Bloom Day and Bloom's Day

Oh, Sorry everyone but I thought that this Sunday was the 15th and I completely missed Bloom Day. I took lots of pictures last night and then realized that it was the 16th! No matter - I will post what is blooming in my garden tonight.

A literary note: The phrase "Bloom's Day" has been developed from the great work of James Joyce, Ulysses. It is the extremely detailed, symbolic and sometimes maddening literary work telling of one day in the life of Leopold Bloom and his emotional and physical journey through 1904 Dublin on June 16th. The characters mirror the individuals who people the epic poem of Homer's Odyssey . It is quite a difficult read and I've been tackling it bit by bit with the help of a reader's guide - it is interesting, but tough, going. I choose to savor his wonderful writing in very small bites - much easier to digest. Anyway, back to Bloom's Day.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia that explains it somewhat:
Bloomsday—June 16th—is an annual celebration among Joyce fans throughout the world, from Fort Lauderdale to Melbourne. It is celebrated in at least sixty countries worldwide, but nowhere so imaginatively, of course, as in Dublin. There the events of Leopold Bloom's day are reenacted by anyone who cares to participate, and his itinerary is followed all across Dublin.

I find it very interesting that a book that is not easily accessible to the general reader (myself included) has garnered such a seemingly intense and staunch audience.

The large part of my gardening is finished and now there will be the occasional weeding, watering, and deadheading. That, to me, is the easy part. We've had a hot and dry week here and each night when I get home, I'm watering container plantings. It's fun to do in the dark because I hear and smell things that are only apparent at night.

Here are some of the pretties that are in bloom a few days after Bloom Day:

Larkspur and Coreopsis


Petunias and a pig and Dianthus


Iceberg and Nearly Wild
... Stella de Oro and Madame Hardy

Window boxes under our bedroom window .....with pretty Goat's Beard

Lovely petunias, Alyssum and a lone daylily

Fantastic celosia!

Tippy pots ......... the welcome bear ..........Asiatic lily

Campanula .........Goat's Beard .........a small shrub rose I grew from seed.

Rugosa rose and Sweet William in the vegetable garden ....

A new type of "African" impatient.

The gardens are so beautiful now and I'm full of satisfaction.

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not. Marcus Aurelius

Bye for now,

Alyssa

A Salute To Steve

Here is Steve potting up the very last petunias that I had started indoors. I had become so tired of planting that he graciously offered to finish up. This year he's found out that there is no "big secret" to planting small annuals and that it is "a lot of fun". You see, Steve has created a new garden - literally - from the ground up and planted all of it himself.

Last fall he decided that one of the paths leading from the lawn to the woods needed to be set off with planting areas on each side. He loves to work with rocks and found a handsome selection on the back of our property. We are very lucky that years ago our land bordered a farmer's field and said farmer would throw any of the rocks he plowed up along the lot line. We have 300 feet of various and beautiful rocks to use in our landscaping. Well, he found some very pretty rocks and set them in wide semi-circles on either side of the path. The he dug up the area and put in loads of compost from the city recycling yard. He bought me shrubs for my birthday in September and placed two on the left side and one on the right side in the back. I had a few hostas, a spider wort, and a couple of silvery pulmonaria that were in pots during the summer so he put them in and left it for spring. Here it is in early spring.

In the left side garden he made a fantastic rustic bench from part of a tree trunk that had been sawed down the center. It is held up on either side by rocks and is completely stable. We have another facing the vegetable garden and they are both large enough for Steve, me and the pugs.

I had bought two flats of mixed impatiens for the new gardens but was just too busy to put them in so Steve said he'd try. For all of the years of gardening he has done, he had never really put in small, flat-size plants. He carefully dug each hole, mixed the dirt with potting soil, made sure the little roots were separated, then planted and watered each impatien. As he got to the second flat he realized that it was becoming a case of overkill and dropped some of the planting steps. In the right side garden the two "Black Lace" elderberries were also planted. Then he mulched it all with the hemlock chips.

During that week the rabbits or deer ate the flowers off of some of the impatiens and I sprayed a repellent on to slow down the damage. The next weekend he asked me to go with him to the garden center and show him which perennials would be good for shade. He liked how the existing perennials looked - especially the hostas- and wanted more of those but wasn't sure about the rest. We found some excellent variegated chartreuse hostas - 6 of those and another with white spots called "Speckles". Nice large plants. A variety of red stemmed astible really caught his eye so we picked up 2, one gallon pots of those. And I liked a very chartreuse tradescantia that went well with the hostas that we also purchased. A marked down hanging basket of New Guinea impatiens that could be separated was the last thing we bought. Steve laid out the plants and put them all in. Here is how it looks and close ups of some of the plants:

The left side .... and the right side.

