All the garden blogs I read seem to be featuring fall flowers the past few days, so I thought I’d buck the trend and post a summer flower while I still can. These morning glories are blooming on the fence around the pond and are putting on a pretty late-summer show. It’s called “Chocolate Silk” and has large flowers and variegated foliage. The only really *chocolate* part of the flower is the center, the rest is a softer rose-purple than is showing in these pics. We have it planted with some moonflowers and at the base of the fence we planted french marigolds. I thought the contrast of orange and purple would be pretty, but now that the morning glories are blooming well the marigolds are on their way out. We grew these from seeds which is a first for us.
Monthly Archives: September 2006
Stuck in the basement
Buddy has been getting stuck in the basement lately. He insists on following my husband down there when he’s doing laundry or getting some tool and then Buddy decides he’s too afraid to climb back up the stairs. Or at least we think the problem is that he’s afraid. He does have some old-age stiffness in his joints, but goes down the stairs fine, it’s up that’s the problem; and it’s just this set of stairs. The three smaller stairs that adjoin these and lead to the kitchen are no trouble for him. The problem, we suspect, is that these stairs are open-backed and Buddy can *see through them* and maybe with his decreased vision it’s just enough to make him feel unsure of himself.
You’d think he’d remember this and not go down there. But the urge to follow my husband and be in the middle of everything is still strong in him. He’ll whine and pace. He’ll try taking a running start at it, but gets only as far as his front feet on the first step before he chickens out. We spent nearly an hour coaxing him once before my husband had to carry him up. Poor embarrassed Buddy!
We’ve tried to be mindful of it and close the kitchen door on our way down so Buddy can’t follow. Saturday my husband was in and out getting tools from the basement to help a friend of his – both were in the basement for just a minute and then left with the door open. Buddy went down to check things out without my knowing it. An hour or so later I realized he was missing and sure enough he was laying stranded at the bottom of the stairs, looking pitiful. There’s just no way I can carry all 90+ pounds of dog up the stairs, so I tried coaxing him. It didn’t work so I apologized and took his pic. An hour or so later he appeared in the living room, wagging his tail furiously.
I’m curious if anyone has had any experience with this in an older dog. We mentioned it to his vet when we were there last week and she wasn’t too concerned and said that if it were hip or joint pain that was causing it, she would expect it to be when going down the stairs. I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas of what might be causing this new quirk in our old boy.
We have peppers!
Two of them – oh boy! What a joke. The six pepper plants kept dropping their blossoms – what is that about? Too much rain? These two nicely-sized peppers have been mocking me since Saturday when I picked them and tonight I’m going to make one of my favorites – stuffed peppers. My dad made the best stuffed peppers, but was always very vague about his recipe, like all good cooks are. I’ll share my recipe, but must warn you that I’m no cook.
2 large green peppers (how convenient; that’s all I’ve got)
3/4 lb. ground beef, pork, lamb, or sausage (I use lean ground beef)
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 7.5 ounce can tomatoes, cut up (fresh would be nice; I use a petit cut with Italian spices)
1/3 cup long grain rice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (I’m generous with it – love the stuff!)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil or oregano (I use both)
1/2 cup shredded American cheese
Halve peppers lengthwise, removing stems, seeds and membranes. Immerse peppers in boiling water for 3 minutes. Sprinkle insides with salt. Invert on paper towels to drain well.
In a skillet cook meat and onion until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain. Stir in undrained tomatoes, uncooked rice, Worcestershire, basil and oregano, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Bring to boiling; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 15 to 18 minutes or until rice is tender. Stir in 1/4 cup of the cheese. Fill peppers with meat mixture. Place in a baking dish and bake at 375 for about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining cheese.
This same mixture can be used to fill zucchini or cabbage rolls. There is always just enough meat mixture left in the pan after filling the peppers that I can stand over the stove and eat hobo-style. I especially like this recipe because the peppers are just blanched and stay nice and crunchy. I always serve this with mashed potatoes and extra sauce on the side. Yum! Off to eat and enjoy.
Gray hairstreak
Gray hairstreak on the frothy white flowers of snakeroot
“Lord, make us mindful of the little things that grow and blossom in these days to make the world beautiful for us”. – W.E.B. du Bois
Writing beside the pond
I’ve written very little lately about the pond. After the initial flush of bloom from the waterlilies and other plants, early in the season, I haven’t spent much time out there or posted very many pics. I feed the fish most days and occasionally scoop out the fish poop that tends to accumulate in areas where the water doesn’t circulate well, but other than that, the pond has pretty much taken care of itself this summer.
