Sunday Afternoon Stuff

 As the season is in full bloom I cut some peonies to bring in for bouquets. The white ones are all on the ground as the rains weighed the branches down and they will not raise up again. 

 I still have rabbits in the backyard. I will have to fence in my raised bed as I have glads planted in there with the tomato plants. The rabbits love the leaves of glads and make quick work of them once the start to sprout. My fence barriers will keep them out of the area. The rabbits don't bother the tomatoes and the zinnias. 

 While at the cemetery I collected rhizomes of the iris on my Uncle Leo's grave site. The whole growth of the iris was overcrowded even thought they were blooming well. I could see the cemetery had cut back some of it as they seem to want to discourage plants in the area. It used to grow on top of all of the Aunt and Uncles graves and now it has been limited to just the one side. I also collected one small rhizome fr om an old fashion iris there that was of two tones of white. I will have to treat that start special for a couple of years to get a stand of leaves and blooms from it. 

 I brought in some clippings of two cemetery iris so we could enjoy them inside. The one on the right has multiplied a lot and I have it growing in three different spots. 

 We see baby birds being fed my their parents, especially the robins. We really haven't seen the sparrows doing that until yesterday. 

 It is a blurred shot but you can see the adult feeding the big baby chick a seed. The stayed there for a long time as the adult kept picking up seed and feeding it.

 A humming bird was buzzing my colorful spinner yesterday. I got the feeder up in about an hour later and there was a bird. I took a zoomed shot through a window so the quality of the shot is poor, but it is my first shot for the season. The female seems a little bashful and doesn't stay long to eat. If there is one I am sure more to be out there. 

 We attended the young mans grad party yesterday. We worked with his father in the Asian Ministry for twenty years and during that time Andrew was born and grew up. He is a great young man who actually went with us to Israel back in 2019. He was a young boy with his father being one of the tour guides.  The food was amazing as there were many things to eat. I am sure the 18 year old boy wanted there to be pizza. His father made Cambodian food with egg rolls and rice dishes. Then there was a table of dozens of different kinds of cookies. It was good to be able to see him and send him off to ISU to study in the fall. I sampled one of the cookies just because. It was a Chicago inspired cookie with a salt and sugar combo theme. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Saturday's Stuff

 While at the cemetery on Thursday I got to see the abundant growth of this iris on my Uncle Leo's grave site. It was in full bloom and could be seen fro a long distance. This was his favorite iris that he grew in Oregon and his daughter dug it and moved it to her Chicago home. Eventually the iris was moved to St.Louis, Missouri at here home now. His daughter, my cousin Sharon, planted it on the grave when Leo passed probably ten years ago. She has encouraged me to take samples of rhizomes a couple of different times, so I did take some more. I planned to start a new garden area for iris and that will be the first thing I will plant there. 

 My row of peonies are blooming well. The red peony is so good at not reacting to the rains, Most of the other colors lay down on the grown when it rains. 

 

This is the last bloom of this variety of iris. It only had one stem of blooms this year. I may just move it to encourage better growth. 

 At the Murray, Iowa cemetery is a Freedom Rock. Ray Sorenson painted a big rock along a gravel road in Menlo, Iowa yearly. That was so popular that eventually he was commissioned to paint Freedom Rocks all over the state of Iowa. There is a different one in every one of our 99 counties. 

 The rocks he paints always includes a draped American flag on it. This side of the rock depicts military men who were killed during WW II. The man named George Horton was killed in Normandy. He is buried in France and I consider him to be a step-first cousin. I was a part of his family because my grandmother remarried into the family. John and Iva Horton, his parents were like grandparents to me as the lived close to us on the farm and we visited them often. My first cousin Joan was a cousin, on her dad's side of the family, to the Matthew Daniel painted on the rock. He was killed at the Pearl Harbor bombing. The artist ran for House of Representatives in Iowa and was elected. So between sessions he is out there painting rocks for people now in all of our surrounding states. His kids are old enough to help to do base coats of paint. 

 My tomatoes are doing well in spite of the cold. The birds are loving the open ground and are out there rolling in the dirt. We have dozens of newly hatched sparrows as well as new mourning doves. I just hung my hummingbird feeder this afternoon. One came up to check out the colorful spinner so I knew one was out there. I used up the last of our sugar sack making their sugar water. We don't use sugar for anything except for them. Diabetics don't sugar things and my wife never was keen on sugar anything anyway. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Late Friday Night

 

I mowed the entire yard today. I haven't done that for years. I was layered up as it was cold and I still got the chills for a few hours afterwards. Tomorrow is to be warmer. We are going to a high school graduation party for a special guy which will be in a park. It is suppose to be plenty warm for that event. 

thanks for checking in today. 

A Cold Day

 Chives are a flower for me and yet we do use them for our baked potato. I am sure that chopped chives could work in a lot of dishes. 

