July Garden Update

With all the rain and fog we've had recently, the garden is really looking lush these days. That and the weeds are running rampant! The flowers are brilliant this time of year and I so enjoy just sitting in the yard and enjoying them.

I took photos of some of the flowers today, but the bright sunlight just faded them out. Nonetheless, here is a pictorial update of some parts of the garden:



The daisies are in full bloom
and this little fella is enjoying every minute.

The lilies made it through the onslaught of those nasty red beetles. Seems like I was out there every other day spraying them with insecticidal soap. Oh, but they are so worth the effort!



The Annabelle hydrangea is just about to pop. The Purple Palace Heuchera is almost lost
beneath it.

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Astilbe and more lilies next to the Annabelle


Delphinium and Goatsbeard

Beach Glass

Yesterday was spectacular! We enjoyed a kayak paddle on calm seas as smooth as glass, our usual picnic on Hog Island and found several nice pieces of beach glass while beach combing.


Beached Moose

Brown glass is pretty common, as well as the green, but the blue is a rare find. H spotted this little gem!

My other love is driftwood, but unfortunately, most interesting pieces I find are much too large to put in the kayak. I'm still working on an idea to float them home!

Enough With the Fog, Already!

Ok, two days of fog is about all I can stand in one week. Especially when those are days I'm off work and could be spending my precious time in the garden.

However, one cannot change Mother Nature, nor coax her to be kind to restless gardeners and we must think of our gardens, who relish the cool dampness of the fog. I can already see the plants breathing a sigh of relief after several weeks of very little rainfall.

The veggie garden is jumping into high gear to get the tomatoes ripe before the first frost. Yikes! I can't believe I actually uttered the "F" word! Frost is about the furthest thing from my mind at the moment, but up here in Maine, it lurks in the dark reaches of a gardener's mind. With the season so short, we are anxious to spend every waking minute enjoying the summer days.



A good garden gnome is never lazy and on those days that I cannot venture into my green domain, I make good use of the time inside by knitting. My latest projects are felted handbags, and the occasional pot holder.

Knitting on H's sweater has been suspended for the summer as it's just too warm to have all that wool on my lap. I've also begun a pair of socks in a new pattern I've never attempted and using, gasp!, a set of #1 needles! These things are like trying to knit with sewing needles! That and the yarn I'm using is so incredibly thin that I had to upgrade my reading glasses to the next strength just so I could see the darned stitches.

Goatsbeard

I awoke early this morning (3 a.m. to be exact) and after tossing and turning and trying to get back to sleep, I finally got up and did a few internet chores til the sun came up. And what a pretty morning it was. As I looked out the window into the garden, the sun was just coming up over the trees and illuminating the almost blooming Aruncus, commonly called Goatsbeard. The feathery fronds sparkled in the early morning light. Unfortunately, my camera could not quite capture the beauty of the moment.



As I was walking through the garden, I noticed that the Delphinium had also begun blooming and the burgundy dahlia was just about to pop wide open.

Since we were up so bright and early, we decided to take a walk in Sorrento, one of our favorite places. This time of year, many of the summer people have returned for the season and their gardens are beginning to perk up. Most folks are happy to have you peek into their yards, but this friendly person actually invites you in!

Now, that's my kind of gardener. I hope one day I'll see them in the garden and be able to stop by for a chat.

Farther on down the road brought us to the harbor with all the brightly colored boats. My favorite red and white sailboat was moored in her usual spot with the mountains of Acadia in the background. I couldn't resist taking several pictures.

Happy Birthday, America!

From Giddy's Garden.

After a long couple of weeks of sanding and staining the deck, H and I will join our friends at their summer camp for a Fourth of July celebration. We're bringing salsa, bean dip and chips and everything else will be a surprise when we get there, although, I'm pretty certain there will be grilled Maine Red Snappers!

What's that, you ask? Up here, most places serve red hot dogs in natural casings. It's the casings that give the dog their famous "snap" when you bite in to them. The red comes from food coloring. Back in the old days, they would smoke the dogs and unfortunately, the smoke did not always color the dogs evenly, hence, the food coloring to turn them uniformly red. It's quite a surprise to tourists when they see their first red hot dog!

