A Hot Day in Holland ... and some Hydrated Hydrangeas!

Hydrangea Paniculata  'Vanilla Strawberry' - in Bill's Garden

We survived our second annual ladies day (four of us!) in Holland (on one of the hottest days of this very hot summer) this past Wednesday. 

The main event was a return to a unique garden that I had visited last summer with my garden club. A year ago I promised myself and a couple of friends we would return to see "Bill's" garden. We pulled up and were welcomed to the garden at 10:00 AM exactly (I have never before been so precisely prompt) by a warm and puffy-faced (stung by a bee) host, who said he was already on his second shower!

Bill has many gorgeous plantings, some even grown from seed, and is always looking for something new and exotic. The figs were ripe on his small potted tree that he winters inside. O grabbed a whole handful of their sweet, warm  deliciousness which we were invited to sample. He and his wife take exquisite care of the garden spaces and the "rooms" they have created in their backyard. A pink and white hydrangea (above) caught our attention, as well as the China asters, but I didn't take many photos this year. Bill even played a hymn on the old pump organ featured in a mini-house out back, which is electrified and elaborately eclectified!

After the garden tour we checked out the downtown Holland farmer's market. In spite of the heat, I purchased a cup of hot coffee from the LemonJello Coffee stand and also purchased some pricey Michigan maple syrup. O bought a hosta, and M bought some corn which was probably cooked by the time she got home!

The market featured all the usual vendors. The blueberry doughnuts were tempting and M shared a bite of one that I enjoyed with that hot coffee. One smart vendor sold individually wrapped slices of pink and yellow watermelon which J and M tasted. Food trucks and picnic tables were available.

But all I could think of was finding an indoor lunch spot somewhere to park my wilting self. I am not heat tolerant, as you know, and felt particularly vulnerable, probably (as usual) not drinking enough. I had no dehydrating alcohol on this trip, however, since I was driving the husband's Avalon, and, well, if anything happened to it I had been instructed to personally drive it into the lake and stay there! I had plenty of help from all the back seat drivers, including the one in the front!

We decided to lunch at Boatwerks, set picturesquely on the Macatawa River. We sat a long time, re-hydrating with lemon water, drafts and diet cokes.

Cobb Salad

Although hydrangeas can be one of the first garden plantings to show signs of heat stress, many shrubs in Holland seemed to be at their peak, this one next to the river by Boatwerks:

A perfect hydrangea, outstanding, in spite of the mid-afternoon Holland heat 

Deciding it was not a good day for the beach, we shopped at De Boer's for some baked goodies, Teerman's store (which is run by a second-cousin once-removed on my father's side!) for some kitchen treasures, and then to LemonJello's Coffee Shop, where this time I had an iced coffee, while O enjoyed a pretty latte--one more coffee shop we can add to our Year of Coffee! They use Madcap beans here too.

I got everyone and the car home safely. I relaxed all night, trying to talk myself out of a mild malaise which I later realized was from a slight fever and a raw spot in the back of my throat, the first symptoms of a nasty virus that was attacking me slowly but surely.

The virus was a "gift" from middle daughter E, who brought it home with her from her trip from Florida. I call it the Mammoth Cave Virus, since she visited the (54-degree) cave on her way home and got sick shortly after arriving home on Friday afternoon. She was feeling better by the time I was my worst snotty self, so she did all the cooking on the weekend. You have to feed a cold, you know.

I worked in the gardens at church on the morning after the Holland trip and picked tomatoes in the early evening, but Friday through Sunday noon I was a hot mess of respiratory distress. Giving me respite, however, rain fell for two days, 2-4 inches on my properties.  I did not have to arise from my sick bed (sofa) to water all weekend! Glorious rain, alleviating all the dryness that had been approaching poetic (if not epic) proportions. I was hearing lines in my head (could have been the fever) from imaginary poems with evocative words like parched and drenched, soaking and sucking, as I listened to the rain beating on the skylight drums.

(Aren't you glad I don't write poetry here? My mother loved poetry and tried to write her own. It was old-fashioned, with forced rhythms and rhymes, sappy and sentimental. I think on one of our moves or in one of our floods, some of the Memories of Mom were lost. Or they may be in some corner of my vast basement. But I would actually love to laugh at even one of those old poems now, if I could find one.)

(This post may still need more edits ... but I am sick of it and there are Olympics to watch!