It started raining late Thursday night and it's still coming down Saturday morning. It stops and starts, sometimes light drizzle, sometimes downpour. I don't care; I love it. My little world is saturated and green and that's ok by me.
Got outside very (very) early this morning. My cat Peach just would not let me sleep for some reason...had me out of bed at sparrow fart (5:30 a.m....). Since it was not raining, I decided to get the corner of the driveway bed cleaned up and then move some languishing bright yellow iris from up in the Fairy Glen to down there. These are a brilliant chrome yellow that really doesn't look good in the Fairy Glen; the brighter color will be perfect down along the driveway bed though. These iris stopped blooming last year because the dogwoods started casting too much shade.
Also got three hostas planted in the Stumpery and did some cleanup down there. Shocked: I was blaming the deer eating the hostas in the Stumpery last summer for the fact that only 2 came back this year. Well, I was wrong. When I dug the new planting holes this morning...after 36 hours of rain...the ground under the top inch of mulch was BONE DRY. I mean dust. Powder. Sahara desert. I couldn't believe it. Where did all that rain GO? I'll tell you: it ran off. I made the mistake of putting on a thick layer of fallen leaves and wood chip mulch as I was building up the mound that would form the base of the stumpery. Basically, I think that stuff formed a sort of "thatched roof" over the mound. All those tiny leaves and flakes were pretty much dry going down and they acted like miniature shingles. Plus, there's very little in the way of actual dirt in that mound...mostly more of the leaves and wood chips, plus some rough compost from the township pile (which I've noticed tends to act very much like peatmoss...once it's wet, it's wet, but once it's dry, it doesn't want to get wet again). At any rate, I've got a problem on my hands and I've already started to fix it. I got several buckets of good garden dirt and mixed it in well in a couple of areas where I want to add plants. Also poured on several buckets of pond water and made sure that I formed shallow basins here and there so the rain would collect and hopefully soak in. I think I'll just need to keep adding in real soil and working it around and it will be ok. On the upside, no weeds....
Coffee bars: We've got yet another new coffee bar opened in the area. It will probably hang on for a couple of years and then go the way of the rest of them. And I think I know why: It's a lovely little shop, filled with light and air, bright lights, shiny new tables and matching chairs sitting out on a shiny new floor. Big windows, the sunshine streaming in. ....and it's all wrong. A coffee house should be dark. It should be shadowy, with cozy intimate booths where people can put their heads together and dish dirt. A coffee house should be a place where revolutions are hatched and plans laid for the colonization of Jupiter. At the very least, a good coffee house should be where revelers go to recover from the night before. The chairs shouldn't match. If I had my ways, the curtains would hang crooked and what little sunlight filtered in would make the inmates blink, squint, and shield their eyes. A good coffee bar should smell of good coffee, old ashes, wet dogs, and intrigue.
***
My dark confession: Every time I hear the Beatles' song "Norweigan Wood" I picture a room filled with Ikea furniture.
Discussions:
| Thread Title | Last Reply | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Norweigan Wood by PAgirl63 | Jul 30, 2017 8:51 AM | 1 |
Post a new thread about this blog entry:
