Foxglove

I'm waiting for these beauties to climb the stalks with those velvety leaves and pop out with those glorious pink bells! So many of my perennials did not survive this past winter and I feel these holes in my garden, severely. I've filled in many of the holes with annuals, and they're ones I've not used ever before. Sweet Peas, African Daisies and Calendulas. Mostly through seeding an area since the cost of the plants are too much so the seeds will have to do. I'm impressed with the lovely green leaves that are surfacing from those seeds now. The sunflowers look rather a lovely, sturdy green already too.

I actually counted the perennials that I lost and it is over 15 different plants! But the annuals are filling the voids rather well and that is thrilling for me.

So despite the tough times, my garden truly holds a special hope for a beautiful plot of petals and leaves by mid-summer.

One Totally Confused Lilac Bush!

I stepped outside the door this morning with my dog and took a deep breath of our nice NEW cooler temperatures. We've been deep summer hot for way too long, but a cold front came through last night and I woke to an air conditioner that was off courtesy of my husband on his way out this morning, and open windows with the most lovely breeze sailing through my house! With a cup of coffee in hand I stepped out onto our patio. There is nothing better that the smell of coffee and fall!

I looked around and began contemplating what plants needed to be cut back this morning and my eyes stopped dead and my brown and rather rumpled lilac bush. There was something frilly and purple at the top...no! Lilacs bloom in the spring! I rose and walked a few steps to my bush to take a better look.

There at the tip of a branch were four purple flowers blooming and smelling lovely. Not a complete lilac flower - that's for sure, but a few tiny flowers none the less and the smell was just grand.

"Poor bush, it's totally out of sync," I said. This is fall, not spring! Was I crazy? I went back and sat in my chair and took another gulp of my coffee. What prompted this small burst of spring? Totally confused, I wandered back toward the flowers and looked at them again. Yes, they were real.

New flowers on a bush that was so brown and almost ready for winter's chill. My shrub had really lost it! It's confused and isn't sure what season it is I'm sure. Let's see...hot summer, hot fall, well we did have those few days of cooler temperatures. Nature does strange things sometimes, but as I sat there in that cool fall day I decided to sit there and enjoy all that my garden held for me today...the fall colors, the crisp air, and the promise of spring.

The Hawk on "Dive!"

Have you ever watched a hawk in flight? To watch the grace and the speed they exhibit flying or hunting is wonderful and I got a really breathless view of one sitting on my patio this morning. The weather was cool and I took a cup of coffee out to enjoy watching the birds flocking all over my backyard, and to enjoy the antics of our two humming birds as they dove after each other through the morning glories and black eyed susan vines. Suddenly there was a swoop and the biggest Cooper's hawk I've seen simply ridding the wind into our yard diving down from above. But those little birds were faster and dove into the various plants and bushes in the yard and out of site - this time.

Many feel that the hawk is an intruder in the garden but for me it is a sign of the power found in God's creation, and it's beautiful to watch. I sat long after the hawk had moved on and watching the birds dashing below the leaves of plants and back out to rest a moment on the spent stalks of flowers or the stems of the sunflowers. If anything is heaven for me, it has to be here. There are no arguments nor any anger...simply beauty and peace. I love it.

Fall in My Garden

This cooler weather is inspiring for me. I often sit on the patio and enjoy most mornings, now. The birds are flocking and along the fence every morning there is a line of sparrows waiting their turn to dip and drink from our bird bath. It reminds me of kids waiting for the bathroom.

Though the garden isn't as pretty as in the spring and early summer some flowers are still blossoming. The cosmos look great, and the asters are beginning to bloom. But I must admit there is much in the garden that looks quite ragged. But that too gives a beauty of its own. The tall brown stems of long dead lilies are now the perches for the goldfinches and sparrows.

The sweet autumn clematis is beginning at the very top to break out in lovely small white blossoms. It covers the trellis at the back of the garden and has often been called the garden "ice cream cone" by neighbors because the blossoms seem to balloon from the top down. There the littlest of my garden birds congregate under the leaves and flowers safe from the local cooper's hawk as it makes its daily pass over the yard.

The fall can be so restive and quiet here in my garden world. It's truly a place to escape as the days speed by. Here I can almost stop my world and take time to inhale the garden that nature creates all around me.

Catching a Dream...

I want to escape! No, that's not quite right...I want to travel! I want to go to Ireland and England and hoof it around, or catch a train all over the islands and see what's historical and what has beauty - what's ancient, and maybe a bit more modern. And I want to see and hear people all over describing what's going on in speeches that tell of the sites, or simply overhear conversations of people in front of me in line.

Nothing as specific as London, but nothing as general as Scotland. Confused? Don't be. My passions tend to be a jumble. You see I've loved those two isles since I was young so the whole of the British Isles has been a dream for a long time to me. I even dream of working for the British Museum and living in a flat for a year, and have read all that I could both fiction and non!

But many constraints have kept me here - tied to my place on planet earth. So instead I dream and try to catch that "mist" in a net, and some how make it real, for until I hold it in my hand and roll it over and over examining it so carefully - it will only be a dream.

I need to live the dream!