My Birthday

This is anemone, or Thimbleweed. It blooms throughout September and even on my birthday, which was yesterday, Columbus Day, a day off from work. It grows on a tall stem and it blooms from a tight formation at the tip that resembles a thimble. I have a large mass of them, but the deer ate a number of them. Mrs. Dana says they are "chiefly striking by reason of long, erect flower stalks."

Yesterday, P went to school. J went shopping. I went to the garden. And worked and worked and worked, for hours. I raked leaves and chopped them for compost. I put away stuff for winter. I clipped and cleaned up the brown stalks of the tall yellows (cleared out six bags of biomass). I dug up a hosta the size of an elephant and divided it in four ways with my bread knife, and replanted three and gave away one. I pulled the banana tree (dwarf cavendish--Musa acuminata) out and wrapped its roots in a plastic bag and laid it away in the back of the garage.

It was chilly, but I was sweating and ended up taking off two of my layered jackets. It was satisfying. And today it's back to the office.

P.S. I read that Katharine White, the fiction editor at the New Yorker from 1925 to 1960, used to garden in a tweed suit and Farengamos. She'd return to the house hours later, kick off her mud-caked shoes and then have to send her suit to the cleaners. Something about being out there, it's all-consuming.

P.S.S. I just went out to the garden this morning and the anemone have lost all their petals. They must have been hanging in there just for my special day. The Putterer