Tag: garden

Save the grapes.

In past times the marauders took all.

This year we vowed to defend against their incursion.

The harbingers arrived yesterday evening, as we ate the evening meal. I gazed out the open windows and into the gardens as is my habit in weather fair and foul. The grape clusters are small this year, but numerous, and their purpling flesh glowed in the lowering sunlight. I admired their bounty and watched the leaves of the vines rustle in our summery breezes.

But wait. My eyes sharpened and I peered intently. Not breezes rustling the leaves! Not breezes at all! The leaves shook and shimmied as two, no three, no! Many robins and starlings gripped the vines with tiny feet and ravaged the fruits with rapacious beaks. A fight broke out over a particularly lush patch. Wretched pillagers fighting! Over MY grapes!

“They are here!” I announced to the WideEyedSpouse, “They are in the grapes!” He slewed about in his chair and gaining his feet stormed the arbor with determined strides. The winged looters fled his arrival, perching tauntingly out of reach on roof and tree.

The Spouse returned to the kitchen. “Our loses are small yet,” he gravely reported. We thought on it. Do we cede all to the feathered freebooters? Do we protect the harvest, as we vowed? “The air rifle we saw in the market earlier today would make short work of the problem,” he decided with a dark eye. I could see him measuring distance, angle, wind – seeing in his mind’s eye the small pirates falling from the arbor. Neutralized.

“Yes,” I agreed, uncertain of the wisdom of this choice, “but they are many, and you must sleep sometime.” We loaded into the Mighty Pathfinder and set about procuring defensive matériel. We fought even tinier marauders bent on attacking our very persons, buzzing in our ears as we draped the precious harvest with fine netting. “How can this work?” we asked ourselves of the fine, light nylon.

Today the vile garden thieves circle the arbor, cheeping tactical data to one another. The netting wafts in the airy day, effective still. Wish us luck Friends, as we guard our precious grapes.

August 2, 2015
WideEyedFunk Progenitor is Also WideEyed Over Spring

*Guest written by WideEyedMom from her home in central Virginia.

“When we left for Florida last week there were little peeping buds of pale chartreuse on the trees and a smoking yellow mist at the tops. We arrived back yesterday afternoon to a darker chartreuse and a deep spicy aroma of oak woods. The mist from the trees is now on all the porches. The oaks are alive with bug-eating woodpeckers, darting bluebirds, finches and cardinals. A little bird again built its nest upon the patio light fixture and Choppie the Cat monitors it every day from the upstairs decking. I have peas and onions waving their heads and summer is almost upon us…”

May 4, 2015
Bees in my garden.

I knelt along the grassy edge of my garden at about noon on Sunday.

The newly blooming lilies scented the air in front of me.

Coreopsis Moon Glow danced in a little breeze off to my left.

Bees, large and small, hairy bodied and crunchy looking, twirled with the blooms.

The lavender, heated in the sun, wafted calm scents toward me from the right.

Bees were in the lavender, too.

The mystery lilies, planted sight unseen last fall as unassuming bulbs, are waiting to burst open.

Daisy, who lives next door except for when she is sleeping on the sunny rocks in my garden, stopped by to learn why I was kneeling in the yard.

When winter comes, and I find endlessly creative language to complain about slush, ice, and the grim, damp cold of Buffalo, remind me of the bees in the summer garden.

July 15, 2013
The garden is poised for action.

Cherry, cosmonaut, and garden peach tomatoes. Hot peppers. Sweet peppers. Leeks. Easter egg radishes and French breakfast radishes. The WideEyedHousehold is doubtful about a breakfast of radishes. Lettuces. Carrots. Borage. Grapes. Sunflowers and two pear trees. And oh, blue coco pole beans, whatever they are, time will tell.

May 18, 2013