OK, I admit I'm only a little sorry summer is over. I was tired of sleeping in my living room -- especially because I recently bought new, soft sheets that I wanted to enjoy on my bed -- and there is nothing I despise more than roaches, which thrive in the heat and humidity. Plus I'm tired of wearing the same thing all the time and I want to start riding my bike to work more, which I refuse to do from about June to September.
But it is a little bittersweet to say goodbye to fresh Silver Queen corn on the cob, field peas, and boiled peanuts, not to mention a quiet college town (the students came back at the end of August).
That said, the past couple of weeks have brought us beautiful weather here. Some kind of cool breeze floated down from Canada, bringing with it clear, crisp skies and mild temperatures (the 70s). As a final farewell to summer, this weekend I went with Rayne to the Ichetucknee Springs State Park, at the north end of the river. It was idyllic. I wasn't in a great mood when we got there, but by the time we left I felt completely, utterly, blissfully happy. Not to sound hokey, but I think there's something really healing in those waters, and I don't mean the nutrient-fed algae.
After we were done swimming, we sat on the ground near the spring, enjoying the sunlight filtering through the trees and the hypnotizing turquoise of the water. I idly noticed a slight rustling in the nearby erosion-exposed, leaf-covered roots of tree on the shoreline. Curious, I kept watching, eventually seeing a snake slide silently into the water. S/he swam rapidly along the bottom toward the spring run. It was so cool! I've only ever seen a snake swim at the surface of water. Two bass chased it, either trying to scare it away or catch scraps from its meals. It was about four feet long and skinny, with dark-gray or brown blotches all down its body. I think it was either a brown water snake or midland water snake.
Showing posts with label fall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fall. Show all posts
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Monday, December 10, 2007
Trees
I know I don't have the best memory, but I don't remember there being this many leaves changing color this early before. There's a beautiful sycamore tree in the yard of my friends Pat and Sally that I photographed this weekend.
It's not blooming or changing colors, but here's a photo of that enormous Southern magnolia tree in my backyard. I really love it, except for the wafting smell of rotting vegetation that I'm convinced comes from the carpet of leaves and fallen branches below it. I don't know if it's apparent in the photo, but the trunk's diameter at the base has to be about three feet.
It's not blooming or changing colors, but here's a photo of that enormous Southern magnolia tree in my backyard. I really love it, except for the wafting smell of rotting vegetation that I'm convinced comes from the carpet of leaves and fallen branches below it. I don't know if it's apparent in the photo, but the trunk's diameter at the base has to be about three feet.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Native Flowers
Thursday I picked a bouquet of native flowers from in front of the office. They looked so nice on the dashboard of my car on the way home that I took a photo (while stopped at a red light):
There's swamp sunflower (ours is over six feet tall!), gaillardia/blanket flower, firebush, scarlet salvia, and muhly grass.
There's swamp sunflower (ours is over six feet tall!), gaillardia/blanket flower, firebush, scarlet salvia, and muhly grass.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Back from My Road Trip!
I'm back! I had a great road trip.
(I will interrupt myself here to explain that yes, I know road trips are not exactly sustainable since one uses gas and all that. And if there were trains that actually got you anywhere worth going in fewer than twenty hours or whatever, I would gladly take them. But meanwhile, we live in the U.S., and so we drive. Finally, my car gets better gas mileage than the cars of anyone else I know--forty to forty-five MPG on the highway--so I think I've said enough about this now.)
My first stop was Asheville. Of course, I love Asheville. Good food, beautiful mountains, and sympatico people. I stayed with my friend Hugh:
He just bought a house. I wanted to blog about the landscaping, but he only had two sad planters on his porch, and they were empty:
Asheville was so beautiful. Here in North Central Florida we get some leaf color in, oh, January, but in Asheville it's prime leaf color season, or whatever you call it. Anyway, it took my breath away. We played frisbee golf on what I am convinced were the two most perfect days of the year anywhere in the world, weather-wise.
The color of the leaves is impossible to really capture in a photo. At least with my camera.
I really love the mountains.
Next I drove to Durham to see my oldest brother and his family. They have a two-and-a-half-year-old and a five-week-old. At the risk of deviating from my blog's mission, I have to show a photo of my niece Mia. She was a princess for Halloween:
Finally, I went to Charleston to see my friend Chris. We danced salsa. I am not a good dancer. But I did have fun. My camera was out of batteries by then, though.
(I will interrupt myself here to explain that yes, I know road trips are not exactly sustainable since one uses gas and all that. And if there were trains that actually got you anywhere worth going in fewer than twenty hours or whatever, I would gladly take them. But meanwhile, we live in the U.S., and so we drive. Finally, my car gets better gas mileage than the cars of anyone else I know--forty to forty-five MPG on the highway--so I think I've said enough about this now.)
