Friday’s Findings.........

The wind is tossing the flower around.  I like the photo because of the feeling of height as it shows things while looking down. The blur of the flower seems to have to be ok.

The two haven’t been moved for most of the summer.  I needed to do sum serious grass cutting so they were brought out from away the backyard fence.

Looking up in this photos lets the leaf arrangement be appreciated. The hummingbirds like to land and rest on the branches.  The size of the brach seems to be a perfect size for them to perch.

The second bach of sunflowers that I planted at a later time are growing taller.  The look like soldiers trying to stand at attention.  None of them have put to a bloom but maybe next week they will start. One of them is really leaning but I am not sure that I can get into the area to put in a steel post and tie it up straight again.

The zinnia does make a great cut flower.  I am going to see how long it last though. The hallow stems may not let the flowers stay good.

It is Friday and the morning was rainy.  The afternoon is going to be very hot and then we will have storms in the evening. It seems like a typical summer.  The weekend is coming soon.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday’s Things.....

A slanted shot of my jade plant.  It has been large, died off, and now is revived and doing well again. It isn’t a grand shape with only two tall sprigs with all those little starts at the bottom.

The seeds from last year’s morning glories have been spread by the birds.  This photo shows a vine growing in the tomato patch. I have another vine blooming over in the sunflower patch.

I am sure that my neighbor with her vegetable garden keeps her weeds down so she wouldn’t be bothered by my wandering blooms. As the weather stays cooler I can see the flowers are enjoying the break from the heat. My backyard grass has grown enough that it really could be mowed again.  My front yard is not doing that well. It is still spotty with dormant grass but the dandelions keep on sprouting up.

My volunteer vine of gourd-life squash keep putting out more.  I have yet to find the plant on the net but I will try again soon in my search. The vine is among the red twig dogwood and seems to blend in with them.  I won’t take it out until the first frost. Unfortunately the first frost seems to be closer than I would want.  I noticed the full moon had moved in the sky to the farther left of me. I thought it wasn’t out there when I was out with Barney last night and ten I noticed it was so far east that I had to go out to the deck to see it.  The moon has already stopped being completely round and is distorted like a flat sided ball.

I am happy with this move of the Russian sage.  It is sprouting out new leaves at the bottom as well as the center of the plant. I have it coming up in my yard like a weed this year since the grass hasn’t been mowed for a long time.  I may pull out some more plugs of it and put it my backyard flower garden with this one. I did see a humming bird getting nectar from those tiny blooms.

The new phlox called “bright eyes” is on its final bloom. All three new ones are doing well in that clay dirt.  Next year they will be ready to take growth and bloom with gusto.

It is Thursday and things need to be done.  I am on a slow speed today so anything that I can accomplish will be good.

I wish you all to have a great day.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week,.....

A blurred shot of a pair of humming birds bringing their young one to the feeder.  I really had to zoom in quickly and the wind was keeping everything moving. The flew in all together and left as quickly after about thirty seconds.

The one hummingbird has a great patterned design on his neck.  I recognize this one because of its shinny yellow green feathers.

 Looking down the steps gives me a different view on the world. I also see that I may need to   paint the deck this fall.  It probably was freshly painted when we bought it and it looks like it doesn’t wear very good.

This second round of ripened cherry tomatoes is a bonus for this time of the year.  We are taking more tomatoes to my wife’s friend in Des Moines today. Within the next month I will be clearing away the dead plants as it gets closer to winter.  Some of my tomato plants are getting close to being ready to come out as all that is left is dead stems.

I was told by blogger friends that my Grandma Brooks’ quilts were made with flour and sugar sacks.  The thing is she also used a lot of here leftover cloth from making dresses and aprons. I remember the blue pattern in the foreground as one of her dresses. I can see some of the materials being sugar sacks as they have such a simple patterned  decoration.

One more different hummingbird that I can share.  The neck piece doesn’t look red here but it does reflect some red in it neck feathers. I think that this is one of the four that I have out there. I am told that the migration of these birds is starting now.

Taking my wife’s friend to the doctor today.  She gets tomatoes and we will get a meal before we go to the hospital.  It is cold this morning and it reminds me that fall is coming.  We have been have evening temperatures of upper seventies, so this morning it was in the fifties.

I was at the old place yesterday so I will skip today.  I can feel my muscles of the job that I was doing.  I was cutting quarter round to surround my new tile floor. That was a lot of up and down movements cutting things at the right angles in the right direction and the correct lengths. I did get all done with the cutting and placement but will install the next time.  I hope everyone will have a good day today.  Thanks....for stopping by today.

Tuesday’s Post........

Tuesday morning is starting off with beautiful scattered clouds. Each one is reflecting the sunlight.

I missed blogging yesterday.  I don’t know why that I did not do it as I have many photos to share.  I  must have had my head in the sky like this sunflower.

