Late Summer in Murphy

 I did not wake up yesterday morning and think to myself, "how about making some chicken cacciatore for dinner" and yet, that is what I ended up making. Perhaps I wanted to celebrate Mr. Bruce feeling like himself again, after a Tuesday that found him mostly in bed?

Shocked is what you are probably experiencing as you read the above because aside from Covid our first December in the cottage, Bruce just does not get sick. Instead I get both of our share of illness! It seems to have been a 24 hour bug and he is good as am I. Hallelujah and amen to that.

The chicken was good despite the fact that I have not made that dish in years. I wonder why I waited so long? 

Speaking of years, oh my goodness! Old blog post HERE. I was making note of my 701st blog post back in 2010. Call me amazed when I read that post, and you should too by the way, that I was praising to the hilt a book called Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. Matt read it too and we both could not believe how good it was. Well, if you can imagine, and I suspect you can, I am currently reading a book I got from our local library, two streets away from here, and one of the blurbs on the back of the book is from him! What are the chances that I would come across that blog post yesterday? Slim, my friends, slim. Tommorow There Will be Apricots  is what I am reading. Somewhat emotionally draining which is fine after the fluff book I mentioned in my last post. What I had no idea about is that she turned that book into a little series, so there were others who were entertained, or so it seems.

Whew, let's put in a pretty picture! About time!

While I am not complaining, heretofore there has been a shortage of butterflies for me to ogle. No longer friends. The one above was from Sunday when we finally went to The Crowne for brunch following church. Matthew gave Bruce a gift card for his birthday (5/18!!!) and we surely had taken our sweet time going there. You may recall that restaurant as the site of the wedding in June. 

The garden that serves the restaurant has grown significantly since we were last there and was producing loads of shishito peppers that the owner was picking while I was taking butterfly photos!

With only one plant it is hard to amass too many at one time, but ours are coming along, as is our okra!

And strawberries!! Usually because, again, one plant, I leave them for the birds.

I do love their little pink flowers. On the subject of pink flowers, one of my dahlias!! I love those flowers and I still cannot get over that I put a seed in the ground and voila!

I know that sounds silly, but it is so miraculous to be involved in the process of bringing beauty into the world! 

We take no credit for most of our plantings as they were here when we arrived, but what I will take credit for is appreciation. I am all about counting my blessings and our landscape is full of things to be thankful for.

Rose of Sharon is in the hibiscus family and talk about a prolific bloomer. The tree that split in two is still producing great numbers of flowers in two cycles . It is astonishing. 

Here is a look at the garden in late summer. (yellow dahlias!!) upper right.

It takes a sharp eye to notice that the bean plants are winding their way around the handrail with beans coming along nicely. The herbs are all fantastic and just this week I planted new broccoli plants!! The amount of sun hitting the garden has changed dramatically since I started in late March with plenty of sunshine happening now. Perhaps it would be better to have lots of sun earlier in the year and now when it is so hot, less? I'm still learning! Aside from the mosquitoes, I just love it! 

I've got some insects for you.  A Katydid on the front porch column. 

Bruce spotted this scary guy in the church parking lot. 

That would be an Eastern Hercules Beetle with that scary looking horn in the front.  

Isn't it fun coming across things you've never seen before or rarely see? That beetle is a case in point, however I have to admit it would not be anything I would want to touch. Bruce did pick it up and it had a hard shell. Two days ago I was walking home from the library and thought perhaps I would go around the block to our home and was I ever glad I did because the sun was shining brightly and I was not sure what I was seeing up ahead and then it became clear it was a hawk. A small hawk.

Merlin identified a Red Shouldered Hawk in the vicinity earlier in the morning, a rare occurrence. The truth is I heard it myself, but I'm giving Merlin credit nonetheless. One would think I could identify lots of birds by their call, but one would be wrong.  I do, however, at least recognize the call of a hawk as it not only distinctive and plentiful in Orlando.

It was not until I was able to use my bird id that I discovered that this small hawk is actually a Cooper's Hawk that was kind enough to pose for me before flying into a nearby tree.

And that, my dear friends is why I always carry a camera!

An absolute gem of a rose lives on that same street where I saw the hawk.

My zinnias are very tall and very covered with powdery mildew that I have been unable to stop from multiplying. I read somewhere about spraying with diluted milk, however, that does not seem to have worked at all! Bruce raised the bird feeder, as I mentioned and it is six feet about the ground now which gives you an idea about how tall the zinnias are! 

Too bad there are no hummingbirds on the feeder in the picture above but I will tell you that they have been plentiful this year.  Note the addition to the pole. I caught Lucifer looking longingly above his head, but so far it is too tall for even the likes of that crafty cat.

The hummingbirds feed on the zinnias but until two days ago I'd not seen a butterfly on them until two days ago when I jumped up from my lunch, telling myself to not get my hopes up as I reached for my camera from it's bag by the front door on the coat rack. Generally birds scatter when they hear the door open but not so with this butterfly with a torn wing.

Come to think of it, Dolly Parton died that day. Of course I needn't include her last name because she is one of those unforgettable persons that has done so much good in the world, she is recognizable by only her first name. We have yet to visit Dollywood which is just 100 miles of roads with more curves than you can shake a stick at. Friends have gone though and say it is beautiful and who is surprised by that?

We did an errand yesterday and drove home on some roads we'd not used before which is something we need to do more often because there are lots of interesting things going on around here. This was quite the sight. He had just finished putting feed out alongside the road and looked up and waved when I took the photo.

