The Last...of September.

I have shared shots of this before now but I keep wanting to  post it again.  The yellow is such a great color. 

The "knock out" rose is really slowing down now.  I hesitate to say that this is the last bloom as the plant seems to make a liar out of me.  I have a bud formed on one of my other roses and I do think it might get that final bloom if nor the season.

The skies are clearer with few clouds in sight.  The colder the temperatures the clearer out skies will look.

The mornings are crisp and clear with not much color in the sky.  Cloudless sunrises are good but a few clouds would help us see the sunrise in a better way.

I may have to bring in the mandevilla inside as it feels like it is too cold for a tropical plant. I don't want to stop its blooming but bringing it in may do that.

We have plans for the weekend to go see a couple of little boys and their parents.  It is a long journey but we haven't done the trip for a while. If I can get some photos taken I will be back tomorrow.  If I don't show up on the net tomorrow we are all okay.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunrise, Sunset........

Last evening I had viewed on television weather that there was a great sunset.  I went out and looked east, which is the above photo, and the colors in the sky were there as if the sun was coming up then.

When I looked west I saw this view.  You can see that it is much whiter and brighter in the wast than it is in the east.  I can't wrap my brain a round why it looked like sunrise in both of the directions.

I didn't really have time to pull off a big blog today as I have been knee high in kids all day.  Lots of things to great and lots of times to correct behavior.  Thanks for looking in on my blog today.

A Midweek Posting........

The clouds in the sky seemed to be breaking up from the strong winds from below.  It is a great pattern that does look well planned out.

Yesterday afternoon's temperatures seem so pleasant even though it was not a high temperature day.  The wind and sunshine made it seem very pleasant outside.

We had bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches for supper last night.  It really is a treat to have a great tasting tomato.  I remember one time when my grandmother fed me a tomato sandwich with mayo and bread only.  It really tasted so good and she really didn't have anything else in the house to feed me.  I have lots of roma tomatoes yet to ripen and  the large steak tomatoes are used in the sandwiches.  The steak tomatoes are few in number.

I posted this photo on my Photo a Day blog today.  I was surprised to see one more set of blooms opened on the William Baffin rose.  The buds really do look like a big T rose when they first start to bloom.  It is great to have a few things like this to show up when most of the flowers are now gone.



It is the middle of the week and we will be cold most of the day.  The furnace thermostat needs to be adjusted so it will turn on earlier in the morning before we have to get up for me to go to school.  I like that it isn't so cold that we have to wear a coat at this point.  I do wear a coat at night when I walk Barney.  Barney loves this cool air and gets excited to go outside.  He seems to be a little bit more willing to go out on his own this days which means we don't have to walk him so much.  He still gets walked by my wife around noon and I take him at night.

It is good that you stopped by today.  Have a great rest of the day.

Tuesday.........

The arrangement of rocks have been there for a long time.  I will move them in the fall before the snow falls.  I don't even know from where they originated. Maybe they were in a bucket that needed to be emptied before I carried water. They sort of looked like they are a planned sculpture. The tomato was picked and sits in the arrangement until I get hungry and take it inside.

The other large burning bush is just now showing leaves that are tuning red.  I discussed this in years past but the soil that this bush grows in is different than the other burning bush.  It use to be a gravel roadbed for a driveway where this bush is planted. I think that is why they grow differently.

It is Tuesday. I am grading reading reports today.  I was told to be lenient as the skills of the students vary in ability.  A student who tries really hard may not be able to pull of a good display or have a  great writing ability.  I have them give me a verbal report on the book and that does increase the points if the person is well versed and describes the book clearly.

It is a good day and we are warming up to 70 F. today.  The furnace was humming along this morning and we did need it.  Old houses can be cold houses.   I hope everyone is having a good day and thanks for checking in today.

A Morning Posting......

The mandevilla has opened its first bud into this wonderful bloom. For a tropical kind of plant it waited to bloom this fall when it has cooled down.

A zinnia, which too is a late bloomer, has pale colors as it first opens. It will darken as it matures.  A monarch circled and landed in the area but then left in the wind heading to the top of the trees nearby.

The hostas are looking weathered but this one still has its leaves intact.  The weathered one are too sad-looking for me to even photograph.