H, staining the deck

East side of the deck

It's nice to have all the flowers back on the deck!

Coastal Maine Botanical Garden

This past Monday, H and I took a road trip to Boothbay, Maine to visit the new botanical garden. This garden has over 200 acres of both native and non native plants in over a dozen separate garden areas. It took us about 2 hours to walk most of the paths and I could have spent more time gawking, but then, H is not nearly into the garden scene as much as me.

Below, are some of the highlights:

The rockwork throughout the garden was spectacular! I wish I could have taken some of the granite benches home with me.I loved the serenity of the Meditation Garden.



H was in charge of the backpack with the water. Unfortunately, the garden, being quite new, many of the plantings are still immature and the annuals will not be in full bloom for another few weeks. I look forward to visiting again in a couple of years to see how it matures. I think though, that we will visit in mid to late July so we can view it in full glory.

This pond was full of croaking frogs! The native ferns throughout the gardens were beautiful and although marked, I still had difficulty telling one variety from another.

One of the things I especially like about visiting different gardens is that I can see plants I really like. This Veronica was absolutely stunning! A must have for next year's garden. The blue stood out from a distance and I can imagine it a glowing centerpiece of the garden.

Last, but not least, a visit to midcoast Maine must always mean a stop at world famous "Moody's Diner" in Waldoboro for a quick bite to eat.

And, so ended a wonderful day. The three hour road trip to Boothbay was such fun. We meandered through quaint coastal villages and spent the hours enjoying the beauty of our chosen State. Life is soooooo good!

Of Birds and Bats

(My apologies to John Steinbeck for the Title of this post!)

We had company over the Memorial Day weekend. They were delightful and we so enjoyed showing off our little corner of Heaven. They, in turn, gifted us with an oh so appropriate hostess gift from their corner of the world. This week, UPS delivered the most unique bird house we have ever seen! It's made of California wine country grape vines/roots and lots of ingenuity.

For the past couple of years, we have had a little brown bat roosting in our deck umbrella every day. He doesn't seem to mind when we open the umbrella and returns every dawn to sleep. I've been doing a bit of research on the internet and have discovered that bats are our friends, each one eating between 500 and 1000 mosquitoes every evening! My kind of friend, so, we ordered a bat house that will eventually, hopefully, encourage a 100 bat colony to roost in our neighborhood. We shall keep you informed as to our success in attracting these voracious insect vacuums.On another note, the blooms are beginning to burst in the garden. This morning, the first of the brilliant Oriental Poppies bloomed! They are absolutely spectacular, however, alas, only grace us with their beauty for such a short time.

The New Dawn Rose blushed forth with her first bud, and beside the dusky purple of the May Night Salvia, they are positively stunning!

Spring Launch of the Mango Moose

Yesterday was the first day where the weather, tides and timing were perfect for the first launch of the season for the kayak. She's big, she's beautiful and she's orange, so she was aptly christened "The Mango Moose"

We had a wonderful paddle on a relatively smooth sea, with a side trip to our favorite island picnic spot. What a great day!Fried chicken always tastes better at a picnic!

Our collapsible "dining set" comes in quite handy for those off shore lunches.

Today is another "perfect" day, so off we go again. The garden needs tending, but that will have to wait for a day where the tides prevent us from casting off.

Boats at Sorrento

Yesterday was one of those days where I just could not get enough photos. Everywhere I looked was an opportunity to get a great shot - the sky was clear, the sea was like glass and the boats in Sorrento Harbor were as colorful as flowers. I came home with 21 pictures on the camera, one prettier than the other. Now, I have to choose which ones to add to the blog. The reflections of the boats in the water really caught my eye.




I think this shot of the lone sailboat with Cadillac Mountain and Mount Desert Island in the background was my favorite.

I could have sat on this bench all day just watching boats go in and out of the harbor


This little chipmunk was sunning himself on top of the fire hydrant.


