First Day of the Week....

 The blooms are weathered and wet. We keep getting rain and that is still a good thing. 

The many blooms of the sunflowers are all not the same.  I planted mammoth seeds that never did germinate. This multi head variety is doing well.

It is nature's own combo of flowers. It doesn't work well with color harmony but the shapes are  okay. 

I really like this hosta variety but the rains have been  hard on it. I like its color and it has grown to be big in the location that it was planted at the bottom of my stairs. 

Some of the day lilies are done blooming but his one still has a lot of buds in waiting. I have some lilies that I need to move as they are planted in areas where they are getting crowded out by other flowers.

My backyard views look great but I have so many weeds that need to be dealt with. I guess the weeds blend in but they do bother me. 

It is a very humid warm morning. I sounds like we may have a storm by mid morning. We are having record breaking rainfalls this month. It is still a good thing since we spent a few years without rainfall. 

Thanks for checking in. Have a good Monday.

Houses...

 

 

 

I had to climb on my tall extension ladder today to clean out the opening at the top of a drainpipe of the eavestrough. The tube at the top of the white drainage pipe on the left of the picture had not been draining for most of summer. I won't do that again for a long time even though I did get along okay. It was not fun.  I think a stray plastic sheet from the shingling people from the past must have been in the trough and it worked its way over to seal up the hole. 

Have a good night and see you in the morning.

We woke to tornado sirens this morning, early, and it sounds like we may get awakened again tonight.

Friday Fun....

 

 The tiger lily shot up among the phlox and just burst open with all these blooms. I really like tiger lilies and I would like to buy another one in a different color.  I had a yellow one and lost it.

My ditch lily never disappoints me and I enjoy then now as much as I did as a kid down on the farm. I knew it was summer when one could see them along the gravel roads in the country. 

I get all sorts of volunteer plants that grow from the fallen birdseed. This mus have been one of the sunflower seed varieties that the harvest for my cheap seed. 

I took a quick tour around my backyard so I would have new photos to share. I have been watering these tomatoes and it is paying off now. I noticed that I have a bunch of new blooms now on some of the plants. 

While at Hobby Lobby yesterday I looked for origami paper and all they had was plain, solid colors. I looked over the scrap booking section and found a book of patterned paper. My wife actually found the section for me and it was fun to see how many things that they have. The scrap book paper can be too heavey to fold so I had to find a book of papers that were actually thinner that most of their papers. 

I spent the last two days working on the cleaning of my aquariums. It will take a few days as I have to get one emptied of fish and place in another then drain and refill. Life got too bush and I have sadly done it for a very long time. I know when it is time to get things cleaned when I start loosing fish because the wqter is not good to support them. The oxygen gets crowded out of the water. I will share photos later as I continue the process to clean the next two that are left. 

Thanks for stopping in today.

Thursday's Things....

 It is a popular tray and birds wait for their turn to feed. The female house finch holds very still while the young mourning dove digs around in the cracks of the tray. 

The house finch doesn't know that most birds don't feed at this seed sack. I was so surprised to see it on there and had to snap a shot.

The sun isn't really showing but the sunflowers are turned to where it is suppose be showing up behind the clouds.The sun did eventually show through and made the sunflowers not look so silly. 

My one hardy geranium is regrouping and has put out some small sets of buds. The color out shines its minimal set of blooms. 

The birdhouse that I built during the covid shutdown sits as a decoration on the deck. I noticed that some bird has filled it with nesting material but I never saw anything fledged in it. I guess when the wind blew it of onto the deck when we had a horrible storm that might have stopped the nesting process. 

We had one appointment today and ended up at Hobby Lobby for a visit. We ate burritos on the way home. I am liking our cool weather. Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week

 

 

 

 The garden stays about the same. We had a loud thunderstorm in the night that gained us tenth of an inch of rain. I pulled grasses and weeds around iris this morning. I earlier mowed the neighbors front yard as she had a showing of her house this afternoon. Our air is still filled with smoke and we have lots of humidity. I guess 81 degrees F. is suppose to be cooler but it still fills hot out there. Thanks for checking in.

Morning Glow

 Getting up before the sun actually rises can help you find great colors. It didn't look like this for very long as I went back to bed for twenty more minutes and this was all gone. 

The phlox does respond to the warm sunshine as well as the heavy humidity. I was outside for a short while without a hat and I really got heated through. Both hats that I have were up the next story of the house in the garage and I was being lazy. 

My sunflowers look rather weathered from all the high winds that we have been having. They are all staked and tied now to keep them from laying on the ground.

