From dogged (I lost his original message) commentor HinTN:
Here up next to the Cumberland Plateau in southern middle Tennessee, we are blessed to live between two creeks. The deer are blessed as well, and their population is so out of control that they now make so bold as to come into the yard and munch everything in the garden. Zinnias and Mexican Sunflowers are about the only thing for which they (knocks on wood) don’t have a major taste.
Top pic is the flower garden approaching full bloom.
My zinnias and Mexican sunflowers. This one even has a butterfly in it.
I generally favor red zinnias but this year I took a flyer on yellow and I’m sold. They’ll be in the repertoire for the foreseeable future.
It’s definitely a country house when the “middle” is growed up in grass. This crape myrtle and four o’clock bed greet the newly arriving as they approach the house. The zinnias and kinetic sculpture are to the photographer’s right and the is immediately to the left up the drive.
Here’s a look from the front porch. The zinnia garden is just behind the internet dish. (My goodness is that service slow but it beat the dial-up we had for years. No Comcast out here and certainly no fiber like they’ve got in gig city.)
That’s the plateau rising up across the way. The big green bushy stuff at the end of the ramp is blue sage for hummingbirds on the left and lantana for butterflies on the right. It doesn’t really bloom until the cherry drops its leaves and allows it the full sun it needs to bloom.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
satby
Wow! Beautiful gardens in a beautiful setting HinTN! Nice looking house too, I’m a huge fan of balconies and porches.
Just fyi, deer and critters don’t eat daffodils either, which is why I grow those instead of the more tasty tulips in the spring.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures??
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
Why are we both up so early on a Sunday?!?
ravne
Nice!
Sab
Gorgeously lush.
Sab
I need some advice. I am a luddite. I have a flip-phone from Verizon and a Barnes and Noble Nook from Samsung.
Both have cameras.
We have seriously neglected our yard due to poison ivy. Also much rain plus we ain’t young. So renting goats.
How best should I record the goats to report back to BJ in case they want pictures?
satby
It’s funny, I’ve been up an hour and having my pumpkin spiced coffee (suck it, haterz) and the dogs have refused to open their eyes or get up to go out at all. The last two nights have been blissfully cool (high 40s) and even the dogs think it’s great sleeping weather. If only it wasn’t so dark ?
satby
@Sab: I assume the phone camera will have slightly better resolution than the Nook, so use that if you don’t have a camera.
And know that I’m jealous, because I would love to rent some goats to come clear out the weeds and probable poison ivy in the neglected mess my raised beds and behind the garage has become.
Sab
My last photo with BJ was my late lamented GSD lounging in a yard pool in 2008 (July 15, 2008).
Yes , JR in WVA , I have been commenting here that long.
Sab
@satby: You are up early. I am eastern time zone. Aren’t you central?
JPL
The pictures are beautiful. I think I’d sit on the porch for hours and hours.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Nice yard.
satby
@Sab: I’m eastern, but rikyrah is central, which is why I was teasing her. I’m a Chicagoan in exile in South Bend.
And at 6:05, the dogs decided it was a reasonable time to get up. It’s 47° out, and I think my neighbor’s outdoor cat is sleeping on the heating mat I left for him in one of my porch rockers. Going to be a beautiful autumn day for me to start my long overdue garden reclamation.
raven
Make good money, five dollars a day
If I made any more I might move away
satby
@JPL: my neighbors think I’m odd because I do sit on my porch for hours, just enjoying being outside listening to nature.
Sab
I thought rikyrah was NY or NJ. So she is nearChicago?
swiftfox
Nice Pictures. Plant selection could be more native to the area but that’s up to the taste of the landowner.
Always liked that part of the state. Interesting that UT-Knoxville is still conducting deer food plot research west of the Smokies while the mountains themselves have fairly low populations of deer.
Sab
We hired a contractor about five years back to build me a small porch out front. The guys (my spouse and contractor) got together and decided we didn’t need the porch out front but we did need a new room out back.
Nice room but I still want my porch. We are in the midwest. Porches should be mandatory. That is who we are.
OzarkHillbilly
I like to say, “Gotta mow the driveway.” Beautiful place H. We use Hughesnet for our satellite. It’s not cable or fiber-optic but it sure beats dial up.
Sab
Looking at the pictures aigain
Gorgeous. Beatiful, Wow.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: @Sab:
Agreed. The house didn’t have one when we bought it. Drove me nuts not having a place to sit, out of the rain, in the shade. Took me a few years but I finally got it built. Take my first cup of coffee out there every morn. Sit in the dark and listen to the night sounds. Drink a cold beer on a hot day. A place to sit and read a good book. And if it’s raining? A good frog choker rain? I have to sit out there and watch it come down. Nothing is more pleasurable.
