Summer Stuff, and The Mystery Reveal

This has been the Summer of Fitness for this little family. The kids and I have been running and taking breaks with biking. We're feeling good. Phoebe and Liam are masters at spurring me and Bill to new heights. In this case, running haybales. It is much, much harder than it looks, and I am terrible at it. The hayrolls shift and roll under your feet and they're spaced just a tad too far apart for me, with  my 30" inseam, to feel comfortable leaping from one to the next in a single step, the way Phoebe and Liam are able to. 

I love this photo, from the mid-air capture of Bill's stride, to the overhanging and touchably close dark cloud, to the tiny figures of the kids. That's Phoebs and Liam waiting at the extreme left end of the hayroll line, cheering their daddy onward. For me, this photo is a big metaphor for the supreme effort of launching your kids into the world. You're doing absolutely all you can to scratch up the huge piles of money, not to mention the emotional wherewithal, to let them go. And the bales shift and roll underfoot. You just try not to fall, not to let them down.

And they're just smiling at you.

 Lookit Dad and Mom go. 

Whee! Lookit me go. 

Phoebe is soaking in her last few days at home. She and Chet Baker do a lot of cuddling, and they take selfies and leave them on my phone for me to find. 

The place is looking pretty amazing after a summer of well-timed substantial rains. We finally got a bit over an inch the night of August 11, after our first real dry spell. I was starting to water the gardens. When I heard the blessed rain lashing down at 3 AM, I sighed and smiled and crossed watering off my rather long to-do list. Thank you.

The Rudbeckia has exploded as it never has. Goldsturm, a rather invasive cultivar of the wildflower, Rudbeckia hirta, is just the thing for the parched soil along our garage. Let it go. Every once in awhile I pull up double handfuls of it to clear around a rose or lavender, but it can duke it out with the pink hibiscus. We'll see who wins. I'm betting on brown-eyed Beckie.

Liam and I are spending more time together in the car as I schlepp him to his ride to cross-country practice every afternoon. Sometimes we get to laughing helplessly. Actually, most of the time. Liam is SO funny.

 He was trying to text a grocery list to Bill on my phone. (Note that the only item on Bill's list was Epsom Salts. See photo above. Epsom salts are our friend.)

 Liam tried to type "Popsicles," but the phone knew better.

iPhones have their own skewed sense of humor and a vocabulary that comes from Mars, or perhaps Gomorrah. Pop cocked? Honestly, my phone will substitute the oddest things for the innocent words I really want. No! I'm not talking about body parts here! I never do in text messages!! Stop that! Damn you, Autocorrect!

Bill brought home the pop cocked  

popsicles and the Epsom salts and I collapsed into the tub, having thoroughly overdone it this past weekend. Chet Baker accompanied me as he always does, and stood half on, half off the scale staring at me. 

You get much better results if you leave a paw or two off the scale. Try it.

Lest you think that Chet is getting porky, he had just cleaned up his big evening bowl of kibble, and he has a bit of a food baby, which will resolve by mid-morning. We all get those.

I left you with a handful of myskeries in the last post, and I promised to tell you what they were.

No flippin' idea. Something nocturnal that eats a wide variety of insects, throwing up. I think. Screech owl, skunk, dunno. Never will. Sigh.

 Pellet from an Eastern bluebird, most likely. Fruit seeds and beetle parts. Could also be an Eastern kingbird pellet. Both cast them, and there's no way to tell for sure. But I'd bet on EABL. Not sure that kingbirds are taking a whole lot of fruit just yet. They switch over almost entirely to fruit on the wintering grounds, but probably aren't doing that yet.

 An unformed pellet, probably from a red-shouldered hawk. Mammal fur and bones, but something that looks suspiciously like a snake or turtle tail on the right side, as well. I know it looks like a dropping, but it is odorless and has no fecal matter in it. So this is probably junk from a red-shouldered hawk's crop. I've found two box turtles this summer that were opened by red-shoulders, as we had a pair nest successfully in our east valley. I would post the photos, because I find them interesting, but they make me too sad. I wish the red-shoulders would eat other things than centurion box turtles.

I told you this one. Old wax lips, which through the miracle of heat transform into lava lamp goo.

Leaf stems (petioles) of Sauromatum venosum, the Corpseflower or Voodoo Lily. Family Araceae. Makes a nasty smelling black spathe/spadix thing in May, right by my front door. Multiplies. So I pulled a bunch of it out. Removed the tubers and leaf tops to deepen the mystery. Here's the blossom (and Chet as a year-old pup!) in an old post, "Look, Darling, the Corpseflower is in Bloom!"  And much more information  and a sleek three-year-old Bacon in this post, "Digging the Corpseflower." 

