What a nice surprise!

The hibiscus I planted at the end of the pond is blooming: the flowers are huge, six inches across, magnificent! I had no idea the flowers would be so impressive: the label showed a deep, wine-red flower, but I expected them to be half this size.

My iguana would have loved them...

Words of Wisdom from Monty Don

http://books.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2282286,00.html#article_continue

If you've never read his books, READ THEM. Yes he's a television personality too, in the UK, but his genius is in his garden and in his writing.

And he's cute, too. In a married middle-aged English gardener sort of way.

And cicadas, definitely

Gentle, high-pitched cicadas last night. No machine-gun rattlers... yet. Just a gentle background noise, so gentle it's like it was always there.

All those trees!

Back from a couple of days up the coast in Boston, MA (where I saw little more than the airport, the concrete walls of the freeway and tunnel, the inside of a very-nice hotel, a nice restaurant, good people, and then back again). Flew to-and-from Islip, nice, quiet and handy airport (just be careful when walking round to the US Airways gates, if you're daydreaming you'll end up back in the lobby and have to go through security all over again... I speak from experience!)

Flying back in a small propellor-powered plane, looking down at Long Island from Orient Point all the way to Islip, I was surprised at how many trees there are. Dumb observation. But you see them better from "up there", out of a clear blue sky. There are lots and lots and lots of trees: houses nestled between them, farmland scraped out, wetlands the only really clear areas.

A lot of water, too.

Trees and water and sand and wetlands. That is this end of Long Island.

Misty sunrise

Egret dance

Early evening, clouds arrive after a beautiful summer's day. The egrets playing, three together, over and in the wetlands.

We went to Smith Point beach today. Lizarding in the sun. But the beach kept shrinking: big waves from tropical storm Bertha, pushing all the people into a narrower and narrower strip of sand up against the dunes. Fun watching people scramble as the waves reached their towels laid out on the warm sand... and being half-asleep when a big wave claimed the territory under my feet. Came home when the concentration of people-to-sand was too intense.

The lifeguards have eyes like egrets: they spot someone in trouble, or likely to get into trouble, and before you hear the whistle blow, they are down off the high seat, in the water, helping someone stand up out of the surf or out onto dry land. They are good.

No gas? Good!

Seeing more and more sailboats out on the bay. So tranquil...

And more and more bicycles on the streets.

Maybe an oil price crisis isn't so bad for everything, after all.

First fruits!

Vine tomatoes growing on the trellis behind the garden deck

"Hot Banana" peppers


... and snap peas.

More busy bees

I am suffering the mosquitos: and yes they do bite me, often, luckily not too badly, but suffering them gladly when I see the happy bees and other insects.

All the mosquito stuff kills not only mosquitos but everything else as well. Crickets even. Why would you want to kill crickets????

The bees love the clover in the lawn. And it needs watering much less often than pure grass. (Not that I have ever managed to keep a lawn of green grass. I have to import some real cricket-field outfield daisies one day.)

The lavender is buzzing with them and the coneflowers are heavy.

Rediscovering yellow

The last few years my gardens have always been blue, lavender, purple, pink, red, white... this year, the garden has decided it wants yellow. And orange. But mostly yellow.

Black-eyed susans (the daisy-like black-eyed susans) have appeared beneath the sunflowers. I don't know where they came from. I am sure I didn't plant them. And they were not there last year, I'm sure! They are very cheerful. And the smaller sunflowers (those I did plant, I remember that!) are very yellow too. And some of the perennials that were already established in the borders: yellow. All of them.

And they look good.

You have to listen when your garden tells you something.

Waspy

The blue thistle plants are this morning swarmed in wasps: tiny wasps up to over one inch blue-and-black wasps. At least I think they are wasps: they have a waspy shape. Very very busy, frantically flying from flower to flower. Some with stripes, some without; there's something about this flower, this morning, that has them all a-buzz.

Mastic Beach Village

Mastic Beach can become a village. This will mean better, local control over the place where we live: making this an even-nicer place to live.

To become a village, there are several steps, including a census and a petition. More details can be found on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_New_York#Village

A "village" in New York state is more-or-less the equivalent of a "town" in England--and in many other states. Mastic Beach is definitely Village-sized, with Village-sized challenges, huge opportunites (see Neighborhood Road and the improvements made in the past year alone), and a long, magnificent waterfront.

