Tuesday's Things.....

My sneaker was tapping as I walked. It felt funny that I would hear a sound from the tip of my toe. An old shingling nail was stuck in the front toe of my sneaker. The angle of it kept me from feeling it in my foot and I couldn't see it.  I took off the shoe and thought it had gum stuck to it. It was embedded in the rubber sole in the very front. I am sure it is leftover from when I had my house shingled.

Moving to the new home gave us opportunity to stick things in boxes willy nilly.  I was digging through a bag of winter things, gloves and stocking hats, and I heard a clanging sound.  The lost brass bell has been found in with the stocking hats.  I don't know why it was in there but I am glad to find it. Once I clean them with brass cleaner I will put all three of them back together to make my wind chime, made in India, like new again. The low light photo comes to you from and early morning shot under lamp light.

At a distance the photo looks like a tree line. It is the last of the peonies that grow in the front yard. I will be removing them today and clearing everything so the leaves will not collect there.  They won't necessarily go onto my neighbor's yard as much as they will just keep on going down the street. The north wind seems to come roaring down our street causing trash cans to be dumped and some people's mailbox doors are blown open.  One person's mail seems to land in my yard and I take it back to the box. What they need is a piece of duct tape to hold it shut.

I am taking the dead zinnia stems to the dump this morning. It was not hard to clear them but I didn't want to take away the dirt around the roots.  I had to really beat the root systems on the ground to get all soil loosened.

We had a large group of children at our door last night to ask for free candy.  We made a decision to do Trick or Treat festivities as being new to the neighborhood we wanted to be friendly. The kids really were nice and the numbers were higher than 50.  I was going to count but then it just got too busy.

The kids costumes are fun to see and we only had one older boy who had makeup making him look severely wounded. It was a very unpleasant night with the wind chills being very cold. We did close down early as the kids who started at 6:00 were about done an hour or so later. The youngest little girl crawled up our steps and the oldest one was probably in 6th grade. Some parents were dressed up too and others just came along to watch their kids.  Our front door is out of the wind so they came right up to the door to get out of the wind. Barney always loves Halloween and watched as closely as possible as they came to the door. He was exhausted from having all the visitors.

It is going to be a very cold day today. The wind is low but we are not going to be above freezing until this afternoon. It will be our coldest for sure.  I will work outside this afternoon with winter coat and hat to keep me warm.    Thanks for stopping by today.

Monday's Minutes for our Meeting......

I had a large variety of hardy geraniums in my collection. Those who have followed me for a while know that I had two reds, pinks and whites.  It got to be to big of a collection and I guess they are all gone.  The one peach one I still have from years past but this one is a new one as of this summer.  I can't let a hardy germanium die when it has a bloom like this, if I can find a container to put it in. Of the three that I bought new this spring I have rescued two of them planting them into galvanized buckets. I may move them to clay pots later.

 The rescued sedum from the town dump is doing well in water. I will try to put them into soil to get roots on them.  I really don't want to grow it inside all winter but maybe if it establishes in dirt I can put it back in the dark room to go dormant. One of my blogging friends reminded me that the dozens of cut sedum could be rerooted for use. I just took three stems of them.

I shared the cleared zinnia patch earlier in one of my blogs.  I had stuck cut flowers into water and yesterday I finally got them into vases.

The small vase worked well for keeping the short seemed flowers. The flowers themselves are pretty weathered and yet exhibit their original shape and color. I took it outside on the deck to photograph it as the light was bad inside. We bought this vase years ago because it reminded us of the plaza cafeteria in the Kansas City Art Museum.  They kept fresh flowers in that kind of vase on the tables where we would have lunch. The cafe area was actually an open two story room with Roman columns and Italian scroll work decorating the entire area. The large bowl fountain in the center of the tile floor was always running and the large glass ceiling skylight made it bright with natural light.  All we get is a replica of the vase for the memories of a wonderful place to visit. It is like getting a t-shirt to remind you of the beautiful state of Maine. The vase has been in hiding since we moved as we really don't know where we put everything but I found it last nigh.

These will last for a while but I fail to keep water in the vase.  I found the last batch had used up the water in less than two days and they of course just died.

I started off Sunday morning thinking that we didn't get the predicted freeze.  Apparently it had reached freezing in the night but by morning we were back up to above that.  I could see that my morning glory got hit hard with only a few stray survivors. I will spend time today to take out the rest of my raised bed of flowers and tomatoes now.