Amir Khalid
@Sab:
I suggest you take any pictures surreptitiously. If the goats don’t know about the photos, they won’t demand payment for publication.
Ninedragonspot
Ugh. Was coming home from an unexpectedly nice performance by one of Taiwan’s better-known opera troupes, when I ended up having a tense (though civil) conversation with the homophobic cab driver. (I’m a Chinese-speaking middle-aged white guy – the questions usually follow the same order: 1) where are you from? 2) how long have you lived here? 3) why did you come to city X? 4) How old are your children? This last question generates follow-up questions which inevitably leads to a discussion of gay marriage….). Anyway, a real buzzkill after a very satisfying performance.
[/grumble]
satby
@Sab: somewhere around there. And yes, porches are mandatory. In MI, I had a tiny front porch and a big back deck. I spent at least as much time in front as I did in back, though to be fair the front was shaded by my beautiful huge sugar maple and about 10° cooler in hot days. The same tree that fell and smooshed the house later.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I would be right there with you! I’d be outside now with my coffee and my Kindle, but the cat is snuggled on my favorite rocker on the heated mat and looks too comfy to move.
My dream for next year is to get my mosquito curtains hung so I can spend more time out there; it’s been a bad skeeter year that’s kept me inside. That and the godawful humidity. I’m happy it’s fall.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m considering Hughesnet. We’ve got something through Dish. The tv is great but the internet is slower than my 4G phone.
HinTN
@Sab: The butterfly is actually in the first photo, to the right of the kinetic. Usually the are scads of them, creating a sheen of movement when viewed from a distance.
Mary G
Love the zinnias especially. Such lush green looks so inviting and relaxing. Thanks for sharing them, H.
NotMax
@satby
Mosquitos? Pricey, but interesting in concept.
satby
@NotMax: interesting. As are some of the other high tech potential mosquito abatement solutions being tested in the companion article. I hope some actually work some day.
My local solution is to hang up bat houses. I love bats.
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: We have foregone tv, it’s a time sink I am better off without. Hnet isn’t perfect, heavy rains can knock it out, so can heavy snow and freezing rain. The local franchise give us good service. My wife has worked from home thru it, so I guess the speed is reasonable. My inner Luddite makes me the last person in the world to ask about these kinds of things.
I grew Mexican sunflowers for the first time this year. They didn’t do near as well as the zinnias. I guess they need a little more than abject neglect from me. But I did like them, so did our hummingbirds. I’ll try them again next year.
Sab
@Amir Khalid: I am not worried about the goats. I am worried about posting ( technology).
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Bats are our friends.
NotMax
@satby
Nowadays I guess citronella tiki torches are out of the question.
:)
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
So long as they don’t try to speak.
:)
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: I refuse to surrender the tiki torch to the fascists. I have candles on my porch.
Kristine
Wow–the view from your porch is amazing. Thank you for the beautiful photos.
It’s currently 47F here in far NE Illinois (that’s the weather app temp. My outdoor thermometer reads about 52F). Just returned home from Door County Wisconsin, where the leaves are starting to change in earnest. It’s lovely up there, and will be stunning in another week or two.
NotMax
@Ozark Hillbilly
“Rain Is A Good Thing”
Rain makes corn
Corn makes whiskey
:)
Quinerly
❤️??♥️??
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Would link to Candles in the Rain except for the fact that Melanie’s singing voice makes my skin crawl.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: Goldfinches like the seeds, too.
Immanentize
Good morning, All!
Beautiful place to live, HinTN!
@satby: we have a package store near me that has various humorous sayings on their sign. Right now it’s “We have all your pumpkin flavored crap.”. It may be I have to suck it….
opiejeanne
Beautiful garden! Thanks for sharing with us.
OzarkHillbilly
Interesting obit: ‘Her war never stopped’: the Dutch teenager who resisted the Nazis
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: My grandparents’ house had two strips of cement for a driveway and tall oxalis growing down the middle. You still see that style of driveway with houses from the 20s and 30s. We chewed on the oxalis, calling it sour grass when we were kids. We figured out pretty quickly to avoid the stuff where oil had leaked from someone’s car.
Immanentize
First cool fall-ish morning near Beantown. 50 degrees, Toasty (cat) is staying on the bed. The coffee is hot and strong. So nice.
