Such a sweet petunia



It's aliiiive!

We've had a comeback! I planted these petunias and those other little orange/purple flowers (their name eludes me at the moment) a month and a half ago, and after about two weeks the woodchucks decided they were the most delicious things they had ever tasted and ate every. single. blossom.  Every one. All of them. Nothing was spared. Imagine what freshly cut grass looks like -- that's what this pot of flowers resembled when they were done with it.

So why the resurrection? I have no idea.  I did put some Critter Ridder right in the pot though, and since then, nothing has seemed to bother it. Or maybe the woodchucks are vacationing in the White Mountains or something. Skiddooing or something. But look at the blossoms -- they're beautiful! This is what I had originally envisioned! That never happens!


I love the color of these petunias. They are a very light lavender (almost white) with dark purple centers. So pretty. I'll enjoy them while they last -- you never know when something is going to need a midnight snack.



One of the best photos I've ever taken. I think.



The Origins of Slimer



Future salad makings.

My parents gave me two beautiful tomato plants last week, and they are both loaded with buds and flowers. Because we've had very little rain lately (like much of the rest of the country, though not quite as extreme), I've been making an effort to water our potted items while letting anything in a garden bed sort of fend for itself.  Even the rain barrel is pretty low.

So the tomato plants are on the side stairs next to our bedroom door, tucked into this little corner so that you-know-who (the woodchucks) might not find them. I kind of like this little area as a mini garden -- we hardly ever use that door, so something might as well be happy there. They get plenty of sun and are fairly protected from the elements.

So imagine my surprise when I went to water these darling plants and saw something so ugly, so repugnant that I started shrieking like a little girl and did what any brave gardener would do -- I went to get my husband.

Me: JOSHUA! JOSHUA! COME HERE NOW!!! PLEEEEEASE!

Josh: (With a look that questions my mental stability) Are you all right?

Me: You need to see something...

Josh: (Now actually concerned) What? What's going on? Did you get attacked by a woodchuck?

Me: No, it's way weirder. Come see this. (leads husband to tomato plants while remaining about 10 feet away.)

Josh: What is wrong with the toma... whoa. Look at the size of that thing! That's HUGE!  (regresses into 10 year old boy.) Can we keep it?



Venkman, get a sample of this.



He slimed me.


Me: No! Get rid of it!
Josh: (Turns into 33 year old woman.) I don't really want to touch it.
Me: Neither do I!
Josh: It's not hurting anything...
Me: Yes it is! It's eating my tomato plants! Everything eats everything I plant and love!!!
Josh: So YOU get rid of it.
Me: Come onnnnnnnn. (I actually whined. I hate to admit it, but I really whined.)
Josh: If we move him, he's going to die. He lives on tomato plants.
Me: Well he can live off the sumac trees now.





Is it me, or do all of his little eyes look sad?


So Josh heroically moved him in a napkin to the woods.  We didn't kill him.  We couldn't kill him -- this thing was about 4 1/2 inches long and as big as my thumb. He's the granddaddy of tomato caterpillars. And now he resides in an area of the yard without tomatoes. Or he's making a fantastic breakfast for one of the robins.

Whatever, that's the circle of life.

But I swear he looked depressed when Josh moved him.  He had his own private tomato smorgasbord going on and got kicked out.

My guilt will go away though when these are finally ripe. Though I'm sure I'll go home today and one of the woodchucks will be leaning back on the stairs, popping these babies in his mouth like M&Ms.



These are mine.



Corn, chalk, ice cream and bubbles



I think I ate like 16 of these.



My weekend was fantastic. On Saturday, I attended my small but meaningful college reunion up in Manchvegas, NH, and had a fantastic time with people I do not get to see often enough. We laughed, we ate, we reminisced. Then we laughed and ate and reminisced some more! It was good times. Good times.

