Celebrating Spring in Vermont

The sun is out and desperate Vermonters soak up the rays; breathe in crisp, fresh air; and dream of green!

Here Griff has decided to get his chair even closer to the sun! It's a great place to get a little reading done...


A second day of blue skies is helping snow to slide off the roof and icicles to drip into longer cones.

Can mud season be far away?

Boston Flower Show

On the Ides of March Margery and I got up in the wee hours of the morning, left my house at 7, and drove to Boston to see the annual Flower Show. (My camera doesn't always know what day it is. Pictures labeled 14 were taken on the 15th.)  Most of the gardens featured running water. Here it streams off a patio roof.

I liked this whimsical rock owl. There were other "rock" birds and some living ones as well. Two cranes had a fairly large enclosure with a pond.

There was also a very stylish chicken coop! The chickens wouldn't be able to escape, but the gaps in the fencing would allow all sorts of unwanted creatures to enter and feast on the chickens. The design was interesting, but I wasn't impressed with its execution (pun intended). 

There were two pairs of Australian parrots...a red pair and a yellow pair...gorgeous coloring.




Pottery mushrooms popped up in lots of the gardens. One of the vendors sold them in sets of 3.

I wondered if in France, Mireille would be interested in diversifying her sale items. The mushrooms are really just upside down bowls balancing on fake stems. I'd love to see some similar shapes in Blanot blues and browns! Mireille would make the color patterns far more interesting as well.


Vermont is still having winter and there is plenty of snow by my home and Margery's, so we get excited about seeing tulips and daffodils at this time of the year...


And there were glass flowers...maybe for people who can't grow real ones? Certainly not for folks with kids, cats, dogs or wild critters that might meander through their gardens... 

Yup. There really were chickens in the coop (above).

For this garden, the "benches" were also a walkway through the pond. The tall rock isn't carved. It is actually a flat surface covered with small tiles that have been painted to create a face.


In past years there have been real fish in a few of the ponds. This year the fish were floating through the flowers...

(My camera finally figured out the correct date, but I'm not necessarily using the pictures in order.)

A Buddha statue substitute

When the fellows get tired of weeding, they can play with their balls...

My first husband had a greenhouse full of cymbidium orchids of all colors. Then he turned off the heat and let them all die. This cymbidium won a blue ribbon.

Part of the show is a judging of individual plants.

Another room was filled with flower arrangements that fit all sorts of categories. A few, based on using trash in a creative manner, were out with the garden displays...

At the top, this one has flowers stuffed into old metal lamp shades. Once again, fish are floating amongst the flowers...

The arrangement to the left, which I should have gotten more of into the picture, had pieces of paper rolled up as a shelf of cornucopia.


Below, the "vase" is actually a couple of old springs, probably from a car.

Margery went to the first lecture which was about starting plants from seed. I met her at the next lecture. It was about the importance of turning garden and lawn spaces into native plant habitats so that native species, especially insects, have a place to live.

We found a food vendor who wasn't swamped with customers and settled on a bench to relax over lunch.

Then Margery and I attended a demonstration about bee keeping. That was both informative and funny, but I'm not ready to add bee hives to my gardens just yet.

Our last lecture was about growing roses in New England. I talked with the lecturer before the program began so he knew I was from Vermont and in a tough climate for roses. Sure enough, he talked about sustainable roses...hardy, and some even hardy enough for my yard, as well as not needing pesticides. I bought his book. Later that afternoon I was grateful to have something to read, but I'm jumping ahead of myself...

Margery and I left our jackets in the car so that we wouldn't have to carry them around all day or pay to have them held for us. This was great during the day, but turned out to be something we were sorry for later.

We toured the aisles of vendors, but weren't big spenders. Margery bought some herb plants and even found French lavender. By the time I got to that booth, what she had bought was gone, but they did have a few lavender plants from Provence. I expect it will have to be an indoor/outdoor plant for Vermont.

This year they didn't have the variety of seed potatoes that I usually purchase...less to carry home.

(below) I liked the idea of using an old metal table as a large pot for shallow root plants...

