Gone To The Beach

Sunday, September 10, 2023

Thursday, September 7, 2023

Heat Wave

The hottest weeks of Summer have arrived, bringing intense brilliant sunshine and high humidity. Temps in the high 80s at noon---which is hot for us at the beach. I always feel so sad for the children going back to school at the peak of the season.

My zinnias are suddenly dry and crunchy; Mo is puzzled: why can he not be allowed out , why are his walkies curtailed? 80 is the the cutoff temp for flat faced dogs. It is better to keep Mo cool indoors than to let him run around and overheat/ cool down.

We have about 45 minutes sit and sew time round 4.30 now. Usually a breeze picks up by then, though the lower September sun is blinding at times. It's too late, too short, but better than being closed in. I'm hand sewing the first Sarah Sporrer block.

The meadow pots look sere, as they would in late summer. I water two or three times a day. The marigolds have been little star performers, flowering on valiantly. The zinnias are tall and leggy but still blooming prettily.

The flowers in the large bird crock, with a plastic pot inside have fared the best, the old thick crock holds moisture and shades the plants' stem bases and roots.

This is a late growing wildflower in the meadow pot. Whatever could it be? Beebalm? Catmint? {EDIT: one bloomed just today! They're miniature sunflowers, so unexpected.]

What to do about the zinnies?---they are called ''cut and come again''. Should I cut them back, bring a big bouquet into the house? If I water and fertilize them they have about ten weeks growing season to recover and rebloom.

I always find it hard to cut my garden pots' flowers. My dad was the same and my mom was the champion of the tiny bouquet bouquet. She'd snip only a few blooms for the seaglass bottles or tiny pitchers on her kitchen windowsill.

A blog I have followed for years had an odd post recently. The writer, a man in the UK, gleefully recounted how he once, in a late night , drunken binge, stole hundreds of daffodils and specimen tulips from all the tiny front gardens in his town. He bragged about this--he has recounted the incident many times. I refrained from commenting, knowing I'd be called a troll--but imagine the people whose spring flowers --carefully grown in tiny cherished city front gardens--- were vandalized. All that planning, effort, expense, and joy. What a sad story.

As the season has evolved I've enjoyed seeing the many many zinnia varieties that seeded and grew for me. Such a sweetly humble, quotidian flower. But suited for the hot dry deck, and so sweet and colorful.

Tomorrow or Saturday may be a bit cooler. Will I get the courage to go out with my scissors and snip the zinnies?

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PS The Fall clothes catalogs are here. I don't need much but I have an LL Bean refund to spend. Must use it before I lose it! I will order a soft grey cashmere sweater later, looking forward to crisp January days. [In a perfect, no-budget world, I'd buy the purple, the coral rose, the shell pink, the cinnamon!]

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

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Probably my poorest scribbling yet. For some reason I was hooked on using a wide tip Sharpie pen to draw with, the results aren't so good.

Perpetual journal, a handful of beach treasures.

I must draw the big blue dragonfly--or maybe the dreaded Spotted Red Lantern Fly? Def not up to drawing the first Monarch butterfly who visited; I'll just make a note maybe. Not a fan of bugs~ googleimage, he was too fast to take a pic.

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Saturday, September 2, 2023

September

So quickly it is September! Here at the beach we optimistically celebrate and treasure Summer to its very end, this year on September 23rd. And many years beach days go on and on into "fall'', only the darker evenings hinting of dark winter days to come..

Note the blackbird mama's subtly empty nest, a vacant birdhouse. So sad. I always secretly cried when my little ones went back to school, back in the day.