Where Is My Cappuccino?

This was my first question this morning. Where is my cappuccino? And where is a big, fluffy, decadent croissant?
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Capri

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Of course, I wouldn't start the morning right away with them. First, I would slip into an oversized white robe and walk down the stairs and out of the sleeping hotel to the outside. The narrow winding trail under the long arbors, thickly covered by vines, would lead me further down to the bottom of the cliff. Huge yellow lemons hanging through the arbors' upper beams would make me smile: what if one of the lemons falls and hits me on the head? There is an elevator which guests can take to reach the swimming pool, but it is early and it doesn't work yet. See the pool down there?

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Amalfi

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The gate to the pool is also closed. Nobody comes here so early. I start my way back up. Fortunately, there are two guys coming to prepare the place for the day, and they open the gate for me. The pool, which is filled with sea water, is all mine. Hey, sleepy heads, you don't know what you are missing!

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Amalfi

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Back in the room, I would sit on a small balcony and look and listen how the town wakes up.

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Amalfi

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After breakfast, I'd go for a walk.
I would get my workout with the natural 'stairmasters':
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Ravello

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or natural 'treadmills':
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Capri

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For walking a lot, I will always have a reward like this view:

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or this:
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For lunch, I would stop at one of the little restaurants on the edge of the hill. I would have pasta and tomato salad.

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Positano

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No, I didn't visit McDonald's, although black & white attire is one of my favorite combinations.
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Rome

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For desert, I might stop at one of the fancy hotels.
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Positano

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I would devour it slowly while admiring this beautiful tree with a name I don't remember, but remember that, as the waiter said, it was from Argentina.

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Positano

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The huge lily-like flowers of that tree looked very exotic, but I was even more excited to see huge masses of morning glory all over the place.

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Amalfi coast

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It was everywhere and climbed everything that it could reach: poles, arbors, fences or just rocks.
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Amalfi coast

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I would walk again after the break and see ancient churches and villas,

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Amalfi*

where only your own imagination can recreate the fragments of the beautiful fresco wiped off by time:
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Out to the streets again.

I miss you, Italian men in bright pants! I love those pants of yellow, red, pink and terracotta colors!

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Capri

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I miss seeing Italian men with their 'Elvis' hairdos.

This is one of our taxi drivers. You ride in his car and talk to him for several minutes, but the next day when you see him passing you on the piazza, he waves to you and smiles and greets you as if you had known each other for years.

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Amalfi

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I miss seeing barefoot men on the streets, relaxing and rushing nowhere, taking time to talk to a friend and look at the people who came to his town from afar.
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Maiori

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I miss unexpected and fast passing rains which leave streets clean and wonderful old tiles shiny:
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Positano

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Positano

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I promise myself to buy a better water bowl for my dog after seeing what a pretty painted cup was given to this little dog for his drink in a ceramic store:
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Ravello

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Ah! The dog turned into a ceramic pooch!

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Just kidding...

Oh, those ceramic stores... I never bought myself their fabulous plates just because I couldn't choose...

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Ravello

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I will get jealous with people whose laundry smells fresh after being dried outside.

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It doesn't matter if it is a street with fancy boutiques or simply a residential area, all laundry has the privilege to pamper itself under the warm Italian sun.
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Then, I would pack my suitcase to move to another town and see the sunrise from another window...

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Ravello
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I might even get very lucky if that window would be in a place like.... let's say Villa Cimbrone dating from at least the eleventh century AD.....

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Ravello

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Could it happen? Villa Cimbrone? We'll see, and meanwhile, where is my cappuccino?!!!

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Copyright 2010 TatyanaS



amalfi coast art

Where am I?

I am in Italy, my friends....
I love it here, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it, love it ...........

Hugs,

Tatyana

Indoor/Outdoor Pictures and This&That

September is vegetable time here. Below is the picture of vegetables from my garden on the kitchen counter. It was taken before we started to cook dinner. I find it very nice. I believe that the light from the window made this shot special.

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I brought the vegetables from outside where I also took their picture.

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Everything looks not bad too, but don't you think that the previous picture taken inside has some drama in it? The light coming from the window made the indoor picture special. It didn't need any editing.
In other cases, pictures taken outside are better than inside pictures. In my earlier post, I showed a picture of the daisy bouquet standing on the garden table.
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The warm light of the late afternoon made it special, don't you think so? Looking at that picture makes me feel good. It not only shows the pretty flowers but also evokes the feelings of warmth and pleasure coming from the soft August sun. I remember how I was thinking 'I'd better enjoy this moment now since autumn is so close'.
Look at the picture of the same bouquet taken inside. Nothing interesting!
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In the case of the vegetables, the picture taken inside beats the picture of the same subject taken outside. In the bouquet case, it's just the opposite. Aren't we glad that digital cameras allow us to play with photography and take as many pictures as we want?

