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MIDNIGHT GARDEN
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Migrations and Transitions

Gee, it feels a bit like the end of an era. Thanks to Blogger's limits on photo uploading, The Midnight Garden has moved to WordPress. The transition is still in progress just now, so please forgive our dust.

Actually, it's sort of appropos, really. Every other aspect of my life seems a little chaotic lately, though really in good and unexpected ways. It just makes sense that the blog should be in a state of metamorphosis, as well. The import project is going well, though there seems to be some issue with all your wonderful comments getting properly associated with their related posts. I'm a little sad about that, since I love you all so much.

In the future, you can find the Midnight Garden here. Please make a note for your Favorites Lists and Blogrolls! Thanks for the memories!!

Tuesday, For Now

Hi everyone!!

Sorry I've not posted in a bit. It was a great weekend, and I have many pictures and a few words to share with you on the subject. It was also kind of a tiring weekend, though, and when my internet access crapped out on me last evening, I took the chance to enjoy a little quiet down time, when I suppose I ought to have been cropping and developing photos and doing some rough draft writing so I'd be ready to blog when the opportunity presented itself.

You'll forgive me, I hope, that I've not regaled you with stories and song about the great times we had this holiday weekend. I will soon. I promise. I hope you all had terrific weekends, too!

Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy these two shots from this evening. The one above was taking from the Stop N Shop parking lot, the one below, as the full Hunter's Moon rose over Town Cove in Orleans. I wish the optical illusion was photograph-able...since the moon appeared about three times this size when I stopped for the picture.

Last Weekend...And This.

Last weekend, you may recall, I went off to Chatham for an afternoon, touring along Main Street and enjoying the sense of anticipation that was building in the crowd for the arrival of the Budweiser Clydesdales. It was a beautiful day, I had a wonderful time and discovered a lot of lovely late season gardens to share with you all, as well as the horses.

I also discovered later than day that I'd reached my upload limit at Blogger, and was unable to share those photos with you. It's been a long week, and surely you've moved on to other things, but I finally had the chance to put together a slideshow of some of those great images...which I present to you here...while I'm off having a completely different weekend.

I hope your weekend turns out to be everything you hope for and more. Here in the United States, it's Columbus Day; in Canada, it's Thanksgiving.

Whatever your occasion and however you are celebrating, I wish you beautiful days, warm and memorable evenings and so many smiles that your face hurts a little by Monday!

Thursday

The day here started out gray and rainy. Not much encouragement for getting out of bed and turning on that coffee pot, honestly. But that's okay...we need wet mornings like this one and meanwhile, every time I look at the forecast for the holiday weekend it looks a little better!

These red begonias are in a stone planter outside of the bank. I should have taken a picture of them earlier in the season when they were a little fresher looking. But they caught my attention this morning and so here you go.

There was a little upheaval at the Nest this morning, but nothing particularly monumental. We had suspected in the last couple of days that perhaps there was a leak in the gas line that comes up to the apartment, as there'd been the occasional whiff of the stuff. Today, Lenny pulled off the facing boards on the step ups from dining room to kitchen and bathroom, since the gas is piped in between floors there.

Naturally, it was only once that destruction had been done that it was discovered that the new stove was actually the source of the leaking...and it has apparently been a lucky thing that we've been sleeping with windows wide open so regularly lately. Anyway, the problem is all fixed, there's no more leaking and all is well.

In fact, I like the photo above not for the destruction (and that's no big deal--haven't painted ANY of the trim in the apartment yet...), but I like the way it shows off the red-orange-yellow progression from kitchen to dining room to bathroom.

Dykewife calls my string of lights "cheer lights" and I love that name, though I've never heard them called that before. I've always been a fan of the indirect light cast by these little lights and have often incorporated them in my living situations one way or another for years now. They ARE cheery, though. And another thing I wanted to point out, are the little balls made of grape vines. I got them on one of those novelty strings of lights years ago and love the way they make these great shadow designs on the walls. The shadows do something to the painting on the wall I really like.

I'll try to get some better pictures of what I'm talking about as far as detail of the painting work in the days to come. It's pretty late now and I ought to already have been in bed...but there's a few flower pics to round out the day.

On the way back from the bank, this bed of furry-flowered ageratum and yellow marguerite daisies called out to me from one of those traffic island gardens and so I stopped for a photo or two.

I'm pretty sure this fuzzy topped stuff in ageratum, though I've not grown this variety before. They ought to call the particular strain Animal, after the Muppet Drummer it so reminds me of.

These petunias are showing what end of the season it is, but I still couldn't look away from the rich purple flowers. Next summer I want to do more with petunias.

And here's some of our fall foliage, a blend of pretty Virginia creeper and sneaky poison ivy, climbing the side of a pine tree across the street from the traffic island, at the path entrance of one of Eastham's conservation areas.

