Sharon Creech's Blog, page 28

Yellow Pepper

If I could draw and paint better than I do, I would paint this still life:  the first yellow pepper ever grown in our yard, ever, ever, with delicate roses and a pleasing vase. It's simple, but I like it so much, this little vignette.

Do you draw/paint?

Squirrel Eats Tree Eye

(Click to enlarge)
This little squirrel spent a good ten minutes nibbling at the plaster eye on the walnut tree outside my office window. All rather surreal.

And I only recently noticed the irony of having lived fourteen years in Walnut Tree Cottage (which had no walnut tree on the small lot) in England, but now at last walnut trees dot the yard here in western New York state.

Chipmunk Door

I received this mini door (about 10 inches high) from my grandchildren last year, after they had visited and been intrigued by a hole at the base of this tree. Each day they had placed various toy critters and dolls near or in the hole, all the while carrying on an endless story.

Chipmunks use the door now, but when the grandchildren return, it will be overrun with other creatures.

Whoever thought to make this little door?

Surprises in the Garden

This is the first year I've grown vegetables in addition to flowers, and it's been more fun than I ever expected. Everything surprises me.  Lettuce!  Tomatoes!


Green peppers! Yellow peppers!


Peas, sweet sweet peas!

And, most surprising of all--this (below) is going to be a cucumber. A cucumber!


Be still, my heart.
I apologize for all the !! exclamations !!  I can't help it.
I mean: did you ever grow a cucumber? 

Island on the Island

(Click on photo to enlarge)
I've shown this island before (see keyword island in list at right). It's a gathering of flowers and doo-dads that sits on the kitchen island, so we think of it as an island on an island.  Above are the last of the dogwoods and peonies and a few of the roses and herbs.

Just as in a book where I sometimes change point of view or perspective in order to highlight another aspect of the story, I thought it would be interesting to see the above rendered in black and white:



(Click to enlarge.)  
So different. The black and white feels more sculptural to me, with more emphasis on form.

Do you have a preference?

Reaping

This may not look like a bountiful harvest to you (lettuce, a few peas, one green bean and a marigold), but I am so excited by it! Although I've always grown flowers, this is the first year I've planted vegetables, and to be honest, I'm shocked that they actually grew! Into food! That you can eat! And they taste completely YUM.

My dad always planted a big garden, with tomatoes, corn, beans, cucumbers. My garden is a much smaller version, but I think he'd be proud to see it.

When I first began writing, I didn't believe that a page this day and another that day would actually ever grow into anything worthy of the word 'novel,' but I learned that with care and patience and trust, those words could grow into something worthy.

Not unlike gardening, when you think about it.  Do you plant vegetables or words or . . .?

More Birds Fly!

Look what was huddled on the corner of the porch this morning: baby sparrow.  I thought it might be injured, but as I approached it flew off to a nearby bush. This bird comes from the 'tenement' birdhouse that is below the robins' nest (the robins left the nest two days ago.)

Here is what the sparrow looked like just a week ago, a tiny, scrawny thing:


See it there, on the right, emerging from the green house?  (You can also see the baby robins above in their nest.)

There is one more sparrow left to leave the tenement. I hope it goes today, so I can snap out of this bird-hypnosis!

Birds Take Off!

When I walked out onto the porch yesterday, swoosh, one of the baby robins flew out of the nest and landed bumpily in the bushes. One of the parent robins soon came to lead it to a more secluded spot.

As I returned to the house, a second babe fluttered over my head, skimming my hair and landed on the porch, plop:


It then hopped under a planter:


About an hour later, I went out onto the back porch--on the other side of the house--and was about to sit down in a deck chair, when I saw this beneath it:


Oops. It's baby number two.  Not sure how it found its way around the house to this spot.  I called for the mother or father to come lead the bird away.  Seriously.

Back to the front porch nest to worry over bird number three, still in the nest. All alone.  All day and all night long.

This morning, that third bird finally plopped out of the nest and onto a table.  I called for the mother or father to lead it away.  They probably did.

I hope so, because one hour later, we saw a cat and four kittens crawl out from under the deck! What?

It's a regular animal nursery around here.

Summer at the Pool

This pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Mm, mmm.

Roses

I am a sucker for fragrant tea roses and add a new bush to the yard each year. These (in pic above) are from our garden. I stick my face right in them every day. June is the best month for the roses here; they receive the best amount of rain and sun, and the Japanese beetles have not yet emerged to chew them up.

Also in the garden are cluster roses (that's what I call them; I don't know their proper name); they emerge as a ready-made bouquet:


I mean: really. Put your face right in there.  Nice, mm?

Do you have a favorite flower?