nighttime noises

When it rains outside, the broad leaves of hostas and pumpkins provides a sound similar to the shower running in the bathroom:

tin-tin-tin-tin-tin

On our last of the night inspections, Franklin and I wander amid the garden, lit up only by the whites (garlic chives, daisies, and a wonderful repeating iris that has started opening up its white tissued petals again, and the big hostas). The wet air hovers as we look out over the night.

The dog is smelling the ground, interpreting signs of a rabbit, or chipmunk, or neighborhood cat that might have wandered across the yard in the minutes prior to our going outside. He does not have the best eyesight, but his sense of smell is strong.

As usual, I am unsure what I am looking for -- the senses are a thing unto themselves, and sometimes I like not thinking, but just looking, feeling, hearing. Gardens are good for that kind of quiet.

But these last few weeks, the night creatures have been in full throated song, as loud as I imagine the seventeen year cicadas who never appeared this summer in the townlet, despite the hype. Of course, our ordinary cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers appear to only sing at night, and without the competition of daytime noises, the tunes are amazingly in your face.

I listen. The other night I was sitting in the house and a cicada or a grasshopper landed on the window. It was green. Green bean green. I could see the back legs twitching, the actual source of this creature's musicmaking. I got to see it, looking at the bug from its belly side. Rub, rub, rub.

voting in indy

According to the Indianapolis Star, several thousand names will be removed from the voter registration rolls in Marion County (same as Indianapolis with semi-exceptions that ultimately aren't all that interesting -- the nuances of sub-governmental bodies in Indiana, as filtered through the 1969 semi-merger of this particular county and city are unexplainable).

The clerk or registrar sent out a card to verify if I am who I said I was when I registered to vote, and then voted in every single election from the past five years or so. In addition to sending out the card, I was requested to sign the card to verify any address changes. And somewhere else, it said that I had to sign the card regardless or the whole effort was invalid. I signed the card. The whole message of the card was that I needed to put my current, unchanged address on it, sign it and mail it back.

Never did it say on the card that I could throw it in the trash, that my mere act of getting the card indicated that I lived at the address where it was delivered. The newspaper story, linked above, said I didn't have to do anything.

Why make things like this so complicated?

Of course, if there was fine print, I probably didn't read it. Because I probably didn't see it.

grand tour

Years ago, partner and I saw the movie Enchanted April, based on Elizabeth von Arnheim's Edwardian novel. The key line of the movie was the magical, mystical, spiritual (pick one) powers of the words "a villa in Tuscany." I think blooming wisteria was also mentioned.

So we've said for many years, let's get a group of people and go to Italy. And we never did.

And then, last year, one of our dear friends said, "yes, we will do this."

And so, after much planning, and saving, and planning, and making up excuses to plan so that we could get together for home-made Italian meals, we're going to Italy.

Soon. Very soon. Never been. Always wanted to go. Will be going.

heavy air

Yes, we can have humid days in Indiana in August. Despite weeks of no air conditioning, and the early emergence of plant activity normally associated with autumn, it is now quite humid and warm. Not hot. We have yet to reach 90 degrees (F) this entire summer. And I think it is supposed to cool off in a few days.

We've had an every-other-day heavy thunderstorm, keeping the ground moist. Our clay soil does have a bit of sand in it -- or so potterers - potters (people who throw pots, not poor people who are buried in unmarked lots) tell me -- giving it a particular light brown color as it dries out from heat, becoming very brick like. A big tree sucking out moisture also makes our soils dry out.

But when the rain comes (and yes, it does rain in Indianapolis in the summertime), it turns a dark, inviting brown. You really want to get in there and work in it.

The other day I passively staked the hollyhooks, putting stakes next to them for something more than moral support, but I did not tie the stalks to the stakes. The thunderstorms have knocked a couple over. I must tie them.

Asters are starting to put on flower buds. Pink (brilliant) sedums are about half-way toward full bloom. And it is not even September.

in case you're wondering what the little grey letter icon is for ...

Blogger has made more changes.

The ads, for the moment, are gone, unless I participate in a profit-sharing plan that would put them back on the blog.

So we're ad-free around here, at least for now. They may decide to put them back.

They've also added a new feature that allows a reader to e-mail a specific post to someone else. I am not sure why -- permalinks work so easily. This is a new bell and whistle not asked for.

On the tag at the end of each post entry is a little gray letter icon. Click on that and you can email a post to a friend.