Then on Sunday, more old friends and my parents came over for a BBQ involving burgers, hot dogs, chicken and corn as far as the eye can see. I love corn. I have a serious thing for corn. I'm sure it's not normal. Oh, and ice cream. Josh is a professional scooper at this point. Three flavors, jimmies (sprinkles for some), and chocolate dipped cones. (I didn't say it was healthy. I said it was ice cream.)





The whirling dervish of bubbles.

 It was ridiculously hot on both days, but Sunday was just crazy hot. Like you sit down and stick to everything you touch hot. Like you're not doing any sort of exercise and yet beads of sweat are falling off your forehead into your plate hot. That's hot. I picked up some AWESOME chalk for our friend's little girls to play with out on the driveway, along with some bubbles.  The chalk looked like all different kinds of junk food -- doughnuts, popsicles, cotton candy, you name it. I'm kicking myself for not taking photos of them. And the bubbles were an even bigger hit because they were one of the few sources of heat relief when you were outside. A bubble would explode across someone's arm and you'd hear, "Ahhhh!"


Remember the days when you were so little you didn't care about the heat, you just had to get outside and be a kid? I love that kids still find fun with little bottles of soap, some chalk and a big grassy lawn. Now that's summer.

Portrait of a Cat

I have a few more interesting posts coming up, but I had to get a weekly Tuukka mention in here. This is a portrait that Josh took of her last weekend as she sat (oddly) on one of our couch pillows. On the coffee table. The pillows are never on the coffee table, and even if they are on the couch, she never sits on them. But she evidently likes pillows on the coffee table. That's fun and exciting.

This is my favorite expression that she makes. I call it the "WTF?"  (It's abbreviated for decorum.) I think I have a similar expression whenever I read anything about the Kardashians or go people watching at Wal-Mart. And some mornings, the world is just ridiculous, and that's all you can think anyway. So I find this fitting since Tuukka is nothing if not the epitome of ridiculous.



Leading the world in ridiculousness since 2011.



Like buttah



I'm a miracle!

Last fall, Josh went to Home Depot and noticed that they had a ton of plants on sale. Among the sale items were some butterfly bushes, and he's a big fan of those since they have them at the Audubon in Topsfield and typically have about a thousand butterflies and hummingbirds jumping all over them at any point in time.

So he bought three of them for about $2 each. I wouldn't have paid that much. He basically brought home sticks in a little pot. (Though the sticks did have a few leaves.) I had very little faith that they would do anything, but we decided to cut what little foliage they had on them back (as is recommended with butterfly bushes) and plant them in the front bed. As you can see, they were miracle plants.



Showoffs.



The butterflies do seem to really enjoy them, but I haven't noticed any hummingbirds around them yet.  But we'll give it time. These should be blooming for much of July, maybe August. Unfortunately, the aphids think their leaves are delicious, so I have been spraying them with anti-aphid gunk. I have resigned myself to the fact that absolutely everything in our yard is going to be consumed by some creature, and it's a battle of wits from here on out.

I love flowers that are made up of about a million tiny blossoms. Each tiny flower makes a big flower, and has so much color! A tiny red center, with a tiny yellow ring around that, then it shades out from a lavender to a blue around the edges. Fancy.


All those flowers in one blossom -- you have to wonder if they all get along.



Shove it over, you're blocking my light!



What's a flower got to do to get watered around here, anyway?

What happens when the plague hits

You're a grand old flag... in my windowbox.

A very, very belated happy Independence Day to everyone. I have had the plague. (Overly dramatic, but equally annoying.) I positively hate getting sick in the summer. It's a waste of perfectly good sunshine and warmth. And I have had whatever this is -- a cold, a bug, a pain in the you-know-where --since last Tuesday. I have had little interest in working outside, and even less to say that makes any sense, which is why you have been spared my babbling around here this past week. I didn't even get off my duff to go see fireworks.

Not a lot has been going on. A new layer of Critter Ridder has been put down as Alvin and her children continue to mow down on my front bed. My mother-in-law's St. Bernard, Lucy, donated some of her fur to the border of the garden -- I read somewhere that the hair of big dogs can freak woodchucks out and make them leave things alone.  We'll see about that. It would be a nice change of pace.