Our heat has been overwhelming with the air steamy hot and blowing it in your face. I did mow most of my yard yesterday in the morning to help level it off a little. I didn’t do all of it.

I don’t have only one or two butterflies this year. Maybe there will be a migration of monarch but I usually get many bugs on my zinnias.  This looks more like a moth.

I have had more bees and honeybees on my flowers this year than butterflies

I had intended to share this shot yesterday in my post. The colors that show through the flower are so great. The dark background of the underside of the deck really makes them look unreal.

It is either a gourd or a squash.  This is another small one just now developing.  I saw one smaller than this on the vine while I was mowing the yard yesterday.

It was a windy day and I was having a hard time getting the flower in the photo.  I liked this one as it has sort of an informal balance with the blurred house in the background.

I have been pulling this weed all summer.  Somehow this one blended in with the bushes so much that I didn’t get it pulled. Now I am going to let it bloom to help me figure out what kind of  weed that it is.

I worked at the old place today and left after it started to storm so badly.  I drove out of it as I came southeast. It didn’t hit here until later while we were buying groceries. We are still on the edge of a drought area and our rains are few and far between. Any rain, even if it does not measure in the gauge still is good to wet things down.

I did get my blog done for today and thank you for stopping by today. s

Sunny Sunday Afternoon........

I found a piece of history in our old house cupboard.  It was slid back in the corner of the corner kitchen cupboard.  It is one of the two that we had.  Our newer one had a spigot on the bottoms side of it.  It was sent to the landfill last year.

I brought it home and scrubbed it down and tried it out for old times sake. My wife remembered how many bags to put in before setting it in the sun.  She remembers because she and her Uncle Toby would discuss the numbers use. Toby always used five or six bags and my wife always used four. I like to pour the tea in a glass and add as much ice that is possible. No sugar is added to my tea. The old jar still works.

While out yesterday afternoon, I sat on the deck and watched the humming birds coming in to feed. It was a good hot afternoon for the tea to brew.

The one hummer rewarded me a chance to get a shot of it in the air. I have found that they like to approach you if you are wearing a red shirt.

While on the deck I caught a glimpse of the sunflower through the slots of the rail. When I zoomed in on it  I have a photograph that is framed on two sides.  It is a very hot and very humid today.  It is not easy to stay outside for very long.  I thank you all for stopping by today.

Saturday’s News.......

The harvest has been good.  I didn’t grow large tomatoes so it seems like I didn’t have so many of them. This cherry tomato is reviving for one last production.  My pear shaped ones also seem to be revenging.  I guess that we left a long drought period and the plants seemed to start a new season.

It is another full moon.  I have been watching that sliver of moon to a full moon  We have had a lot of cloudy nights so I was surprised to see it full developed.  The red planet of Mars seems to be hanging around near it now as it was not near it when the new moon was forming.  The were almost at opposite ends of the sky.

 A low flying passenger jet went over me at the same time.  It looked like it must have left Des Moines Airport and was heading straight north toward the Minneapolis area.  It seems like a late time for a departure but I do know we have landed in Des Moines at ten thirty at night when coming from Maine. The weather was very humid and the jet was flying so very low as it passed over our city.

The rhubarb has done well this season.  For some reason a bug really liked eating this one leaf.  I didn’t see the insect so I don’t have a way to identify it.  It just seemed to like only this leaf.

The knock out roses continue to impress me with all their blooms.  This one cluster is on the side of the one bush that is ready to bloom again soon. They have received benefit of getting water all summer from my garden hose.  I was watering the main frontward flower garden so it seemed good to help out the roses and evergreens.

It is going to be a hot day with full sun.  I could mow the yard but I think I will just wait until more of the dormant grass grows back in to the yard.

I just received a call from my older son about his house being hit by lightning.  He wanted to pick my brain about the situation.  Our older house in the old town was hit a number of times and we really never had damage.  He has lost a lot of his electronic pieces but not major appliances.  I know that the water pipes and sewer pipes tended to ground out a lightning strike.  His seems to be ground out on one end of the house but the other end did get hit.  I don’t like the unpredictability of lightning strikes and houses don’t have the lightning rods anymore.

Thanks for stopping by today.

College Design Crafts Project.......

The project was one of designing on paper a piece of furniture. It was to be built by hand.  That meant that once the instructor had picked the design from the sketchbook of twenty-five ideas,  I was to build it without using power tools. The instructor was a man who built tables of great design with natural woods, being used as a part of the design in unusual, nontraditional shapes.  Il was the early seventies and he looked more like a hippy than I did.

Hand cutting dove tails worked out good for me even though I had never done that before. I had to cut things smaller at a time and sand them so they would fit together like a person puts their fingers together inside of each finger.

The bottom cross joint was added to the design by the instructor, as her really did like the design on paper. The one bottom board has a white vein of color in it making it look different.  As a kid, I should have flipped and put the whiter wood on the bottom. I don’t know how I made that joint with a handsaw but I must have used a wood chisel too. I did cheat one weekend while visiting my parents. I took all the verticals to my Uncle Carl’s house and he help trim the all to be all the exact same length.  That did guarantee a better chance at getting it all to work.