I am cheerful about Google/Blogger because:

1. it's free
2. they provide tech stuff that I am incapable of producing, making it easy for someone like me to blog
3. they added a wysiwyg component to composing entries similar to word processing
4. it's free

I try to be grateful.

garden talk

Chan, at The Bookish Gardener, celebrates the virtual lunchroom of blogs, where one is free to pick up bits and pieces of interesting conversation. I agree with her.

She also wants to know how my brazilian verbena (Verbena bonariensis) became so abundant -- I pulled out several plants last week.

Last year, I took old flower heads and broke them apart, spreading the seed in places where I wanted it to germinate. They reseed very easily. I did that to a lot of plants that put out seeds (and I know that there is a reasonable chance that they might germinate).

An aside -- yes, this is zone 5, and yes we did have one weekend last winter that got down to 14 degrees below zero (F), but one of my bv plants survived, sprouting out of the roots this spring. I've had a few rocket snaps do that as well.

If I had had the time, I would have taken many of the bv seedlings back in early summer and transplanted them to the backyard garden. I just never had the time to do it.

This weekend, I started looking at plants in my garden that came from re-seeding:

asters (out the gazoo)
columbine (a purple variety that has been quite prolific in re-seeding)
rose champion
brazilian verbena

This year I had a bountiful crop of flowers from seed and I hope their legacy will be carried on from the seed they produced:

larkspur
bluebonnet
hollyhock

In the division category, I am ready to tackle this fall:

perennial begonia
asters
catmint (nepeta)
daisies (becky cultivar)
purple coneflower (echinacia)

A big success story has been divisions I've made with my lamb's ear (Stachys byzantium).

I bought a gallon pot a few years ago from a local nursery. It is slightly darker than traditional lamb's ear, with bigger leaves. It needed to be thinned. I broke apart the roots during a break in late winter, transplanting them throughout the garden. They mutated into several successful clumps. They don't put on flower heads, either (a big plus).

Meanwhile, last fall a neighbor gave me a small clump of the more traditional lamb's ear, and I planted them in the backyard. Numbe one rule is to never let these plants put on a flower stem. The flower is not really a flower, but an ugly stalk that has tiny petals or brackets. It is nothing to look at, and it distracts from the foilage of the leaves, which are pleasant as a textural difference from other other plants.

By breaking off the flowerheads, the plants grown more compactly, making a nice patch of lamb's ear.

My backyard lamb's ear are doing quite well, next to an old purple loosestrife, some mums, and butterfly bushes.

lazy and green

It rained most of Friday, making the ground soft enough to easily weed. I did a lot of weeding in the vegetable garden on Saturday, realizing that the summer growing season is almost over. My hope is to keep weeds from flowering, spreading their seeds. The tall sunflowers that have proudly lorded over the garden are now beginning to droop and brown. Many of the pumpkin leaves have lost their deep green color, and enough pumpkins have started to become ripe enough to pick (these are small pie pumpkins, not the huge kind).

I finally staked my hollyhocks as well as a few japanese anemones. I did not mow this weekend (which means I'll have to do this on a weeknight). This was less an act of rebellion than just being caught up in the gentle laziness of this place -- Central Indiana is as green and full as it should be this time of year.

Temps remained moderate all weekend -- the air conditioner has been off for days. At one point, we looked out in the backyard and two greyhounds, the next-door wolf hound puppies, and the Airedale were running around the backyard. Franklin joined the group, bouncing and running in his arcs, with his shaggy eyebrows pushed back, with only a feint hint of white around his eyes.

Walking in the townlet has been easy -- we inspected the on-going construction (really remaking) of a white brick Georgian, and did extra loops each time to build up our strength for vacation. Another house ("the Frank Lloyd Wright house, as it is called because supposedly one of his students designed it in the 1950s) is also being restored.

Usually my head is full of planting ideas, but frankly, I've let myself relax a bit, enjoying what's here, reminding myself that next group of chores is thinning and transplanting, not adding. The large white flowering hostas have a lovely orange scent. I've promised divisions to a few folk (hope I don't forget to whom).

rough hands

I've been gardening without wearing gloves lately and my finger nails and cuticles are getting a bit ragged. I cut the nails back, but the cuticles require using hand lotion, something I usually only have to use in the dry winter months.

Which reminds me of what the esteemed AKMA said to me during my brief meeting him last winter at a Seabury chapel service: "Your hands don't feel like a gardener's hands."

That would seem a bit unfair, given that it was in the middle of winter and I had been deprived of working in the soil for many weeks due to cold temps and frozen soil. I think I mumbled something about it not being the season. I suppose I could have showed him my poor toes, bruised and cut from gardening barefooted, something else I should not do nor really intend to do. But I spared him and the lovely Jane and Susie such a demonstration in the chapel outside of the proper liturgical season.