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Peaches. They are not from my garden, but I find them very photogenic. Usually, they apply this term, photogenic, to people who appear physically attractive or striking in photographs. I think these peaches are very attractive. They attract me. I want to eat them all. At the same time, I like to look at them. We are thankful for photography that allows us to keep images long after the subjects on the photographs are gone.
Now, 'This & That' part of the post. I borrowed this name from one of my favorite garden bloggers, Grace Peterson (Gardening With Grace http://www.gracepete.com/)
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I can see what search words and phrases people use when they arrive at my blog. Very often, it is 'when to pick up tomatoes Black Krim' and 'my cucumbers have thorns'. I pick up Black Krim tomatoes before they start to soften. When they are hard to touch (but not brick-hard as green tomatoes) and when their color is red (as in the collage above) or green/red (as in the last year picture below):
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As for the cucumber prickles, they are normal. A light rub will take care of them.
Recently, I got embarassed when I saw that someone came to my blog looking for 'Card for would be husband'. Imagine a young and innocent girl looking for a romantic card. She clicks my post "Card For My Husband" and what does she see?

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This is not THE card, you need to click on the link below to see THAT card

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If you are not a gardener, don't go here! http://tanyasgarden.blogspot.com/2010/09/card-for-my-husband.html

To make you feel that you didn't come here for nothing, I decided to end this post with some useful information. How about a way to protect plants from deer? After my roses, perennial phlox, strawberry and grape leaves were eaten by these gracious creatures early this summer, we bought and installed a 'Scarecrow'. It should be attached to a hose and pointed to the part of the garden you want to guard.

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It worked! I now have my plants blooming profusely and no deer touch them!

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Perennial phlox and rose 'Carefree Marvel'

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The device is pricy, but I liked it more than a spray. The spray works, but I keep forgetting to use it repeatedly. And, of course, it stinks! The 'Scarecrow' is fun to use, especially when someone in the family forgets about it and gets hit by the strong jet of cold water. I never knew my husband could jump so far! Ha-ha!
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Copyright 2010 TatyanaS

They Made It!

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Whom do you want to be in your next life?

A fat cat? He has the best view...

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Disclosure: The squirrel and the cat are not mine. Unfortunately, I don't have such gorgeous views as they have!
The dog is mine, and he is the puppy in my blog's header picture.

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Copyright 2010 TatyanaS

Front Flowerbed in August

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If you have trees growing in containers, rotate them once in a while, my friends! I ignored this rule for several years, and sure enough, one of the Italian cypresses, in the background of the picture below, sent roots through the dranage hole in its pot*. By the way, I pruned those cypresses recently, and they look better now. It answers a question asked by one of the fellow bloggers - have I hired gardeners? In my dreams, Rene, in my dreams! (I have an earlier post Do You Have A Hired Gardener, Tatyana?)

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The front bed is the one I was most pleased with

this year. I should confess that I never had a plan of what to plant in this bed and what colors to use. I was just buying plants which I liked and which required full or part sun. Somehow, it worked well with pink and purples prevailing in July and August.
Acanthus mollis (Bear's Breech) didn't bloom last year. It just took a leave of absence I guess to gather energy, and voila - here it is showing its big glossy leaves and white flowers with purple markings:

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Well-drained soil, part shade - Acanthus has what it needs for long blooming in this location.

New students in the classrom were the drumstick alliums of rich, intense purple. I planted a lot of alliums last fall and winter. The drumsticks got the space in the central bed. Their green tops poked out in the past winter which was pretty mild. For half a year, I was skeptically watching the tall, thin, sickly looking green stems. What good could they produce? So, when these textured pom-poms greeted me in July, after our 11-day Alaskan vacation, I got pleasantly surprised. Yes, they were small, but I find their heads charming and interesting. It looks like they are floating above the other plants.

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Die-hard Spanish lavender looks faded after almost a 3-month blooming period but still provides some color. Soon, I will lightly trim it to give it some shape and tidiness, but in January 2/3 of its green branches will be cut off (be sure to leave 1/3 of the GREEN branch. Nothing will grow from the leafless part of it).

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Hardy fuschias never disappoint me. I bought them several years ago as tiny starter plants for $2.50 each, and since then they proved to be low-maintainance, reliable fellows. I remember my Mom used to have them as house plants. Geraniums, fuchsias, kalachoe, miniature roses were thriving indoors in the houses heated back then by stoves which didn't dry the air as central heating does now.
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Daisies, a short compact variety, came here by chance when I was looking for a space to put clumps of them which I got after separating an original plant. They might look out of place in this picture, but there are three groups of these daisies blooming in front of the house, thus creating repetition (two of them are seen in the next picture). I would say that this summer was very good for daisies! Both varieties, short and tall, did their best!

