Calling All GIrls

I was fluffing up the cushions on my sofa this morning and found a folded up $20 bill. I rarely sit there, so I know it isn't mine. Please let me know if you thought you were a little short after attending the Oct. soiree. I'll send it to you, pronto.
I'm preparing for my first Thanksgiving celebration in my new house. Hope you all have a great holiday and, watch out for Black Friday. Fifi  

Nor-Ida

.
After constant rain and gloomy skies since Tuesday night, I decided to go to Rehoboth Beach and check out the damage from Ida. It seems that the entire state of Delaware had the same idea. It looked like the middle of August. People on the beach, the boardwalk the streets. It was almost festive, but for the eroded beach, storm whacked boardwalk and rough seas.

It could have been a lot worse; the damage could have been like that in NC and VA. The powers that be will again put the sand back, as tourism is critical for the resort towns from Lewes to Fenwick Island. I expect that the southernmost towns were hit hardest. Attached are 2 videos and a few photos of the boardwalk and beach erosion. Sun is predicted for tomorrow. Until then, I'll be hunkered down in Milford for another evening. 

Remember to double click to enlarge photos,

This is not from the storm. They are laying new boardwalk



The beach drops off at shoulder height as seen by the passer by on the beach




You can see where the sea covered the boardwalk in places.



The boardwalk and beach in front of Victoria's Restaurant.

It's Official

Kathy and Juanita have confirmed my hopes - I fixed the problem with my video of the herb walk. Thank you for letting me know.
I'm about to leave for a tour of some native plants at the University of Delaware Botanic Garden in Newark.
Be forewarned - there could be some photos of plants in the next blog.

Going Native

As my faithful blog readers know, my front yard is a work in progress. I went to a nursery in Smyrna, DE some weeks ago to have a plan for landscaping with native plants done. I was quite excited about it, but when the plan was handed to me, it was nothing like I had envisioned. I had supplied the employee with the best information I could get, including photos of the front from every angle but satellite; the flood elevation drawings which showed placement of house, driveway, septic system, well, etc.; more measurements made by moi regarding placement of objects such as well, septic, trees. What I got back was not a native plants/natural front yard, but an interesting faux pond with a bridge over it. It was supposed to be the starting point of a spectacular landscape at 604. I was overwhelmed for a while, but finally came back to my senses and decided that my project was best left up to me; I would tackle the job a little bit at a time.

The first thing I did was go to the annual plant sale of the Delaware Native Plant Society at the St. Jones Reserve in Dover on Saturday, Nov. 7th. It was from 10AM to 3PM. I got there are 10:10 and missed some plants. I circled around the plot, looking at trees, bushes and herbaceous plants. There were many persons there from the club to help. I finally heard someone talking about what to buy and noticed that he was a botanist. So I waited and spoke with him, telling him of my dilemma of planting over a septic leach field. It was no dilemma to him - he said I needed herbaceous plants, including tall grasses and a dozen or so more species I had not heard of. He turned into my personal native plant plant-a-meadow shopper. Spending money was never so easy. I found myself wanting to buy everything in sight, but there were other people there. So I settled for enough to get me started on my new, exhaustive, never ending project of filling the 100 X 85ft front yard of my house. Except for some larger trees that were spared the axe when clearing the lot for building my house, my front yard is a landscape designers dream or nightmare, depending on attitude.

I told the botanist that I thought I would start with a kind of 'swish' along the septic leach field, extending that swish as plants matured and as I decided to add more plants to the developing meadow. To my surprise, he thought the swish was an excellent decision. So now I had a plan and a car full of plants that had to be planted immediately, if not sooner. Sunday was to be a fantastic day for being outdoors. It was settled - Sunday was going to be a weed-pulling, swish designing, herbaceous plants planting day. Then a fairy plant mother stepped in to lessen my load...

Since I was about 4 miles from Fin's lot, I decided to drop by and see what progress had been made on the construction of the Bay House. I took some photos to send to her, as she hadn't planned a trip down this weekend. Fin had already been down last weekend. I called to tell her I had bought some native plants, that I had some photos of her house that I would be emailing to her, etc. etc. Then she said she would come on down and help me plant my plants on Sunday. Wow - I was happy, as she is a whirl of energy and ideas. She arrived with 2 or 3 doz. fresh oysters. We cooked yet another gourmet meal of both fried oysters and broiled oysters in the half-shell and a Caesar salad.

After dinner came the netflix movie night, after Fin hooked up my dvr which I had for 3 years and was still in it's box. I did a little prep on the plan for the swish and we called it a night.

Today was even better than I had expected for being outside digging, sweating and pulling back muscles. But with my helpful marine biologist/handy gal/native plant enthusiast, Fin, digging and pulling weeds, the time seemed to go fast. (But it really didn't in retrospect).



The swish below after forming and pulling weeds.



Placement of the plants within the swish.



Plants planted and ready to be watered.



Fin left and I cleaned up the empty pots, watered the plants and came inside to drink a lot of water and get off my knees.


The following is a list of flowers I've planted over the septic leach field. Clicking on the common name will take you to a url with information and photos about each species. The urls are for my future reference also.

Forked Blue Curls
Swamp Sunflower
Common Milkweed
Downy Lobelia
Flaxleaf Aster
Blazing Star
Slender Mountain Mint
Blackeyed Susan
Blue Vervain/Swamp Verbena
Little Bluestem
Narrow Leaf Bush Clover
Yellow Indian Grass

Tomorrow I'll be watering the plants and planting three other non-herbaceous plants:
witch hazel, northern bayberry and sweet pepperbush, but they won't be planted over the leach field.

A good time was had by all.