Pierced by Punctuation on Muse Day

"They say every time u use an ! a fairy dies...." Yolanda Elizabet

Usually Thalia, the muse of Comedy, is the inspiration for Muse Day, but this time any younger or more sensitive viewers can blame Yolanda Elizabet and Kate Smudges, whose twitter conversations about the danger of exclamation points made me look for the sketching pencils.
This post is part of Garden Bloggers Muse Day, hosted by Carolyn at the Sweet Home and Garden Chicago blog.

Midsummer Visit from Puck

"Midsummer Visit from Puck" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.


Until the solstice on June 20th the 'Cupani' sweet peas managed to open new flowers each day, but they turned to straw over the weekend. I pulled them up today and looked for seeds but found only three small undeveloped pods on the vines - did the 'Cupani' use all its strength to bloom instead rather than make seeds?

Once the sweet peas were gone light fell on a few seedlings from last year's Blue Pea Vine, Clitoria ternatea, also known as Blue Butterfly Pea. Their growth was so rampant last year that the obelisk could barely hold them so this late start may work better. There should be a Moon Vine, Ipomoea alba, on the obelisk, too - I don't see any sprouts so am soaking a few saved seeds.

The very last flower of Hemerocallis 'Prairie Blue Eyes' opened yesterday for Midsummer's Eve. This daylily is pretty tough, opening every one of the flowers on the scapes as the blooms grew progressively smaller through the days of relentless heat.


I thought about celebrating Midsummer's Eve - but if any fairies were dumb enough to stay in Austin this summer they're lying low now! Squirrels disturbed some of the work done by the Fairy Garden consultant last spring, but until a couple of weeks ago the little pool was in place. I'm only showing you a few feathers, but one morning there were wings on the lawn of the secret garden - ripped off and left by one of the many cats whose owners let them roam the neighborhood.Finding bird wings was bad enough - what if it had been a pair of ripped-off fairy wings, instead? So I closed the pool by turning it upside down... it can still shelter a fairy from a hailstorm, or allow a toads to hide underneath.Frances of Faire Garden is a sort of fairy garden expert, who stocks her garden with plants fairies like - ferns and mossy beds and elfin thyme. Although the pink false indigo is alive, the ferns are drying up here, the sparrows keep the thyme clipped short and moss dislikes hot, dry alkaline soil. I think most fairies have moved to Tennessee or Washington State or Maryland, but it seems that the mischievous Puck has less fear of heat and drought.



Since we moved here nearly four years ago the trees behind our back fenceline grew unmolested, leafing out each spring and casting dappled shade. In response I've chosen plants that were suitable for shade and have enjoyed the illusion of privacy provided by those leaves, especially admiring the saucer magnolia which draped down on my side of the fence, masking the bulk of the looming house on the other side, with its windows and balcony all seemingly designed to look into our yard.


Who else but Puck could have been at work yesterday, whispering into my neighbor's ear? Why else would anyone employ a tree service to raise the canopy of the trees on June 23rd with the temperatures rising to our daily 100 degrees?

From our back door and from the breakfast room windows we now see ugly bare trunks and that looming stone blockhouse instead of leaves. Since their house is on a slope the pruning allows them a much better view into our garden and windows. It looks much worse than in the photo; I'm trying to respect their privacy.



We on small lots are always at the mercy of what happens next door and this year's storms have changed many of your gardens. MSS at Zanthan is dealing with sun on shade lovers since a neighbor's tree fell in a storm, Garden Girl Linda suddenly lost her private spaces, Zoey will soon have a view of a huge garage, and back in fall 2006 a gigantic house was built behind Ki. Several of the Divas of the Dirt have seen shade gardens suddenly exposed to sun when trees were removed on the other side of the fence and then had to scramble to redesign their gardens.


Now it's my turn to try to see a pruning as an opportunity instead of a minor disaster. I repotted the larger plumeria and stood its pot in the border - maybe it can cast enough shade to keep the plants below from dying from the sudden increase in light. I also rearranged the pots on the 'growing on' table so the most sun tolerant can act as parasols for others - and will need to monitor them closely. I will fertilize and water my young evergreens while urging them to grow taller than the fence and I'm already planning what will be planted in late fall.

Luckily the area where the 'San Antonio Rose' hippeastrum grows was unaffected by the pruning and it still has dappled shade.

Yesterday was a very unsettling day. It was good to get a few tomatoes big enough to slice for sandwiches. It was bad to lose our privacy. But it was even worse to lose George Carlin. That news put the tree trimming into perspective.

My favorite routine was his comparison of baseball and football.



There are many versions of this classic comedic comparison, including one he used for the very first Saturday Night Live show, but this one was on YouTube.


Thank you, dear readers, for letting me vent about my unhappy Midsummer's Eve experience! Now if you'd like to see someone properly celebrate this ancient festival, go over to Faire Garden where Frances describes an evening filled with whimsy and glitter.

"Midsummer Visit from Puck" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

The Left Coast Garden Consultant

This post, "The Left Coast Garden Consultant", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.

Garden bloggers like Carol of May Dreams and Frances of Faire Gardens report the presence of wee fairy folk in their gardens but I've never seen evidence of them here. Luckily for me, an experienced maker of fairy gardens happened to be visiting Austin a couple of weeks ago and she graciously consented to a consultation - accepting root beer floats, barbequed brisket and gift shop souvenirs in place of her usual fee.

The Fairy Garden consultant liked many parts of the garden. She appreciated the deep fuchsia color of an emerging anemone but felt that the most likely place for the fairy folk to dwell was in the Secret Garden, kept warm in winter by a brick wall and southern exposure, but shaded by deciduous trees in summer.

This small garden is planted with a fig tree, shown with summer leaves in the photo above - how many fairies would it take to eat one ripe fig?

Apparently, the fairies didn't feel at home because they had no small benches to perch upon. The cute little caps of the live oak acorns weren't set out on tiny tables.

Pot feet that could be useful to fairies weren't placed in the secret garden but were stacked on shelves. Seashells from a vacation were kept inside a large plant saucer. How could the fairies use them if they weren't handy?

The consultant arranged shells, rocks, wood and terra cotta in a more pleasing way. She liked a heart-shaped rock and some tumbled glass mulch.

Some fairies don't mind manufactured items but these fairies are the Austin hippie type, disdaining all but natural materials ...the pot feet get by because they're clay

and the tumbled glass started out as silica sand.

The stars were cut from paper, which used to be wood.

It's possible that I won't see any fairies attracted by these efforts but I'll keep watch for traces of them dwelling in the secret garden.

The consultant rested on the bench for a moment, looking at her work.

I started to believe that there had been a fairy in my garden after all.

This post, "The Left Coast Garden Consultant", was written for my blogspot blog called The Transplantable Rose by Annie in Austin.