My first stop was Asheville. Of course, I love Asheville. Good food, beautiful mountains, and sympatico people. I stayed with my friend Hugh:
He just bought a house. I wanted to blog about the landscaping, but he only had two sad planters on his porch, and they were empty:
Asheville was so beautiful. Here in North Central Florida we get some leaf color in, oh, January, but in Asheville it's prime leaf color season, or whatever you call it. Anyway, it took my breath away. We played frisbee golf on what I am convinced were the two most perfect days of the year anywhere in the world, weather-wise.
The color of the leaves is impossible to really capture in a photo. At least with my camera.
I really love the mountains.
Next I drove to Durham to see my oldest brother and his family. They have a two-and-a-half-year-old and a five-week-old. At the risk of deviating from my blog's mission, I have to show a photo of my niece Mia. She was a princess for Halloween:
Finally, I went to Charleston to see my friend Chris. We danced salsa. I am not a good dancer. But I did have fun. My camera was out of batteries by then, though.
Monday, October 22, 2007
New House
I haven't written in a while because I've been in the throes of finding a new place to live. This week I'm moving, and next week I will be out of town. So this post will be an oasis in the desert of my temporarily abandoned blog. (Which will make certain of my colleagues, who look at blogging as a competitive sport, very happy. Ahem.)
My new place is a one-bedroom in a duplex. There's a pretty substantial yard with a large camellia bush and a gigantic Southern magnolia. The yard gets a lot more sun than my current place, so growing vegetables will be much easier.
And that means I can finally bring home those pots that have been sitting in the yard at work for about nine months...sorry, everybody. I grew my first veggies at work last year in five-gallon pots (with mixed results). And the pots have been sitting out by the weird blue water pump thing since after all the plants died. I keep meaning to bring them home, but, you know--it rains, or I have somewhere I need to be, or I just got my car cleaned...
As I've mentioned before, I planted some fall vegetable seeds a few weeks ago, but have been kind of neglecting them with all this other stuff going on (although I did finally transplant them to larger pots). And I need to plant more seeds. So that's on the agenda for when I get back from vacation.
The new place needs a compost heap. I also need to figure out the best place in the landscape for all of my plants, since some of them like more sun than others--but if they get too scattered, I will never get around to watering them. Sometimes it really seems that my life is just a struggle between desire and laziness. (Not very Buddhist of me, I know.) We will see which wins this week.
My new place is a one-bedroom in a duplex. There's a pretty substantial yard with a large camellia bush and a gigantic Southern magnolia. The yard gets a lot more sun than my current place, so growing vegetables will be much easier.
And that means I can finally bring home those pots that have been sitting in the yard at work for about nine months...sorry, everybody. I grew my first veggies at work last year in five-gallon pots (with mixed results). And the pots have been sitting out by the weird blue water pump thing since after all the plants died. I keep meaning to bring them home, but, you know--it rains, or I have somewhere I need to be, or I just got my car cleaned...
As I've mentioned before, I planted some fall vegetable seeds a few weeks ago, but have been kind of neglecting them with all this other stuff going on (although I did finally transplant them to larger pots). And I need to plant more seeds. So that's on the agenda for when I get back from vacation.
The new place needs a compost heap. I also need to figure out the best place in the landscape for all of my plants, since some of them like more sun than others--but if they get too scattered, I will never get around to watering them. Sometimes it really seems that my life is just a struggle between desire and laziness. (Not very Buddhist of me, I know.) We will see which wins this week.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Grocery Shopping at Ward's
I love to grocery shop and cook. One of my favorite things about Florida is all the locally grown produce, much of it organic, that's readily available around town in farmer's markets and in my favorite grocery store, Ward's. Ward's is locally owned and I can remember going there as a kid with my mom, when the meat section scared me (it smelled like seafood, which I've always feared and loathed).
Ward's is great because it's just too small, and you're forced to interact with--and sometimes even touch--complete strangers while maneuvering around the store. (I try to be in a good mood when I go shopping.)
It's also a very mysterious place. I go there almost every week, but each time, without fail, have to ask the nice people who work there where things are (sometimes three or four times in one shopping trip). Olive oil, for example, is in two or three different locations. So is rice. I'm sure it makes sense in someone's mind, but right when I think I've figured out the logic, they rearrange entire sections of the store. "Excuse me, but, um, where did the chocolate go?"
I also always run into at least three people I know. Shopping takes longer than expected, because I have to have catch-up conversations while squeezed up against jars of artichoke hearts or bottles of red wine.