I did need to intervene during the heatwave in mid-July when the overly hot water threatened to boil my pretty goldfish and slimly algae covered the pebble beach. An afternoon with the muck-vack and daily water changes kept that disaster at bay. The frogs have been fairly active and vocal, especially the tree frog who hung around for a month or so. Before he vanished I was finding him calling each evening from inside one of the slats of the pvc fence that surrounds the pond – he found a spot with excellent accoustics. There have been very few dragonflies this summer, which is disappointing because I enjoy watching them so much. No dragonfly nymphs either; I’ve spent many hours in past summers rescuing them (or so I imagined) from inside the skimmer net where they seem to prefer to set up shop. I never got around to planting any annuals along the pond’s edge as I usually do and never even fertilized the waterlillies. Despite that, the new tropical, purple in the opening photo, is still going strong, with two blooms on most days. Before long I’m going to need to figure out how to overwinter it; if anyone nearby would be willing to rent out a small space in their greenhouse it might just continue to bloom through the winter. We planted new fountain grasses at the back of the waterfall a few weeks ago to replace the switch grasses that were there. Switch grass is pretty early in the season before it flops over and looks like it was trampled by an elephant.
One morning this week my husband startled a young black-crowned night heron from beside the pond. Leaving for work before it was fully light out, he called me from bed to bring my binoculars. Sleepy-eyed, I found it perched clumsily in one of the holly trees at the edge of the yard. We haven’t seen it since and there don’t seem to be any fish missing, so I can happily add this new bird to the yard list. I hope this first heron to visit the pond doesn’t mean that others will follow; while I won’t begrudge them fishing rights, I have become fond of some of my fish. Maybe this wasn’t the first visit and explains the occasional fish that has gone missing over the years.
I was poking around th
is afternoon in the bog garden, wondering over some goldenrod that is growing wild despite the soggy soil, when I found this black and yellow garden spider, commonly called the writing spider. I’d never seen one of these before and was happy to find it there, in its web, overlooking the pond. In the web were two carefully wrapped skippers, caught unawares on their way to or from the joe-pye weed, still blooming nearby.
An interesting bit of folklore about writing spiders says that they can be used to cast a spell on an enemy. All one need do is shout the person’s name at the spider, after which the spider will write the name in its web, and misfortune will follow for the intended victim of the spell. You might also try asking the spider the name of your future husband or wife, and the spider will oblige by writing the name or initial of your future mate in the zig-zag portion of its web, called the stabilimentum.
A short chicken and Coop story
Don’t you imagine it must be nice to keep a few chickens in your back yard? Crowing at dawn and to announce visitors? I know having chickens is no big deal for some of you living in more rural areas, but for most people living in my part of NJ, it’s something of a novelty nowadays. Growing up I didn’t know anyone who had chickens and I still don’t have any neighbors with a coop in the yard. The closest thing to outdoor farm animals in my area are hutch bunnies. ;-(
So when my oldest brother Kevin moved to the country (or what passes for *country* in these parts) and joked about it, we got him a baker’s dozen of baby chicks for Easter one year. I don’t think he’s forgiven me yet.
Giving animals as gifts is never a good idea. Giving chickens is really, really silly.
It’s been seven or eight years since that first batch of chickens and Kevin and his wife have recently built a fancy new coop to house their growing population, so I guess they must have found something to enjoy about them. There have been quite a few problems with predators though, as those of you with chickens know is inevitable. There have been raccoon issues and opossum problems, and of course there have been hawks who visit the flock.
Kevin sent me an email a few weeks ago with pics of this photogenic hawk, wanting to know what type it was. He had some great shots of it to help with ID, but this one was my favorite.
I’m not certain how many chickens have been lost through the years to hawk attacks, but from the stories he tells the problem is more often a raccoon or a neighbor’s dog. I was really surprised to hear that dogs would be a problem to chickens, but it happened. A few winters ago before my brother rebuilt the chicken coop he had hawks that were getting inside the coop to attack the chickens – imagine that! I guess late winter is a lean time for predators and they are desperate for food.
The original chickens we gave them were Bantams, who make little tiny eggs, but I’m not sure what variety he has now. He collects the eggs and lately has been using them to make a Pennsylvania Dutch Specialty – pickled beet eggs – yum! A recipe is available here. I love to visit when there are baby chicks, who will follow you around peeping. My brother lets them *forage* for bugs in his vegetable garden and feeds them raspberries from his bushes. He also turns over logs and rocks to help them find crickets to eat, but that’s another story! He used to have one really nasty little rooster that liked to attack people, so you had to carry a stick out in the garden, just in case he cornered you. I think they must be begging for breakfast in this last pic, just outside the back steps. Wouldn’t that be a nice sight first thing in the morning?
