Tree Fern and 'Charade'

This was our project yesterday morning. Our tree fern spent last year behind our garden bench, still in the plastic pot it came in, but standing in an empty, broken clay pot once inhabited by our banana. That pot was duct-taped to hold it together, so it was a very classy presentation.

The fern wasn't doing well behind the bench, where it's too shady and a bit too dry beneath the taller trees. But we weren't sure what to do with it.

Meanwhile, we had a blueberry bush in a big pot on the patio that you might remember actually gave us blueberries last year. It wasn't very attractive but we were excited about the fruit -- until we left it out over the winter, not realizing that apparently blueberries aren't hardy plants. It was deader than a doornail this spring.

So yesterday we disposed of the twiggy carcass of the blueberry and transferred the tree fern to its pot. We always understood that tree ferns don't have much rootball and that they mostly take in moisture and nutrients through the trunk. But this plant was so root-bound that we had to cut the plastic pot off.

Now it's happy in a much bigger, more attractive pot, and the duct-taped monstrosity is in the trash bin where it belongs.

There were also lots of bluebells in the pot with the blueberry but I transferred the bulbs to the tree fern pot. They're hardy plants so I have high hopes they'll survive and flourish next spring. The project made the robins happy -- we watched them snap up several choice grubs from the old blueberry soil.

I took time out so Dave could photograph me next to this foxglove. Look at that thing! I'm 6'2 and that stalk on the left is taller than me! 

I also cleaned up our front garden, which is mostly mounds of shrubbery but includes a patch of crocosmia that was being smothered by weeds. (I know Ms. Moon wages a fierce battle against her runaway crocosmia but we have to take care of ours!)

Then I took the dog to the cemetery. I'd been thinking we might try a longer walk but after that yardwork I wasn't up to it, and given Olga's energy levels she probably wasn't either.

That apple tree (I think?) was positively humming with bees.

I came home and sat out on the garden bench with this bizarre snack, which came in my most recent Craft Gin Club box. They're always including weird little snacks and things. Once it was escargot-flavored potato chips, now it's strawberries and cream coronation popcorn. What will they come up with next? (I'd rather have plain old salted peanuts, to be honest, but this popcorn was better than it sounds. As were the escargot-flavored potato chips.)

Last night Dave had to attend a student play at school -- they needed an adult supervisor and the drama teacher was unavailable. I was going to go with him until he told me it was a student-led, 90-minute production that was almost entirely sung and with only two cast members.

Instead I decided to stay home and watch the 1963 movie "Charade" with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Somehow I'd never seen this movie even though I've been humming the theme song practically my whole life. Hepburn plays a character virtually identical to Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," made just a few years earlier, and there's a silly scene with Grant taking a shower fully clothed -- one of the weirder moments in mid-century cinema. (He camps it up, too.) Not a bad movie overall and I'm glad to finally chalk it off my list.