Another rainy weekend. Riley and I have been out in the garden doing the usual.

One advantage of a rainy, rainy summer is that all these lovely tall Flowers that usually don’t mingle with their shorter brethren are flopping down for late summer close ups. These bigger plants are so leggy after a season of so much rain and their blossoms are so heavy with actual raindrops that all the plants that aren’t staked are flopped over. That would be practically everything in the garden. Everything is flopping. That would be because nothing is staked. Despite all my best intentions and all those great green metal stakes I could buy, there just hasn’t been any staking going on. Zippo! Ergo, very little is vertical out there.

Here the formerly five foot tall Bee Balm visits with the two foot tall Autumn Joy Sedum. The Sedum is just beginning to think about blooming. The Bee Balm is just beginning to think about finishing its blossoming. They look like they were meant to nudge elbows but they weren’t. Notice all those lovely leaning stalks!

More flopping on the Sedum. I would if I could. It looks very inviting. Here a five foot tall Phlox takes advantage of the offered resting place.

Did you notice in that photo of Riley that the lawn is looking rather long? Sort of like the beginning of a hay field? Yup, that’s another thing that is looking leggy.

Jim experienced a miracle this last week. The lawnmower died. When he took it in to be serviced, the lawnmower guy reported so many other sick lawnmowers in the queue that Jim was assured it would be a good two weeks or more before a revived lawnmower would be returned into his hands.

This delay gave Jim a new lease on life. Up until the lawnmower collapse, any essay he wrote about HIS summer vacation would have been about mowing the lawn.

Our endless rain has meant that the lawn has needed to be mowed at least every five days ALL SUMMER LONG. Usually after these five days it was a tough mow of thick lush growth.

All this wet summer long, whenever Jim would get a distant and distracted look on his face, I would asking him what he was thinking about and he would tell me he was thinking about his next assault on the lawn. Often he would overshare with long descriptions of his next mowing strategy.

Even during a dry summer this lawn is a tough mow. As you might imagine, with all the odd shaped garden beds and zillions of shrubs, trees, and gewgaws I have planted, it is no easy thing to mow our lawn. It takes Jim at least three and a half hours and he can’t do any of it on a riding lawnmower. Its all fiddly bits circling trees and such.

Were Jim to film a horror film, he would probably include a scene with him mowing under the Larch tree. But for now, he’s been given a reprieve. He is enjoying a sleepy Sunday afternoon without the smell of gasoline in his nostrils or the roar of a small gas engine in his ears, an afternoon where the only noise is that of rain drops falling on flopping Flowers.

We decided to take overworked Rhino to Montreal for a mini break holiday. It was the least we could do for him after his long summer on dish duty. Montreal is a little over three hours from our farm. Rhino was game to drive up early Tuesday morning, wander the city for a day, spent the night in a hotel, and returned late the next day after more adventures.

Here he is on first arrival, fresh and ready for lots of walking.

Here’s Rhino on St Catherine Street leaving the three older Sheehan children to a shopping whirlwind. Will, Rhino, and their supervisory parental units had other plans.

They went to the rooftop hotel pool to chill.

Once revived, they could join the rest of the crew to beat the pavement again.

Gosh, it looks like we were the only people in Montreal in these shots. That’s what a Rhino does for you. Really clears the pavement!

Rhino even took in a museum.

Rhino particularly liked the “Il Modo Italiano” exhibit at the Musee des Beaux-Artes and insisted we get a shot of him in front of this vintage Alfa Romeo touring car.

But it was not ALL walking, shopping, and culture for Rhino. It didn’t take Rhino long to realize that this is a city that’s all about the food! Here’s Rhino looking at the view from the balcony of his new favorite bistro on Crescent Street, a street packed with restaurants.

Favorite sights in general for Rhino? Spotting this car, just his size.

And seeing the sartorial splendor of a city that loves its fashion.

After lunch today, I found Jim at the kitchen table with big bins of papers. He was leafing through heap after heap in a determined search for a particular farm document. He explained that he needed eight different pieces of information for a meeting he had later this week and he wanted to find at least one needed piece of information today. The rest, he said, could wait until tomorrow.

I suggested all eight documents could wait until tomorrow, noting what a strange thing it was to get worried about finding this document on a beautiful sunny afternoon. He said the things we got worried about at unusual moments was what made us individuals. He noted the weird way I had spent the morning. He had a good point.

A brush pile that had been down near the compost heap since LAST OCTOBER suddenly became my top priority. I was overcome with a BURNING NEED to move that pile. This pile had been there with more and more Ladies Bedstraw tangling it to the earth for almost ten months. It was not going anywhere and was almost invisible to all but the most observant and obsessive eye. Soon it was going to meld into the landscape so well it wouldn’t even need to be moved. But NO, I was going to move that pile this morning if it was the last thing I did. And when I clocked myself on top of the head as I heaved a big piece of brush into our truck, it looked like it might be my last moment. But it was not.

On one of my trips, I hooked William into riding shotgun. It was really fun to bounce across our hayfield in the truck to the bottom of the field where I was moving the brush. William was stellar at tossing the brush onto its final resting place without clocking himself as his mother had done.

Here he is getting ready to roll.