My parents came over for dinner last night (Hi Mum! Hi Bert!) and brought Rosie, my replacement sibling. (When I moved out of the house after college, I got them a dog. It was a good decision for everyone.)

Say hi, Rosie!

Hi Rosie!

Rosie is a rescue that was brought to New England from Puerto Rico.  At this point, we are guessing she is about 11 or 12. I think. My parents have had her around 10 years or so, and the shelter felt she was at least one or two at that point. I brought her home in my old Ford Contour and she was great the entire ride... until we got home. Then she threw up on the console. But I assured her it was just nerves, and she was going to go live with Mr. & Mrs. Marshmallow and never want for anything again. She took me on my word and went into the house with me. 

Mr. & Mrs. Marshmallow were less than thrilled when they saw her, but for some reason in the past 10 years, very few car rides have occurred without a little gray dog on someone's lap, hanging her head out the window. And for some reason, a certain little gray dog always manages to get some treats at supper. And for probably a similar reason, a certain little gray dog always has a little pillow to sit on when she comes over to visit.

Blue Steele.

Magnum.

Not that she's cute or anything.  We wouldn't want that to go to her head.

O Sumac, My Sumac -- meet Cyndi "Lopper"





Some people have oak-lined driveways. We have a sumac-lined back yard.



We have a you-know-what load of sumac in our yard. Well, bordering our  yard. As you can see here, it's not exactly small either.

It's not that we hate it, it's just... a tree weed. Really. It's the weed of the tree kingdom. If you didn't want a tree to grow in your yard, sumac would show up, knock on the door and announce that it had planted 35 of its children along the periphery of your property. And then those children would invite their sumac friends over to play. And then those friends would move in too. And then pretty soon, you've got a yard full of tree weeds.






Sumac and ROS. Disregard the pile of sand. We'll get to that eventually.

  This past October, we had a terrible snow storm. It was one of those freak, way-too-early-in-the-season-even-for-New-England-nobody-is-prepared-to-lose-power-for-five-days kinds of storms. When we moved in last August, the most beautiful thing in the yard was the Rose of Sharon.  This thing has the most beautiful colored blossoms on it that I have ever seen.  Kind of a weird purpley-blue combo. So of course, because we absolutely loved the Rose of Sharons (ROS now for blogging purposes), they had to be the first things Mother Nature attacked in her pre-winter snit.




After the help of Cyndi Lopper. (Yes, I know that's not how you spell her name.)

 We are now on a mission to save our ROS. There are three of them, and two of those are in rough shape.  They had also been taken over by the sumac, so Josh commandeered a tool from his brother's shed that is officially known in our family as the "lopper."  The "lopper" kind of looks like a giant set of pliers, but has a mini chain saw at the end.  Totally awesome. It cuts through sumac like buttah. Josh got kind of this crazed look in his eye when he turned it on.  All that power in one machine...




Rescue attempts for the Rose of Sharon.

Josh mowed through the majority of our sumac issues in about an hour, and that included clean up.  So the "lopper" is a hit. We're going to introduce Cyndi (the "lopper") to our pine tree in the front yard that has a ton of dead branches on it. I think they will like each other very much.

We're now attempting to figure out how to help the ROS. We called an arborist who basically wants $500 to come in and cut them down. I told Josh that Cyndi and I can cut them down for free. Girls just want to have fun.




An amusing side story for which I have no photo (and really wish I did.)  Everyone who sees or hears of our sumac assumes it is poisonous and we are going to die because it is in our yard. Poison sumac is a real thing, but it is pretty rare and is typically found in swamps. (Also, it has white flowers.)  Our sumac is ridiculously common and has red flowers.  My father and Josh had a bit of a disagreement the other night over whether Josh should be wearing gloves when handling the sumac, to which my husband of course said no. He then went over and hauled a leaf off a sumac and ate it while my father watched in horror. Good times.