Another good reason to garden!

 I'd like to transplant the picture above to my own yard. Later, it was a surprise to find a winter scene...

Maybe we should have seen this snow as an omen of things to come.  Around 4 o'clock we decided to head for home. The car was about 3 city blocks away so it wasn't too bad walking along the harbor in the wind to get there. Just a tad chilly.

Here Margery is fishing through her pocketbook for the car keys. And this is where the real adventure began! Even after emptying her purse, Margery couldn't find the keys!

We returned to the Flower Show, but the car keys had not been turned in to the office. I settled on a bench to watch our stuff while Margery went off to check all the places where she might have dropped the keys. No luck. Fortunately, she had a cell phone. It was time to call Gary for the number of their car service company.

From what I gather, Gary contributed a few colorful words along with the phone number.

The car service said it would take them 85 minutes to reach us! I was lucky. I got to keep warm on that bench.

Margery went out to wait by the car.

Behind me were these 3 rock birds.
 
Below is the view from my bench.

What I didn't know at the time was that her rescuer arrived in an unmarked car, didn't see her staying out of the wind behind a large SUV, and so he left! She finally called again. This time it would only take them 45 minutes to show up! Meanwhile, the SUV drove away and the sun disappeared.

A bus driver had been watching and took pity on a very cold Margery. She got to sit in his bus for the last part of her wait. Sure enough, the keys were in the car trunk!

I did a lot of people-watching and a bit of reading in my rose book. I wanted to get some water, but I didn't dare leave the bench and its location near the front entrance.

It was nearly 8 PM when Margery showed up at the entrance, waving for me to hurry. I knew she had to be illegally parked!

This was our view of Boston as we left the harbor. One bridge we went over was lit up in blue...

but I couldn't find the right button to press on the camera until we were practically over the darn thing!

Once beyond Boston, we stopped for dinner. Corned beef and cabbage was on the menu for Saint Patty's Day. I ordered that...there was none left so I ended up with fish...but that led to a great conversation with our waitress and made for an enjoyable mealtime.

On the road again. We ran into snow squalls and began seeing cars in the ditches. We slowed to a crawl and at the first chance got off the main highway. It was safer on the side roads. Local snowplows were on the job! Margery pulled into my driveway about 1 AM. She still had another half hour of driving to get herself home.

I maintain that all of this was Gary's fault because he is so super frugal that, when he bought the car, he wouldn't pay extra for the kind of car key that locks the car doors. If Margery had had to lock the doors with the key, she would have known that she didn't have the key! But that's okay. Now I have something to razz Gary about. And I'll be chuckling about this adventure for many days to come. 

Meatball & Marley

Frankie went to another foster home and within a week he was adopted by a family with 2 pre-teenage boys...dog and boys fell in love...even a puggle can find the right home.

When Frankie left, Meatball arrived. He was a sweetie. His only problem was his eyes which required medication several times a day. Meatball wasn't thrilled about drops in his eyes, but he would patiently put up with the attention.

He had a strange way of sitting; his rump seldom made it to the floor.

Meatball was fascinated by the smell of our cat and in the beginning he lunged at her a couple of times. She soon discovered that he couldn't see very well so she was perfectly safe on any chair. We also discovered that if we meowed like a cat, Meatball would come running! He must have been a little mixed up about his identity because, when he was content, he actually purred.

Before a week had passed, Meatball was adopted. There was only Jake, William, and Jennie around the house so I took advantage of the peace and quiet. The kitchen and dining room got mopped and the dining room floor got waxed as well. The shop-vac came out of the closet and suctioned up anything that wasn't nailed down. Dirt and dog hairs were gone!

Then Marley arrived. He's a 5 month old puppy who immediately adopted Jake as his older brother.

When Marley first arrived he tried marking in the house so I couldn't let him run around. Then I learned about belly-bands. There is half of a baby diaper in that belly-band so sprinkling is impossible.

The "boys" wanted to be with me while I worked at my computer so I brought the dog bed into my nook and they settled in. They are adorable.

Marley gets neutered on Monday and he will be adopted on Wednesday.