What a month it’s been! Beautiful days, some lazy indulgences, some quirky sights to be seen. Due to the outrageously fine weather, I’ve spent some significant (and perhaps a bit wasteful) lengths of time just hanging out on The Urban Porch ™. What is retirement about if you can’t enjoy just “being”? Observations abound both on and off the porch. I have a mélange of thoughts and what amounts to a photo dump of pictures. Although I actually have a vignette that occurred off the porch that I might write out later this week, my head is too full at the moment. Right now I continue to be immersed in the changing of the floral guard here.

There were only a few remaining small spikes of lilacs left in the neighborhood, gratefully gathered and brought into the house, where they strongly perfumed a room for about a week. Serious aroma drug.

The Siberian Irises are past peak. I know I’ve posted a few photos of them already (because I like them so much) but I could not help but want to add another before they are gone. That royal color is stunning, my eyes keep going back to them. I used to not be much of a purple person. Oddly enough, suddenly – almost over the course of a day – I had fallen into a purple phase, which I now lapse in and out of. Just today, someone actually mentioned to me that when they first met me I was wearing purple and so they think of me that way….which sort of made me cringe, I’m not sure why. I always thought I was more of a turquoise person…..

This suddenly reminded me of an incident years ago, when I was angrily told (in an accusatory tone, by a somewhat insecure woman) that “you always wear black”. This fact was part of a litany of things about me she found fault with. Well, I was younger then, and used to look a lot more chic in black than I do now, and I did have a lot of black…..which apparently she found somewhat intimidating and one of my more undesirable traits. One of the perks of not being that young anymore is that none of that ridiculous crap matters.

Of note, today I am wearing benign blue. I think this might be my summer of blue.

The Eastern Blue Star is blooming in different areas around the house. It is a very subtle blue.

Speaking of blue, I spent a day at a sculpture garden with a friend last week. One of my favorite installations was of massive, painted blue clouds made of steel, high against the blue sky. I felt like a kid inside a story book looking up at them.

We meandered past a field of Yellow Rocket and then followed the call of a croaking Raven and a Yellow Warbler, neither of which we could visually locate. We did pursue the song of a Red-winged Blackbird, until we found him.

On the subject of clouds, the other day I was awakened by my young granddaughter at 5:30 am, who had set up a little installation of objects on the floor right next to the bed where I was sleeping. It included a small dog bed that looked like a banana, a quilt, a stack of different size decorative pillows, and a smiling rainbow cloud light. How can you mind being woken up to that, plus a little face inches from my own groggy one, saying “Mema” – even at that hour?

Clouds again. Blue again. So I put on a periwinkle blue dress and a tanzanite bracelet….because, Signs.

Back at home, the poppies are done and gone. There is some Wisteria on the back fence which seems to have bloomed overnight, ending up reaching into an area a bit away from where it was initially planted, sending out runners far and wide. It actually graces a scrap metal pile behind the house. I think it also jumped the fence into my neighbor’s yard. She’s the wonderful gardener with the koi fish. I’m not sure if she cut them back on her side or not. These are not as fragrant as ones I’ve had in the past. Their shape is a little more rounded too. But they are pretty.

And speaking of neighbors, a friend who is both an artist and an avid gardener with a back yard full of stinging nettles has decided to rip them out, so she invited me over to cut what I wanted. I really like nettles (see Nettle Peace), so I filled up a big bag and then took them home to prepare. They are a bit labor intensive because you have to blanch them to deactivate those nasty stinging parts first. After bending over and over to harvest them and then standing around blanching and preparing them for a good long time, I ended up with a bit of an Old Person Backache. Really, this aging thing can be so rude…..

Another friend has bestowed the gift of ramps. Between the ramps and the nettles being so time-sensitive, I’ve been busy coming up with different combinations to get them into recipes quickly or to put up for the winter. Ramp butter, ramps and eggs, ramp pesto, ramps and nettles. The ramps are pretty intense. These ramps are so strong that they can actually give you a bit of indigestion. I am sure I am walking around smelling like some garlicky oniony human repellant.