As much as I enjoy feeling the dirt, I try to remember to put on gloves and to wear shoes. The older I get, the more I realize that that scrapes, cuts and splinters can be prevented. But more often than not, my gardening is not planned. I start one project and end up on another, I walk past the garden while taking out the trash or checking the mail and see a weed and then I am lost for an hour or two (or more), weeding, or cutting something back. And so hands and toes get whacked by rough dirt or stems or tree limbs

This is not the most productive way to organize one's life, or work in the garden, but it what I do often, trying to keep in mind the ever present priority of what needs to happen now (soil worked, certain plants transplanted or divided, for example). Gardening is so reliant on weather and season that it is important to pay attention to the working "to do" list. Even with good intentions, certain projects get pushed aside until the next time that is optimal for doing the work.

And yet, the work gets done, and I am satisfied at seeing these things happen, the result of work with my hands. Knowing that we may end up moving next year, I have worked harder this year on the garden than I have in previous years, trying to finish projects. The good weather this summer has helped, and partner has been patient in losing me on many weekend days.

The fall season is just ahead -- I've seen three trees this week that have started turning leaf color -- and I am already starting to think about what I want to get done. I've already stopped pinching the asters -- a wave of pink bloom has already spread throughout the sedums. I'll thin both fall plants, abundant throughout the garden, once their time of blooming is over.

A long anticipated holiday is only a few weeks away. And then, with cooler airs blowing through the trees, and soils more damp and chilled, I'll dig and move and work, plotting like Katharine White, next spring's resurrection.

Father Jake has an excellent post on Archbishop Tutu's remarks on homophobia in the world:

A student once asked me if I could have one wish granted to reverse an injustice, what would it be? I had to ask for two. One is for world leaders to forgive the debts of developing nations which hold them in such thrall. The other is for the world to end the persecution of people because of their sexual orientation, which is every bit as unjust as that crime against humanity, apartheid. This is a matter of ordinary justice.

FJ also has a post on the latest trial balloon on breaking up/leaving the Episcopal Church -- two parishes in California that declare they are now under the Uganda Church. His post also has background on the political efforts behind all of this:

I suppose the point of all of this is to note that the self-interest fixation of the right is not limited to the political arena. It is alive and prowling among the religious communities as well. To borrow some of the words of Andrew Weaver; "It is time, in other words, for "fighting Methodists" (and all progressive and moderate members in the mainline churches) to make a comeback lest their tolerance and Christian charity be turned against them and used to undermine their churches and further the social ends of the right wing's radical ideology."

matters of doubt and faith

The Elegrant Variation has a guest review by Michael Patrick Hughes of Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History. Hecht's book traces the flip side of belief in western and eastern religion. Quoting Hecht:

“Great believers and great doubters seem like opposites, but they are more similar to each other than to the mass of relatively disinterested or acquiescent men and women.”

The EV also links to the New Republic's Leon Wieseltier 's 1983 review of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz's The Witness of Poetry, based on Harvard lectures that the poet gave.

The Witness of Poetry, the text of his Norton Lectures, is the credo of a great poet. It reveals that Milosz is really a religious thinker. His religiousness is not "tacit," as a critic recently claimed; it is explicit, as it has been in his poems for many years.

Milosz died this past week.

blogger news

Blogger added a new tool bar yesterday to the top of blogs using their software. It allows the user to search the blog, using Blogger/Google's search tool. It also lets one pick a Blogger blog at random.

And it seems to do away, at least for the time being, with advertising -- unless you click on a permalink or archived post, and then the ad returns.

Does this mean that ads are gone from the main page of Blogger ads, or is this just a temporary deal? I'm betting that the ads return.

Afterall, why wouldn't the Charleston Symphony want to advertise on my blog as they did for much of the past week after I wrote a post on the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's summer program?

olympics

Eamonn, an Irishman in Munich, looks for bloggers at the games.

We watch each night -- I find myself still ranting about women's gymnastics (too young, too hard emotionally for kids so young, too unhealthy for their bodies), still envy the sleek power of the swimmers moving through water, and laugh at American commentators for ignoring almost all elements other than American related stories. Aren't they even curious about athletes from other countries? Mumcat has a beef about this, too.

I even enjoy the spectacle shows on each end of the games. And unlike Hugh, I even like Katie Couric.

