When we first moved up to the Boston area two years ago and were presented with the opportunity to garden, I was beyond excited. Although I was raised in an apartment in NY, I love to tend to plants. In fact, my father once had a coffee tree in their apartment that faces west so they get lots of light and is always ridiculously hot. (Going back there after having become accustomed to our chilly apartment here, I almost find the heat of my parents' place insufferable.) My dad had all sorts of plants in the windowsills, from a teeny azalea bush to amaryllis to African violets to different varieties of spider plants, whatever he caught his eye at the local florist. These plants would thrive there on the windowsills in their living room. He still has a whole bunch of them there including a pine sapling that my mother somehow ended up with and had better find a proper home for before it goes through their ceiling.
Since moving out however many years ago now, I have tried to keep plants in my different apartments but have never quite had the same level of success my dad has had doing so. The closest I came was in our stinky beloved old apartment in LIC where I grew a whole bunch of aeniums and other succulents. They did really well in our super-hot apartment (I swear it was 90 degrees year-round in that place). While we were living there, I tried my hand at actual gardening by joining the community garden, which was fun. I planted a few things, but I don't think I really cared for them properly. I was a slacker about going there every weekend, and sometimes I used to just go and hang out there. I'd have coffee with my friend who ran it, and we'd do a little bit of work and a whole lot of talking. It probably didn't help that we're both big hand-talkers so we did more gesturing than gardening as we chatted.
Last year, up here in fancy-pants Cambridge, I planted several dahlias, but they didn't do very well. One of them didn't grow much, and the other two were knocked over and destroyed in a storm because I didn't stake them correctly. Due to what I thought was a failure on my part, I wasn't very enthusiastic about planting more dahlias this year. I even lost last year's tubers, which I took as some sort of sign that I shouldn't bother. (They're somewhere in a brown paper bag in Matt's parents' basement. Yep.) However, Matt went and got a bunch of tubers at Bonnie's anyway, and touched by the fact that he did this, I planted them, blindly, only knowing what one of the whole bunch would look like. It was late in the season so Matt said the pickings were slim, and I had assumed that they were probably all the same variety. Well, we lucked out big time because we got a lovely array of brilliant dahlias. And because of all the rain, they've done exceptionally well this year. I've also made sure to stake them securely and to re-stake them after storms or heavy rain. So yay for dahlias! I'm hoping next year is as bountiful in our little garden.
I am stubborn. While most folks have already said farewell to summer, having had their last dance with it Labor Day weekend, I have been clinging on like lint, refusing to let go. It's not that I don't like Fall. I kinda love it, in fact. It's no summer, though.
We're back from our little trip, and woah, was it a great one! We spent a few days hiking in the Berkshires (we did Benedict's Pond & a bit of the Appalachian Trail there, Monument Mountain, and Jug End) and a couple of days hiking & biking in Vermont. It was a fabulously blissful time. Now that we're back, I feel like something has shifted and I am realigned. Yeah, I know it sounds all foo-foo and whatever, but it's true. I feel more focused and reinvigorated. Time to strike while the iron is hot and work on some of those projects that have been piling up, both personal and professional.
It finally feels like summer in New England, and I am loving it. Of course, lately, knitting has come to a complete stand-still around here, and there is buck-all crochet. All I want to do is work on the garden, bike around, read, and hang out with friends in our backyard. So there's been a lot of that and very little else. I'm feeling a little guilty on not working on a couple of projects for a couple of wonderful people I know, but dude, I just can't focus right now. I'll get back into the swing of that next week when we return from our trip.
When we first started gardening upon moving to Cambridge 3 years ago, Matt intentionally chose flowers for the front garden that would attract bees and butterflies, like beebalm and sunflowers. Since then, our little garden has grown; we've added a variety of other plants and flowers, including coneflowers and my accidental planting of some drumstick allium bulbs (thinking they were narcissus), which the bees seem to especially love, contributing to this bee-feast. There are dozens and dozens of bumble bees, honey bees, and all sorts of bees buzzing about doing their bee thang in this front garden. Seeing the crazy amounts of bee activity of the last couple of days, it has finally dawned on me - we have a bee garden. And this gives me a little bit o' joy.
As far as I'm concerned, Spring is the most fabulous time of the year. I loveitloveitloveit - love it! The buds are bursting, flowers blooming, and I am feeling inspired and reinvigorated, shaking off the winter blahs and eager to get started on projects. Being as I enjoy photography and am slightly obsessed with Flickr, one of my favorite projects is working on a photo theme. Last year, Maryse and I started MacroMay, in which we shoot one macro photo a day and post it to the Flickr pool throughout the month of May. Wanna play along with us? Feel free to join the group. You can do a macro a day or every other day or whatever suits you best. The most important thing is to have fun with it!
Can I tell you how much I am loving this color combination? I am totally smitten with it, which is funny because I don't think I would ever list yellow and purple as my favorite colors. Yet seeing them together like this makes me appreciate them both individually and as a combo.
Today when I went out to run my errands, I saw that the strong winds we had all morning had knocked down and broken several of the dahlias. The white ones were all snapped, which was fine because I just made a bouquet for my mother-in-law with them. I guess I should have gotten longer stakes, since they were taller than me at that point. Oh well, at least the purple ones are blooming. Also, the upshot of all this weird weather?
When we first moved up to the Boston area two years ago and were presented with the opportunity to garden, I was beyond excited. Although I was raised in an apartment in NY, I love to tend to plants. In fact, my father once had a coffee tree in their apartment that faces west so they get lots of light and is always ridiculously hot. (Going back there after having become accustomed to our chilly apartment here, I almost find the heat of my parents' place insufferable.) My dad had all sorts of plants in the windowsills, from a teeny azalea bush to amaryllis to African violets to different varieties of spider plants, whatever he caught his eye at the local florist. These plants would thrive there on the windowsills in their living room. He still has a whole bunch of them there including a pine sapling that my mother somehow ended up with and had better find a proper home for before it goes through their ceiling.
