I had to run into town today on my day off to do some training at work, and
I gave
Rose the go ahead and told her "lets go, Rose, get in the car" and she was
out the door before me with that dawg smile on her face. I got into the
car, rolled down the window for her and slowly pulled out of the driveway,
smelling the intense fragrances of the open dragon lilies that all popped
open day before yesterday in a flurry of wings, petals and aeroma's. The
garden is a jumble of chaos and growth, the heat has arrived to make
the perennials pop even faster, now that the unseasonable cool days seem to
be over.

The mountains to the south of me are shrouded in morning mists still, and I
can't see them, and I see Miz Mary has, in her unusual need to mow as much
as
she can, has hired her lawnmower man to start on the unmowed pasture on the
north.
But that isn't a good thing because I see the "path" he has taken towards a
clump of woody, scrubby area west is the precise spot the wild turkeys are
nesting. Ahh well, the chicks are probably long moved by now.

Rose and I pull out to the paved road and head up the rising hill that wraps
around us on the west and north, and since this is a leisurely drive and I'm
in no hurry, I take advice from the dog and cruise and enjoy the day and the
wind in my face. I start noticing the signs of Summer.

All along side the roadsides, the remnants of spring is still evident.
White wild daisies in clumps, but intersperced amongst these bits of white
spots all along the country road, are huge swaths of fallen sky, and fuzzy
floating heads of little mini clouds suspended on tall stems. Fallen sky?
You know by now that means the Chickory is blooming right up to the edge of
the asphalt and concrete and it's sky blue. But with all the rains we've
had there seems to be more than I remember last year.

And with the oncoming heat, another reminded that it's almost summer grabs
my eye as we sail past dragging the white daisies and blue chickory behind
us. The flames reach up towards us on either side the whole way into town,
screaming orange, heads straining to rise up and over the road. The ditch
lilies are out in full force. The color combinations have never been this
way before. Usually the white daisies are long gone and THEN the blue
chickory and orange daylilies start. But I see there are MORE arrivals and I
carefully take in everything I can. This is a different day.

There are flat saucer sized heads of soft white Queen Anne's Lace and spikey
purple punks of thistles in knobby attendence everywhere rising several feet
above the oranges and blues and whites. The heads of the thistles are so
silly looking, but I know they are insidious and bristly, and too close and
one would be seriously stuck by fine thorns. I enjoy their appearances
never the less. They are a smile for me and my mind.

As we round a nice curve and turn onto a straighter road, I notice that
everywhere there is a hillside pasture, it looks as if the hillside is
broken out in wierd, man made chicken pox like bumps. Tan, flattened on the
sides, everywhere and in a bounty that makes the hillsides look infected,
it's the round hay bales. It actually makes me laugh at the sight of them
dotting the hillsides everywhere. I also catch myself thinking of chenille
bedspreads.............Remembering how I would grab one of the tufts of
cotton and pull and oh hell the whole thing would start un-doing right
before my eyes and I knew I'd catch it when my mother saw the empty spot. I
picture someone reaching down and pulling one golden knob and the whole
hillside coming unraveled.........g

There was even a pasture where there was so many bales of hay, the farmer
has stacked them like huge rolls of coins along side of each other. Like
great golden tubes of hay, he'd gotten creative and after placing them end
to end, he'd then stacked another row next to that, and then stacked yet
another row between the two making a hay triangle. Wierd and wonderful at
the same time.

The naked scars of rising pastures that now are pieces of yards that were
scraped of weeds and scrub and houses plunked down sprout Johnson grass and
Bermuda. There is a spot where the red clay has bled down the bulldozed
opening that will be another driveway and I see chickory has already laid
claim to a corner and is blooming. You just can't stop Mom's Nature in her
attempt to cover the whole earth with flowers, bushes and trees..........

As we careen past the visuals, red jumps out at me, and my eye snatches up
the image and I remember to look when I drive past it and later I discover
it's a stray red corn poppy. Another visual is the clump of bright
sunshine yellow that is right on the edge of the cement, and that is yellow
primroses that have decided to pop up there for some reason. Nowhere else,
but right there. But another nice arrival I have noticed lately is the
yellow tickseed flower fairies have been having a field day since the
wildflower sowings have started in earnest around cities and towns near
exits on interstates and medians.