Those are some fancy chickens, aren't they?

Bruce has been working on all kinds of projects for the church in his role as chairmen of the trustees. Whew...it is a lot, but anyone who has worked with Bruce in the past knows that he does not know how to not put in a lot of effort. It is in his DNA. Good thing I am used to it!

I wish I saw more Carolina Chickadees because they are as cute as a button.

Being the citizen scientist that I am (haha), my bird count was but six this morning, down from at the height of summer, in the 15-18 range. As has been said before, I am learning what birds are here in what months. Plus I am tracking the times of the sunrise and sunset which I know can be done with a phone but it is just as handy, if not more so, to open a notebook with your own handwriting and see what you want to see.  Practicing my handwriting is part of the process because I find when I do need to write something my handwriting is deplorable. 

It's a good thing I know how to type!!

your friend,

Gail

Mostly About Plants

Sometimes vignettes just appear before me, this being one of them. Red fence, mountain laurel, several shades of green--what's not to like?

So yes, I did come across this, but what my intention was on that afternoon was to find the source of the loud chirping I was hearing in the lane. Lo and behold, luck was with me that day. This is a pair of House Wrens, birds that I rarely see, but there they were, really almost out the back of our yard 

Loud as can be, it was not but a few days later that they went out on their own. I think they might be coming to our feeders now and if not, some look-alikes are. As in small brown birds.  It is astonishing how many birds we are attracting at the moment, including one of my favorites and definitely not a regular, but welcome nonetheless, a Eastern Towhee with a little sunflower seed in his mouth. 

Here's something that is a little bit amusing, or some might find it so. My bean harvest to date.

Green beans are said to be easy to grow, however I had a heck of a time getting them to sprout, thus one plant and four beans to date. Unlike my romaine lettuce that grew too big and with the constant wet weather of last week, that I wrote about here, began attracting slugs, thus I did a big clean up of the garden and pulled all of the lettuce leaves off.

Whether it was a good idea or not, for a different reason I also clipped off all the bottom leaves on the cabbage plants. And what would that reason be, you ask? They were so large and were shading the burgeoning cucumber plants. The four cucumber plants are now flowering, the broccoli is forming new little plants, and there are tomatoes on the vine. Aside from some "pest pressure", I am overall pleased with how things are progressing.

The rainfall since last I wrote has diminished somewhat, yet still the threat of rain has loomed meaning finding the right time for Bruce to paint the parking lot with a new directional sign using a giant stencil he made using a large cardboard box, was tricky. 

Buying a stencil that large was not in the budget, so he got creative.

Unfortunately, people are still coming in the wrong direction, but he did what he could. Note the looming clouds pictured above and about two hours later it looked like this!

Not a whole lot later, the clouds opened up wide.

As I have mentioned before, hard rain is not that common here; instead it is slow and steady, however on that day, it came down hard and fast!

That same day, while waiting on Bruce, I met the new pastor and his wife and son who were coming to Murphy for the first time. Porter, aged four, is as cute as a button. A catered lunch was held on Sunday following church for Pastor Wil, Lea, Nathaniel, and Norah. 

Nathanial, aged nine, was still just a baby when they came to Murphy, but now he is a budding preacher because he took the mic at the after event with no nerves at all.

Mayor Tim Radford spoke as well because Wil was such a presence in the community. Saying that they will all be missed is an understatement!

Weren't we supposed to be focusing on plants? The title says it so it must be true.

I was a little greedy, thinking I could separate the plant above (Paristemon), and by golly I seemed to have done it with success as two of the three are now in the ground. Whether they will make it is another story, but I'm thinking that if they were going to die, that would have already happened..

Lavender in pots on the front steps, 

and Autumn Sage, a very fragrant plant, adjacent to the front door. 

I keep buying more plants, in part because I can, and in part because so many are new to me I want to see if I can grow them successfully. 

So cute, right?

Hummingbird's Lunch Cigar Flower and Strawberry Fields Gomphrena are two newish plants in one pot near the hummingbird feeder because they are meant to attract the same.

Speaking of hummingbirds, sightings to date have been few and far between, but every now and again, a little gift of seeing one happens. One morning I was captivated by the antics of one on this plant below.

Keeping a garden notebook is helping me keep these new names straight! What in the world did I do in the winter because I sure was not tending to plants? 

One thing I have not done as much of lately is walk on the river walk, but yesterday afternoon I corrected that, in spite of the warm weather which we all know I am not a fan of. The depth of color, as well as the shades of green when I was at the park made me think of a book I once loved, How Green Was my Valley. No coal was mined around here, as far as I know, but talc was, as well as marble that still is  being mined.

Anyone else read that book and love it like I did? That was a long time ago for sure, but it just popped into my head. There was a small flock of Starlings that would all fly off at once, in a very mini-murmuration. It's fun to watch that sort of thing and try to catch it with your camera. I failed miserably, but I did get this one shot that if you look closely you will see them all lined up on the fence top.

Something else that caught my eye that was something entirely new to me.

I have no idea what happened, but the butterfly seemed to be trapped and never moved while I watched and waited. So strange.

According to my notebook, this garden experiment began on March 5, 2026, and I've learned more than I can imagine with a little help from our friends on YouTube, as well as friends who have gardened here for years.  It's very common here and you know what they say..."when in Rome" . Yup, that's me.

your friend,

Gail