On a misty, moisty morning, here are some cosmos about to start being cosmic.
Speaking of mulberries, as we were only yesterday, here are some more growing in my yard. This one has colonized the forsythia in the Mary garden:
Mary herself is down there somewhere beneath all this foliage. I suppose for now I'll just let the mulberry grow and call that an aesthetic. They are hedgerow trees, trees of the forest fringe, so I guess I could rethink that space as a "forest fringe" garden. It's not exactly tidy, but then nature isn't. Since I do now have my lovely, tidy garden space, I'm a little more content to let the rest of the yard go haywire and see what happens. It would be nice if what happened were lots of mulberries. I have no idea whether these trees I have are male or female, but I guess I'll find out. I've been cutting them back so much that I don't think they've had a chance to arrive at any fruit-bearing stage of maturation, but now I'm resolved to leave them alone.
Here's another little one starting up under the laurel trees in the middle of the yard:
It's too late in the season now, but in the fall I might try digging it up and transplanting it next to the one by the kitchen garden (in the other forsythias --- they do seem to like forsythias).
Other garden highlights:
In blackberry news, we are making continual food offerings to the bird gods. So nice of us to provide this fruit buffet right next to the big bird feeder.
All this and suet, too. The ingrates.
My eggplants are looking suddenly lush. I bought some organic fertilizer the other day to give things a bump, and boy howdy. There's a little random chard peeking out, too.
The tomatoes are coming along far better than I have ever had tomatoes come along. I need to get some rebar to stake them, since they're too far along for tomato cages:
I have three containers of these full-size yellow tomatoes, with basil and some seeded marigolds which have not grown very fast, which was one reason why I bought the fertilizer. I hope they're going to go BUMP soon, too. But the tomatoes are looking good.
I have a few cherry tomatoes, too, just about ready to eat:
Also this funky purple/black "Midnight Snack" variety:
The arugula situation is a little crazy:
But I should have plenty of seed to save.
By the stump, the zinnias and marigolds are flourishing:
I'm ready for things to bloom and be colorful.
By the patio, I've weeded out some of the Pennsylvania threadflower, bottom center and right. This is a lovely native species that grows up in pink spikes, very small and subtle but pretty and beloved of pollinators. It spreads everywhere; I wanted to have a little more defined clump that makes room for other things. The lamb's ear I transplanted is taking hold, the black-eyed Susans are about to start blooming, and I should get blooms on the Rose of Sharon this year as well. Farther to the right, out of the frame, are four-o'-clocks, also an excellent pollinator flower which I hope will draw hummingbirds.
In the back-door shade garden, the hostas are starting to bloom:
Dora likes to go crashing around in them, hunting skinks, but they've held up pretty well.
In other news:
Reading a lot, cycling between a reread of In This House of Brede, a reread of Ngaio Marsh's Artists in Crime (because it introduces Troy and is So Good), and Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. It occurs to me that although I generally don't like book groups, I'd love to do a study of this book with a group of women with children, because it is about preserving that space in yourself for contemplation and curiosity and growth, while not assuming that you have twenty-four hours a day to devote exclusively to the life of the mind. I'm not quite halfway through, but this is an amazing, engaging meditation --- rigorous and wide-ranging, but accessible and readable.
I've also been reading a little collection of my friend and colleague Joseph Bottum's essays from the Washington Free Beacon, where he wrote a weekly book column in 2015. These too are wide-ranging and fascinating. I'm in the middle of an essay about the Victorian architect George Gilbert Scott which has made me laugh out loud several times, but also given me a lot to chew on. Jody is a prose master --- it's hard to think of another contemporary essayist who's quite that much fun to read --- and there's nothing he's not potentially interested in (though we have a lot of conversations about how he likes these Yeats poems but not those others . . . "Oh, you like that kind of thing," he said to me, of "The Song of Wandering Aengus," and yes, yes, I do like that kind of thing, thank you . . .). Anyway, I'd bought this Kindle book some years ago and then not read it, so I am enjoying it now.
Meanwhile, just, you know, not bothering to choose different outfits like at all:
An encore of Sierra with blue EVA Birkenstock Arizonas. She was a tad warm on my walk, but I think she's a good choice for the day nonetheless.
Enjoying a pretty good hair day, I must say, having washed it yesterday. I'm still liking my Vida Bars; the one thing I did differently this time was to use gel. I'd been out of gel for a while, so when I made my store run on Monday I picked up some Aussie Hard Freeze, or whatever it's called, which is an inexpensive Curly-Girl-approved gel. While I still had conditioner in my hair, I combed and detangled it, then I flipped my head upside down, combed it out again, and ran more water through it so that it was both tangle-free and soaked, just a sheet of dripping hair. I used probably three squidges of gel, working my way around my head, sort of frosting it on with praying hands, on top and underndeath, then raking it through with my fingers. I squeezed out the excess water and scrunched it a little, trying not to break up the clumps too much, then I kept it up in a microfiber turban for about half an hour. After that, I diffused it a little, because I was tired of having wet hair, then let it air-dry for about another hour, then diffused it again to get it all the way dry. I scrunched it to break up the gel cast, and fluffed it with a wide-tooth comb.
I tend to prefer volume and rippling waves to defined curl, which in my case is a hit-or-miss proposition anyway, since I have such unpredictable curl patterns. I really just like the feeling of having a lot of luxuriant hair. So having gelled up my hair, I'll then do pretty much anything to make it look as though I had not gelled up my hair: none of that wet gel look for me, thanks. Give me all the frizz you want, instead of that. What I end up with is hardly influencer hair, but I'm happy with the results nonetheless:
Mostly, the ends look as though I did something to it, other than sleep on it, mist it with water, and go out for a walk in humid weather. I'm really due for a trim --- my layers are growing out a lot --- but will wait until we get back from the beach.
Today: having walked the dog, I'm fiddling around with some tasks before heading up to Blowing Rock to meet my friend. I need to look at these Yeats poems for next week's Sun, and I need to think about my shopping list for beach groceries, and I need to be sure where we are with the laundry. My own clothes are in good shape, since I hand-wash and rack-dry them, though tomorrow I might need to put the rack out in the sun to be sure everything I need in the way of underwear gets dry. The children have discovered that the washing machine is back in business, so I haven't set foot in the laundry room in days and have no idea what state it's in. Just avoiding it with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and being happy that I have clean underwear anyway.
PS:
I also have new shoes!
The red Mary Janes are here, and now I don't want to take them off.
I have to admit, they're a dopamine hit. But that hit will have to do me for a long time! Anyway, I love them. I think putting them on will be a dopamine hit all its own.