The great "gifts" of Summer

The days are long and hot, the flowers are in their most splendid blooming.

Daylillies! They bloom a few weeks "late" here at the beach. When I was a little girl back home in Illinois the daylillies bloomed for the Fourth of July.

The orange trumpets and chartreuse leaves filled the roadsides, along with huge drifts of blue-sky chicory. We considered them wildflowers and to this day I do not know if they were naturalized garden flowers (lilies run wild! LOL!) or if the native American wildflower was so beautful it was cultivated and hybridized into a Victorian garden plant.

Daylilies were so treasured by my family that my grandmother made an appliqued Daylilies Quilt, an heirloom I still own and treasure. My dad remembered going with her to the Five and Dime---Eckert's?---to buy the printed muslin blocks each week with the pennies she'd save shopping thriftily.

And when my dad built his Cape Cod greyshingled cottage, he planted the roadside again with daylilies...backed by grey fences laden with pink wild roses and lavender.

We get our blues from hydrangeas now...

...no wild blue chicory or Queen Anne's Lace here at the beach (though you can buy QAL for $12.oo at the market, geez...).

This is an excerpt from my favorite Cape Cod writer, North Cairn, writing about the glory of hot summer days: 

"That’s one of the great gifts of summer, isn’t it, that sense of total abandon. No standing on ceremony when the temperature and humidity hit 90. No stand­ing on anything.You either dive into the surf, lounge on the sand or loll on the living room floor. It’s all worth it in the end, with the long, slow sunsets, the milky twilight and the sleep that comes at last.

There is no relaxation quite like the torpor of summer, no matter where you live.... Peace comes or eludes everyone in turn, in due time.You just have to rest in the moment and let the transforma­tion begin.

North Cairn’s Nature column runs every Sunday. She can be reached at ncairn@capecodonline.com

PS- We couldn't resist a pot of on-sale Star Gazer lilies for our deck. Daylily's exotic cousin!

enjoy!

love

                   lizzy

              

                               gone to the beach...

Cape Cod Herb Garden

This is my favorite house on Cape Cod.

 It was built in the 1600s and has been cherished and lived in for over 300 years!

Just imagine: this weathered grey house saw the Mayflower Pilgrims and stood through the Revolutionary War and all the war and years and events since!

Currently it holds a charming shop full of unusual primitives (I especially love the angels, of course) and a yummy bakery.

Best though...after the wonderful low doors and hand hewn beams and old flat stone stoops..is its herb garden.

On a hot summer day the still air is filled with the hum of honey bees...

 and the sweet scents of Cape Cod lavender and rosemary.

I love the traditional Nantucket baskets---some painted bright white and filled with flowers in the garden!

The house is called the Hopkins House and is on Route 6A in Brewster.

And speaking of herb gardens---my friend created this beautiful and useful,"just the right size"---kitchen herb garden on her deck.

                      

 I love the idea of having it waist high, safe from critters and who-knows-what! So pretty. And delicious, too!

  

                                

love

                 lizzy

                        

                                gone to the beach....

Hot Days and Baby Birds

July! The temperature is creeping up to one hundred degrees this week, even here at the beach. I timed my swim and beach walk towards late afternoon to avoid the sun and heat....Sure, it is cooler near the water but it's a long Sahara-like (only steam-y) hike to the shore over the dunes and down to the water.

The holiday crowds are gone and the shorebirds have retaken the wrackline and beach edge. And tonight they were bringing out their babies, what a thrill for me who has watched over the nests since March.

Besides the cuteness factor and the sort-of stunned wonder that newborn wild creatures elicit from many of us humans, I am happy that these endangered species whose nesting areas take over approximately 70% of our high tide beach have produced viable nests and healthy chicks.

The piping plovers are cute---and fearless!

The newborn chicks look like fuzzy white golfballs on pipecleaner stilt legs. And they are fast! The chick is runnng off the photo to the left/below, mommy in pursuit!

There is a mama and a baby in this picture too (below), hard to see, because the baby is so camouflaged. The baby is the white spot diagonally down and to the left of the adult, see his pink feet and neck ring? [use zoom?]

My favorite: American Oystercatchers....

The various groups have different aged babies....[note the big arctic tern baby top right, all grey w/ white chest!]

I say "groups" because there are often threesomes of adults with two or three chicks---a mystery, though some bird experts say one adult male may have two females in his group. But I never see two nests, always the threesomes and one set of babies,

hmmmm...

And then there are the terns (arctic and least) and black skimmers, all of which agressively defend their nesting sites. There is an adult oystercatcher in the lower right corner, so you can see the difference despite their similar coloring....

These are baby skimmers....

The photos are fuzzy because they were taken from a great distance. This is an arctic tern chick, below. They are big and fluffy and awkward, very unlike sleek smaller- appearing adults.

Terns are especially nasty, divebombing within inches and dropping globs of white poop on the unwary. (Yeah, one got me! Yuck!). This is an angry skimmer, it chased me too!

So on the hottest day of the summer, the birds brought "the kids" to the Beach! What do you like to do on the hottest day of the year?

 Me, I am thinking icecream floats...and a picnic?

love

                  lizzy

                        ...gone to the beach

 note:all photos were taken by lizzyd/ robin/ gone to the beach EXCEPT the large closeup of the p.plover chick which is from an unknown source [thank you!]. enjoy.