I will mow the front, pick more tomatillos and poblanos, and make some many-veggie tortilla soup today.
And call my mother!
Immanentize
@opiejeanne: I grew up in upstate NY and most of the homes were built in the teens and 20s as company homes. If you worked at the shoe factory, which most did, you could get a house for 5 dollars a week from your pay. They all had those two-concrete strip drives. I still love seeing them wherever I travel….
debbie
@rikyrah:
I hope you’re still here. I Googled for NC produce to know what to avoid and NC pretty much grows everything. I found this website where you can find produce by state, by region, and by season.
NotMax
@Immanentize
A high point (such as it was) of kidlet time was when the parents replaced that center berm with stones. No more mowing and weeding by the unpaid labor.
Later on moved to a house with an all gravel driveway, which was a b*tch and a half to shovel when it snowed.
debbie
@HinTN:
I love zinnias! I used to grow them when I was a kid.
I have a neighbor who grew them along the back of their garage on an alley. They had to be more than four feet tall. I don’t remember them growing that tall back when, but we usually cut them to make bouquets. The neighbor’s were shades of rose and pink. I have to make a point to walk by there today before they die off.
Your property is lovely. Wish I were brave enough to live in a place unsurrounded by other people.
Sab
@OzarkHillbilly: Ues tjey are
Raven
@Kristine: Sister Bay and Egg Harbor! I had some fun days up there!
Steeplejack (tablet)
I’m up a little early, possibly because I went to bed so early (for me) last night—around 10:00, I think.
I’m about halfway through my Las Vegas trip—day 11 of 23. The resident greyhound, Woody, and I have settled into a good routine. He finally decided that it’s okay to sleep on the bed with me, which is fine except for his tendency to take his part of the bed crossways in the middle. He does move with a little prodding, but there are aggrieved sighs.
The big change from previous trips is that he is much less food-anxious. He does dive into his dry food-wet food mix in the morning, but in the evening he sometimes lets his dry food sit and he grazes on it through the evening. Might be because his previous companion, an elderly whippet, died a few months ago (after a long and happy life), so there’s no “competition,” or it could just be that he is continuing to become more “socialized.”
Most greyhounds’ lives are pretty rough before they are adopted at about age two, and Woody was the most “troubled” of all the greyhounds my brothers have had over the years. Nothing major, just somewhat nervous and fearful for a long time. The other greyhounds, once they realized what a sweet deal they lucked into, adapted to the good life very quickly. It has taken Woody longer. His pre-adoption life was in Mexico, probably not a good sign, and at some point he had a broken leg, also not a good sign. But he is very happy now. Just a little leery of strangers and not interested in interacting with other dogs at the dog park.
My mother also is doing well, still going strong at 88, although she complains that she can’t get out in her garden and whip it into shape like she used to. The other day we looked at some of the quilts she has saved from a lifelong career of quilting. I’m going to box up a few and send them home to myself. And we agreed that sometime this coming week we would break down her double secret brisket recipe. Looking forward to that.
The weather has been pretty nice by Vegas standards. Haven’t quite had the autumn cold break yet, but the highs have been mostly under 100° (barely), and of course it goes down into the low 70s at night.
It’ll be dawn soon, and I’ll be looking on the patio for the fat little cottontail that shows up every day or two to sniff the breezes and plan the day. Woody is either clueless or “Eh, I’m done with all that chasing rabbits crap.” Also a lot of doves in the back yard, and the other day I ran into a line of quails in the front yard (xeriscape).
No big plans today. Still can’t get used to NFL games starting at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. And forget about the Premier League—there’s a match on now that started at 5:30 a.m. PDT. You’ve got to be a dedicated fan to get up that early.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
Day 11? Boy, that tempus sure does fugit.
Disappointment reigned supreme when Mom revealed her secret was slathering and basting it in canned cranberry sauce. Hope you fare better.
JPL
I planted kaleidoscope abelia near my mailbox, and this year they went wild. Since they are covered with bees, it’s been difficult to prune them back, but also I didn’t want the postal person to get stung. I went out before 8 and managed to at least cut it back from the mailbox, before the bees came.
satby
@Steeplejack (tablet): @NotMax: I hope you decide to share the recipe. I’d love a good recipe for brisket.
John Cole
That garden is goals
Steeplejack (tablet)
@NotMax:
She already mentioned liquid smoke and letting the rub sit on the meat overnight, so the early signs are good. And of course it always tasted great when she made it.
