OilMan's World

OilMan gets up before I do most mornings, and by the time I appear, he's made his 'To Do' list for the day. I dream up chores for him to do and he puts them on his list. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, as it has been lately, I join him out there, but he is the brawn and the green thumb of the operation. He would be quite happy working out there all day every day. Dana has been the mastermind behind redesigning parts of the garden so that they look a little softer and a lot more flowery. She has helped OilMan far more than I have. 

My Italian neighbor came by and traded me a container of homemade tiramisu and a jar of her father's home cured olives for some oranges and rucola. While I was up getting the oranges I paused for a moment to enjoy the sounds and scents of OilMan's garden. He deserves a lot of credit for all his hard work and he doesn't always get it.

The sky was full of vultures circling on the thermals and looking surprisingly elegant. A mockingbird went through its medley several times in a nearby tree.I love listening to these birds, but I always hope that they will move on because they won't hesitate to go through the same medley all night long.There are more swallows than I have ever seen, swooping through the sky, catching bugs on the wing. And there are more bugs than I have ever seen. Clouds of them. Mr. Frog, who was hanging out at the base of the back fountain must have found himself a girlfriend at last, because his mournful 24/7 croaking has abated. 

The roses are all blooming wildly in blowsey masses and delicate little buds. There are yellow and pink, ones and a dramatic dark purple one. OilMan has a complicated fertilization schedule that he got from a neighbor, and they certainly do seem to thrive on all the TLC, not to mention all the rain. They smell lovely.There are also bearded iris, coneflowers, poppies, sweet peas, salvias, lavenders and several things I don't know the names of.

The thing that looks like a covered wagon is one of the three raised beds which stay covered until there is no fear of frost. It is the only one with a cover now and contains my dahlias and zinnias. The other two have tomatoes, peppers and zucchini. There are always some potatoes somewhere, and I can see some tomato cages in the little raised bed behind the yellow rose bush.There is a whole blip to be written about raising tomatoes around here, but that will have to wait for another day.

The Agave spike is now at least twenty feet tall and when I went out to look at it today I could see the branches beginning to sprout from the bottom of it. I tried to take a picture of the branching spikes, but they are still somewhat hidden among the leaves. I put one picture of it in the extras, just to give an idea of what a show it is. The new shoot is a dark red/brown down among the leaves to the right of the center spike.