9/14/06 Mid-week bunny fix
Has anyone noticed that the mid-week bunny fix has moved more towards the weekend? I originally started posting bunny pics on Wednesdays back in the spring because that is my teaching night. The bunny fix is an easy post that I can do quickly when I’m brain dead after working the day job and then teaching my class until 9 pm. Anyway, I’m teaching on Thursdays this semester so the bunny pics will be appearing on Thursdays until some time in December when the semester ends.
Back to Peeper, the bunny by the window. Our routine is for her to have a half hour or so of *out time* in the morning before I go to work. She chews on the door edges of her cage until I let her out. That sound drives me crazy so it’s an effective strategy on her part. Once I’m home in the evening and settled I let her out again to romp and play for a bit. We’re still at the stage where I feel the need to supervise her out time because she likes to get into things. She digs at the floor and the carpet. She pulls papers out of the wastebasket. She races around the room, literally bouncing off the walls. A few times I have come into the room to find her perched on my desktop. She jumps straight from the floor, up three feet, to the top of the desk. But her favorite thing to do is to sit on the hope chest and look out the window. None of the other bunnies have ever done that so it amuses me and I take a lot of pictures of her there.
Chicken apologies
I have pics and a story to share, but a lack of time and patience for Blogger’s wonkiness tonight.
Sensing this, Blogger vaporized my first attempt at this post. Now, more than an hour later, my laptop battery is about dead and I’m giving up for the night.
This is a pic of my niece feeding her chickens. The chickens are my fault.
Check back another time if the story interests you. There are hawk pictures.
‘Night.
A casual gesture of beauty
I took the day off from work and camped out in the backyard with my butterfly-to-be. I drank my morning coffee, did some prep work for school, watched unidentifiable warblers flit through the trees, dozed in the sun, drank more coffee, read a chapter or two in a book, and snapped this photo around 1:30 this afternoon. I was impatient and had myself convinced that it wouldn’t happen today and that I would miss it while at work tomorrow. I’d read that the chrysalis would become very dark before eclosing (thanks for the proper word, Bev!) and once that happened I could expect the metamorphosis the same day. The chrysalis certainly could not become any more beautiful than it was in this last pic above. 
I got up from the lawn chair at 2:45 and found that the butterfly had emerged while I was feeling sorry for myself. It hung, suspended from its shed chrysalis, for about an hour and a half. For most of that time it was as still and intent as when it was pupating. Every so often it flexed its wings or repositioned itself ever so slightly. I’d read that most of the work of metamorphosis is complete before the caterpillar forms its chrysalis. During the first half of pupation the wings grow and scales develop; the last touches are the addition of pigment. When it emerges from the chrysalis the butterfly hangs limply, vulnerable, while it pumps blood through the veins of its wings to expand and harden them. Tentatively it tests its wings and flight muscles.
Eventually it climbed to the top of a snakeroot flower, a few inches above where it had spent the last 17 days pupating, and spread its wings to the warming sun. I could see then that it was a male based on the two *dots* in the black veins of the hindwings. The russet and black wings are gorgeous and fresh. Breathtaking! He flew to the top of my neighbor’s garage and rested, then flew to the mulberry tree and rested again; warming and strengthening his wings.
Just 2 1/2 hours after emerging from his chrysalis, and 2 1/2 weeks after pupating he flew away towards the sun; heading south, I hope. It is chilly tonight, I hope he has found a sheltered spot in which to spend it. From what I’ve read, monarchs born this late in the summer form the last generation of the year, flying south to Mexico where they overwinter until March, when they mate, fly north again, lay eggs and then die. I feel incredibly lucky to have been able to watch this whole wonderful spectacle from start to finish. I’ve been blessed by the experience. Fly! Fly away butterfly!
Twilight
“Twilight is a time for sharing – and a time for
remembering – sharing the fragrance of the
cooling earth – the shadows of the gathering dusk –
Here our two worlds meet and pass – the
frantic sounds of man grow dimmer as the light
recedes – the unhurried rhythm of the other
world swells in volume as the darkness
deepens-
It is not strange that discord has
no place in this great symphony of sound-
it is not strange that a sense
of peace descends upon all living things-
it is not strange that
memories burn more brightly-as the things of
substance lose their line and form in the softness
of the dark-
Twilight is a time for sharing- and a
time for remembering-remembering the things of
beauty wasted by our careless hands-our frequent
disregard of other living things-the many songs
unheard because we would not listen-
Listen tonight with all the
wisdom of your spirit-listen too with
all the compassion of your heart-
lest there come another night-
when there is only silence-
A great
and
total
silence-“
WINSTON ABBOTT
*Really bad pic of the Tribute in Light taken this evening from the North Beach Observation Deck at Sandy Hook. A small group of strangers met in the gathering dusk. The sunset on the bay was fantastic, night herons and small flocks of canada geese flew past us at eye level, and the lights from NYC lit up the clouds.