With Fulsome Praise

We're slowly beginning to dry out. No rain since Saturday, and that has become remarkable. There were a few lazy drops of rain while we were sitting out after dinner, enjoying the cool breeze whispering through the gazebo on our deck. The sun was full out, the sky mostly clear, but directly above, a small, dark cloud. And the lazy drops of rain pinged on the roof of the gazebo. An utterly comfortable and comforting scenario for us.

The ravine is tarrying in its dry-out schedule, the creek still fuller than is usual, and its tributaries still running swiftly where generally at this time of year it is dry. The trails are beginning to dry out, there are many muddy patches, but no longer the wide puddles of accumulated rainwater to slosh through. Deeper in the confines of the wood, however, remain wide swaths of stubborn little lakes, hesitant to depart from their cool confinement.

From these areas come the mosquitoes that follow us so avidly, lovingly taking our blood. There has been a fairly constant presence of an unusual bird that we've sighted for the last several weeks, a small phoebe. It flits out from under one of the bridges as we cross and alights on a nearby tree, always, it seems, the same tree, allowing us to admire it, as we pass by.

In the gardens surrounding our home those lovely California poppies are now in bloom. The Annabelle hydrangeas with their full-blown huge white balled flowers are in their boastful stage. The Princess spireas are bright with pink flowers. Among other roses still in bloom, our Fairy roses raise their many-headed modest pink blossoms. The Monarda are in bloom and so are the lilies.

The garden pots have filled out nicely, the New Guinea impatiens, the begonias, dahlias are working overtime to present their blowsy, full-blown blooms for our admiration. We find some unexpected surprises informing us that mischievous little red squirrels have been at work, pulling out defenceless annuals, digging up bulbs, leaving them there for us to rescue and place carefully back into the soil so they may continue their life trajectory.

Work commences apace under the deck, as my husband, having completed adding another layer of stonedust to level the area, discovers that nothing deters the chipmunk. He has busied himself, improbably, digging into the new layer of stonedust that has been tamped down firmly to make it stable and impervious to the predations of the little monster we feed with raw, blanched peanuts twice each day; a fair exchange since he allows us to believe we have ownership of this place.

Two trailer-loads full of large cement pavers were brought home this morning, and they are in the process of being neatly laid out to entirely cover the area under the deck. It will be neat and clean and unamenable to the growth of weeds, and present for us when it is completed, a perfect storage area for our many garden pots to be over-wintered.

And tomorrow I will begin the distribution-planting of the chameleon plants that we acquired yesterday. I had nurtured one single plant years ago and it has grown mightily since that time, spreading and climbing and flowering. In the fall its red-streaked leafage turns even brighter and more beautiful. It hasn't proven amenable to allowing small rooted pieces to be re-planted elsewhere in the gardens.

The two pots-full of this plant will provide more than adequate volunteers to become established elsewhere in the garden, to delight us with their variegated bright colours, architectural texture and lovely little white flower heads.