the garden

Alleluia! Alleluia! I was sure we weren't going to see these til June!! And that's some oregano coming to life up at the top.

It seems to be

a year for insects.

This pretty little moth
kept me company an entire day
on the ceiling of my room.

i would love to get closer to
this beauty
dining on the agapanthus 'Elaine' nectar

However
i require a long-ish lens
to capture the gorgeous marbling
in the nest of the bald faced hornet

the first

the earliest ones
always come into the house with us

and now, all these sweet little cups

Where smiles grow

i confess:
i was not at my best Wednesday morning
"stuff" was getting the best of me.
Gratefully, i'd made plans to take a little field trip with a friend
and worked hard as we drove together
to let go of the dratted gnat-like bothers still buzzing in my head.

Our goal:
to visit and ramble through a sunflower maze
the largest of its kind on the east coast
and just a few miles from our town.

What an absolute surprisingly delightful
experience this little morning outing turned into!

i've driven past very happy sunflower fields previous summers
and have various types in my garden ever year
but i've never before kept such intimate company
with literally thousands of them

i could not stop smiling

and admiring the various other visitors that were out with us that day

 

a pollen drenched soldier beetle

 

The farmer has sown millions of seeds
in succession
so that there will be glorious heads to visit for several more weeks
and now
we can examine them in all their stages
from bud to heavy heads laden with ripening seeds

John Parke (who is a project director with Audubon) and his son Aidan

explained that all of these are black oil sunflowers
and will be harvested and sold as bird seed locally
with support from the Audubon Society's very cool S.A.V.E. program

It was so much fun
and totally turned my head and day around
to spend ...was it really only an hour?
in such sweet company

 

Where am i?

Have i been transported
to another land?
Perhaps southern England
or northern France.

It is very mild in these parts.
As a British friend says,
"We're having a proper English winter."

At Greenwood last weekend
there were snowdrops!

wintersweet was in flower
and filling the soft breeze with its heady perfume



(Don't let those diminutive
blooms fool you. Their perfume fills the air!)
However
it usually doesn't flower around here
until March.

And, then...
at home
in the chilly front room
where potted plants spend the winter
a viola!

what i did on the weekend

i have nothing to brag about.
Not when compared to the feat two friends achieved.
The most i can say is that between Friday morning
and Sunday evening, i drove more than 900 miles
gazed at some marvelous countryside, skies,  and mountains.
And for about 3 hours Saturday morning i sat, waiting
on top of a mountain
ringing a cowbell
with a few hundred others
cheering and marveling at 600 of our fellow beings.

Here's how it went:
Friday morning, 9AM
My sister and i hurridly packed the car
bought breakfast at our favorite little market on the way out of town
came to a sudden halt when we saw this a few miles north of home.

We then proceeded to drive 440+ miles north
to Bethel, Maine
where we met up with two friends
who are
without question
the craziest two people we know.
They love to race
not simply ride
their bicycles up mountains.

Saturday morning, 5AM.
Woke, dressed, wolfed down oats with fresh, wild blueberries
met up with some more friends/cheerleaders
then drove an hour to the base of Mt. Washington.
Then, our pack of cheerleaders wished the crazies well and
did the sensible thing.
We drove to the 6,288 summit
where we waited for them along with the hundreds of other family and friends
of other insane individuals.




In the world of cycling
The Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hill Climb
is known as the toughest hillclimb in the world.
Seriously.
Nothing on the Tour de France tests riders the way
this mountain does.
7.6 miles in length, it has an average grade of 12%
with extended sections of 18%
and, then
the final 50 yards is an astonishing 22% grade!
It is difficult for most humans to walk up that last stretch.

If you read those chalk messages
you'll note that there are lots of moms and dads
who conquor this mountain on two wheels.
Everyone that crosses the finish line
gets a much deserved medal
and phenomenal sense of physical, mental, and spiritual accomplishment.




They call it the "Climb to the Clouds"

And the weather can change within minutes



There are no guard rails.
A long section of the road is unpaved--because erosion makes tarmac implausible.
There are spots where 2 autos cannot pass each other.

And the mountain is infamous for its weather
the observatory at the summit embraces the motto:
"Home of the World's Worst Weather". In point of fact,
in the spring of 1934, observers clocked a wind gust of 231 mph,
which remains a world record for a land based weather station.

Some years, the riders start out in sunshine and 65 degrees
ride up through the fog and clouds and into sleet
to reach the summit where it is 30 degrees colder.
Two years ago
the riders nearly fried in the sun.
And, yes...winds often blow riders off their bikes.

This year
the weather was perfect. Sun and clouds
temperatures in the 70s and
a gentle, cooling breeze.

Both Lili and Carol, veterans of this race
beat their old records
Carol cut a whopping 6 minutes off her time
coming in just under 2 hours.



Being veterans
Lili (left) and Carol are pals with the organizers and many of the volunteers
who joined us in singing "Happy Birthday" to Lili
as she approached and crossed the finish line
on her 50th birthday!!

i bow before them both.

 

 

Glowing faces

In a jug
on the dining room table

the ones in front that look a lot like "scrambled eggs" has been growing here
for decades, if not longer. It's easy to see why people call it that.
But it's true given name...well, at least its current official name
is Van Sion and is named, according to a history shared
by my friend Scott at Old House Gardens, for
"Vincent Sion, a Fleming, living in London, [who] cherished it in his garden for many years
before it flowered in the year 1620." 

This is an heirloom if there ever was one.

And, of course, there's all sorts of discussion
for this daffodil has a mind of its own.*
Some years in this garden it is all gold, as in the photo
other years, it sports streaks of bright green.
Live a few years with a flower like this beauty and
you will come to believe that plants do have personalities.
And they have moods.

i love that this curious individual persists and thrives
all on its own.
seemingly forever.

The other daff with its glorious glowing trumpet?
He is one of a very handsome crowd
from a bagged mix of unnamed bulbs i couldn't resist at the hardware store.

*From Old House Gardens:
"All ‘Van Sion’ bulbs sold in the US today are grown on a small island off the north coast of the Netherlands. There the climate is perfect for ripening bulbs which will bloom with all of the doubling neatly contained within the trumpet...No matter where you garden, that’s what you can expect to see the first year after you plant them, and that’s what most books and catalogs show you.
      But every spring after that, most of these bulbs will produce quite different blooms – shaggy powderpuffs with no sign of a trumpet, as you see in our photos here. And in some years or some gardens, these blooms will be heavily marked with green or they’ll open gnarled and imperfect. Though they’re weirdly charming, these mop-headed blooms are rarely pictured in books or catalogs.
 

‘Van Sion’ isn’t the only double
daffodil to bloom in two different
forms. Here’s another from
Paradisi in Sole Paradisus,
John Parkinson’s landmark
florilegium of 1629."

forsythia

Between me and the neighbor's barn
where a small forsythia grows
is a Russian olive that is just beginning to leaf out.
A soft rain falls for most of the day.
The telephoto feature + high iso = a chunky image
that prompted me to mess about with pixels

Visitors from another latitude

bought a bunch for a friend's birthday
and myself



the sepals resemble the way stockings wrinkle 'round old ladies' ankles



that's a net bag of pine nuts i'm snacking on, next to the painted pitcher....mm, mm, good!