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Hoya loyceandrewsiana ins a new plant that Colman bought earlier this year. I seem to like the cool wet summer weather we’ve been having. It has put on growth and the flowers formed rapidly. Here is a shot of the flowerhead as it was early in the afternoon of July 26.

As the sun went down the flowers began to open, here it is just a few hours later.

A couple of days later I noticed that there was a visitor, the fragrance of this flower is overpowering.  The whole day there was only this one, I think it’s a hornet (and the lady bug), and no other type of insect, no bees, no ants.  And no other hornets, it was as if this was the only insect for this flower, a solitary feeder. Here’s a video of one of the visits.

Hoya and Hornet movie

My friend Ray gave me this link about the hornet,   Bald or Whitefaced Hornet.  thanks, Ray.

It’s been a week of making invitation samples for a client and finishing up the silver wine cup. Silver work had stopped because there were too many pressing demands from my binding work and I needed time to redesign the bottom of the cup. The next designs will not take so long to complete. This cup and its design has taught me a lot. Here’s the new design for the bottom, chased into the cup, I have also started to accentuate the lines and push background down from the flower.

The beginning of this cup is in the April 20th entry of this blog. You could also just click on the word chasing in the word cloud to the right of this entry to see it. It will appear right after this entry, replacing the rest of the July stuff.

You can see I still have trouble making a small circle, I think the curve chaser is too rounded, it tends to dig into the metal I’m chasing instead of traveling smoothly where I strike it. I should make another tool. The large curves are made with the tool designed for straight lines.

After the basic chasing was done, I took the red pitch out of the cup and cleaned it so that I could work from the inside of the cup.

I have made two Snarling Irons. The first one was for pushing larger general forms out from the surface of the cup. The second one, with the narrower top, was made because I couldn’t get to areas near the base in the inside of the cup. Its uneven, angled face was meant to get into the corner where the sides of the cup meet the base.  It worked  pretty well.

Here’s what the inside looked like after the snarling irons were used. The darker parts inside the cup are  where the snarling irons polished the surface as areas were struck and pushed out by the iron’s vibrations. I used repoussè tools to expand the volume of the flower in the bottom.

On Gennady’s advice, I put black pitch into the cup with a large dowel so that I could hold the cup in a vise. The black pitch is more resilient and should allow me to produce a greater depth of relief in the design.  In this photo the cup is held in a vise  by its dowel extension so that I can work on the sides.

I’m working on the bottom here and in the following photo. The flower rose way too much above the plane of the cup base.  After I removed the pitch I was able to knock it back down so that the cup could rest on a table like it should.  It was scary and risky but I know how to do it now if it ever happens again.

Here are photos of the finished cup. There’s probably some final polishing to do but this is where it is now.

The bottom medallion.

The inside.

Sally and Quentin invited us to visit them while they were vacationing at their Aunt Keith and Uncle Frank’s home near Philadelphia the week after our reception. We drove down on Wednesday and came back late Thursday. Wednesday afternoon we sat with Frank on the South Porch, it has a beautiful view of their neighbors field. I like the way the trees  form a long view. In the center of the photo there’s a break at the edge of the field where a row of three short, round trees are framed  by larger trees.  It seems to be a pathway to another place, I enjoyed traveling visually through that part of the landscape.

Keith has three dogs, there was another one  visiting while their owners were away, his name is Elvis, here he is at the kitchen door.

Took this shot in one of the walk through living rooms; I have a hard time resisting mirrors when there’s a camera at hand. I think these candlesticks are a part of Keith’s  brass collection.

We haven’t been here for a few years, a lot of work has been done restoring the garden, here’s a composite shot of  a delightful lower garden and its wall at the back of the house.

I was surprised to see this large Begonia boliviensis growing so happily in the breezeway, I had just gotten some seedlings from Logee’s.  My seedlings aren’t happy anywhere I put them, they suffer in the greenhouse and seem to be too weak to be outside.  Keith said that hers came from Mostardi’s nursery, she’s had them for about a month and they had grown a lot since they were bought.

She took Sally and me to Mostardi’s Thursday morning.  It’s a great place, lots of unusual plants for a wide selection of microclimates.  I bought some purple leafed plants to take back to Kevin and Diana.  I bought a B. boliviensis and picked a few other plants for our garden in Staten Island. Here is a shot of one section in Mostardi’s.

Here’s a whole bench of begonia Benitochiba.  I’ve tried growing this one for a number of years. It does fine outside and comes inside for the winter where it seems to survive until the end of January, then it loses one leaf at a time until it just perishes, no matter what I do to try and save it. It’s a little disarming to see these large specimens offered in such numbers at a reasonable price.  I bought another one to try again.

The highlight of Keith’s gardening is her hydrangea collection. They were at their peak while we were there.  This is the path to the garden from the kitchen breezeway.  Blue lace caps, pink varieties and the tree, all in bloom at once.

Here’s a photo of Keith (in yellow) with Susan, Dan and her dogs. The plants in the boxes are just about to be packed for the trip to Staten Island.

Here’re Sally, Quentin and Daphne sporting a recent skateboard(?) scuff.

Here’s a shot of the cottonwood in bloom over some blue hydrangeas. There are a number of them on the property, I think they’re very attractive, adding a lot to a mid spring garden.

Quentin took this photo of us just before we drove off for home.

On the following Friday, the 26th of June, I was in the city walking by Madison Square on Fifth Avenue.  I had never noticed it before, but there is a widely varied collection of hydrangeas growing there. They looked very fresh that day and near full bloom.  Here are a few photos, the double flowered oakleaf hydrangea is my favorite.

Yesterday I was in the city making a mad rush between materials shopping and seeing clients. I think it was on Seventh avenue that this window display stopped me in my tracks. This is a leather sofa. A Silver leather sofa. I’m amazed that this would even be attempted, but then , longevity was not in the upholsterer’s mind.

And there’s a chair to match.

Tonight on the way to Austin’s opening in Brooklyn, we drove past this remarkable scaffolding work. It makes me wonder how it was done before we had modular metal scaffolding.