Bring Me The Voodoo

I was determined to get the water turned on in the roadside vegetable garden last week. I just had to convince myself I had the necessary energy to do it. It is a struggle. Things are getting fuzzy in my absence.

While I was getting a waterline back up and running, the six pots of voodoo lilies landed in my truck. Why shouldn't they spend the summer with me? It could be the last. I made sure they were out of winter storage and on the deck at the house next door before the sickness grabbed hold. That made getting them in the truck easier to imagine.

Voodoo Lilies are a summer, June, bulbs. On the first day of summer, they have yet to awaken, a touch late by habit. I didn't miss a thing. That is how cool it has been the last three months on the mountain top. Heat changes everything in the garden. I'm still waiting. I have tomato, peppers and voodoo to grow.

I have collected plants and shiny trinkets to display all my life. Talismans of people and places. Doors to other worlds. The Curio Cabinet of life in a biological world.

Summer is here. I have two more chemo treatments in this first round of treatment. Then it will be time to assess and decide what is next.

What is next? The forces are stirring. It is going to take some voodoo to get me out of this mess. The maintenance gardener would be happy with some light summer mowing. A touch of order is always nice. A bountiful blooming meadow grows on and draws me in no matter.

Bring me the voodoo. 

A Couple Of Lilies Before Joe Pye

A neighbor brought me a big box of Turk's Cap Lilies a couple months ago. One of them actually managed to bloom after the transplanting. It was always on my list to go dig some from deep in the forest for the garden and I never got around to it. It was nice to have half the job done as a sweet gift.

A lily bulb that fell out of the ground from somewhere escaped the usual spring freeze and managed to bloom this year. Yesterday it was white. Today it is pink.

The Liatris is in full bloom as Joe Pye forms flower heads. Summer moves on along.

Easter

It smelled good. The blood was minimal that afternoon re-fencing, replacing the ancient and rickety barbed wire fence on hundred-year-old locust posts that came down during the logging operation next door. Now it is raining cold.

Blue Senescence

The Voodoo Lilies have turned to mush

Without a hint of frost.

A Maryllis ponder their fate

Into dry storage and forced to bloom.

In a blue world bent over.

Senescence like falling in deep blue waters.

The bones will rise again as green flesh slips away in fire and frost.

The Under Garden draws near.

Voodoo Lilies

With three amaryllis

Down by the Shores of Turd Blossom Lake near the Crooked Shed.

Big buckets of tropical voodoo and scattered junk

Washed in hurricane waters.

Walkabout

After seeing the phenomenal growth of a pot of nursery grown small give away bulbs of my Voodoo Lily I decided to give mine more food than usual. They got bigger.

The pot of the smallest bulbs grew to medium in one season. I could get a good bulb crop this year. I'll have to have a chat with Ms. Mandy at the nursery and see what our plans for voodoo are.

It has been a busy week. Momma's car died. We went out and bought her a certified pre-owned, low mileage, 2018 Honda HR-V. 

With a bad check. I can not believe they let us drive that car off the lot with a check we told them was no good cause the real money was another check still in the mail. It is a most lovely Aegean Blue and came with a CD player. I thought that would be impossible to find on a newer car. Technology has moved on.

Now I need to dump the old car, a 2007 Mercury Grand Marquis. We opted not to use it as a trade in cause  .... Moma was in a hurry and wanted a new car now. That trade in would have bogged down the process. An interested buyer emerged when I called the metal recycle to inquire about processes of disposal. One way or another I will be getting a little pocket change out of that old boat.

Time moves in multiple speeds in all directions.

The Tall Flower Meadow beckons after endless and unfinished paper work.

Joe Pye blooms deepen their color.

 

I was not alone. Mama deer is left of center behind the firepit. Her still spotted fawn scooted back in to the forest behind her.

Get Off My Lawn!! It does not help that the utility company sprayed the easements for miles around a dreary dead brown. Our meadows are oases of green.

The View from The Parking Lot

My natural vibration is increasing. More of the pictures I take are coming out blurry. Or my eyes are going again. If I cared more about the photography I'd use a tripod, but I don't.

Everything is vibrating at a higher pitch. Everything. What it portends will be determined. A client died last weekend. Not from the corona virus. His bug garden is in the previous post 'Flowers'. I plan to acquire the sign and have a little memento of Dr. David Alsop, entomology professor at Queens College New York in my bug garden.

Three gardens I tend will be on the market soon. Change is coming. A lot of it is age related.

It is the time of Voodoo and a wet and steamy voodoo this year. I sent a full pot of my baby Amorphophallus bulbifer to the nursery last fall. In a larger pot with nursery quality fertilization, they are already bigger than my Voodoo Lilies in one season. I was shocked. She owes me an Amorphophallus konjac bulb.

They have multiplied enough for the Crooked Shed to go full voodoo this year. Maybe I could start selling the annual bulb crop to the nursery?

All these years later and the peasant gardener still has a patch of weed flowers and one Japanese maple grown from seed in the parking lot cabin side bed. There were and still are other priorities. And should I get another gubmint bribe check, the driveway and parking lot are going to get regraded this winter. After my weed flowers are gone. Better to see the grade then.

It's either that or time to have a sign made for the top of the drive, 'Warning - High Hump Ahead'.

The Full Voodoo

Lord God Almighty! There was a powerful stench that filled every bit of air out there this morning. The rains returned and the air was just right to capture the full voodoo. It hovered low in the compound like some poisonous gas.

Some drip flashing was added to the roof lines this evening when the rain finally stopped in preparation for the covering this weekend. Hale Mini got just over an inch of rain without a roof. The plywood floors bubbled a tiny bit. Oh well, it will just have to dry out. A tile floor can hide that.

I have competing odors growing side by side. When everything is just right, these discard lilies can fill the air with the scent of heaven. And you can stick your nose in close to repel the voodoo.

On The Day Of Fireworks

The wild cultivated gardens are rocking the mountain.

The wild flowers begin gently in Ku'ulei 'Aina.

Maturing shrubs are now a big part of the show.

Big foliage works the edge of shade.

Aesculus parviflora

Closer

Indian Pink, Spigelia marilandica 

In Hawaiian Waters

I was moved to rearrange things.

I found fish. Must be all that pond scum.

The real fireworks are out in the hot sun.

All kinds of bloom going on.

Billowing grasses

And roadside weed flowers left unmowed.

A perfect lily inside

Okra Weather has arrived for the roadside vegetable garden.

There will be fine produce. Probably too much.

Perennial Wild Leeks

Enough daylilies to make your head spin.

Big Leeks and Ironweed. I do believe I know why they call it Ironweed now. Getting rid of it is not easy.

The Sunny Utility Meadow is having a very good year.

Do the slide show if you haven't already. The pictures are much better that way.

You really have to walk through to see it all.

Several times.

Definitely daily. The lily is at the peak of perfection.

The voodoo slowly rises.