OK--the big myskery. Regurgitated pellet of an American crow. At least, from the size and composition of it (fruit seeds and beetle parts), that's my best guess. They frequent the haybales; there's a family of five out there most of the time. It can't be a kestrel pellet because kestrels don't eat dewberries and blackberries. 

It isn't skunk poo because it was odorless and free of fecal matter. And a skunk would have a tough time getting atop a hayroll. 

Had to be the regurgitated pellet of a big bird that sits on haybales and is an omnivore. C'est voila. Crow. Don't feel bad. It took me 45 minutes in a deep brown study to figure it out. 

End of a Mojo Coconut Chocolate Chip Bar. And American Crow pellet. Be careful which one you grab, Zick. 

Phoebe and the Voodoo Lily

My kids trust me as their personal Ranger Rick, their guide to all things natural. I seldom trick them. But sometimes the temptation is too great. 

Phoebe and I rode our bikes over to tend to our neighbors' dog, Max. Max is 14 and he adores Phoebe.

She gives him the love he needs when he's staying home alone.

I used to pet-sit for all kinds of people when I was her age, too. She's good at it. Conscientious. Will set her alarm to feed him on time. Knows he needs to feel someone cares, and isn't just pouring food in a dish and walking away.

While Phoebs bustled around getting Max's food ready, I strolled through Sherm and Beth's garden. Like me, they love weird plants. I spied a voodoo lily in full bloom. Oh oh oh.

This member of the Araceae attracts flies and beetles by emitting a powerful odor of rotting flesh and cat poo. I moved over for a tentative sniff. Didn't smell anything. Took a deep breath and agggghhhh!! Sooo bad. Like sticking your nose in a litterbox. Worse. Flies buzzing all around. Eccchhh.

I swallowed my gorge and called to Phoebe. Hey Phoebs!! Come see this voodoo lily! It smells AMAZING!!

Phoebe hurried over, asked, "Does it smell good?" 

"It smells AMAZING!!" I repeated. I wasn't lying. The stench was awesome. 

She stuck her nose right down by the spathe and took a deep draught. Trusts her mama. And gave a strangled cry as she recoiled, covering her face with her hands.

She twirled away for a few yards, yelled, "I HATE YOU!!" and stood there shaking her poor little head. "It's stuck in my throat! It's burned into my nose! I hate you!!"

Ah ha ha ha ha. Little Science Chimp prank for ya there, girlie. Pay it forward.

I led her to these iris, which smelt of grape bubblegum. Almost all better.

She turns 18 tomorrow, this Child of Light. And she's gotten her biggest birthday wish, and he's been staying with us for a week.

Perhaps Phoebe's favorite skyline...PNC Park, home of the Pirates.

We kicked his visit off with a Pirates' game, against the AZ Diamondbacks. Here, they're walking across the bridge to the stadium. Liam is always included. I love that about these kids.

The game didn't go so well in the end, but we had fun.

The baseball park is a scene my family loves, but it's truly all too much for me. The organ music, the roaring crowd, the announcements, the flashing tickertape, the clapping and stomping. I get antsy and have to get out of there. I guess it's because my soundtrack of choice is crickets and birds, and my ears and senses are set to sort through all the natural music, identifying each singer. So when I get a wash of loud, random noise, I go on Tilt, like an old shaky hunting dog might.

I did enjoy watching the clouds sail like great clipper ships across that beautiful city skyline. Rough-winged swallows dipped and swooped on the infield.

We had a quintessential Pittsburgh moment--the pierogies, racing past the iconic Heinz ketchup bottle.

It's true--the moments I treasure most are when the kids and I are out in nature together. We've been doing some biking this summer, a bit of cross-training with all the running. It's astounding how many miles you can cover in a short time with a bicycle. I feel like a caveman, discovering The Wheel. Ten miles feels like nothing.

Whenever there's a hill, the kids get there first. I have to stop and take cow photos, anyway. 

We've befriended all the dogs on our routes. 

We look for pink chicory. I make them sit down with it, because I'm remembering a moment...

And I'm blasted back in time to the first pink chicory we found, and the ten-year-old who posed for me. It was in the same spot. The plants are still there.  But everything else has changed a little since July 10, 2007. What a difference seven years makes.

She's growing up now, and she's going to go soon, and we're going to have to make sure Liam's OK with that, that he gets enough love without his big sister handy by. 

I watch her starting her real life, and part of me wants to go along. A lot of me does.

 Happy birthday, beautiful bird. These hills will be waiting for you when you come home.

Digging the Corpseflower

The pear and the Russian prune hedge are just coming out; the forsythia's in full swing. Let's pray it doesn't freeze them all to black like last year. I don't trust God's rainbow promise. Spring in Ohio is usually brutal.