Some Progress with the Nesting

I'm pretty impressed with how well this volunteer hollyhock is doing at the entrance of the restaurant parking lot. As you may recall, none of us actually planted it; it simply began growing there, its seed brought by some random bird or something. I'm quite fond of the single flower and the buttery yellow color.

Ah, what a full day Wednesday was. I started early with a visit to the bank, on the way to my latest eye appointment. The appointment went well - my eye is showing what was described as 100% improvement since my visit there last week. But I also saw a different doctor, and I found that he was a lot more forthcoming about describing my condition to me and how I need to be treating it to ensure that it heals properly.

The previous doc hadn't been nearly so specific, and its just another reminder to me (which I'll try to pass on to you) that these days, we can't count on our health care so-called professionals to tell us what we need to know. We have to be pro-active at our appointments and ask the right questions. Almost makes me think they should be giving ME the $20 co-pay.

With this good news under my belt, and a delightfully sunny day going on around me, I took the opportunity that being further up-Cape provided and did a little shopping, making stops at K-Mart, Christmas Tree Shop and the Mill Stores before returning back to the Nest...where I was met by the withering gaze of our household's executive officer.



I wouldn't say he was in a bad mood, but sleeping pretty hard, apparently, since he didn't meet me at the door. I'm afraid we haven't had quite the snuggle time he might enjoy, as I've been a bit of a perpetual motion machine lately...only ever sitting down for a few moments (except for email and blogging, when I sit a little longer...), before popping up with some new project in mind. I try to stop every now and then to give him a proper scritch behind the ears or under the chin, as he loves...but I'm sure he will be pleased at the additional attention he should enjoy from having a houseguest to boss around this coming weekend.



I'd like to say I was incredibly well organized and that I'm completing tasks before moving on to the next ones...but I'd be totally lying to you. What I'm doing is a little of this, a little of that. The short term effect is that I act and appear a bit scatter-brained. Wifty, you might even say. But as time passes, I'm finding that I'm actually getting a lot accomplished.

For instance, the bathroom is now about two-thirds yellow.


It's only a single coat, and brushed on, because of the uneven surface of the beaded board. In time, I might get around to putting a second coat of yellow on things...but in the meantime, the first coat is looking pretty good and in the few places where a little pink shows through the yellow, it creates a sort of orangey-look I don't totally hate. Still, it's a work in progress, like much of the Nest.

After a short visit to work (it was technically a day off, but I still had a few things there that needed my attention), I was back home, where I got a little more testosterone going as I got out my phillips head screwdriver again and put together the new shelf unit I bought for my music CDs.

At first, I thought I'd done a crooked job of it when I put it in the corner, but really, it's the floor and the walls of the Nest which are uneven. L and P and I had a good laugh about this later on, and they advised me there's a great supply of shingles to use as shims out in the barn, which can be helpful for making everything in this old house seem less uneven.



In the photo above, you can see the progress being slowly made. The modular shelving units (okay, fine...milkcrates), the installed brackets for hanging plants, curtain rods, floral wire for the pothos vines to climb along.

As darkness fell last night, I took a little break to bring some of those milkcrates over to the restaurant for a run through the dishwasher there, and spotted two or three different coyotes in our greater neighborhood. No real surprise there, considering the recent late night outburst, but still...it was remarkable to see several of them in a single evening.

In other news of the Natural World, there's been a lot of excitement and a little bit of concern in our region recently, as sitings were reported of a manatee in a variety of locations. At first, they were just stories, unconfirmed, but now there's details. You can get the full story and video here.

While I was out cleaning up those shelving units, I also picked up a new string of lights to weave into the long pothos vines I was training along/above the wall where the sun and crow are painted.



It's mostly a string of white lights, but I did change out a few bulbs to bring in a little bit of green and amber...and a little blue and red behind the plant basket (for a little purple shadowing). I like the way the bits of color bring out some of the detail of the wall.

By the way, the print I've hung there is A.F. Tait's wonderful Adirondack painting, A Good Time Coming. It's long been one of my favorites, as I am a big fan of the lean-to as a bit of rustic architecture...and my love affair with the Adirondack region is no secret, either. Also, I always like the name as a good omen for entertaining.

So you can see that things are coming along pretty nicely. Like I said the other day, I'm on my own schedule...and I don't really expect things here to be fully settled down for at least another month or two. But I have been encouraged to accomplish a few things in advance of weekend visitors. Still, it remains a work in progress...there's still at least one room that looks like this:



Also - in the interests of full disclosure - Marc, I want to be sure you know in advance that this is the kitchen you will be working in Sunday evening.



It's not one of those big Martha Stewart country kitchen affairs...ha ha...so please keep your expectations low! But the stove works and I'm sure we can find you a little counter space for prep. And I've got dessert all worked out, so no worries on that front!

