November

Sweet, slanty light.

School has started and it feels like fall.

Summertime

A cooler full of water balloons.

Icy cukes.

Thunder cake.

A fairie camp fire.

Seeds, shells…

I like to toss both seeds and shells around the garden. If your soil is very acidic, as mine tends to be, the calcium in the shells will help neutralize it.  Also the shells remind me where I scattered the seeds. Sometimes, if I am feeling quite contrary, I line them all in a row; sometimes I decorate the bean poles with them.

Busy time

Industrious ants on my peonies.

They inspire me to keep working… (after I  take a break to go outside and photograph them, of course)

Spring Break

Well it has been a fun & busy week. Last Friday we all got in the car and headed south. I have wanted to visit Savannah, GA for a long time so we did, stopping in Charleston on the way down and back. It was a wonderful trip. Lots of good food and ghosts.

Almost impossible to make a decision at LuLu’s Chocolate Bar.

Never too soon to check out colleges right? Yikes.

I grew up near a cemetary and have always found them to be very serene places. This one above is in Savannah.

But this has to be my all time favorite graveyard.  It is at the Unitarian Church in Charleston.  We took a fantastic ghost tour and so got to visit it at night. More pictures on flickr. I can’t wait to go back and visit during the day sometime!

Then it was home again, home again in time for the bunny. As is our tradition, on Easter we gardened and in the evening we toasted peeps over an outdoor fire. That’s really the best way to eat them in my opinion. Sure,  you could make a peep-nut butter sandwich, which is much like a fluffernutter. I do enjoy those (once a year)  but really the best way is toasted. Beware with little kids though, the peeps get really hot,  but after cooling off a bit the sugar coating gets crunchy, sorta like a marshmallow brulee, if you will. If you aren’t fond of eating them then, by all means, make a diorama.  I absolutely adore this year’s winner of “Peeps Show” the Washington Post contest: NightPeeps by Melissa Harvey, Arlington.

The girls are back at school today and David is back at work.  All that’s left is the hardboiled eggs and a very quiet house. Now I’d better get back to work… : )

It’s coming…..

…..finally.

I am grateful for…

Frozen peas…

And the warm love of family and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dahlias, Darling

I take care of the Elda Dixler Unger Dahlia Garden at the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore. My dear friend, Eden, started the garden and named it in honor of her mother, a dahlia gardener extraordinaire. When Eden and her family moved to Egypt she asked me to take care of the dahlias. Ever since I have been completely smitten with them. I started a complete novice but have learned so much over the last three years. They are such spectacular flowers. Unfortunately when it rains they sometimes drink too much. No matter how strongly I stake them, I find them the next day leaning on one another, bees buzzing around their pretty heads, in other words, hungover. But all it takes is a little TLC and they are back to their bright cheerful selves in no time.

This time of year I often find photographers snapping away in the garden, some with elaborate tripods and enormous lenses….waiting for the perfect ray of sun to hit the flower just right. That makes me so happy. Elda lives in California. Recently she and I have been emailing dahlia photos to each other. I’d love to visit her garden some day.  You can see many more gorgeous dahlias here.

Officially Fall

The Autumnal Equinox, AKA the start of Spider Season, happened today. I think they have been busy preparing for this for some time.

I wish I could have gotten a good picture of her face. But, alas, I frightened Miss Spider away.