Green sleeves…and shoes…and gloves… – The Weekly Villager

It’s time for the annual, more or less, horticultural, porch, kitty, slash. All of you who are “looking forward” can relax now. (What is this “bated”? A relation with “rebate”, “debate”, “exacerbate”, “probate”, “abatement”, “incubate”, “reprobate”, “intubate”? Huh? 20 playable Scrabble words with this particular root, which means: lessen or lower; deprive of Or you can use the second entry in Webster’s New World College dictionary, which relates it to the German word beiszen – to soak up lye-all over leather tanning. I don’t see the connection, myself. Go for the word score.) Anyway… The long-awaited emergence of “flowering ferns” (ferns do not flower, but c is what the Dutch company at the BIG Home and Garden Show was selling them as, probably because of the shape of the foliage.) planted in front of the Y some time ago, has finally seen the light of day. We planted about eighteen individual bulbs along the front of the building, using my favorite method of driving a stake into the ground, then pulling it out and dropping the bulb into the resulting hole and covering it. Then we waited. And waited. And waited.
No sign of greenery, fern or not. The rain came and went, the sun shone, then more. The flowers in the large box in the front have popped up (they are blooming now, not like last year, but progressing.). Still no sign of life from the bulbs. So… boom! One came then another, and so on; about 15 of them are now waving in the breeze, so to speak, and at least ten of them have flowers – mostly pink/magenta. I spotted a few green sprigs of another kind of plant coming up. God only knows what it is. I only vaguely remember putting anything there, but volunteers are always welcome.
At home, things bloom everywhere – there are flowers on tomato seedlings of any variety (there are several of them, including “cups” and at least one yellow kind.). My “flower tower” has had a change of color scheme this year and seems to be doing well, if I can just keep it watered. Red raspberries look good. The blueberry bush has shrunk to a single ruffled stem in a pot. Good luck finding muffins. The blackberry bushes that were in one of the large pots croaked and left thorns galore and a single stalk in a different pot – also I think there are outlaws climbing into the ferns near the porch. These ferns are tough as Marines and can hold their own, that’s for sure; they must be thinned out otherwise they will invade the entire lawn. Could choke out my new “Primrose Lilac” or the Franklin tree. Either they’ll take over or the Jack-in-the-desks will. The Silver Creek Garden Club sold me some shade perennials that seem to do well in the backyard. Porch Kitties resent their finer qualities, as these take up space in what the PKs consider their own well-deserved “comfort station” – sheltered and so convenient! Newbie Spike hangs around, talking all the time, making sure everyone knows he’s not the Welcome Wagon. RM (Reformed Mamma) has an occasional snack there on the steps and sometimes drinks from the water feature at the back of the garage – where the bat house is, so far keeping the fledermaus out walk into MY house… but summer hasn’t even officially started yet, maybe they’re on vacation.
Who is NOT on vacation is the raccoon population. Several times now I’ve had to chase a rather pudgy-looking masked bandit out the front porch where he’d gobbled up the PK’s morning rations. It seems the ‘coons didn’t have a particularly harsh winter. I thought they were more nocturnal or dusk, but maybe they just finished a night of partying and stopped to get ‘one for the road’. I screamed and picked up my trusty buggy whip (What? Doesn’t everyone have one?) to chase the creature away. Once he descended the steps and turned in front of the porch; I spotted him hiding in the bushes plotting to come back. Another time I blocked his exit this way so he climbed over the porch railing to escape. Apparently even being whistled by RM wasn’t enough to deter the creature from its morning snack and neither PK wanted to fight.
Anyone looking for a challenge should come here to get hired to work on my really, really assorted flowerbeds before doing their freelance imitation of the Amazon jungle. I certainly didn’t follow things.
AND… Big Graduation Sunday. Magnificent weather, superb scenography, exceptional class. Congratulations all around.