the picture of summer heat, against the blue sky.

Into the Earth

hot, humid, heavy day. worked outside all day today, my son up with his great-grandparents in the house behind ours, they in town from away.

planted another round of lettuce & mustard seeds; re-planted zucchini & summer squash seeds again (i'll remember to water this time!); planted butternut squash seeds. tomorrow will plant: bush beans, pole beans, cucumbers, more parsnips (a few didn't come up).

spent a while expanding my cut-flower beds with the "weedless gardening" technique we use & love: lay down 4 layers of newspaper, wet them with the hose, then lay down at least 2" of soil/compost on top, and plant into that. this technique preserves the waterways under the earth that support roots, keeps the microorganism communities intact below the surface of the soil (which also support the roots of the plants) and saves you from "waking up" all of the dormant seeds lying under the ground that otherwise start growing after you till. into this expanded bed (8'x10') i happily planted my flower seedlings: dahlias, statice, and strawflower. the bed only accomodated about 1/3 - 1/2 of the seedlings, so i'll need to find more space for them elsewhere, but at least these can start sending their roots down. still need to plant various sunflowers, and zinnias.

an update on the saga of our plum grove: we learned last week that american plums are not grafted onto rootstock, which means that the new little shoots from our dead plum are the same sort that we want to have grow, so today we lobbed off the dead stalk and are now watching the two little replacement shoots make their way into the world. being our main pollinator, it stands in the center of our little plum grove. so now our circle of 7' saplings, which looked scrawny a week ago, absolutely tower over the new little shoots growing in their midst. they have a way of leaning inwards over the little one, so that it looks like they're guarding and monitoring the growth of their new little relative.