Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: gardening


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Some kind of hope

This morning the temperature was a balmy 51 degrees when Katie and I ventured out. Last Monday morning it was only 7 degrees, so you can understand that we felt a bit giddy today. We ended up over 60 degrees this afternoon!

After I dropped (poor) Katie off at the groomer I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I took my camera, looking for signs of spring, but in reality it was a pretty dismal looking day, gray skies, still some slushy snow in the ditch, a lot of dirt and litter. At my turn around spot I ran across these guys:
trees-801 Notice the one on the right is charging toward me. I don’t think he thought of me as a friend. I backed up and got a shot of him front on…after he spit at me and showed his teeth.  Though these guys were very pretty I don’t think they’re the kind of horses you pet and feed apples!

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Then I wandered around the back yard and cut some pussywillow,  redbud and forsythia to put in a vase inside.  Hopefully soon I’ll have some real proof of spring, blooming on my counter!

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I hope spring is truly on the way now.

And Katie came back

from the groomer very pretty.  As usual.

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My backyard

I was mowing the yard yesterday for the last time this summer (again…what’s with this warm weather?) when I realized there was still a LOT of fall color, particularly in the shrubs and some of the newer trees. So I stopped right in the middle of the lawn and went inside for the camera. For the rest of the afternoon I mowed slower, stopped more often, and enjoyed the task more as I snapped pictures along the way. As my husband painted the house, and the dog watched from her kennel, I’m sure they were wondering what I was doing. Tonight I had a chance to look at what I shot for the first time. There were so many pretty pictures I couldn’t figure out which to show you. So I put several together below. I really think this will be the last of the fall color blogs. Maybe.

See ya,


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It's a wonderful life

The fruits of a summer of work are coming in now. This afternoon I made myself a tomato sandwich. I had never heard of such a thing until someone told me a couple years ago about a Southern tradition; tomatoes, mayonnaise and white bread. It only works if you use a fresh picked, ripe tomato and luckily I have a few of those around. Me, being a Northerner, I used wheat bread and Miracle Whip. I hope the traditionalists reading this won’t be outraged.

I was especially decadent by slicing my tomato thick (I don’t own one of those Jinsang knives that slices a ripe tomato paper thin) and using the whole tomato in the sandwich. I didn’t want to share with anyone!

This is the kind of sandwich you eat over the kitchen sink. For two reasons. One you just know it’s going to run down your chin and off your elbows, and two, it’s too good to wait to find a plate and sit down at a table.

If tomato sandwiches really are Southern tradition then here’s another reason to celebrate the South!


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Piping the weeds away

My sister is still in town and this morning she was practicing her bagpipes while I started weeding my small overgrown vegetable garden. She gets a lot of attention from people driving by as she plays her pipes in my yard.

My garden is totally overgrown. I don’t know when this happened. Possibly during this past week as I’ve been driving down to AA ? Or maybe it was before that when I didn’t want to think about the weed population and hoped it would somehow get weeded without me. Or maybe it was a combination of all of the above.

Nevertheless, I needed to get to it today, and even then waited too long into the afternoon, so that the work was hot and miserable. Lesson learned again: Weed a little every morning, or you’ll need a bagpiper to accompany your groans of dismay.

The good news is that under all of this were a few green beans that the groundhog didn’t eat, a few peas, some chard and even some tiny cherry tomatoes! And of course my parsley, rosemary, thyme, basil and dill. Really. It’s all in there!


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Misc. stuff

I’m trying to learn new stuff in relationship to this blog. So it won’t be boring for me, or for you! And I now can upload pictures in a gallery…and maybe give you access to that gallery…hmmm…I have succeeded in uploading three garden pictures to a gallery I called “summer garden” (how creative, ey?) but now I have to figure out how to get that gallery into this blog post. Right. Hang tight…humming elevator music now…well…unsuccessful at figuring out how to add it. But I know someone will let me know!

Meanwhile. I went out to my little herb garden to gather some basil for a tomato and goat cheese soup I made this afternoon. (really good, if you want the recipe, let me know!) I thought I’d check on the young cardinal that was sitting in a nest nearby last time I was out in the garden (see post of July 8). Imagine my surprise to see a snake curled up inside the nest. I hope the youngster flew away before the snake arrived. But I imagine that the snake wouldn’t be there if there had been no bird. Sad story.

So..anyone have help about how to use the gallery feature? Post away! 🙂

[POST EDIT – Spike]


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Thirty-Eight

As many of you know, I’m training for a half marathon in the fall. That means I’m getting back out there and attempting to run again. It’s hard to start over. Today I was scheduled to do 6.5 miles. For those of you not runners, this isn’t as horrible as it might sound. We “beginner” runners are doing these training runs one or two minutes at a time. So just about any length should be manageable. Really.

My plan was to get up at 6 a.m. and be out the door by 6:15. It’s good to have a plan. The reality? I woke up at..well I don’t know what time it was, and I went back to sleep. A couple of times. By 8:30 I determined that this morning was going to be cooler than tomorrow morning, so I ate my breakfast and then headed out about 9. I have to say this 6.5 miles kicked my…well you fill in the blank. By mile 5 I was seriously considering calling home and getting a ride. And I’ve never done that. But since I wasn’t carrying a phone I lumbered on. Almost funny today was the fact that whenever I checked my watch it would show 38 seconds after some minute. Almost every time! I’d convince myself that I could run 22 more seconds..right!? And that’s how I got through this run.

