Long Weekend Discoveries

I have had a long weekend, seemingly full of discoveries. Brian and I found a wonderful old farm in Brunswick, Mapleside Farm, where you can pick your own pumpkins, bag your own apples and pears, take hayrides, go through an acre of corn maze, buy all manner of local jams/jellies/honeys/etc., and grin and the large number of tiny children who feel as though they really should be able to pick up pumpkins that weigh almost as much as they do.

I discovered that if you are patient enough not to rip out your late-planted Roma tomatoes in September, you can harvest enough ripe and ripening tomatoes in October to fill (3) 13x9 and (2) large roasting pans. (The tomatoes may be a little mealy in comparison to the texture of tomatoes harvested earlier, but they are more than fine for sauce and that's why I planted the Romas in the first place.)

I also discovered the old saying that "stolen" plants grow better than gifted ones is possibly true. The variegated iris I dug up from grandma's garden without asking again (I did have a blanket offer for more of these in the spring, however) are already doing much better than the ones that disappeared on me last summer:

I have discovered that my 'Dortmund' rose has dainty little orange hips in the fall:

I have discovered that some seeds, like these nicotiana sylvestris, are too tiny for my camera to focus on them properly:

I have discovered that I will miss the way the morning sun hits my 'Sum and Substance' hosta once the single red post becomes a full, shade-providing grape arbor:

I have discovered that some trees (thanks to Kylee, I know this to be a hawthorn) couple beautiful berries and intimidating thorns.

Also noted is that the foliage on some varieties of asclepias turn a bright yellow in the fall.

I have discovered that we are indeed still in the midst of a drought--or, scarier, that the reports of Lake Erie shrinking are correct--based on this part of Edgewater Park. Every other time I have been here, the water has gone right up to the rock and more rock is visible just underwater. I never knew that there was sand here at all, and yet it looks like a well-established beach:

And lastly, I have discovered that when you find yourself thinking, "This is really a stupid thing for me to be doing," you have approximately 30 seconds to rectify the situation before something bad happens.

For example, say you are climbing around large chunks of rock at a local park with your dog (who is on an extendable leash) and you have the above thought. Please remember that you do NOT have time to take a picture of your cute dog after she jumps down from the top of a 4 ft tall rock onto the beach.

If the situation is not fixed immediately, a large seagull may swoop past and your dog will give chase, as dogs tend to do. You will have a split second as the leash runs out to choose whether to jump off of the large rock yourself (and risk spraining something) or dig in your heels somewhere in a possibly futile effort to contain 90 exhuberant pounds of dog.

I can't tell you what will happen if you decide to try the former, but I do know that if you choose the latter you might discover how much flesh a large, seemingly smooth rock can shred. Suffice it to say that your discovery will happen the hard way and will require at least 7 bandaids to cover. You may also have to cut off a dime-sized flap of skin when you make it back home.

You will probably wish that you could discover why--seeing as how you are a very coordinated, athletic kind of girl--you keep having accidents that leave you looking like a 7-year-old who's been having trouble learning how to ride a big-kid bike. And then you will wonder why they always seem to happen at bad times. After all, it's tough to harvest 6 plants' worth of Roma tomatoes, plant all of the shrubs and perennials you still have to get into the ground, and complete your digging projects with a bandaged hand.

(And that explains why I got the tomatoes harvested yesterday and planted a few perennials, but got little else done.)
*sigh*