Moby Tabletop, you'll be glad to know, has again surfaced from the icy depths of my pond.

I wish I could report that Moby had survived his big adventure unscathed, but as you can see from this picture, his time underwater has not been good to him. It's up to Dr. Marn and her Magical Rust Proof Paint to bring him back to life.

I have decided that white is simply too meek a colour. I'm thinking of sanding the rust, applying a hot blue base coat and then using a sea sponge dipped into a nice vibrant purple to create a kind of stippled Monet blue effect.

When I say this, my spousal unit makes cat-coughing-up-a-furball sounds. He's been joking lately that maybe we should paint it pond green.

Smartypants.

On other fronts, my perennial border and beds have entered that insanely beautiful stage. Walk out the front door and everywhere you look there are flowers. I wish I could take credit for this, truly I do, but I have to confess that anyone (including yours truly) can make a good perennial garden this time of year because the choice of flowering plants is truly stupefying.

Things are especially gorgeous this year (despite the recent hail storm) because we've had a lovely coolish wet summer, ideal growing conditions. Yayyyyyyy Mommy Nature!

Dusk is my favourite time right now. I have a lot of hot colours in the yellow/orange range happening, and they glow as the light fades. Several of the hemerocalis (also known as daylilies to their friends) are heavily perfumed and they really crank it up at dusk, probably to attract the moths that will pollinate them. Bonus, big time bonus, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, and the waterlilies have started to flower, too. At night, if it's moonlit, they also seem to glow as they float there on water. I love to sit in the dark and soak up their perfume, listen to the black bears hooting to each other across the valley. It's the most eerie sound ...

Have you ever sent off a message in a bottle? (I'm thinking that sentence puts me at the head of the line for the "Non-Sequitur of the Week Award", but I'm trying not to get too cocky yet. I could still get beaten. Darn that CubicleGirl.)

Anyways, I was thinking about messages in bottles this morning when I was working around the pond. When I was a kid I loved to do that. My parents used to occasionally rent a cottage on Lake Erie and I can remember carefully writing a short note, colouring a picture, and putting it all in an old jar of some sort. I'd stand there and watch it float out on the current, and wonder who would find it.

I never got a reply to a single one.

Lately my diary has started to feel a bit like I'm sending out little messages in bottles. Instead of colouring a drawing, I take a picture of something that matters to me, mutter a few disjointed words about it, and then send it off into the void of the internet.

And occasionally I will get a note in my guestbook or a piece of e-mail back from someone and it feels to me as if my bottle was picked up and opened.

Even better, many of the e-mails turn out to be more than just a "hey I got your bottle" replies. Sometimes someone tells me a story back.

Just one f'rinstance ... I've heard from a man who makes music. He explained to me how a conductor weaving together musicians is just like a gardener weaving together flowers.

It's all about hard work and planning, but then there comes a moment when you have to let go and simply trust that everyone/everything will do their part right. When it works, you're part of something beautiful in the richest sense of the word. Music for him is what gardening is for me, a place to find faith.

I had never once thought about weaving together music, gardening and faith until I got his note.

When that happens, when someone reflects what I've said through the prism of their own experience and tells me how it all fits into their life, I feel as if a message bottle has washed up at my feet.

This really is a big adventure, you know.