If you want to express your opinion during the incorporation process, you must be a registered voter in Mastic Beach. If you have forgotten to register, do it now! Be ready!

I believe this is the right thing to do. I will add links to information about the Village incorporation work as it arrives.

More summer flowers

Tall-and-gangly white phlox, and some beautiful-blue "volunteer" flax (that means they snuck in and volunteered their services in making the garden nice.. AKA weeds if you don't want them where they volunteer, but I like them very much... also, flax was the main agriculture of the William Floyd Estate in the years way-back-when, when it was a working farm).

Lots and lots of purple coneflowers...

... sunflowers like blood oranges...
... and the gourd vines. I don't know if these are the bird's nesting box gourds, or the snake gourds, or a couple of each. I planted both in the pots. We'll see when the gourds arrive: they have just started to flower: large, white, calling the bees.

Summer night

Still no cicadas. Maybe the ones we heard last year go to sleep for seventeen years? Some do, then emerge from the earth to surprise everyone again. I have become used to cicadas in summer: in France, they accompanied me on walks up the paths to the Vercors.

Drifted in and out of sleep last night.

Birds were singing in the dark. Quiet trilling, gentle, like a lullaby.

There are no nightingales here--and they did not sound like nightjars.

May have been the Northern Mockingbirds having a late night?

Early morning, and the biggest egrets are one-legged sleeping around a pond in the wetlands. Sometimes they wake up there: sometimes, perched in one of the old, empty-leaved trees.

And then I heard a rattle... one maraca...

Maybe we wil have cicadas this year after all.

Pollination

Bumble bees, carrying pollen all over their hairy backs...

... honey bees, with furry legs that start to look like yellow jodhpurs as they pick up pollen while gathering nectar...

... the skinny black blue-winged wasp prefers allium to lavendar...

... a bumble bee works his way around the coneflower, stamen by stamen...

... Disco Bees!!!!! (Now where did they come from?) Flourescent green.... wow!

Today's flowers

The sunflowers are coming out... and the two tiny clumps of purplish daylilies I planted last year have turned into huge clumps that will need dividing before the summer is out. Lavender is in bloom, so are the later allium; the coneflowers are just starting (both the purple and the two unusual ones found late last year, a buttery-cream and a russet).

The hydrangeas are out all over Long Island; lots of blue in the wetlands-and-sandy soils, but purple too, and some with huge globes of moonlike white. I think I need more hydrangeas.

Nature's fireworks

July 4th, and the sky is filled with fireworks. The pets don't like it much, but I'm practising Dog Whisperer techniques and having Fury associate dog massage with exploding skies. So far, so good--she has managed to ignore 80% of the noise so far.

From the deck, I can see fireflies.

They are like sparks discarded from a cigarette: they flash a bright spark, less than a second, then go back to dark. You can think you are imagining things: flashes of light in peripheral vision. But they are there... nature's sparklers.

Magic.

Deer don't count the days

I spotted him from an upstairs window. Day was almost ready to start turning to night: not quite dusk, but thinking about it. By the time I was downstairs and out the front door, he'd crossed Park Drive and was heading for my neighbour's garden, looking for a tasty snack.

He stood and posed for a while, then trotted off back around the corner, where he met up with a young female,., and both headed through the reeds into my little woods. Probably on their way to sort through the compost heap.

He's a young guy... look at the velvet on his small antlers.

Fourth July at Smith Point

Today was warm but not too warm, hazy but not foggy, humid but with a nice breeze... not the perfect 4th July holiday weather, but not a spoiler either.

Went out on the bike and ended up at Smith Point, along with many other people. A band was playing cover versions of old songs, and the snack bar was doing fair business. The lifeguards had just finished their days work and were showering off the sand.

People were starting to pack up their towels and beach umbrellas, and heading back home for barbeque and fireworks. Some were already rather merry.

Duck!!!!!

Earlier this week, after a trip to almost-but-not-quite Montauk, we stopped by Flanders so I could say Hello to the Duck.

Before you ask... I have No Idea. But he is there, by the side of the road, and you can walk inside through a door under his bill. And inside you can buy souvenirs. Such as rubber ducks to float in your bathtub.

Here's some more info about the Duck: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2173

There are also duck farms on Long Island... and a baseball team called the Ducks.