Walking With Joe Pye

What a week. The whole thing can be well summed up in one sentence. My 93 year old mother has fleas. I'm not sure what else about this week I am willing to discuss.

A for real Fred induced flash flood roared down the Pigeon River Tuesday evening from Cruso, through Canton and Clyde and on to Waterville. Along the river there was a lot of damage and 20 to 30 people went missing.

I am thankfully dry and my head is above water walking eye level with Joe Pye.

It is the week of the full moon. Clematis stans is in bloom.

My mother's fleas are my problem.

The bugs are in focus. The flowers are fuzzy.

My mother has fleas and a mama cat with four kittens showed up. Was that the day after Fred? That has caused a certain level of disturbance in the local cattery. Button. Then a big snake showed up on the front steps where four kittens were recently seen.

Like Ironweed.

I bought a new vacuum with powerful suction.

Now I have to make a lot of tidy. Then repeat.

I blame Solly. There were never any fleas until she spent the winter in Florida. A Florida fleabag. I should get a picture and make her do a perp walk. She has turned into a nice cat. 

Fleas. A world of fleas. Fleas need hot. I wanted okra. We are low on both.

I Heard Fred

Was the name of the hurricane waters that are currently passing directly overhead. I wasn't paying that much attention. It has been raining steady all day long.

Look close as the river runs through it. In a long downpour, the waters rumbled and ran on the surface the farthest I have ever seen them go. Unperturbed, the garden grows on.

A Bloom Of Fine Produce

This is the roadside vegetable garden on feral parsnips gone to seed. It was time to tidy things up a bit. Harvest season of fine produce is well under way.

 

The finished parsnips were removed. As one can imagine, hundreds of seeds spilled into the garden in the process.  Oh well. The paths around the outside edges got whacked. The remaining unbloomed parsnips can be harvested after the first frosts.

More tidy. The better to find fine produce.

Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato squash is this year's big producer. The squash department is always unpredictable.

Red tomato

Yellow tomato

I looked into the Black Turtle Beans. Looking good, but they are a couple of weeks away from being dried on the vine.

Some Butternut squash. There has been a lot of yellow squash, fat sacks of Lazy Wife Pole Beans and two kind sweet peppers. The potatoes are ready to dig.

The okra is knee high and blooming. Not much time left by mid-August. Will there be okra? Only the hot will tell.

The Ironweed is near ten feet tall and starting to bloom. A Joe Pye snuck in.

It's a Bloom Day of fine produce in the roadside vegetable garden. Carol at May Dreams Gardens Bloom Day headquarters will surely approve.

Uncle Ernie does.

Joe Pye And The Butterflies

It was a lovely evening. I repotted a bunch of Angel Wing Begonias and enjoyed the lovely.

The Walk In

To the garden. Note the flower buds on Magnolia 'Jane'.

The night time cacophony of katydids vibrates in the air. It is August.

And out.

The light is always changing.

It Is Done

Some of it anyway. There are a lot of paths and edges out there.

Today was my gardens turn. It is the perfect time for a good mowing as the Tall Flower Meadow goes in to full bloom.

Shall we go for a stroll in a freshly mowed garden? The meadow is feeling quite civilized.

This has been an exceptional bloom year in the meadows.

Then I realized, nothing has been squashed yet. The pestilence has been subdued,

The Great Lawn

Now mowed.

This is where my ashes go. I hope. Swirling down the drain.

I'll have sky lights.

This is a pretty good record of how I keep things mowed during the Lush period and the actual layout of the grounds should anyone ever be curious to know how to find the garden.

It might not be readily discernable shortly after I am gone.

In the hiss of a summer lawn.

A meadow begins high bloom.

Pedal on.