My first tomato was small. It is the best they could do at this point. I have some larger ones that are still green and I hope they start to ripe soon. 

The newly hatched sparrows are fun to watch. The don't quite have their balancing act together and they just sit and look around to see what is going on around them. The fledglings are many in number. 

At the other end of this bed I planted my new zinnia starts. I checked on them this morning and all but one are standing straight and looking alive. One single one had a very large stem and it is not not doing well and I can't reach it to correct it with a deeper hole. Maybe another day I can figure out how to reach it wiht out stepping on things. 

 My two large stems that budded late are actually this form of tiger lily. I bought them and the photo didn't show that they were a variation of the original tiger lily. My grandmother had an old fashioned tiger lily and I thought that was so magical to see. I may have to order some on the net. "Lillium double tiger lily"

We are going to be very hot today again. Our humidity is high and the air quality is bad. Smoke of course likes heavy humidity. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

First Day of the Week

 The new young bird was circling around me as I was sitting on my stairs taking a rest. It is a barn swallow. 

In the past few weeks the barn swallows circle around me as I mow the yard. They want to catch the insects in the air that I don't even see and know that they are there. 

 There were probably three of them that were keeping an eye on me. Maybe they liked my straw hat. I sat still and they never did land on me. Barn swallows stay in sheds and barns making their mud nest up in the peaks of the roof. I can only imagine that they must be someone who has a larger building, maybe a machine shed, in the area of this new development that they must be nesting in. My wife's family farm had a barn in which flocks of barn swallows returned every spring to create nests and raise their young. 

My wife had a follow up visit to an optometrist today in the big suburban city. The entire area is west of the big city and has two or three major hospital buildings and many clinics scattered everywhere. It is a duplicate of the downtown medical centers. My wife will continue to visit every few weeks until everything is healed. It is hot out there again today.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday Stuff

 

 

 

 

 We had a few days off from the rain. It seems like it might be just a normal weather pattern for Iowa for a change. I have a need to clear out so many unwanted growth in the flower gardens but I work at it a day at a time. I like using a weed/grass trimmer but I always cut off flowers by mistake.  Scheduled  appointment for tomorrow so I won't be in the garden at all. The weeds will wait for sure. Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunny Day

 I must have been doing one of my random planting actions as I see I have put this ditch lily up in the front yard garden. I must have dug it up down from under the tree where it wasn't working and I guess this is where it lives today. It was a pleasant surprise to see it open.

I had to wait around for the grass to dry out this morning as we got another inch of rain. As I wandered about I caught this shot of the William Baffin rose putting out its second round of blooms. I never got to the dead heading of it yet but it isn't going to wait for me to do it  I did get the back yard mowed in the late morning. I also did my neighbor lady a favor by weed/grass trimming along her back yard fences  It won't help her to sell her house but I know that it bothers her that the other neighbor had not got it done. I will feel those muscles the rest of the day. 

I didn't plant this sage but I do let it grow. The rains are so hard on it as it just won't stand up.  I do have some stakes so I will get it standing better eventually. I didn't have the time to deal with it today. 

The cone flowers have perked up with all the rains but they too have the lean to the right in the front yard. 

 

The day lilies are doing well. It is there time in the season to show off and I like my variety of blooms. 

It is a hot day again after the rainy season. We avoided having flooding in Iowa but all of large and small rivers are really full of water. Our water department in Des Moines is still fighing nitrate runoff problems with the water but things are improving as more rain flushes out the farm fields.We have acceptable levels of nitrate right now and everyone is happy. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Final Day of the Week

 The vines are there but they just are not climbing yet. Once they start they will fill in the trellis. We keep getting more rain. It is a good problem rather than the two and a half year of drought. Thunderstorms are the norm.

The rain is taking a toll on the flowers but no water is worse. The large daylily is ragged but from the back view it still looks majestic. 

The soil is so wet that the flowers are swaying and leaning to the ground. I have Russian sage that is all laying on the ground. The phlox tends to do this anyway as the flowers do make it a little top heavy in the wind. Add some rain and they do fall over. 

This rose is in between bloom cycles and these strays are hanging out away from the plant. 

I mowed the neighbor lady's yard just in time today. It was between the rains and right after I finished a realtor brought by a couple to see the property. The grass looked really good.  I did go ahead and mowed my front yard also as it needed it. My fertilizer seems to be working well as my grass is taller and gets shaggy faster than her grass. 

I am draining the granite pan from excess rainwater. I thought it had a hole in it but apparently it doesn't. I am glad it let me lay it on its side as it was very full of water. 

Thanks for stopping by today.