The rings on the tree stump are very large.  Unlike a hardwood tree where the lines are close together, this soft wood tree has large rings and this kind of tree is short-lived.  The moisture on the tree made the large rings show up and erased all the signs of scratching from the chain saw as I previously shared in a photo.

Just like the bad focus on this photo, the tomato patches are becoming blurry messes. The vines are failing and falling.  The tomatoes end up on the ground and need to be picked quickly to keep the insects from biting into them. The flavor of the tomatoes are really good this year.  I had abundant vines and enough tomatoes for two people to eat during the late summer months.

It is Monday and I am back at school teaching seventh grade grammar and literacy.  Knowing the difference between and autobiography and a biography is being discussed. Dangling modifiers and misplace modifiers is being taught to all these corn-fed students. I am in the most part enjoying my short term teaching job and today is the half way mark to the finish line.  As the fall ends and winter moves in I will be glad to not have to get out into the weather.  We were cold today and my furnace was running smoothly.

I wish everyone a great Monday and thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday Times..........

One of the many silver spotted skippers in the garden this fall.  They seem to be the only butterflies left to gather nectar from the blooms.  The bees are doing very well right now but the bumblebees seem to be gone.

The golden privet does not seem to ever grow into a large shrub.  It seems to die down every few winters and just starts over again.  In the fall the colors from the leaves are so great to see.

The mandevilla plant is now ready to bloom.  I am sure that I will be taking photos of it in bloom soon. It has taken it all summer to come around to put on some buds.  I have a couple of branches that has buds on them. I know that I mentioned earlier that it is going to get moved into a larger pot.  It does well inside in the window as it vines up the blinds of the window and I have to keep cutting it back.  I has never bloomed inside but usually blooms outside in the summer.

We visited the bookstore on Saturday and had a few hours of "away" time.  We found the last two DVDs of the Sherlock Holmes tv series and were happy. We have watched the first years series way too many times.  I also made a mad dash to the O'Reilly Automotive as I had to replace the back left turn signal light on the car.  The socket on that side must be faulty as it seems to look like it is overheating the bulb.  All was fixed quick enough but it was really hot out there working on the car in late afternoon.

Red and green remind us of Christmas but this shrub will soon be all red with red berries.  One bush is turning and the one  growing right next to it is not.  I should photograph that sometime to show the strangeness of how they don't mature at the same time.

I will share for the last photo this blurred shot of the blue morning glory.  It could be painted and look just like a Georgia O'Keefe oil painting.   I hope everyone will have a restful day.  Thanks for stopping by today.

We are the proud owners of fiber optic cable now for our internet connection.  When I use the borrowed school computer and do the blog, I am moving around in double time motion.  It is good and it is bad.  I will get use to it and we were so deserving to have the new line after all the time we have wasted in waiting for things to download.  Barney really made good friends with the cable guys and barked to ask them to stay and play. They really were nice to him and he appreciated new members in the family.

Predicting the Future......

Last evening I could see that I had blooms next to the east garden gate.  All I could see was the leftover blooms.  This morning I was pleasantly surprised as to see how far the late blooming vine has matured.

I had plenty of blooms to see and to photograph.  One bloom that I was not expecting to see was the one that was next to the back door.

This vine grew up from last years seed as that was my dominate color of blooms last year.  It is a great surprise and I am glad it was the weekend and I was home to see it.

Thanks for stopping in today.  I wish everyone a great day.

Remembering to Publish....

It has been hot the past two days and we had rain falling this morning.  The clouds from yesterday afternoon are not looking tremendous but their compositions are great to see.

I hope the neighbors are use to seeing me wandering around with my camera pointing to the sky.  I guess I could start the rumor that the sky is falling.  It is nice to have an open sky without dead trees in view.

I have discovered that it is the sparrows that are darting in and out of the burning bush to get berries.  I don't have any fancy birds in the yard right now but maybe later on as it gets colder I will see one or two.  The berries have ripened sooner  this year in the season than they normally do.  In dry weather they just dry up and the birds don't even stop at the bush.

The peperoni plant seems to enjoy being outside in the sun.  Its leaves really have turned to a different, richer color.  I can see that it is an overgrown vine that I am going to have to plant into a bigger pot.  It is a leftover plant from the terrariums era where everyone tried to grow them in glass containers.  I do like the plant but it isn't an outstanding plant for a houseplant as it sprawls all over the table.