This is complicated and I do remember now that I had many small squares to keep track of. To make things more complicated, I made two matching ones to be used like end tables or a coffee table when both pushed together. My glue job was done well but as you can see the one joint is letting go.

I have the second one in the basement, waiting for me to restore it. I remember how hard it was to  make these as we didn’t have enough lab time to create them.  I took the two to a park to put on the finish as I couldn’t do it in a dorm room.  I felt pretty strange back then, a twenty year old, painting finish at a picnic table.  I remember that a young boys baseball game was going on at the time. I had to hand sand everything and probably didn’t wipe off the dust back then.

As a class it was to be a purist type of class making us into hand craftsmen using fine wood.  The walnut wood and all the grain directions really help make this a great design. With all the experience I have now,  I am thinking that was an impossible task.

Thanks for stopping by today.

ps. I remember now that the boards came in this width and that make me create the table in relation to their widths. It made it a lot easier when the power tools were banned for use.

Garden Shots.....

Middle Day of the Week.....

My one and only monarch was feeding in the front yard.  I could not disturb this one while shooting photos around the area.  I think it was laying eggs as it was not eating from the dried coneflower.  I had seen earlier, a few days ago,  a monarch worm on the butterfly weed that grows in the same flower bed.

When it is not so hot and dry the morning glory shrivels up to look like this. You can see buds in the background that are blooming this morning.

There are still a lot buds on the hibiscus.  I should have blooms through this mont ad maybe beyond. This variety is not very tall.  I know it is its first blooming season so next year it might grow taller as a plant.

We had a rainy day, all day, on Monday.  The humming birds and young goldfinches didn’t seem to be bothered with sprinkles. A few days later we have a very cool morning but it will warm up today.

I have packages to send to the grandson who broke his arm.  I tried to send out a card to him yesterday and the mailman, who normally doesn’t go until five or six in the evening, decided to go at three in the afternoon.  I went to mail the card and the mail had already gone and I had mail.  I took the card to the  large grocery store and the mail had already gone there too.  I long for a consistent mail service in our  big city.  I actually believe that we didn’t get mail the day before, so they went early the next day to make up for it. You can not schedule your life on that service. Sometimes you don’t have an idea that you need to mail out early because the need to mail something had not developed yet.

Today is chores day for me.  I have watering to do and maybe an area of the yard to mow. I will start early on the postal service problem knowing that I can get it done early in the morning that maybe I can hit a mail truck somewhere.  Our post office is miles away on the other end of town.  Our grocery store post office is a mile away from our home. That will be the choice once everything is ready. It is the middle of the week already.  Where does the week go?  Thank you for stopping by today.

Tuesday’s Things.....

It bent over a few weeks ago and I tried to save it.  I stood it back up and wrapped the kink on the stem. It didn’t work though as the wind just snapped it off yesterday.  The bend didn’t heal but started to root above the old part and no real strength came from trying to save it. I did stick the broken off stem into a bucket of water but I know that will not work.

We had an inch and a half of rain yesterday. Spotty rains happened all day.  The rain was not good for the yesterday’s blooms but they are back today as other new blooms.

I removed all of the dead roses and put them in this dirty bucket. The  bushes are already budded for the next round of blooms even though the bushes look blank right now.

The rocks that I had picked up and put on the top of the wall now are decorated with rose petals. The grandson who likes to put these rocks  back with the others had an accident yesterday.  He was playing on the monkey bars and fell breaking his arm. We are going to send him get well cards off and on.  We also picked up a lego toy for him to put together.  He starts school next week riding a bus to start his kindergarten year. His little brother will get a toy too because that is what grandparents do.

I did work at the old place today.  I had plans of things to get done but I don’t get them all done.  The neighbor guy was over and we talked for a while catching up on things. Being a friend sometimes means sacrifice but I can work longer next time to catch up on my list. He was excited because his daughter was going to leave New York City and go to Chicago to work. I had both of his daughters in school from middle school through graduation.

The old place got three times the amount of rain than what we had at the new place. I had chunks of old tree branches to pick up this morning. My yard in Woodward is very green.

A blurry shot of my new fish.  It was an immature decision but I bought a koi.  They can grow to be a foot long and I will have to deal with that years from now. I have to cover all of the openings above the tank as they do tend to jump out of the tank and commit suicide.  I do think 68 years old allows one to make foolish decisions and I will figure what to do when he gets to be too big.

I am late blogging today. It is kind of a low key day.  We are both sad about our grandson and his broken arm and yet we know that he isn’t the only kid with a broken arm out there today.  His little brother broke his collar bone diving off of a bed about three months ago.  Thank you for stopping by today.  Yes, as long as the old grandpa in the family doesn’t break anything, everyone will be happy and so will I be.