Sleeping, Creeping, Leaping

First I want to share some exciting news from the garden this week.

Voila!  Zinnias in the former weed bed/dream-vegetable-garden-that-never was!

Let's take a closer look at my lovelies!

So much better and more satisfying than

The former weed patch.  Now I just have to go out trim them and watch them multiply.  They'll last until the first hard frost, sometime around the end of September and maybe a little past that if I cover them when it frosts.  As warm as it's been this year, they could well last until the end of October.

Annie's been sharing the abundance of her garden, delivering tomatoes and cucumbers on a regular schedule.

We took some of our haul to the Des Moines area for Prince Charming's class reunion.  Our niece, Melynda, hosted us.  One of the nicest things about marrying P.C. is that I get a whole new set of relatives, mostly ones I adore! Melynda made quick work of the cucumbers.

Introducing me to an entirely new cucumber vodka cocktail. Really could there be four better things in the world than cucumbers, a splash of vodka, tonic water and a lovely view?

Melynda has the most charming lake side play house down by the pond.

I want to stay and play awhile.

Can't you just imagine yourself in here potting, or painting or creating some piece of whimsy?

Mother nature's been creating her own whimsy this week.

The storm clouds in the Midwest are really impressive in August.

After the storm, the sky is its own kind of perfection

Nature now angry, powerful, mysterious; blink your eye and she goes all soft, and lovely. She offers you the abundance of her fields and ponds with an open and generous hand.

I want to make nature all warm and cuddly, but she's indifferent to me. She works her awesome magic destroying and creating completely indifferent to people in her path.  She operates according to immutable laws, most of which I don't know or understand.

And so we study her and try to memorize her haphazard, careless, fecundity. We try to distill her nature into rules we can remember.  

One of my favorite "rules" of gardening is the old farmer's saying:

"Sleeping, creeping, leaping."

This rule of thumb tells you how long after you transplant a perennial plant, bush or tree it will take until the plant gets over the shock of the move.

It spends the first year "sleeping". The second year, the plants "creep" and the third year they "leap"

So I knew this would be the year that my bower would finally come into it's own. 

The inspiration for my bower, a shady, reclusive spot to contemplate the world.  Note the swing, in my opinion (humble or not) it isn't a bower worth having unless it comes with a swing.

Three years ago Ann, the butterfly lady not to be confused with Annie, gave me starts of autumn clematis.

Here it is blooming last year. If you don't have some of this in your garden, drop whatever you are doing and go get yourself some.  The flowers are not that showy, but the smell of this autumn bloomer is stupendous.  Lilac, autumn clematis and lily of the valley are the top three, make your heart stop and count-your-blessings fragrances that the garden offers every year.

  Oh wait, I forgot about star gazer lily.  But really, let's be honest, a star gazer is just showing off and can get a little cloying.

Here's a picture of the deck supports (far right in the picture) I wanted to use to create my bower.

And here it is today, three years later.  The plants on the far left get more sun as a result of losing half of the red oak which also removed a couple of pines on its way down.

One way to thin out and create more sunshine,  have squirrels hollow out half your red oak which will then suddenly go down just narrowly missing your neighbor's house. I'd like the other two pillars to look as nice. But we've spent years worrying about, inspecting not to mention spending a small fortune having preventative measures taken to retain the red oak.  This is the yin-yang of gardening. Conditions are never perfect and we've all just got to muddle through, accepting our limitations, even embracing them.

The bower will come, but it will be slower where it's more shaded.

I have visions of Prince Charming and me sitting here, under the fully-leafed out bower as he strums his guitar and sings sweet songs of his love to me.....Hopefully P.C. will go along cheerfully for his guitar lesson next week. The last time I signed him up for a lesson it was like getting hold

of the wrong end of a badger.

Wishing you the songs of summer, badger free, Wonder Ones!