Saturday's a Go.....

 The traditional phlox that gets handed down from neighbor to neigbor does look like this.  It surprises me each year as it freezes and dies down and I don't remember that it is there.  It is a perfect plant as it is tough and rarely does it get any leaf desease. 

The commercial product looks like this where the traditional has been cross bred to make a great set of flowers.  The problem is this is shorter and I doubt it will ever get as robust or tall as the traditional kind. 

The wooden bracket comes with a story.  My grandfather owned two farms around the Murray, Iowa area back in the 1900s.  He raised ten kids on the farms and during the depression 1939 he lost both farms.  My dad and his brother dropped out of high school to work the farms to try and save the farms.  It didn't make a difference.  Somehow my grandfather did have enough to buy a low priced farm southeast of Murray and moved there with only four of the ten kids still at home.  The house on the place was covered with gingerbread wood trims on a large wraparound porch of an old two story house.  Fast forward, my Uncle Donald got out of Air Force from WW II and bought that farm. That would have been in 1945.  Fast forward more my dad who lived a few miles on his own farm was tearing down our farmhouse for its lumber in order to build a new house.  In 1959 he also bought Uncle Donald's house and tore it down for its lumber. My uncle and family moved to another farm house that was more modern.  The brackets were saved from the farmhouse. 

When my parents moved from the farm  a town the brackets were kept. I asked for them and they have been in storage for a good thirty years with me.  I kept them around as cherished antique items but never used them until I had place a flower box on them at my old place.  When I moved to the new place they were removed from the shed and I brought them to our new place.  The builder that put in our deck that wrapped around a fireplace put in these goal posts supports under the deck to meet building code standards.  I have decided to make the goal posts into the place to display my brackets.  The 1800's brackets are now on a house that was built in 2003. 

The goal posts now frame a window that has antique looking lace curtains on it and they fit in good. I added a few trim boards to decorate things. 

 

These were just shipped to me recently from a company that grows them in Oregon.  They wait for them to stop blooming before digging them, dry them and ship them.  I have to figure out where I want to plant them.  I am over planting the property so I must stop buying things.  I will figure out where to plant them but I am procrastinating in making the decision. The spades aren't that sharp but I can dig when I get around to it. 

It is a muggy, hot day today.  I did get the other half of my yard mowed this morning but the grass is needing some rain. Brown spots everywhere are showing but I won't water my yard.  I guess I think I owe it to the water plants of Des Moines not to sprinkle the water freely.  The river that the water comes from was so low the past two years.  Thanks for stopping by today.