But lets not focus too much attention on my tiny little kitchen. Instead, let me share with you the sunset over Cape Cod Bay from Tuesday evening, just down the road from the Nest. I think you'll find it much easier on the eyes.

Catching Up

Well, okay...so thank goodness for Photobucket. Now I just need to get a little better about re-sizing photos before uploading, and I might be okay. Sorry for the delays in posting.

Because of the recently limiting of photo uploading, I'm considering moving the blog to WordPress, where I understand I'd have substantially more memory hosting. Anyone have any bouquets or brickbats to share with me about WordPress? What's your experience been in transferring a blog and its archives from one place to t'other?

Meanwhile, though, I don't want to distract from the important garden business at hand. First, above, you can see that my imperial Chrysanthemum (well, that's what Chuck thought it was when he passed it on to me, anyway...) is fixing to bloom shortly. Also, below, I was happy to know that my favorite - the garden heliotrope - has bounced back from its rough treatment in moving and seems to be taking very nice to its new home by the front door.

Now, I realize (and have been reminded) that the recent photo debacle has left you all in the dark about how progress has been coming along here at the Nest...so I'm glad to be able to share a photo or two with you to show you how things have progressed. As I mentioned, I have finished off the painting in the living room. I might go in with a tiny brush and touch up the dragonflies a little, but I also sort of like the way they seem embedded into the wall, too. Maybe I just want to go in and sketch some of the finer lines of their wings with a marker. We'll see.

Meanwhile, though, I am happy to let them be as they are, while I try to focus less on the painting and more on getting the Nest finally starting to feel more like a home than a collection of empty rooms filled with boxes. After all, I will be hosting some company this weekend and am eager for the place to start feeling a little more comfy and welcoming. Plus, for my own well-being, it sure would be nice to have things unpacked and starting to feel a little less unsettled.

Here's a photo, with Cat, of the loveseat we welcomed to our small collection of furniture this weekend. It's second hand, but we like it just fine...plus, it was relatively easy to get up in the ladder and into the apartment. In the background, is another view on the living room painting (The crow, I'll remind you, I've actually touched up a little so its not quite so recessed into the painting now.).

There were two second-hand loveseats to choose from actually. I liked the muted colors and lighter pattern of this one, which seems to go pretty nicely with the detailed painting I've done in the living room. The other one also featured a floral pattern, but not a brocaded one, as seen here, but merely a print on fabric and in a bright green, red and pink floral pattern that would've been more appropos for the Golden Girls' lanai, or perhaps a shirt for Bea Arthur. I feel I've chosen well and Badum - who's had WAY more time than I to test it out - seems to agree.

I did make myself sit down a little the other night and it is a comfy place to rest. There's just so much to accomplish, though, that I feel a little guilty about settling in one place for too long. Well, not guilty, since I'm on no one's schedule but my own...but there's so much I want to get done. Let's put it that way. In other news, I am about two-thirds finished with painting the bathroom yellow. I like it much better than the dingy pink I am covering over, especially in the golden light of morning.

Speaking of morning, it is pretty early here just now. I have an early eye appointment (slow progress there, but I'm practicing patience, which is apparently my Big Lesson to learn from the Universe just lately) and hope to visit the bank before leaving town, so I'll have a little cash in hand for a stop at K Mart afterward for a few needful things like Flatware and maybe a nice shelving system for my music CDs...and some hooks to help properly suspend some of my houseplants near their favorite windows.

On that front, Patience (the landlord, not the lesson) gifted me a pair of long and dangly pothos plants last evening. She'd had them outside this summer, but was feeling a bit oppressed with the responsibility of bringing them in for the coming winter...so I was all too glad to bring them upstairs to the Nest, where the light is wonderful and should help to encourage that Jungle feeling I enjoy on a winter's afternoon, when all my plants are thriving and green around me.

Here's the view off the deck just about ten minutes ago, as the sky turned from dark blue to lavendar and the sun crept up over the horizon. It's chilly this morning and I wonder, with deciding, if the season for going to the beach to watch the sun slip above the eastern horizon hasn't passed for another year. We'll see. Perhaps there's one more sunrise morning coming our way before the holiday weekend is through. In the meantime, there's this view from the deck to enjoy each morning.

By the way, in the time it took me to prepare and upload that photo, we've gone from pre-dawn silence to a crazy multitude of bird chirpings out there. It's pretty nice. I'm tempted to go back to bed...but I fear I'll never wake up for my appointments if I snuggle back in this morning. Of course, it's also still far too early to think about pounding a nail or anything like that.

NOTE: Apologies about the weird photo file sizes...too early to be messing around with this, perhaps. I'll try to figure this out before next post. Promise. Meanwhile, have a day!!