Prairie Home Companions

Really? Do I only post on Mondays now?

I've been busy digging holes.

Adding grasses, echinacea, butterfly milkweed and sages, subtracting Queen Annes lace that over took the baby love rose and almost killed it. 

Taking out dead hypericums and hydrangeas that didn't survive that last winter.

Turning my garden into a prairie.

Next I'll be making my own dresses out of calico.

But I'm so happy with the new look of the back berm, I'm moving slowly from bed to bed. Dividing iris, giving away  some of the invasive but beloved pale pink lily of the valley to my new garden conscious neighbor, changing it up.

Hopefully plantings that will require less water in the future.

Though I just did the math and thought, am I actually going to be digging up these grasses in three years and dividing them?

Highly doubtful but we can dream.

Dream someone else will do it.

The amazing part of all this is that I can do the digging.

I just "graduated" from shoulder surgery today.  6 months out. Passed all my tests, paid my 20.00 co pay and left the office with tears in my eyes. It's over.

I asked the Doctor if I could salsa dance now.

"Could you salsa before you tore your rotator cuff" he asked.

"Yes I could", I said.

" Then dance away", he said.

Maybe I'll go clogging instead, seems to fit my new prairie lifestyle better....

Special thanks to my friend Gwen who shot me a text to tell me I had misspelled prairie in the blog title.

#tooexcitedtoproofread

And The Beat Goes On.

I know, I know, you would think I would have all the time in the world while lolling about with this sprained ankle.

But no, aside from staying home on Wednesday (actually taking a cab to work on Wednesday then being scolded and sent home with the driver by my workmates), life has carried on as usual.

Weddings, ankle up, planting urns inside and out on site ankle up, standing in one spot at work designing designing, then ankle up. No stairs though, okay only once or twice a day. Oh and then hobbling home and ankle up. Up with ice?  Heaven. Unfortunately I visit heaven too infrequently and as temperatures have risen into the 90's so has my cranky level. Though I have not yet become what we refer to as work as a BOB (big ole bitch). Well, only once and then I apologized to GG. Profusely.

So no zumba, no gardening, no walking to work, no nothing.  Except we did have our annual Memorial Day party. Apparently cleaning, cooking, fluffing house and garden are acceptable behavior with a sprained ankle.  But I laughed so much and the company was so appreciative and the food so delicious it was worth every Advil.

Next up: the food.

And the garden?  looks like it's doing fine without me.

The Times They Are A Changing

The garden is reeling from an endless stream of 90 degree days. And not to be a total bummer here but the August issue of Organic Gardening magazine reports that this is only the beginning of hell on earth. Allergies will worsen, due to plants blooming earlier and producing more pollen. Mosquitoes, and other garden bugs will flourish. The plant damaging storms we have had this summer will be the norm. Winters will be wetter, summers drier. Ay ya yay.



But there are still and hopefully always will be sweet garden moments. Platter sized red hibiscus blooms, moonflowers on the chain link fence, firecracker and thunbergia vines twisting around the porch railings are but a few I found today.



And there are more late summer/early fall flowers to come, fall blooming anemones, pineapple sage, the callicarpa bush is covered in lilac berries, soon to turn a deep purple.

To continue to experience such lovely moments I will follow the advice in OG magazine. I'll use a rain barrel to collect and store water, I'll continue to mulch, I'll drop to my knees and weed whenever possible and I'll remove some heavy drinkers from my beds and replace them with more abstinent plants. And now I have another reason for creating the potager in my backyard: to spare my plants from heavy storms water-logging the ground. Small silver lining?

... August ...

To my surprise I'm having a staycation. What happened to the beach you wonder, or the mountains I was idly thinking about.

Let's start with sick dog and BIG vet bills. But she's worth every dollar we think and is feeling so much better she's up for jogging (with GG, I'm no jogger) and chasing after squirrels. She's off to the vet now for her check up and yearly shots, so add another big bill. Plus the other beach we visit doesn't allow dogs and you can't ask anyone, even a sister, to take care of a sick puppy.

So, we're home doing as little as possible. I wonder why it feels fine to lay around the beach all day reading and napping but at home you keep feeling like you should be doing something? We need a screened-in porch (you're allowed to do nothing on a screened-in porch).

The heat and humidity have returned with a bang so working in the garden is out. I have a few new plants to put in and several I'd like to see go but after an hour outside this morning I gave up and fled inside to a cool house. I did get a few shots of what's blooming, too bad I didn't take any of our vegetable garden. It looks like a field hospital circa World War 1.

Still the crepe myrtle is glowing (how far north does this grow? does it grow in Europe?) the limelight hydrangea is full and green, and the agastache stands tall through it all. And the pesky allium are blooming away as if they are a welcome garden guest.

I guess any plant, minus the bindweed, is welcome in August.

Moonflowers

Did Georgia O'Keeffe paint them? If not ,why not?

They begin to unfurl at dusk. In the dark they're large, luminescent and fragrant.

In the morning they're folded back up like a fan. You think you might have dreamed them.

They then do it again, and again, till the first frost.

We planted them up the chain link fence. When life gives you lemons,eh?