But I've got to quit looking at the results that are getting posted on news media outlets. No suspense at night. I was a good person, however, in not letting on to partner the results.

the other chives

In Spring, the lowly, lovely chive puts out its purple thistle-like flower at just the right time, as spring bulbs are fading (or gone) and before many of the summer perennials have started blooming.

Its of the allium family (same as garlic, onions, and the big ornamental purple globes), and according to organic gardeners, something of an aphid retardant.

In addition to liking chives as a food source, I really appreciate its architectural place in the garden, providing small, grass clumps, a textural contrast to the broader leafed mounds around it. Chives are a punctuation mark, shooting up, cutting space like stakes.

And now its time for the garlic chive to shine. It's been sitting quietly all year, unobserved or noticed. This chive has white flower buds that turn into furry globes similar to the dandelion seedhead.

My garlic chives have the white buds right now, little white slashes on the ends of the stalk.

editing and smelling

Sometimes there is too much of a good thing. This weekend, I had a great time editing overgrown plants in my perennial garden. The brazilian verbena, a tough annual that reseeds, was in too many places. I pulled out several, trimmed back others. The nepeta, or catmint, always requires a haircut about this time of year. I also deadheaded daisies and monardia (bee balm). I cut back chives as well. I trimmed back my big sage, too. I pulled out dead larkspur, spreading the seeds that were in the pods. And I finished cutting all the day lily stalks.

This created a hearty musky smell as I bagged the cuttings.

For me, the purpose of having lots of herbs in my garden is not for cooking or potpourri. It's for the pure sensory joy I get of snapping and smelling them as I work in the garden.

Just read her blog

I know I've said this before, but somethings should be repeated (besides, people from Waco repeat themselves a lot -- it's a part of our culture): Shelley is an incisive, interesting writer. She writes often about technology, but refuses, in her blog, to narrow her curiosity to that one aspect of her life.

And she offers wonderful photographs of flowers. Like Georgia O'Keefe, she makes us stop and see the flowers, to consider them individually.

I may have to move her from the Blog Philosophy category of my blogrolls to my Garden Blogs category.

fair day

Friends let me tag along yesterday to visit the Indiana State Fair. I had never been and decided that it was best to go with someone who had an established ritual.

Fairly quickly, we got new Indiana state maps. I passed on the refridgerator magnets shaped like the Hoosier state. I also got my glasses cleaned by a fellow who pointed out I had a small knick in one of my lens. He put a substance on my lens that prevents the glasses from fogging up.

One of my friends had her tennis shoes cleaned by a miracle wipe that made them look very shiny and white.

We roamed the art exhibits, walked past a style show with a runway and people sitting around it. Somewhere was an organ whose tones swelled repeatedly. I never saw the organist.

I also saw a child play a piano in the area where paintings were being shone. He was a small kid, but played quite confidently. Somewhere in the crowd must have been a proud parent or two.

I had a ribeye sandwich and a shake from the Dairy Bar. There was a man who wrestled an alligator, and a hyperactive host of a dog show (lots of frisbie catching and a pier diving contest). We walked past the horse barns where the harness racing horses, and their carts, are kept.

I saw fish that swim in Indiana's rivers.

I saw trees cut into lumber, and cedar into shingles.

I saw competitive entries of tomatoes and green beans -- our garden's bounty looked at least as good as the entries, which of course, says something about fairs and its celebration of our ordinary lives.

I saw more gutter guard exhibits than I ever care to see, a few animals, including my favorite of the cows, a small brown Jersey calf. And frankly, it's hard to look at food entries if you can't eat any of them.

I saw honey bees in glass boxes, and I saw round aluminum honey extractors.

I saw the colored photographs of the Miss State Fair winners since 1958. Big hair never made it up in the 60s like it did in Texas, but boy the short bobbed hair of the Dorothy Hamil era was quite popular.

In a world that kills out the odd and unslick, led by forces that market the belief that life experiences should all be the same, the state fair is a throwback, a reminder of places and experiences that are rough, silly, garish and unique to this place for at least two weeks a year.

water

Mowing the lawn Sunday afternoon, I realized that despite our fairly cool temps, that the ground is quite dry. Often I stirred up a cloud of dust.

So I've pulled out the sprinkler and have started soaking the parts of the yard that need it the most, particularly around the base of big trees that suck out moisture.

I've noticed more mildew this summer than most, particularly on lilacs. My pumpkin vines have it as well. They say we're getting lots of rain over the next few days.

Alas, I decide not to take a chance that they are wrong.

farewell, julia

I've not been a Martha Stewart basher, but I must admit -- if I had to pick one of them for a dinner guest, I would have picked Julia.