This thing about priorities….. I am a bit of a pinball out in the gardens. A long, long time ago I tried to be a list person. Plan. Color code with magic markers. Cross out with secondary colors. Mostly I found that I would put things on my list after I had already done the job so that it could look like I was making progress on my list.

Now its all a bit more random. I start with some idea of what needs to be done and usually this leads to other things. On Friday I decided to make Dilly Beans. I haven’t canned in about ten years. Just like that brush pile, suddenly those beans and my canning jars were calling.

I went out to pick the beans.

But I also needed garlic for the Dilly Beans. When I went to pull a head of garlic, I realized all the garlic needed to be pulled up. So I harvested the garlic with Riley at my side.

The Dilly Bean project was a success. I got a ridiculous amount of pleasure from lining jars of beans on Jim’s new pantry shelves. So today, after the brush pile activity, we did yellow Dilly Beans to compliment Friday’s green Dilly Beans. Because the water was hot and I had been leafing through my freezing and canning cookbook, I decided to can blueberries as well as yellow Dilly Beans.

This turned out to be the easiest canning ever.

While out picking blueberries, I saw our cat Mishka chase a wild turkey. This was perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Tiny toasted marshmallow colored Mishka leaping like a siberian tiger after a turkey several times her size. It took the squalking turkey a good fifty yards of running just ahead of Mishka before he remembered he could fly. He took off over me and I had the berries back to myself.

Because it was such a clear sunny day, I also made several Flower Essences. That is one area where I do make a list. I inventory all the mother Essences before the growing season and build a list of what needs to be made that season. The list is in a loose chronological order of bloom time. When we have a nice day, I look at this list and see what is blooming. Today I made Joe Pye Weed, the Fairy Rose, and Black Eyed Susan. I was lucky with the Fairy Rose because its just about to go by. But there was a beautiful branch of blossoms sitting right over the Arbor Garden pool just waiting for me today.

Did a little weeding too. After all my action shots of weed piles, I bet that surprises you!. Well here’s another one!

I also had to go over to admire the ripening peaches at frequent intervals. We have NEVER had peaches like this. I probably am asking for a hail storm the way I am so excited about the peaches.

Okay, I WAS tired after all this activity. Looking through a pile of papers at the kitchen table was sounding like a reasonable way to while away a Sunday afternoon. I decided to stop and settle down with a cup of tea and a book in the shade.

But the garden had plans of its own. One of the beehives swarmed. Suddenly about 60,000 bees were on the move. They formed an icicle of bees about 50 yards from the hive. The Angels told me to finish my cup of tea before going after the swarm. When I had finished my tea, I went down in the bee suit to move the swarm into an empty hive box, but the bees had started to move again! Lo and behold they went back to their original hive. I am so glad that they decided the grass wasn’t greener in another location and that I listened to the Angels about finishing my cup of tea. Angels move bees much better than people!

You may remember our rhino friend from an earlier blog. Rhino holds court in our kitchen where he reminds the younger children all the kids everyone under twenty five and their half zillion friends a cast of thousands from all walks of life to put their dishes in the dishwasher.

Here is our friend Rhino on the job yesterday AFTER the breakfast dishes had been dealt with (by Rhino’s friend the mother), but BEFORE the lunch rush.

And today, same time. This makes me Rhino wonder how many mid morning snacks do people need?

Let’s face it. Things are not going well for Rhino. He gets no respect. Job satisfaction is zilch.
He’d rather be….

Hiking small peaks.

Observing the Flowers.

Sunbathing in an adirondack chair with his girlfriend.

Frolicking with big game.

Visiting or napping with Riley.

Rhino has gone AWOL since I took these photos. He packed his bags and blew town to an undisclosed location. I may join him. No one will notice I am gone until all the clean dishes are used up. That should give me a good ten hour three hour forty minute head start!

It is very hot today. Part of the crew has settled into the Arbor Garden for the day to sort Red Shiso. This time of year we need to finish sorting the rest of the Red Shiso from last season so the building where we hang the Red Shiso is empty and ready for this year’s crop.

When we sort, we pluck and save only the most purple leaves from each stalk of the plant. It takes a long time to do but it’s the reason why our Flower Essences are pink. I just went out there to take this photo. Everyone was laughing. There was a bit of a breeze and it was nice and shady under the grape vines. The dogs, of course, were out there supervising.

Speaking of Red Shiso, so far, so good. The leaves look a nice deep maroon. We are hopeful that the crop will dry a deeper purple than last year’s crop which dried mostly green.

William, Jim, and Lizzy took a day last week to climb Mt. Liberty and Mt. Flume in the White Mountains. Will and Jim have decided to try and climb all 48 of the peaks over 4,000 feet tall. Here they are resting at the top of Mt. Liberty.

Here they are on Mt. Flume. Guess what number Mt. Flume is for the boys? Only 45 to go!

Back at the ranch, we are enjoying our new 3 bottle boxes. They look like Skittles and we love ’em.

In the office we do not climb mountains, we make them! Here is a small mountain of orders ready to fly out the door to you!

And because it is the summer of 2006, when it rains ( and it rains most every day) it pours and everything is about two feet taller than normal and sooooooo green!