The old fashion marigold has survived but once I get started I think all of this will just go into the recycle sacks or the back of the truck. The former owner planted a lot of vegetables and I have screens that he placed around the outside of both garden areas.

I really didn't notice any creature was bothering any of the garden area but he as well as the next door neighbor seemed to be concerned about rabbits. I think that putting up barriers made them feel they had better control of any possible pest.  So I have sets of screens that lean against the fence in the far corner of the property that I may never use. I think tomatoes will be the only thing that I will ever take the time to grow.

I decided to stay at the new place today and catch up on work in the yard.  The wind chill is cold today and the old place seems to be something I can wait on until tomorrow.  I hope everyone will have a great Monday.  Thanks for checking in today.

Sunday Stuff......

An archive photo of the old birch at the old place. The birch is at the same stage today with most of the leaves fallen to the ground.

An earlier photo taken with the phone shows the yellow leaves still on the tree. The time the photo was taken the sun was bright and the temperatures were a lot warmer then. The yellow tree to the left bottom is actually the neighbor's maple tree across the street.

I will miss the tree but we have a river birch that grows almost across the street. That house is for sale right now and the people left last weekend. I was reminded of the birch in Woodward as its leaves are being blowing into our new house's yard.

An archived shot that shows the bark of the now 35 year old tree from Minnesota.

We did  reach freezing temperatures andt we were cold enough. It will happen again soon enough. I have three trees at the new place that will probably drop leaves in the next two weeks giving me more things to rake. I have a truck full of old zinnia stems to dump tomorrow. I will be mowing in a winter coat but I have to get it done both places.   I hope to be winding down on my outside work soon.

I appreciate your stopping by today.

Weekend is Here......

It is the same old view these days. The only changes seem to be where the jet vapor trails are the number of them. I only saw one this morning and it is a subtle white streak.  The temps are hanging close to freezing but we did not freeze now for the past two days. The windchill on Friday was painful and caused me to wear three layers for working outside. The wind is less today, Saturday, and it is said we will be 41 degrees F. by late afternoon.

Friday morning the zinnia patch looked like this photo shown left. I started out pulling and cutting them. I thought I would just do a small portion of them then finish later.

Once I got started and had taken a couple of wheel barrows full of stuff to the truck, I had gotten use to the cold. It now looks like this and it looks pretty sad. I did remove the glass jar and antique chicken waterer from the birdbath in case it would really freeze. The stumps of the sunflowers remain and they seem to be needing a bulldozer to get them out of the ground.  I may wait until spring and see if the natural weathering processes will help to break them down for easier removal.

Since it didn't freeze, I may go back and pick a few more.  I don't have much luck with some of these ripening in the house but I will give them a chance.  The pear shaped small tomatoes do change to yellow but the flavor just isn't as good.  I did pick a lot of those for eating.

The porcelain pail holds all of the last zinnias until later placing in vases.  They do have water now and that may make them look better. It took a lot of time to hand clip the blooms while pulling the plants was a faster process. The truck is full of the stems and leaves now and I will dump it on Monday.

I did pick some of the herbs and we will get them ready for freezing today.  We have decided to just hang the sage upside down by its stems. I may hang them in the furnace room which will make that place smell good.

Other things that were done yesterday was to dig up the cannas and two hardy geranium plants. I wasn't going to dig the geraniums but I don't like killing a plant when I don't have to. They are in my galvanized pails and will probably stay in them all winter.

We did get our flu shots yesterday and sore arms seem to be consistent results of that.  The place was certain that I had already had my shot, but the pharmacists was not spelling my last name correctly. He didn't want to give me a second shot.  After some discussion he entered my last name with a "us" and not "ess" and found that I wasn't registered at that place.  I could of told him that as we had shots in another city last year.  My wife was in the files as she buys her medication there, but I don't do that. The shot site was good but really was not in a muscle. I guess they don't look for muscle anymore for poking a needle.

We are off for our usual adventure this morning and will be home for rest this afternoon.  Dodging cold weather is the familiar  behavior for winter but we do have a garage now that makes part of the journey more tolerable.  I opened the garage door yesterday and started the car so it would be warm. My wife  wasn't  surprised as to how cold the wind was until we got there and had to get out of the warm car in the parking lot.

I am glad to have the weekend begin and hope to enjoy the next two days off from everything.  Thank you for checking up on me today.

Friday's a Final Finish.......