This Sunday on my way into the store, I witnessed a horrific car accident in the parking lot. This F150 pulling out of a space suddenly lurched forward and smashed into four parked cars. I spent about a half-hour talking to the car owners, the police, and all the onlookers who wanted to know what happened. Then I went grocery shopping.
It's the end of the summer, which is always bittersweet. On the one hand, I love autumn. I'm thoroughly sick of the heat and humidity of summer by this point and I am really tired of my summer wardrobe. Plus my car smells like mildew. But I do love summer produce, and it will be sad when the collards and avocados and green peanuts disappear from the shelves, not to be seen again until next May.
In the meantime, though, I bought some zipper peas and organic, locally grown spring salad mix, talked to a bunch of people, and said "Excuse me" about forty times. So: a good Sunday.
Ward's is great because it's just too small, and you're forced to interact with--and sometimes even touch--complete strangers while maneuvering around the store. (I try to be in a good mood when I go shopping.)
It's also a very mysterious place. I go there almost every week, but each time, without fail, have to ask the nice people who work there where things are (sometimes three or four times in one shopping trip). Olive oil, for example, is in two or three different locations. So is rice. I'm sure it makes sense in someone's mind, but right when I think I've figured out the logic, they rearrange entire sections of the store. "Excuse me, but, um, where did the chocolate go?"
I also always run into at least three people I know. Shopping takes longer than expected, because I have to have catch-up conversations while squeezed up against jars of artichoke hearts or bottles of red wine.
This Sunday on my way into the store, I witnessed a horrific car accident in the parking lot. This F150 pulling out of a space suddenly lurched forward and smashed into four parked cars. I spent about a half-hour talking to the car owners, the police, and all the onlookers who wanted to know what happened. Then I went grocery shopping.
It's the end of the summer, which is always bittersweet. On the one hand, I love autumn. I'm thoroughly sick of the heat and humidity of summer by this point and I am really tired of my summer wardrobe. Plus my car smells like mildew. But I do love summer produce, and it will be sad when the collards and avocados and green peanuts disappear from the shelves, not to be seen again until next May.
In the meantime, though, I bought some zipper peas and organic, locally grown spring salad mix, talked to a bunch of people, and said "Excuse me" about forty times. So: a good Sunday.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Weekend Yard Walk
This weekend my roommate and I did a yard walk. This is when we take our beers and walk around the yard looking at what's growing and what has died since we last remembered to water plants.
The heat and lack of rain over the summer finally got to some of my perennials, like the three different kinds of native salvia I have in pots (though I don't think I've killed them yet), and some of my other potted plants looked pretty gnarly and brown. I snapped off some dead bits and hoped for showy comebacks in a few months. I like low-maintenance plants, obviously.
The larger containers where I put a few different plants seemed to be thriving pretty well, and we still have broccoli, tomato, and strawberry plants from earlier in the year. The raised beds were choked with weeds but we decided to leave them until we plant something. Here's one of our hanging strawberry plants.
Some of the vegetable seeds I planted last weekend had sprouted last week, and I contemplated putting them into the beds or some containers I grew vegetables in earlier this year, but didn't deal with it this weekend after all. More on this when I get around to it.
In the compost heap, which also got neglected this summer--except by the roommate's girlfriend's wiener dog, Raz, who visited it faithfully--an avocado pit had shot up over a foot tall, clearly thriving. Whenever I see things growing in the compost I take them out and put them in pots, but sometimes they look so happy I put it off for a little while.
I'm really glad that fall is finally coming! It's my favorite time of year, and I'm looking forward to gardening again. The summer is just too hot for it.
The heat and lack of rain over the summer finally got to some of my perennials, like the three different kinds of native salvia I have in pots (though I don't think I've killed them yet), and some of my other potted plants looked pretty gnarly and brown. I snapped off some dead bits and hoped for showy comebacks in a few months. I like low-maintenance plants, obviously.
The larger containers where I put a few different plants seemed to be thriving pretty well, and we still have broccoli, tomato, and strawberry plants from earlier in the year. The raised beds were choked with weeds but we decided to leave them until we plant something. Here's one of our hanging strawberry plants.
Some of the vegetable seeds I planted last weekend had sprouted last week, and I contemplated putting them into the beds or some containers I grew vegetables in earlier this year, but didn't deal with it this weekend after all. More on this when I get around to it.
In the compost heap, which also got neglected this summer--except by the roommate's girlfriend's wiener dog, Raz, who visited it faithfully--an avocado pit had shot up over a foot tall, clearly thriving. Whenever I see things growing in the compost I take them out and put them in pots, but sometimes they look so happy I put it off for a little while.
I'm really glad that fall is finally coming! It's my favorite time of year, and I'm looking forward to gardening again. The summer is just too hot for it.
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