And last, but not least, the beach roses were just beginning to bloom, we had a beautiful 3 mile walk and found lots of beach glass along the shore. A perfect day!

Bananas in Maine?

Yes, I know I'm sometimes a bit goofy, but I'm talking about real bananas. Two years ago, my son in Florida sent me a small, six inch banana pup. I've been nurturing it through two winters in the house and it spends its summers on the sunny deck. Last year, she grew three pups and the original plant is now taller than me! Who says ya can't grow nanners in Maine?

I took a walk through the garden this morning to see what was new and found the "Firecracker" clematis blooming.

The plants in H's planting boxes have begun to bloom. They each have a spike, black and lime green sweet potatoes, pink verbena and a beautiful double petaled, swirled petunia. Can you tell I like pink?

I'm always looking for interesting pieces of driftwood while walking along the rocky shore. A few days ago, I found a very straight piece about 7 feet long with a "hook" on it. H just rolled his eyes and asked what in the world I was going to do with that thing as it didn't have the usual snarls and whirls I find unique in driftwood. Well...... why buy those expensive wrought iron shepherd's hooks when Mother Nature and the sea provides perfectly good ones free!


I have a small planting bed in the middle of the yard which I refer to as my "Zen Garden". The rock sculpture changes frequently when the rocks fall, or I just take a notion to change things around a bit. Finding the rock's center of gravity often takes a few minutes of calm concentration and deep breathing.

Unproductive Week

Between trying to get over a nasty cold and worrying about not being able to get out to plant the pine seedlings which came in the mail a while back, I've not been able to get much else done in the garden.

The perennial garden needs weeding, the veggie garden needs tending and planting, the pots on the deck need attention, etc, etc, etc. It's enough to make a good garden gnome frantic. So, what does a good garden gnome do instead? Since being house bound is not my idea of fun, H and I decided that despite the foggy weather outside, we were both desperately in need of food for the soul, so off we went for a foggy walk along the shore in Sorrento.

The stroll through the enveloping fog was just what the doctor might have ordered. The eerie stillness in the white mist heightens the senses. The tide was out and the aromas of ocean and seaweed filled the air. The gulls were quiet for a change and our ears strained to hear even a peep out of the normally raucous crows or the joyful, lilting songs of the warblers and sparrows.

I love the fog.

Giddy's Back!

Giddy has been on hiatus for a couple of weeks due to gardening priorities and getting ready for a house full of company over the Memorial Day weekend so there is much to catch up on in this post. Please excuse the potential length and verbosity of today's missive.

First of all, Ms. Giddy has a partner! Gunter Gnome arrived as a surprise package in the mail one day from my German cousin. He and Giddy have become fast friends while sitting near the front gate, and invite everyone to visit in their garden. When asked why he was named "Gunter", it was because our eldest son, Jason, for some strange reason, always called his Dad, Gunter.

H's sister, brother in law, nephew and wife visited with us over the Memorial Day weekend. We did warn them that May was not a good month to visit Maine due to the hordes of black flies which descend upon us during that time, but since they were visiting their kids in New Hampshire, it was the only time they would be able to visit.

Giddy, in her infinite wisdom DEETed herself liberally and often and managed to avoid any hits from the nasty little insects, however, our poor company did not fare so well and took many a lovely souvenir back home with them.

We had a whirlwind tour of the Downeast coastline on one day with a great lunch in Eastport overlooking the Passamaquoddy Bay. The crabrolls were great, piled high with lots of yummy crab.

The next day, we headed out once again, this time over to Acadia National Park for another whirlwind tour. After a stop in Sorrento, we stopped by Jordan Pond to stroll along Jordan Stream and ended up taking some great photos of the Cobblestone Bridge.

Chad and Lora brought along their Greyhound, Keeper. What a beautiful animal he is and quite the good house guest.

Keeper did make himself right at home, including digging a new flower bed for Ms. Giddy. We had been planning on putting some really good compost into that bed and he save me a lot of back breaking shoveling!








Well, dear Readers, I must away. There remains much to do in the garden and I have 100 pine seedlings to plant quickly before the rain sets in. Oh my achin' back!