The only good thing I can say about this training run is that it is OVER. I can already tell I’m going to be sore tomorrow. And it was taking me 13 and 14 minutes to do a mile! That’s not much faster than walking it for heavens sake. Good thing I’m not running for the US in the Olympics.

This is all testament to being a middle aged woman, slightly overweight and out of shape. I can’t do anything about the middle aged part, but I’m working on the weight thing, and the exercise. So it can only get better. Right? RIGHT??!

On a happier note: We finished moving the last of the ten yards of wood chips yesterday! Bye-bye wood chips!

Good-bye wood chips!


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Ambushed by cardinals

Today after it stopped raining I got up the courage to go and inspect my small vegetable garden. I knew I had neglected it for the past couple of weeks while I was moving wood chips and I was a little afraid of what I’d find. Did the ground hog leave me any green bean plants at all? Would the tomatoes be falling all over themselves? Did I have any peas ready for harvest? Rounding the corner of the house I saw that the poor garden was totally overgrown. But there were some bean plants left, some peas down among the weeds, and the tomatoes had set some fruit.

As I settled in to at least get the weeds pulled from around the plants I noticed a male cardinal yelling at me from one birch tree, and a female doing the same from another birch tree on the other end of the garden. As I worked they got more and more riled up, the male flying over my head and landing next to the female, as in chorus they increased the volume and speed of their comments. They obviously have a nest somewhere near, and they wanted me out of there. After a bit I took my half filled weed bucket down to the weed pile and then stood there and watched the two of them. They cried for some time, then settled down. Mama cardinal came out of the tree and waked the split rail fence that surrounds the garden, then hopped around in the yews planted next to the fence. I waited for as long as I could, until the mosquitoes found me.

I really needed to get the garden weeded, so eventually I went back to work on it. The cardinals started up screeching at me again. I tried to keep my head down as they flew back and forth over me, and I began to weed faster, the sooner to be out of there. The garden wasn’t weeded nearly enough when I gave up, bent to gather my weed bucket handles and happened to glance up into a privet bush. There a mere yard from me was the nest, one young bird sitting inside it, with topknot just beginning to develop, chest heaving in fear. I quickly gathered up my stuff and retreated. As I glanced over my shoulder before I rounded the corner, mama cardinal was flying into the privet bush to reassure her youngster. Daddy sat up in the tree and continued to give me what for.

I’m not sure I’ll be allowed to go back into my garden until the young one flies. That’s OK. I can wait.


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Sun Tea and Weiglia

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Remember sun tea? Maybe most of you are too young to remember making tea in big glass containers out in the driveway in the 70’s. A few unseasonably hot days ago I remembered wistfully the wonderful iced tea we used to make that way. So I dug through the back of my cupboards (OK, I don’t throw away nearly enough stuff) and found my suntea making jar, cleaned it up and put it back to use:

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In a few short hours I had wonderful tea.

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What great memories a cold glass of suntea brings! College days (the first time back in the 70’s when I was young) and even further back into high school. You can’t beat it.

Katie and I tried camping last night in my new tent. That was an experience; more on that another time. Meanwhile today we spent some time weeding the last garden. Then we rested in front of a weiglia bush in full bloom.

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Remembering Grandma

Yesterday I got 7 more yards of mulch. Really.

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And of course today it’s in the 90’s, which makes spreading mulch not so fun. I did some of the spreading and spent some of the day digging up rogue plants that had moved into areas they didn’t belong, along with their corresponding weed friends. The deer have already eaten plants I put in pots out in the garden, my pink lilies that I haven’t seen bloom in years, the phlox and now are starting in on the sedum which had never been touched in previous years. Every year is a new learning experience! I DO have one iris blossoming:

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Which made me happy today. Might as well enjoy it today, because tomorrow it could be deer fodder.

As I was weeding the perennial bed I thought about other people and their relationship problems that seem so overwhelming. My little problem of not having a job doesn’t seem to be nearly as earth shattering as what several other people are going through. A twenty year marriage ending, a relationship that never had a chance to begin. It’s like the world has gone a little bonkers all around me.

I’m contemplating this while weeding tall grass out of my Russian Sage plants. The smell of the sage lingers on my fingers and instantly I felt myself back in my grandmother’s yard, out on the farm, over 30 years ago. And for just an instant the smells of the garden remind me of good days long ago, remind me of times when life seemed simpler. But I bet if I had asked grandma back then I’d have found that she too thought things were a little bonkers all around her! She was 96 when she died in 1982, and she had seen some pretty amazing and most likely crazy things in her lifetime.

So the big concept here is that it’s all relevant. Every day has simple components, pulling weeds, smelling memories. Every day has craziness, hearing sad stories about people and their relationship problems . But every day also has hope; that tomorrow there will be more simple things and fewer crazy things, and maybe even more opportunities to remember happy times from long ago.