Today is the day that I clear the zinnia patch.  It could be done a few days later but I am home today and they look more like a mess than a flower garden now.  I will try to get a before and after shot to show progress taking place with the winter preparations.  I did dig one more daylily yesterday and brought it home. It was in an area where I was working on the house eaves.  I looked down and saw it. It was one of my favorites and I decided to get the spade.

I did pick up some clippings from the city tree dump of the sedum.  Someone reminded me that they can be rooted so easily.  There was a large pile of it but I only  took three stems. I may put them in soil in a pot though and bring it inside for a while before I put it back outside. There is a pile of landscape timbers at that dump site where people place them there for burning. My wife was so surprised that I didn't just load up the truck and bring them to the new place. Our new lot is probably a fifth of the size of our old place so I can't just pick up things and pile them for storage. I have the majority of my old brick collection now in the garage waiting for me to make a brick path or stepping stones.

I am going to wait until these flowers go bad from the frost and freeze. I won't cut off blooms and throw them away but I will cut down dead blooms when they are through.

It is time to get the flu shot today.  We have many places where we can go but we will go to our large supermarket pharmacy.  I like to have space and privacy to get the shot and some locations have little spots next to the window. This one has private rooms off the pharmacy.
I always get the shot in my left arm but my left arm is messed up right now with very sore muscles.  I will just put it in the other arm. I do hope the person does know what they are doing. Sometimes we get some who really don't understand where the shot should go in the arm.

It was 34 degrees F. when I took Barney outside this morning.  The wind was strong making three layers not really warm enough.  I do remember now why I don't like winter so much. Barney, though, loves the cold.  He has been laying down in the grass to soak up the cold air.  It would be fine but I can't just leave him there and walk away to do something.

Time to conclude for another day.  I know that I need to take photos if I want to have fresh blogs.  I have lots of chores to do today around the house.  I can't work outside up at the old place. I should mow today but maybe will wait for tomorrow. It might be ten degrees warmer tomorrow. Thanks for stopping in today. Take care......

Thursday's Things......

The evening was beautiful with the clouds reflecting many different colors. This is in the front yard view and the whole panoramic view was covered with houses and trees. I had to find a view that gave you a good sample of what was there.

The back yard view was great too and the neighbors wonderful lone surviving tree. gets to be in the picture. Off the subject, but I wonder if both neighbors to this tree knew they were buying into all those leaves.

The front yard looks good with the mums in full bloom. They stay until a hard freeze turns them brown.

The photo reminds me of the two yards that need to be mowed. I have a major trim board to replace first on the old house and then it is back to mowing the yard at the old place. I have a silver maple that still holds onto its leaves until November.  My birch tree leaves blew away with all the strong wind. I guess I shared or should I blame it on the wind. I return to the house to work today because it is predicted to be snowing tomorrow.  It isn't abnormal for that kind of weather right now.  I remember one year when we had an freezing rain storm and branches fell a week before Halloween.

Thanks for stopping in to see my daily diary. I hope everyone is well.  Thanks again.   Tomorrow !!!

Wednesday with no Wind......

Afternoon coffee in a poppies mug. It is a neat mug with a great handle to hold. The mugs are stowed with the dishes so I don't use them so much.  I may have to move a couple of them up on the coffee mug shelf.

Space guy was slipped into a box as he is so neat to see. I don't think the whole set came with him but I do have a few of these guys. This one actually was among some of the tools. My shop has its own theme as it is a storage room too. So Christmas, toys, antiques and framing stuff all share space with all the other part of the room. I forgot pottery and ceramic pots in my list and then there are, of course, tools.

Because of the two new chairs placed in the basement, the red oriental rug was banished to my shop. It really wasn't banished as I now have it on my floor next to my work bench. I have a fancy shop with great style.

This is a good time to share the spooky rug.  It moves on its own when one isn't watching.  Actually the rug moves as we walk on it as its backing lets it shift as you step.  I kept noticing the rug was changing position and finally checked it out. It isn't a floating carpet but it just kept moving counter clockwise.  Now that it is on a concrete floor on the shop it just may stay still. I don't believe in spooks but this one really baffled me for a while as I would come downstairs and the rug had moved.

It is what you don't see in this photo that is important.  I was tired but I thought I should plow through and get all the trimmed branches into the truck. After that I went ahead and cut down the last two of the 8 bushes. They are all gone, all packed down into the truck.  This morning they were dragged out onto the dump area for the city to burn later.