I did discover that after I had lost a blog on Tuesday that I then forgot to post the Thursday's blog.  You get two blogs today.  It has been a busy week at school and exhaustion sits in once in a while when it comes working with students for long periods of time.

This new rose is putting out one more bloom for me.  I wouldn't doubt that I might develop more buds as it just won't stop.

It is a warm, humid day today.  It rain large amounts in the early morning but it has stopped.  A town north us  had heavier amounts of rain than us that caused flooding in the streets.

It is Friday and I am looking forward to it being the weekend.  I hope everyone is doing good and feeling well.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday's Things

Somehow or someway I lost Tuesday's blog.  I don't quite remember what was on it so I may share things again.  I don't think I will ever figure out why it was deleted but I will claim it was probably human error on my part.  I did think that I had posted it but I don't know.

The hydrangea flowers are all green. The camera does pick up the individual blooms that make up the full flower bunch.   The rains have kept the bushes around for longer time than most years.
We are giving reading tests on computers today.  It seems to be an easy task to get them to do it but they all do have to have earphones to listen to the questions. They all have to log in with their own personal id usernames and password.

I wish everyone a good day today.

Middle of the Week........again.

The silver spotted skipper is a frequent visitor to what flowers I have left in the garden.  I have not seen this variety of butterfly before this year.  It seems to be one of the few kinds that I have. There are a couple batches of sedum that are just now blooming and the zinnias keep putting out some new blooms which will help to keep them around a little longer.

 The windmill seems to be almost choked off from the wild vine.  It never became this large last year but this year it is abundantly growing.  I could pull some of it off but the frost will get to it some of these days. I have the idea that I would like to get the blades replaced back onto the windmill and I have an idea that I could get that done by the welding shop class at school. I will be working on that this fall.

The petunias are looking better than ever as the rains have slowed down.  They don't like to be flooded all of the time by rain but do seem to bounce back quickly.  As a purchase value, this has been a good buy.  I paid little to get a pot of flowers.

Most of you who have followed me know that I do take action on whims.  I grabbed some seeds of the morning glories and scattered them at the base of this post.  I have no flowers at this point but I have a great looking vine going up the post.  I have hope that all those buds that I see on the vines will bloom soon.

It is another day at the office, so to speak for me.  Grammar teaching is ruining my easy going writing style as I now have to proof my sentences in my blog writing.  All those intentionally dropped "Subject" parts  of the sentence are now being put back in and the verb usage has to be checked out randomly.  Dropping the subject when I write, makes me sound more like a storyteller but I can still tell stories with a proper subject in the front of the sentence. I think though I do have an identity conflict thing going on as I lost my original identity to proper grammar usage.

Thanks for stopping by today.  It is hot and humid out there and also inside as the air in our classrooms is not working.  I wish everyone to have a good day.

Monday Morning.........

I would have liked seeing these all in bloom.  The row of spent buds does seem to make a good statement thought that the plant is really putting out abundant blooms.  I see an insect also has become hungry and likes to eat the leaves.

While taking shots I picked romas from the ground and the vine.  Sadly they are still laying out there as I was distracted and didn't return to take them into the house.  I will get them after school today The crop out by the garden shed is just now starting to have its tomatoes ripening so we can eat them.

When  my neighbor Bill cut down the largest tree in the orchard, he had to make a few different cuts at it to get the job done.  He had the normal size chainsaw unlike one that a logger would have.  The textures really don't show until the light hits the top  surface at just a certain angle. The chainsaw cuts makes marks that look like a modern artist had created it on purpose.

The spent coneflower shows that it is now a skeleton form of itself.  I don't know if there is any seed left in the dead plant.  I do know that some goldfinch liked landing on them when they were still blooming.  The whole patch looks pretty much abandoned by birds and insects.

I will share this last photo of the back view of the rose.  The sun in the evening casts a strong directional light that lights up the back of the flower.  I do have the shots of the front view to share but this seems to be more artistic.  

I am back at school today teaching reading and writing.  Actually it is a lot of grammar and improving comprehension skills.  It is a Monday and the students seem a little hesitant to get started for the day. My blogs take longer to write these days as I have to evaluate the sentences that I have created and make corrections.  I am trying not to write like a spontaneous old country boy but that is hard to change.  I go back and add subject parts to my sentence instead of assuming you could fill them yourselves.  When I am done teaching in November I  probably could slide back into my old ways.

Thank you for stopping by today.