In the Depths of August

Here’s just a quick list of some of the sights and sounds of the weekend:

Lovebugs everywhere

Wrens chattering in the sumac

A little eggplant harvest

Muscadine grapes, fresh from the vine

Open windows

A strange breeze (from the hurricane)

Tiger swallowtails on the ironweed

Red mushrooms in the grass

Cats lounging in sunbeams

Yesterday I did a whole bunch of weeding while Rob mowed the lawn and cleaned out the gutters. I actually love to weed. It’s so peaceful and it gives me a chance to really look at my plants, really study them and their surroundings. Yesterday while I was weeding I discovered all kinds of interesting things: cute mushrooms, raccoon tracks, and tiny fiddleheads. I saw ladybugs and toads and hummingbirds and big, float-y tiger swallowtails. If I hadn’t been weeding way back in the back of the big bed along North Adams Street, I would’ve never even known my old roses were blooming; they’re so hidden among all the raucous perennials—the purple coneflowers and ironweed and bearpaw—that you have to wade in really deep to see them. You have to get up close.

Here’s Baronne Henriette de Snoy.

Baronne Henriette de Snoy again

And Maman Cochet

Aside from weeding, I also did a lot of cat brushing out on the screen porch. The cats were so lazy this weekend, especially today. Carl slept on top of the pie safe, and Francie lay on her back on the couch, her long white feet in the air to catch the breezes.

Here’s how the breezeway looks with the new Coke sign we got in Dothan last weekend.

I made a peach cobbler today, and vegan macaroni and cheese with a miraculous creamy sauce concocted from ground raw cashews. Rob made the best seitan, flavored like sausage with sage and crushed red pepper. We ate on the screen porch surrounded by napping cats and, farther off, the shaggy August meadows. I could see the rosinweed flowers as round and yellow as happy faces, and the complicated surprise lilies (they look like whirling eggbeaters, I think).

I should have taken a picture of the surprise lilies, because they won’t last long. Oh, well, here’s a picture of the back of the house as seen through the lemongrass.