Garden Update

The garden in late May: beans up, lettuce getting fright-wiggy, catnip in bloom and the newest roses to flower: Pink HP Mrs. F.W. Sanford, white Oak Garden Alba, dark beauty Supurb Tuscan. it's getting hot and swampy-tropical here. The air is like a drug---green, damp, heavy with honeysuckle, wild-rose, sassafras, and the first cutting of hay. Kudzu and honeysuckle and VA creeper have begun their annual clamber up phone poles, over porches, trees, down embankments; spring peepers do not "peep," they deafen--It is sooo multisensory. If only this could be a scratch'n'sniff weblog!

Stan "I'm Dangerous, Really" the Cat Reveals His Softer Side

Stan at home on Friday night enjoying "Club 13": he demands and receives an ear-scratch; enjoys quality time with Drew; his latest trick--correctly choosing which hand conceals the salmon treat.

Pictures of the Road King....

Getting ready (okay--thinking about it anyway) for vacation and ride north through PA and OH and IN to MI...sitting in the garage and talking about it...on Friday night. Note gardening knees...there is a great picture in the collection of me dismounting the bike with an expression of goofy concentration, but I'm too vain to post it.
The best part of long rides, in some ways is the ritual--getting suited up, making lists, packing everything you need, because what you bring is what you've GOT, you know? And at the same time, packing with outrageous asceticism, because every ounce you pack weighs the bike down, wears it down, slows you down...

Note the Precision Bean Trellis--Drew's engineering instincts much in evidence.
Note the extremely closely-spaced pepper plants--that megalomanical thing of mine...I can and will plant EVERYTHING! Hahahahahahahaha!

The Rest of the Garden pictures. Dial-up...painfully..slow. Have to upload singly.

Virginia in May--walking today the air is drenched with the heavy and heavenly drenching really perfume of wild roses--little white climbing into trees and up telephone poles in every neglected corner (lots of those in Lake Arrowhead!). They do not look like much, but the complexity, the many-layered nuances of scent they create--I gotta stop--I know this sounds idiotic, but they smell amazing..."Weisse aus Sparrieshoop" and barbed wire in the garden today; The first bloom of "Madame Caroline Testout"; slightly blurry "Souvenir de Madame Leonie Viennot" (too breezy for a clear picture but check it out! What color ISN'T in this rose?); "Buff Beauty"--an old friend; the gargoyle broods in a nest of Russian sage; The newly-planted garden bed: tomatoes and hot peppers to the left, herbs straight ahead, and beans (the enormous harp) and cucumers to the right.

Rediscovery: A velvet painting of Jimi turns up in the garage. 20 yrs old? 30 yrs. old? I tried, unsuccessfully, to strike up a conversation: "Nice shirt..."