I have had a busy day and need to close this blog down now.  Thank you for stopping by today.

Rescue Work......

While I was out to the old place, I go to a location where there are sewer lagoons.  They have a place for people to dump their yard waste of limbs, sticks and leaves.  I took out a truck load of dogwood bush limbs leftover from my timing them.  I saw this bank of flowers out there and it was mums and sedum that had been tossed on the pile.   I was excited to think that they were pulled up and I could get some roots of the mums and sedum.  No such luck, as the people had just cropped off the top of all of their plants getting their gardens ready for winter.  I did bring back some mums and put them in water as they seemed to had been placed there on Sunday.  I did look over some roots of another kind of hosta that had been placed to the side, one time when I was out there.  I didn't take them but some one else had by the next  day.  I will go out there again tomorrow so I can check out what else has been tossed.

Our downstairs bathroom really is not a good place for a potting center.  I just needed them to be reorganize in their pots and to toss some of the out of the collection. Someday I am hoping to put is a scrub sink into the furnace room so I won't be doing this to the bathroom sink. When I divided that plant of the sansevieria which had been over crowed for a few years, I pulled out a lot of individual specimens. I tossed some today, even though they were good plants, I just can't keep them all.  I am going to take one of them tomorrow to a neighbor lady at the old place and maybe my wife's friend in Des Moines would like one. It is a low maintenance plant that lets you forget to water it and keeps living anyway.

This donkey and plant will not stay on the back of the toilet. It just looks good there right now as I decide where to put it.  I had it upstairs with the fancy dancy stuff but I don't think it will do well up there anymore. I did replace the vine but it still seems to belong downstairs.

More shots of the mums while they are taking in some water.

The bouquet is a free one with very little work required to get them into a vase. I like the color of these mums. This is just a second photo of the same thing.

We have a couple of chairs to be delivered today for our downstairs area.  We decided that a couple of new upholstered  chairs with ottomans will inspire us to finish off the room down there.  We still can't quite figure out where the sitting area will be. The birds are causing us to rethink things as they like to be in the windows and the artist really do like to be the window too. It is really a minor problem but it was a lot easier to decide things upstairs.

I am home to day for the delivery and for the sake of my old body to heal up a little bit from the work I do at the house. We took a severe change in temperatures today and it is not good with the strong winds. It will freeze someday this week for sure.   I will try to work a little out in the yard this afternoon but I will have to wear layers and a stocking cap.   I hope all are doing well out there.  Thanks for stoping by today.

Good Morning Monday......

The distant tree that has its dead limb is loosing its leaves. Soon the dead limb will just blend in and we will see the sun coming up behind the tree.

A maple leaf that I picked up from the old place.  It seems to be less red this year.  We had plenty of rain so the leaf should be more red. My silver maple hasn't drop very many leaves yet but probably will these next couple of weeks.

The planter of vines is still shooting out flowers. It was cold and windy yesterday and I was so surprised to see the blooms. When we get a good hard freeze I will be able to take the planter off of the deck and put it in the garage.

This is our morning view.  The earth keeps tilting back, shortening our daylight and lessening our warmth.  It definitely feels more like winter this morning than pleasant fall weather. The older I become the more I understand why people head south for the winter rather than go through the shock of the cold one more time in our lives.

I am headed to the old place again this morning and will see if the pelicans have headed south.  The batch on the lake right now have had a good amount of time filling their bellies with fish so they can take the next flight further south. They are headed for the gulf to bask in the sun. I am traveling north today but it is suppose to be one last warmer day today.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday P.M.

While taking random shots in the truck sometimes the camera really isn't aimed at anything. One never knows what you will get when you shoot willy nilly.

The corn needs to be picked. They are working at it as you drive along on the highway. Beans did come out first.

The story that goes with this is on my Photo a Day blog. Lions, tigers and elephants, oh my!

The sunflower mess is now all gone except for the stumps still in the ground. I took out two more red twig dogwood bushes yesterday causing my truck to have a full load again of garden scrap materials.

The photo isn't so good but you can see that I cut back the red twig dogwoods bushes. I know that in the spring I will be rewarded with better looking shrubs. I have four more of these to take down to a shorter height.

When I was ready to come in from working outside, I thought I should check out the tomato harvest.  They picking is slim right now but I did have to use my one work glove as a container to bring it what I had picked.


It is a sunny but cool day today.  I wish everyone to have a great rest of the day. Thanks for stopping by today.