The pictures don't really do it justice. The lighting on the camera was set too low but I'm sure you can see how beautiful it looks. It's quite restful. How talented he is to have done this from scratch by himself!

I call this Steve's Garden now - I name most of the gardens. He also calls it "My Garden" which I think is so very sweet. He said he's surprised at what a sense of accomplishment he feels after putting all the plants in himself. He said he knows now how I feel.

And for that reason this garden is very special to me, because it has brought us even closer together. Tonight, as we sat outside in the gorgeous evening enjoying a fire and taking about the work we had done today, I thought how very lucky I was. I have such a fine person and companion to spend the rest of my life with.

Experience shows us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but looking together in the same direction. Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900 - 44: Wind, Sand, and Stars)

Bye for now,

Alyssa

What I've Been Doing and Some Waterhouse

I know I had promised to blog about music, but that particular Muse has left me for a while. At the time it seemed like a rather simple thing - to write about my very close relationship with music and the importance it has played in my entire life. But, during the week, mulling the subject over, it became quite complicated so I'll save it for another time.

The last two days I've been trying to finish up the endless gardening and, now, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I planted the FV garden (the new name for the flower/vegetable garden) with flats and flats of annuals, 3 cucumber plants (I feel guilty buying cucumber seedlings, but time isn't on my side) 13 hot and sweet pepper plants, 12 cherry tomato plants of 4 different varieties, 4 small bred- for- container tomatoes (so what are they doing in the garden?), a bay leaf shrublet, and 2 miniature golden barberry shrubs. The tomatoes and peppers were planted last week and there are many perennials, bi annuals, and annuals that came up from compost I'd put down a few years ago.

There is giant blue lobelia, hosta, matricaria, rose campion, purple coneflower, coreopsis, sidalcea (a mallow kind of plant), and lamb's ears. There are plenty of self sown larkspur ,which are favorites , because I can't seem to grow delphiniums. In the bottom box of the garden, years ago, I had, on a lark, sprinkled a package of wildflower seeds in a row, the length of the box. What a joy they are and no deer, woodchuck or rabbit can kill them. There are mainly brilliant sweet william in lovely crimson, pink and white mixtures and one large ,but ethereal, blue flax plant with new, baby blue flowers every morning.

And then Steve laid down two very large flat pieces of lannon stone (dug up from his last planting project) in the center of one of the boxes so I'd have stepping stones. I found two more smaller ones and laid them in like puzzle pieces. He then put down lots of straw mulch around most everything but put decorative hemlock wood chips around the long border of alyssum (love that name!) plants I'd put in the bottom box.

Now that is finished! All that is left for next weekend is to plant a flat of pinkish nicotiana around the pond. I have some kind of pink wave petunias that I had planted in there a few weeks ago, but they look bad and aren't performing like I want. And nicotiana are nearly fool-proof so they will go in with the petunias. Oh yes, I picked up water plants - water lettuce, water hyacinth, and pickerel weed - for the pond. The fish love them!

And, I'd forgotten, pot up the last of my shade and sun annuals- the stragglers. The little pig planter that I showed in a blog a couple of months ago, I'll fill with purple alyssum and give to Ashley. She remarked how pretty the color was on her last visit.

Enough with the gardening!! and on to the Waterhouse. Here is another painter and type of painting I like. I know many women like him also because I see tiny paintings of his used as avatars quite a bit.

Just a little background and on to the pictures. John William Waterhouse was a British painter who was born in l849 and died in 1917. He painted in a style called Pre-Raphaelite (See Wikipedia for a good explanation of that if you're interested) and was famous for the female form in subjects taken from mythology, history, and literature. The pictures are highly symbolic and romantic - everyone seems to have flowing hair and gowns. They are very detailed and fun to explore.

Enjoy!!

Creepy Ophelia.....



Oh, such a haughty Cleopatra!

Looking at all of these pictures doesn't it seem Waterhouse used the same model? Weren't there any other women available???? Can't anyone smile??

Bye for now,

Alyssa