Day 3 of Summer
Summer is here, I guess. I’ve not yet been able to dispense with the fleece jacket,* but I’ve been moving forward with summer-type activities anyway. To celebrate the Solstice, B and I took an evening walk in Hoyt Arboretum staring at about 8:00 PM. There was still plenty of light, but we were pretty much the only humans there. We heard a coyote howling, saw a grouse making a ruckus, and listening to the gurgley flutey song of what I am fairly certain were Swainson’s thrushes. And I breathed in lots of conifer-scented Solstice air. Just the ticket.
Summer means spending as much time as possible lazing around on patios, ideally, accompanied by pizza and beer (the two mainstays of the Portland economy [according to my brother]). So we did that yesterday evening.
It seems way early in the season, but this morning I harvested my first small handful of blueberries. Super yum! I grow the biggest and best blueberries, though I say it myself.
One other garden-related thing. I have succeeded in turning the pink blossoms of one of my hydrangea bushes to blue.
I am thrilled with the shade! It took two years of sprinkling the soil with elemental sulfur to acidify it sufficiently for the color change. (Don't tell Al Gore.) The other hydrangea bush, however, remains stubbornly pink, despite the same treatment.
*This is in no way a complaint. It’s more that I just have trouble processing the fact that it’s noon on a summer day and only 66 degrees F, with 45% humidity. Having spent most of my live in the Midwest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to rid myself of the notion that summer = suffocating heat and humidity.
Summer means spending as much time as possible lazing around on patios, ideally, accompanied by pizza and beer (the two mainstays of the Portland economy [according to my brother]). So we did that yesterday evening.
It seems way early in the season, but this morning I harvested my first small handful of blueberries. Super yum! I grow the biggest and best blueberries, though I say it myself.
One other garden-related thing. I have succeeded in turning the pink blossoms of one of my hydrangea bushes to blue.
I am thrilled with the shade! It took two years of sprinkling the soil with elemental sulfur to acidify it sufficiently for the color change. (Don't tell Al Gore.) The other hydrangea bush, however, remains stubbornly pink, despite the same treatment.
*This is in no way a complaint. It’s more that I just have trouble processing the fact that it’s noon on a summer day and only 66 degrees F, with 45% humidity. Having spent most of my live in the Midwest, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to rid myself of the notion that summer = suffocating heat and humidity.
Labels: blueberries and blue hydrangeas, pizza and beer, summer
posted by Rozanne at 12:32 PM
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