The other day at lunch we were talking about food and recipes, and after I said she was a good cook she said that none of us ever said as much when we were growing up. I tried to explain that when you’re a kid you assume your family life, whatever it is, is “normal.” It was only as an adult that I realized that not everybody’s mom put a home-cooked meal on the table every night, much less some really good ones.
She said that when she started out she didn’t know anything but “farm cooking,” and the first time she went in a supermarket (early ’50s) she didn’t know what to make of it. She said she just “adapted” as time went on (which is true). Everyplace we lived she picked up new recipes, and now she’s got a lifetime of them, many of which I’d like to preserve.
satby
@Immanentize: I use pumpkin year round ?. One of my favorite recipes is a pumpkin-cauliflower curry. It’s just your basic vegetable curry using cubed pumpkin instead of potatoes.
Also pumpkin ravioli, pumpkin coconut curry soup, pumpkin zucchini bread… Damn, I’m making myself hungry.
debbie
@Steeplejack (tablet):
My mom would be about the same age as yours, and she never stopped marveling at how much every single thing had changed during her lifetime.
NotMax
@satby
Tried out this recipe in the Instant Pot only a few days ago. Incredibly simple and even more incredibly mouth watering. Only alteration was adding black pepper along with the kosher salt.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Good morning, Baud. Just seeing your nym made me remember that you were in my dreams last night. Nothing X-rated, or even R.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I wanted a porch for at least 20 years before i got mine. No voting this time around. Do it! You won’t be sorry.
NotMax
@NotMax
Although highly satisfied with it, next time might try adding a healthy splash of red wine with a very little bit of honey whisked in.
Suburban Mom
@Steeplejack (tablet): The super-secret detail in my grandmother’s brisket recipe is a deep sear developed in a cast iron pot. When Grandma passed on the recipe she advised me to “burn the brisket.” After burning you add a sliced onion and one clove of garlic per pound of meat, salt and pepper to taste, and braise covered in an inch or so of water or stock until tender. It winds up with a ton of flavor for something with so few ingredients. You can toss in root vegetables at the end for a one pot meal. It’s even better made ahead, sliced, and reheated. And now the world knows.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Suburban Mom:
Thanks. I will definitely pass on my mother’s recipe after I get it.
rikyrah
@Sab:
Chicago born and bred?
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: What did Baud look like in your dreams?
Gelfling 545
Beautiful. When I see a beautiful property like this I’m always a bit envious untill I remind myself I’m heading towards 70 and my tiny garden can even be a bit much at times. Love all the zinnias too. They’re pretty much my favorite garden flower: so bright and cheerful and dependable.
MagdaInBlack
I just can’t do current events yet, I’m not ready for outrage, so thank you for garden chat.
I have a balcony i refer to as the porch, which has an over-hang so I can indeed enjoy the rain. My current obsession is 2 am on the balcony, because bats! and stars. The bats and I enjoy the peace of late night.
Its cooled off now, insects are disappearing, and so will my bats.
Next its’s snow, because theres not much more peaceful than a late night snow.
(I know, I know…snow..ugh)
dp
That is just spectacular and, like every Sunday, leaves me jealous of other peoples’ green thumbs.
HinTN
@swiftfox: All the natives are around back on the hillside overlooking creek and the cave from which it issues.
J R in WV
@Sab:
“Yes , JR in WVA , I have been commenting here that long.”
That’s good.
I have occasionally jumped on commenters I assumed to be trolls, who speak as a ruler of the world after posting 6 times in the past week, but I don’t actually track anyone. And I have no idea when I started posting comments myself, but there have been several thousands of them, according to the Goog.
Trolls are usually easy targets, but I do want to be sure I’m not jumping on someone who’s been posting for years and I just don’t recall their nym… I’m bad with names, authors, titles and such. Just a black hole in my memory.
We went to a nice picnic at the local lake shore yesterday. It was cool and pleasant, and beautiful. It was a pot luck, and everyone brought potato salad. Fortunately different recipes. And not really everyone, it just seemed that way. 4 different flavors, 7 people.
satby
@NotMax: Damn! Going to try it, thanks!
Aleta
@Immanentize: Like Endicott Johnson houses?
Kristine
@Raven: It was my first visit. I hope to go back soon–it’s lovely up there! Great hiking.
urlhix
Also a big fan of the zins. Dang deer at my new place nipped everyone of mine a while back, but I’m still eeking out a few late blooms. Keep an eye out for “Envy”, a lovely green zinnia that really pops in bouquets. I also like the candycane ones, fwiw.
JaneE
Satellite internet can’t help but be slow. Every handshake involves close to 50,000 miles – even at the speed of light it adds up.