Saturday's Such Things............

I have posted the first monarch photo of the season in my garden.  It was so thrilled with what he could find to eat in the coneflower that it really did not mind me moving around pointing a camera at it.  I still have not been able to capture the shot of a smaller orange brown butterfly that I keep seeing out in the flowers.  The one is not friendly at all and takes the high road as soon as I am even 15 feet away from it.

My first zinnia bloom has yet to come out in full bloom.  The orange petals are still curled in and maybe today I will see a change in that. I have a couple more zinnias that are about to open.  I know on this one pictured that the yellow parts sticking out do become little yellow flowers. 

The marigolds seem to be struggling along. I guess I do remember that they can become big bloomers the closer we get to fall weather. I did not water them daily so they were probably stunted because of that reason.

My new purchase on Wednesday was this begonia.  I replanted it right away into some real soil mixed with their planting mix.  I had removed all the hardy geraniums from this hanging pot and wanted something to replace it.  Walmart was dropping prices by half so I bought this one.  I like bringing begonias into the house during the winter.  The do fairly well in a window as long as they never get a chance to dry out completely.  If they do I can just expect nothing more to happen as the shrivel up and look like long stems with no leaves the rest of the winter.

I didn't mention that the local Walmart south of us had such a bad garden manager that they threw away more flowers than they probably sold.  The person running it has not a clue about growing plants. Inside plants were placed outside to sunburn and many starter plants were not watered often enough. Once the plants in plastic go bad they stay bad.   I was going to get some beat up coneflowers a few days back and all of those kind of things must of hit the dumpster.  The Walmart north of us in Boone has a responsible manager and they still had a lot of their plants alive and well. 

I spent time yesterday morning dragging cut dead branches into my burn pile.  I did burn one batch the other day and it was quite a fire.  I had too much on the pile so I scorched some tree limbs way above it.  I cleared up yesteday two smaller piles which made things look a little bit better. I still have a lot of dead brush to get rid of before winter. 

Not many plans today.  I will mow today as it will be too long if I wait until Monday.  I will try to collect grass for mulch for the garden area, which takes me longer to do the yard.  The stopping and dumping of the grass takes time. The mulching keeps me from having to fight the weeds.

I have grub and bore chemicals to get spread in the areas of the iris.  I noticed one other iris had its rhizome completely consumed from the inside out.  I know that I will have to cover the entire yard with this stuff eventually as it is the moths that drop the eggs down to eat the roots.  I will hit the whole yard more thoroughly to kill out the grubs next spring.  The internet said to buy a product made by Bayer that worked well and the toxic effects to pets is gone in a day.  I will water mine in so it will be gone sooner. I won't do the grassed area of the dogs this year.

I hope the people who need rain will get some soon.  We had way over two inches, maybe three, which helped us a lot. I need to buy a rain gauge of my own.  I see it is raining again this morning to the south of us and some rain is headed in to the north of us.  Thanks for stopping by today.