She died today at 91. My first thought was a joke -- if she had only passed on butter and other fatty foods, she would have lived longer. She often railed against those who took the joy out of eating. She also wore a welder's helmet to torch the flambé on the old Rosie O'Donnell talk show.

Rest in peace, Julia.

Here's a link to Slate's Diary that she did a few years ago on making sauces.

notes on yesterday

1. I would be much more charitable about the politics of this if the governor had not put his boyfriend on the state payroll. This kind of corruption, low-grade and usual for New Jersey, according to some commentators, is the stuff that eats away at a democracy. I am a firm believer that government service is a high calling. People who work in it should treat the experience as sacred. Our government belongs at all levels, ultimately, to the people, not to the officeholder or to a party.
2. There were some excellent comments about this story. Chris had good points about coverage here and here. Fools Blog also has a good response to someone missing the point completely. Hank Stuever in the Washington Post had an essay about the closet case.
3. Which reminds me of another reason (besides equality) why the battle for same sex marriage is an important one. To actively place legal obstructions for gay families has a price. Our society doesn't know what to do with its gay folk. But the society is affected by its negative and or indifferent response to us. Look at the governor yesterday, and his wife standing next to him. I have no idea what she was thinking as he announced that he was gay, but I would assume she wished he had figured out a lot sooner that he was gay -- actually he probably figured it out along time ago, he just could not deal with it. Want to defend straight marriage? Don't act as if gay folk don't or shouldn't exist within society. That world of straight appearance, gay on the side, affects lots of families. I think I've thought this was for the generations ahead of me that had few choices. But its still happening.
4. Shelley (who is back at her blog again - yea!) has this post about Missouri and its voters, particularly in relation to the recent anti-same sex marriage amendment. I will be interested in her thoughts as she teases out what happened in her state. My own sense is that one never wants to have his or her basic civil rights on the ballot. Activist judges (to use the president's term) threw out bans on interracial marriage. The Congress overturned voting, housing and employment discrimination that was tolerated at the state and local level. None of these things were put up to a vote by the general population.

monkshood?

It's always good to have a working list in one's head (if you are a gardener or around gardens) of the toxic or poisonous nature of certain plants.

For example, foxglove (digitalis) is poisonous -- heart medicine is derived from it, by the way. Oleander is poisonous. I am pretty sure that narcissus are poisonous -- that's why deer ignore them.

If you have a child or pet that is prone to eating plant leaves, keep them away from these plants.

The University of British Columbia Botanical Garden Website has this post about a young actor who died from monkshood, which evidently is quite lethal. I have two plants on the edge of my backyard shade garden. I had no idea about this.

why do you do this

Bob, a seminary student at General in New York, has a wonderful post about his CPE experience this summer as a chaplain. He is finishing his chaplaincy program this week, and wrote about one of his experiences with a mother who was separated from her newborn child.

UPDATE:

Karen, at Church Divinity School of the Pacific - Berkley, has a story from her CPE experience that compliments Bob's -- Karen's post is about the passing of a homeless man.

let the record show...

Partner talked to his father last night on the phone, who passed along that Austin area and the Hill Country are also unseasonably cool.

I would call him my father-in-law, but no law is there yet. He's my father-by-love.

odd day

This morning the radio came on, waking us to the news that a record had been broken. Temps were at 47 degrees, two degrees colder than the record low temperature.

NPR described battle scenes in Iraq. Matt and Al were late for the Today show opening in Greece.

It was almost a cold day. I wore a sweater to walk Franklin around the townlet. We met up with a neighbor and her two aging dogs. Her dogs don't need leashes, but she must verbally keep them moving forward. They look up at her with their aged eyes as if to say, "get off my back, I'm moving as best I can." She loves them and dotes over them and it is sad to think about their age. They do keep moving, walking along with us.

The California Supreme Court voided those marriages from San Fransciso. As Kate Kendall said on the radio, nobody is surprised, but it still hurts. I remember the scenes of couples joyfully lining up to get married.

Then I noticed that the Governor of New Jersey had resigned. I am a Gay American, he said. Looks like corruption (he hired his lover twice for the state payroll) and possibly blackmail. The old question paraphrased, is this good or bad for gay folk, is asked by friends.

Mostly cloudy today. I look up at the sky and have, once again, a hard time realizing that those murky gray puffs go on and on to other places, past the house where an overachieving bright fellow faced up to a part of himself hidden these many years -- at least he didn't do a "down low" cop-out --- past places where families are doing their best to to be open and honest and faithful, past places where people are fighting and dying or in camps, past the divides between the us and thems of religion, politics, culture and civilization.