Notes From Zone 4

Today was just another perfect day in paradise. Paradise, at least if you consider puttering around in the garden on a beautiful summer day to be paradise. Which we do. Oh, to be able to retire and do this all week. Now that would be paradise. The water plants we picked up yesterday look

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Our school of fish was looking quite small. So we bought more! Valerie insisted that we do it by the book — set the bag in the water unopened so that it has time to come to the same temperature as the pond water, thus lessening the shock to the new fish. She then let them out slowly. It’s amazing how quickly they joined the other fish already in the pond. Feeding them all was quite fun. They basically followed the example of the established fish, and found the food after a few minutes of watching. On the other hand, the news ones are still very skittish, and scatter when we come to the pond, rather than come up to us to be fed like the old ones. Still, cute. More fish!

I’ve spent far more time actually out in the garden than updating the journal, and I’m trying to get my pictures in here, with some narrative, while I still remember why I took the pictures. I also know this page takes far too long to load, so I’m working on a better way to

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We poked our noses out to do a few things in the garden today, but the bugs were bad and it was so hot that we came in after about an hour, I think. I noticed that it’s great mindless stuff for me … I wander around, deadhead and weed, poke and prod. I try

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Frank and I took a walk out in the woods today, with our friend Paul, up from Greenfield, Massachusetts. Paul was in search of mushrooms, which turned out to be hopeless. We think it is probably too dry, too early, maybe. Frank and I wanted some water/bog plants for our pond, and we found quite a bit. The woods were gorgeous, and we have several abandoned beaver ponds that are drying up, so we even feel virtuous about rescuing the water plants. Coming up on the house from the back end like this reminds me how in the boonies we really are. From the front, we’re only about a mile from the center of town (of 700 people, but still.) Behind us are literally miles of woods. We used to get out in them more often than we have lately. I wonder if we’ll make time for it again. We really enjoyed it today.

I said the other day that ditch lilies weren’t flowers from my childhood. Lantana was, though. In El Paso, it wasn’t an annual, and the bushes grew five feet tall and were everywhere. There was one stretch of highway that had miles and miles of it, and I loved it drive on it when

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Frank mowed the lawn today, and tried to push the edges around the septic more than Valerie or I have been doing. It’s a bit scary to hug the cliff like that, and I noticed that even he was leaning away from the edge as he did it. The lawn is coming along, though still

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The rain has been on and off all day, so we got in quite a bit of gardening, actually. The yard’s looking so pretty right now. The frogs are all over the pond, too. They make a huge racket every night. Quite the frog orgy out there, I think. To cheer myself up from teen

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Welcome to High Summer! I was a picture-taking fool today, but I can’t help it. The garden is absolutely beautiful right now. Such a change, suddenly. There are tons of colors all over the place, and everything, it seems, is in bloom. My window boxes in particular are all very full, draping down nicely.

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One of the things we’ve noticed when we mow the lawn is that there are many places where the tips of rocks are sticking out and catching the lawn mower. It’s made for a very bumpy ride, and we’re sure it’s not good for the mower. So today Frank went out there with a shovel,

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