The nettle patch , such an easy score – might be eliminated this year if they all get pulled out. As for the ramps, the place where these came from are up a steep hill, in tick infested woods. My friend still makes her way up there, but her knees aren’t happy about it. I won’t even go. Between the lack of energy and the huge and somewhat depressing wave of people who have recently discovered foraging, scarfing up mushrooms and wild edibles, I will admit my enthusiasm is waning. Maybe I’ll get a new spark of energy somewhere along the way. In the meantime, I’m enjoying these gifts of spring while they are still to be had.

On and around The Urban Porch ™ life moves on. Saucy Squirrel paid another visit, this time coming right up to Rudi and I, where he perched by my foot, looking up at me as if expecting something. Perhaps it thought I was another one of its local peanut providers. Just as I was raising my camera to take what would have been a close, clear shot of that little expectant face, an enthusiastic older woman with an Eastern European accent suddenly came loudly bounding up my porch stairs, sending the squirrel scurrying away. So no cute squirrel picture today. The woman was canvassing the neighborhood for Jesus. Because she seemed benign and somewhat ernest, I didn’t get as annoyed as I might have – I could have really shut her down bigtime. But I seriously dislike people coming to my door trying to sell religion, and I didn’t give her the opportunity to take up my time. She left me with a card from their organization and a tiny little sealed plastic cup of what was purportedly wine – which looked eerily like blood – which I was “to share Jesus in the sacred bond of marriage with your husband”, should I have a husband. I have to say, you never know what you are going to get on and around this porch.

In other areas, some Starlings have appeared and have been hunting in the front lawn, probably looking for grubs. They are rather boisterous. There is the remnant of a tree on the corner – it had been dying and cut down years ago, but for some reason about eight or nine feet of trunk was left sticking up. I don’t know why they hadn’t cut the whole thing down to the ground, seems kind of weird to me. The woodpeckers and insects have been having a party with it. Rudi likes to pee on it. At least it’s not the kind of thing that can fall down on your head.

One rather unpleasant discovery today was finding a new Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) growing on the side of the house. Perhaps long-time blog readers will recall the saga (called Hydra) of what I consider the Tree of Hell. I tried pulling it up, ended up cutting it and getting that tell-tale smell of raw peanuts on my hands. I recently read that this invasive tree from China is also a preferred food for the invasive and destructive Spotted Lanternfly. I just can’t believe one popped up again. It was small. I’m on top of it. Nasty stuff…

I finally planted the lavender I had bought to replace some of the ones that didn’t make it over the winter. It had been sitting on the porch in a pot, looking rather country magazine chic, but today it went into the ground.

There is a large, dark magenta Rhododendron directly across the street that I have been appreciating from where I sit. I walked over there to admire it up close.

The ants are busy helping the peony flowers to open.

The Sweet Spurge (Euphorbia Dulcis) has jumped to a new location this year. The original was from a Woodstock garden about a decade ago. It never gets very big, just a tiny bit here and there. Sometimes it appears, then it is gone for a year or so, only to show up someplace different around the house. It is always a fun surprise to see where it will turn up next.

The Birthday Week is winding down. This one has ended up being more like a whole Birthday Month for a lot of unexpected reasons and surprises. I will share one of the biggest indulgences. It is softshell crab season – they are expensive this year. And yet, just about once a week I have bought myself two of them, lightly floured and peppered them, cooked them up in butter, squeezed some fresh lemon juice over them, and eaten them for lunch – mostly while standing right by the stove at my kitchen counter, because I couldn’t even wait to sit down. Usually I get them once a year during the week of my birthday, just the one time. I have never gone to this extravagant extent before – it’s as if I’ve gone all out and crossed some kind of “Well why the hell not?” line. Just typing this is giving me all sorts of feels.

I could go on and on with random, meandering mélanges of snippets outlining what has gone on this month, flooding this post with even more photos (which I know would cause my sister to sigh, as she has been slowly compiling these posts into hard copy. Inserting the photos is a chore). So I will stop tonight. There have been a number of sub-plots happening on and around the porch these days; my head is full of thoughts and tales that I hope to share soon.

~*~