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The rose Mister Lincoln also came here not because of some great creative idea that struck me a couple years ago, but because I didn't find another place for the plant which was a gift from my mother-in-law. I wrote earlier about another rose which I planted in the vegetable/perennial bed for the same reason. I need to clarify that it's not actually a lack of space. There is a lawn that can always be reduced. What stops me, is the difficulty of preparing a planting hole for the roses. It takes several hours of digging, using a pick-axe, and picking out a great number of rocks of all sizes. It's much easier to put roses in already existing flowerbeds.

All my Mr.Lincoln roses, planted here and there, produced huge blooms this season. Probably, this is their response to a dose of composted horse manure which I spread under each bush in the spring.

Spurge (Euphorbia X martini), seen in several pictures above, has already been blooming for a couple of months. I can't say I love its color in this particular place, but what to do.

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Previous posts about this flowerbed are here:
Front Flower Bed Summer Transformation
Front Garden Bed. Spring 2010

It's funny, I just noticed that I called this bed 'Flowerbed' and 'Garden bed'. What an inconsistency! I use the term 'Garden bed' to note the fact that, besides the flowering plants, there are shrubs and trees growing there:
Green Mound juniper, Sungold Threadbranch cypress,
dwarf English boxwood, Japanese maple, Canadale Gold euonymus and Privet tree (Ligustrum lucidum).
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*P.S. Lesson learned: After we cut that tall cypress' roots which escaped from its pot, we went on a short trip to Arizona. When we returned, the tree looked dull and its foliage was absolutely dry. I think, it's gone... It's clear to me now that the timing was wrong when we cut its roots: a heat wave came right after we left, and a neighbor didn't water it enough. This is a big loss for my garden. The remaining cypress needs to be relocated since the symmetry is now gone.

Copyright 2010 TatyanaS

My Picture(s) of the Day. See a Bee?

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Gail (http://www.clayandlimestone.com/ ), does it qualify as a wild flower for Wildflower Wednesday?

Copyright 2010 TatyanaS

Beautiful NOT-Thorns

Can thorns be beautiful? You bet! And, I'll show you some. Can we call things by their wrong name? You bet! And, I'll tell you what I mean.
We have all seen thorny, prickly, sharp thingies in our gardens and the gardens we visited. Those thingies, if we accidentally touch them, make us say 'Ouch' or 'Shoot' or something worse.

I, for example, have a thorny gooseberry:

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Don't praise me for growing such a producing plant. If not for this picture from 2006, I could forget how abundant it could be!

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Even some cucumbers have prickly little thingies. Those who don't like them may grow a Japanese cucumber with a smooth skin. But, the spikes will fall off upon plant maturity or can be rubbed off. By the way, a cucumber is a fruit, not a vegetable...

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Good thing is cucumber' sharpies are not as sharp as those on cacti!

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Do you think cacti has them to protect its beautiful flowers?

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This cream flower, above, I found in Arizona. The white one, below, is from Hawaii:

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The scary thing with small cute leaves is also from Hawaii:
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Its heart-shaped leaves are well protected!
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Some plants don't need additional protection. Their leaves and needles are sharp enough, like on this Monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana, native to Chile and Argentina) which grows in a pot in my garden:
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It's more painful to touch them than let's say these fir needles:
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Everything that was shown above was just an appetizer. Those were not the things which caused me to publish this post. The actual reason was the plant we often think of first when we hear the word 'thorns'. What are those plants? ... Correct! Roses!

Roses' thorns are not actually thorns. They are prickles!

There are three types of sharp structures on plants: thorns, spines and prickles. As our friend Wikipedia says, they have similar appearance and function, but arrived from different plant organs. All three are hard structures with sharp, pointy ends, which are generally used by plants for protection against herbivores. Let's add - for conserving the water in spines.

Thorns are modified branches or stems, spines are modified leaves, and prickles are needle-like extensions of the cortex and epidermis. (Cortex - outer layer of the stem or root of a plant. Epidermis is a single-layered group of cells that covers plants leaves, flowers, roots and stems).

The roses I want to show are not those from my garden, with 'normal' thorns... pardon me, prickles and big flowers:
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They are from the beautiful garden of Katie which we visited this summer. See the tall thick canes? They certainly add a vertical effect to a flower bed:

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A closer look reveals another attraction, bright red prickles:

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This is a Wingthorn rose - Rosa sericea pteracantha (introduced from W. China in 1890):

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I like its fine, disease-free foliage too. With the striking combination of huge blood-red prickles and gracious leaves, this plant attracts everyone's attention.

The flowers are single, white with only four petals (the image is from Wikipedia):

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An excellent article about this rose is here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/4325363/How-to-grow-winged-thorn-rose.html

The author, Val Bourne, recommends planting it where 'winter sun can slant through and backlight the stems'. She also names 'Heather Muir' as a hybrid which produces a long crop of single white flowers bossed with golden stems.
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So, roses have prickles, cucumbers have them too, cacti have spines... Who has thorns? Lemon, pomegranate, wood-apple... You can name more if you know...

Copyright 2010 TatyanaS