Beautification Committee plant sale

 

The Monte Vista Hotel hosted the Annual Plant Sale of the Beautification Committee of Black Mountain. It is on W. State Street.

The following photo is a description of my gardenia (the new one, which has small flowers abundantly)

Appalachian Creek Nursery is usually at the Tailgate Market on Sat...I wonder if they were in both places this weekend!

The Monte Vista Hotel

I have a few more photos, which I'll post tomorrow!

Today's Quote:

Knowing is a veneer our minds create and lay over the landscape like a painter’s drop cloth set upon a forest floor. Its uniformity protects us from the pine needles and beetles, but it also obscures them, as well as the soft moss, fragrant soil, and teeming complexity of nature’s bed.

GREGORY KRAMER

Birthday blooms

 

Cathy gave me this bush laden with buds for my birthday (at lunch last week!)

The new gardenia has a place of honor on the corner of the porch, where the most sun will shine on her.  The old gardenia bush in is in the foreground, and shows that fertilizer does make for healthy leaves. 

And within a week (actually Sunday 8/29) there are all these flowers starting to open!

So one delightful bloom came inside to give me whiffs of her scent at my desk. I am enjoying both the outside ones and the inside one this way!

Today's quote:

There is nobody else like you in the world and this is worth celebrating, rather than searching for faults.

Still producing blooms!

 

The scraggly petunia has some blooms still. Maybe it will be better looking after Aug. and all the hot weather. Of course it has all it's flowers closed up as we sit in continuous rain from Fred and stuck low pressure fronts.

Just about open...maybe a late gardenia. I waited another day, and then brought it indoors.

It is pretty simple...but I love to have the scent of it. Such an enjoyable experience.

I've made a decision. Big decision for me. No more eating unmasked outdoors. And I'm wearing 2 masks overlaying each other to hopefully keep out that darn Delta variant. Plus tomorrow I'll get a booster since I got shots way back in Jan and Feb. This is due to the upswing of COVID cases in my state. I'm back into home eating again, or using take-out. 

Today's quote:

We can discover the meaning in life in three different ways: 1) by creating a work or doing a deed; 2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and 3) by the attitude we take toward suffering.”

“If one cannot change a situation that causes his suffering, he can still choose his attitude.” ~ Viktor Frankl (Prison-camp survivor)

It' gardenia time

The sweet little gardenia bush has a zillion buds. I pick a few of the early flowers, and share them with friends in the neighborhood...as well as have a few around the house.

As I put my nose deep into a blossom, I deeply inhale. And there, a bit of that sweet fragrance. I wish my nose still worked better, but there are moments when I enjoy the smell that has never been used in a perfume (that I know of.)

She's Baaaack

 There are tiny hostas pushing up from last year's hump of leavings. And a couple of dandy-lions in the grass.

 Another bunch of hostas is coming up next to my porch. The bareness is blessed by them and my little Gardenia bush (potted) and the funny St. John's Wort dead plant (I think) which is so artistic that I left it on the porch all winter. I know, it's also saddening.

But as I go up the steps, I notice the little azaleas are about to bloom. They face north, so are retarded in their blooms. And the bush used to be huge but was trimmed to almost nothing a few years ago by the landscape crew. No comment.

A gardenia without a brain

 It was very late blooming this spring...

 And now that it's getting cool again!

I gladly picked the first bloom and have loved smelling it on my bedside table.  I find taking several deep breaths clears my sinuses or whatever enough I can enjoy the scent.

Happy Solstice dear friends

I don't have a ritual this year for this high holy day of yore.

It may be called Mid-Summer, but the calendar calls it First Day of Summer.

My elder friend from Denmark tells of sitting by the shore late into the night with a bonfire on the rocks or on rafts that floated out to sea.

Apparently other countries do "pole dancing" as well as jumping bonfires.  I've always associated these dances with the May Day or Beltain celebrations.  I must have more Celtic roots than they do.

Whatever you do, try to spend some of the time in a natural setting, with stars overhead, and maybe lightning bugs blinking around the trees and bushes.

And remember all life is connected, so just as the stars shine on us, we can shine to others.

Take a deep breath, smell whatever you have in your environment that feeds your lungs, your spirit.  That's why it's called in-spir-ation.

Happy Solstice.