This is the time of year when the whitefly and aphids get so bad in the Garden Pod that trying to spray for them is like cleaning the house while the kids are around; like shoveling the driveway while it's still snowing. So I took advantage of a couple of warm thundery days last week to give everyone a two-day bath, washing the sticky aphid pee off the leaves, bumming out the whitefly colonies. I repotted plants that couldn't live another minute in their small pots, trimmed things back, groomed off the dead blossoms and leaves. And had to load everything back in when it dropped to the 40's Friday night. Sure enough, we had a mild freeze Monday night, which meant that I had to empty my linen closet to drape my 16' tall heirloom lilac with sheets. The whole garden looked like a yard sale, with sheets and pillowcases on everything. I'll stand out there with a space heater if it means I can save the blossoms this year. They all froze off last April 13. That is not going to happen this year if I have anything to say about it, because last spring nearly killed me.There is a terrible lot of biomass in that greenhouse by mid-April. Terrible. You can't even move in there without a clippers in your hand. But I've got to deal with it until at least May first.The bougainvilleas have done terrifically well this winter. I love these prickly old things, whether they're blooming or not. Good thing, because as soon as I set the pots outside, that's the last I'll see of flowers until next January. Go figure.

Sauromatum venosum, or corpseflower, is a truly icky plant. That's why I love it. A member of the Araceae, or jack-in-the-pulpit family, it has a long blackish-red spathe and a greenish spadix that it sends up in early summer from a bulb that can attain truly titanic proportions. The flower smells like something died. See my post, "Look, Darling, The Corpseflower is in Bloom!" from March 2006, when nobody but Mr. Gold Wow Powerleveling Runescape had much to say to me. The miracle of it all is that it's hardy over our Ohio winters. I plant it right near the front door so I won't miss it when it blooms, because that dark blackish-red color kind of fades into the background. This is the flower of a 1" bulb. You can imagine what a 6" bulb puts forth...Peeeee---yewwwww. But don't worry. The flower only lasts a couple of days. Then it sends up a single fantastic 2-3' wide pinnate leaf on a long stem that's speckled like a gecko. Sauromatum, with flowers that smell like rotting flesh, isn't for everybody, but the bulbs multiply and I've sent them to two similarly twisted friends already since I got my first, tiny bulbs from my friend Dave about three years ago. By the way, the rot smell is to attract fly and beetle pollinators. It works. I found the blossom among the hostas last year by following the smell and the sound of buzzing flies, expecting to find oh, maybe a dead raccoon. Mini-Baker fix, just so you know he's still alive and kicking. Sorry for the dearth of doggeh posts. I've been traveling and gardening (working like a mule). Bacon is still up to his old tricks.

I wanted to send a bulb to a special friend in New Jersey before they started growing for the spring, so I gingerly forked around where they were lying, dormant, under the soil. I was a bit concerned that all the tubers I dug up had soft gooshy spots, but I scraped out the rotten pulp until I got to firm living bulbflesh, washed the bulbs, and replanted them. I don't think there's much that's going to stop these things.
You can see where I scooped out the flank of the huge bulb. I still think it's going to grow fine; in fact it's already working on its flower. Weird enough for you, Chet Baker?
Mether. These are yucky. I am not a squeamish dog, but I have to wonder about a person who would plant something like this by her front door. There are other people in this house, you know. Namely me, Chet Baker. This bulb is bigger than my head. Do you remember last year, when I found the flower? Well, I thought it was something lovely to roll in, but it was only a plant.

Here's an excerpt from Scott D. Appell's wonderful writeup on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's web site:

This tuberous aroid, hailing from the Himalaya, is considered to be subtropical (tolerating a minimum temperature of 41°F) and technically has no place here, but I am including it because I cultivated a four-foot-wide colony of it in Columbus, Ohio (Zone 6), through decades of freezing hibernal Midwest temperatures. It could prove hardy for you too! Considered a horticultural novelty, the voodoo lily tuber will produce its purple-mottled shiny green spathe and purple-brown spadix on a windowsill even without soil or water. The early-spring inflorescence grows up to 15 feet tall and emits a profoundly strong smell of carrion. (When I grew the plant, it attracted every fly in the neighborhood. "Did one of your cats die?" a neighbor inquired.) After its inflorescence fades, each tuber produces a single dark green, two-foot-tall leaf divided into numerous lance-shaped segments. The leaves have puce leopard spots on their petioles, and in large clumps they make an impressive tropical foliar display. By midsummer, the foliage shrivels away, but in fall, clusters of attractive red berries appear. The tubers multiply rapidly, making propagation from offsets easy. Plant the tubers six inches deep in fertile, well-drained soil and partial shade. With adequate protection in the colder areas, the voodoo lily can be hardy from Zones 6 to 9.

He grew 15' tall voodoo lilies in his Columbus garden?? Sounds like a soulmate. Stand by. Pictures of flowers in May or June. I just hope I'm here for the blooming, because it comes and goes in a couple of days.