Get Back To The Garden

The maintenance gardener is feeling sad. He was hoping the spurt of energy would last through the summer mowing season. That is not what happened.

I was in the hospital for two nights and three days last week because the drain catheter in my right lung got infected. Another CT scan showed the cancer had grown right back. Instead of any improvement, I have gone back to sleeping most of the day. The garden grows fuzzier by the day.

The garden is also doing a spectacular bloom which makes the garden designer who has been nudging a meadow in this direction for the last decade quite happy.

It's like my garden knows. Even the strong thunderstorms the last few days have only bent the tall flower meadow. It has not broken. The flowering meadow will fluff again on the next dry wind.

I have a consult with a radiation oncologist tomorrow. Just to see if I can breathe a little better. But the time for hospice is here. Then I can get back into the garden.

Weary

I have not been feeling well the last couple of months. And the garden grows a little wilder by the day.

Movement has slowed. The tall flower meadow blooms on.

The rambling Clematis stans has ebbed and flowed and held on with the competition.

The Doll's Eyes have come out to look.

Joe Pye bends with the wind while butterflies glide and hummingbirds zoom through the air.

And golden Rudbeckia drifts in waves.

I draw it all in, resting in the view from my front porch.

The Bear In A Tall Flower Meadow

I appear to be on the late summer route.

The bear is a regular morning visitor it seems. They probably always have been. I have just never been home during the day to see them so often.

I like this cropped picture better. It shows off the Tall Flower Meadow coming into full bloom and the bear to better advantage.

The bear went up the stairs. Time to get in the house. 

The bear poops all over the stairs and back stoop. So do racoons.

Over the river and through the woods, to Bulbarella's house is next on the route.

A Very Fine House

I wandered out to a late summer wildflower meadow yesterday to take some pictures of the ever-increasing floral abundance to share for the Bloom Day post, then ran out of energy before I could finish. I'm a day late. Such is the way it is these days.

The tall flower meadows are having a stellar bloom this year. A vision in my head from long ago has finally been turned into a reality. I did what I came to do.

Around back, the Voodoo Lilies, Amorphophallus bulbifer and A. konjac are in full summer leaf. The stink has passed. I do believe that smell attracted a yearling bear to come scout the place. That bear was on my front porch Monday afternoon looking right in the window at me sitting at the computer.

Joe Pye is a major element of high bloom in the late summer garden. It is reaching full color and the butterflies float over the gardens by the dozens.

It's a very fine house and a bountiful garden full of life where I am content to spend my final days. It would just be nice if I felt better.

Joe Pye And The Sweet Angelica

Late summer bloom in the Tall Flower Meadow has begun. Joe Pye is one of the first to color up.

Angelica gigas is now self-sowing and wandering the gardens. That is always my hope with the wildflowers that I introduce to the mix.

Black-Eyed-Susan is a prolific spreader and a pretty good weed smothering ground cover.

The time of Joe Pye is here.

Into A Blooming Meadow

In between rain showers, when the meadow is dry, is a good time to wander into the garden to see all that is a bloom.

A lavender Beebalm.

Purple Liatris

Purple Coneflower

Post white Fly Poison fading to green

Black-Eyed-Susan

Into a blooming meadow.

The Aroma

The morning air of late has been just right for the putrid stench of Voodoo to emanate from the parking lot and infuse the garden. That aroma has been starting off my day. The sweet smell of 'Lemon Drop' azalea is no more.

The meadows are popping with all kinds of flowers, far more than I can show. The chicory is still going strong.

Purple Coneflowers and Black-Eyed-Susan are opening abundantly to summer bloom.

The hill side of Gooseneck Loosestrife does its thing.

Spikes of purple liatris are all over the meadows. I am surrounded by flowers in a garden lurking with all manner of wild things. I do believe it was a bear that opened the door and got inside my truck last week. The muddy paw prints were quite large. Voodoo.

Baby Voodoo

This is the absolute latest rising of the Voodoo Lilies that I can recall. It seems they would be fully leafed out around the end of June in the past. I could go back in time on the blog and find out. The worldwide record heat wave is slow to reach the mountain top thank you very much.

I can't help myself. I made a tray of baby voodoo. They hang on the front porch for the summer with the house plants I am not supposed to have. I can't help myself. Plants just multiply around me.

I felt pretty sick all week after the last chemo. Other than going for a new CT scan, I did not get much past the front porch all week. Good thing I have some pretty on the front porch to meditate on. The oncology nurse said that the chemo gets progressively worse when I called to whine about the troubles I was having. One more to go.

The sick lifted on Friday after I got myself fully re-hydrated. I wandered down to the basement patio for a closer look at the summer meadow with ever more weed flowers in bloom.

The garden misses me. Its fate after my passing is written in the editing and maintenance I don't have the energy or flexibility to do right now. After all these years of tinkering, the meadows are having a very good bloom year without me. I just want it to look nice for the party when my ashes are spread.

On the edge of life and death, I watch the garden grow and endure. If I was a rich man, I would hire myself a real gardener, such a nice thing to have. But I am a contented peasant gardener who has lived his whole life outside.