My last trip thru Knoxville towards Nashville was a nice surprise with the
diversity of flowers each town sowed. But the laughter that came was the
drifts of coreopsis that shown like sunrays fallen onto the pavement and
lingered at the edges to light the shoulders of the roads.

As Rose and I pulled out into the main street in town, I noticed Canna's
were starting to put blooms out early, and mimosa trees were already puffing
out. The pink Mexican primroses that grow wild along roadsides were also
popping up in some older folks yards, and the yarrow is blooming where
gardeners have deliberately planted it.

Roses are now showing up, and I see tall spikes of old fashioned hollyhocks
in yards, and the pokers have come and gone already.

All these are Summer signs of blooms. Since working at the nursery at
Lowes, and knowing what we have more often than usual (and here I thought I
knew when they got every perennial..........I didn't have a CLUE) I notice
now who has given in to temptation and bought what. I see yards with clumps
of those bright orange asian lilies, or the red ones, and I know they got
pots of them from us. I also feel smug to know that there are a few of us
that have trumpet lilies in bloom now instead of the asians, but I also know
the older gardeners are looking forward to their old fashioned freckled
tigers to open soon.......

As Rose and I pull into the parking lot, I see just next door where there is
still a farm and quite a bit of land set back next to the Lowes above it
riding the hot air currents, three buzzards. I love it..........Just down
the road the other day I pulled into a Food Lion parking lot and scattered
about 300 seagulls and I laughed so hard I had to put the car into park
until I quit laughing. This was 14 miles west in Jefferson City, another
little town near where I live. Seagulls in an Appalachian hill area, land
locked but with lakes on either side.

I left Rose to sit leaning against the armrest and looking cool, and went
inside and did my training. An hour later it was still cool outside and I
was thru and I was back telling Rose what a good girl she was for watching
the car, poured her some cold well water into her bowl, and we headed home.
She was ready to ride again and hung her head down over the door out the
window.

This time we took the more usual road over the railroad tracks and I noticed
more chickory, and in some good moist spots, orange clumps of Butterfly weed
and black-eyed Susans mingled in with the Queen Ann's, and blue sky chunks
and the ditch lilies.

As we crest the hilltop above where we live, I look over at her and she's
smelling the air and knows we're close to home and I notice the house that
has 5 horses in their huge front pasture/yard with the fruit trees has
loaded apple trees this year. The apples hang on all the trees like huge
green ornaments. I can see the horses in my mind eating those apples later
on right out of the trees.

The road drops down and wraps around the hillside with a window view of
English Mountain and Douglas Lake that always makes me stop and breath it
all in, then I dip down and take the curve, straighten up, shoot up the
deadend road, and slow down to see what Barney the mule is doing, glance
towards those mountains again thru the other window of land, and shoot up
the steep dead end road to come to a smooth halt on the level spot at the
end of the pavement. Check the mail, don't circle around Miz Mary's turn
around, but pull in, past the now bloomed out Acacia trees (pink locust),
stop the car and let Rose out to pasture and check out the smells in the
waist high grasses, and notice the patch of bachelor buttons that popped up
at the edge of the pasture just off the driveway and then the deep purple
larks spur and the yellow cinquefoil that Miz Mary has her mower man mow
around. (She loves all flowers and trees).

Thru the tangle of jungle that is now at the gate, my poppies that Helen
sent me seeds for sifted thru the chain link fence and some of the largest
ones are blooming in the pasture side. The rest are uncurling along the
fence where I originally sowed them. You see them as you pull up to the
gate. The Zebra grass is up to five foot tall, with the crepe myrtle leafed
out and above all that, the sherbert colored trumpet vine has made an
umbrella shape this year and is already in bloom.

The country roads today looked like summer quilts, with all their textures
and expected and unexpected flowers in bloom along them. My gardens are
bursting at the seams....... The jumble and ruckus of Fairy Holler is for
another time. I will catch you up on the going's on later.

thanks for allowing me to share a little bit with my friends out there. I've
missed you all. Another time then,
madgardener up on the ridge, back in Fairy HOller overlooking English
Mountain in Eastern Tennessee, zone SEVEN, Sunset zone
36................(we've gained a new zone!)