 My coral honeysuckle is in full bloom this year. It suffered so much during the three years of drought. I didn't cut it down and my patience with it did pay off. A former owner planted this and I had to research it find the name.

 

 My knock out roses are starting to bloom. I had to cut back so much deadwood this spring that I didn't think they would look good ever.

 

 

 My William Baffin rose is growing large. I know that it is a climber but I have never seen this one grow so tall. I don't know if the branches will eventually lean down from the weight of the blooms or if I will have to cut it back. The blooms above are looking really good. 

 I planted the tomatoes a few days ago on a very cold, wet morning. They don't seem to be bothered that much from the cold. I bought them in an outdoor area store so I guess I didn't think they would be any colder here as they were a couple of miles away from here. I only have four plants this year. I didn't buy any that had multiple plants in the container as I didn't need seven plants like last year. The soil was in great shape and I had mulched it last fall with locust tree leaves and a new bag of commercial soil on top to get it ready for the season.

We took a journey down to the cemetery in Murray, Iowa. It was very cold and windy but I wanted to get things done. My parents, brother and sister graves are there. Dozens of relatives are buried there include the closer ones of uncle and aunts. My grandpa Burgus had thirteen in his family so there are scatterings of all those once removed relatives all over the cemetery.  Being the only sibling living in the state, it was my job to change the vases of flowers on my parents grave stone. The fake flowers were long overdue in being changed.  A group of a  high school class was there at the cemetery doing volunteer work on the area. Some of them earlier in the year cleaned old worn stones. I guess today they were there to pick up anything that need to be trimmed. We have a large painted rock at the entrance of the cemetery where many students were cleaning. The Freedom Rock project by one man is an amazing thing and Murray was the one spot that was chosen for the county. I will share photos on another blog. Freedom rocks are all over the state and now are in neighboring states. The artist is now a member of our House of Representatives. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Middle of the Week's Worth

 The lily of the valley is hiding the sculpture. Sometimes I cut it back so the guy isn't so crowded. For now it looks like he is in the deep forest.

 

I use to call this a flag iris. It might be but I find it on the internet labeled a Siberian Iris. Either way it is starting to put out lots of bloom.

I traded the purple one with the neighbor for some of this lighter blue iris. I like both of them and I am glad it is so hardy. It isn't quite unfurled yet as the temps are so cold. 

I bought this iris to resemble the one that I use to have. It was a cemetery iris but this one is sold commercially. It is called bumble bee.

 This was an iris that I got from a grab bag my neighbor had put out on the curb. It is a hybrid one with great colors.

 Our blue spruce has grown to be so big since we bought this place eight years ago. It seems to be trying to outgrow the maple tree that was planted next to it. I call them Arlyn's tree as he is the one that planted them. 

I cleared an area in the garden where I plant zinnias. I dug around to loosen up the wet soil and scattered many zinnia seeds. I followed directions on one of my packs and sprayed them with water to settle the seed in. Actually we have had so much rain it seemed strange to add more water on the area. I dumped another inch of water from my rain gauge this morning. We bought flowers today for the visit to the Murray Cemetery tomorrow. I buy lots of loose fake flowers and assemble them into my own bouquets.   It takes an hour to drive down there to southern Iowa and it should take our morning to get that task done. I think we should stop in Des Moines on the way back and eat out. 

Thanks for stopping by today. 

Grosbeak

 

She showed up at the feeder Sunday evening. I didn't know what I was seeing. I looked through many bird books and finally found here. She is a Rube Breasted Female Grosbeak. I am sure she is migrating north as they are not a common bird in our area. The male has a big red patch of feathers on its chest but she has just a pink cast. I have seen grosbeak at feeders at rest areas along I-35 in Minnesota. Their are yellow ones also. 

 I finished my bench. It is made from raw two by fours and one by fours. I water sealed it yesterday. I got my tote cart and rolled it up my hill. I moved it through the garage and brought it up the three steps from the garage into the kitchen. It was easier to do it that way than tote it up the thirteen steps to the deck from the back yard. 

It was a fun project. I followed the dimensions from the internet story. Its given measurements were in centimeters so I used that kind of ruler. It was easier than making the conversions. 

 Our daily rains are great but my peonies don't look good because of it. Drought is worse than too many rains.

 The red peony was given to me from a start my mom had years ago. She had dug some from her mom's house in Murray, Iowa, That had to be in the early 70's. I like having plants with history.

This one has history too as I dug one small rhizome of this from the top of the hill of Murray Cemetery. It has spread readily at my old place and has done very well in my new place too.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Monday's Mentions

 It is a hazy day with lots of humidity in the air. We will receive more rain tonight. We had three fourths of an inch of rain last night and numerous tornadoes were spotted in out state in the late evening.

 The rain does put some of the peonies on the ground. This old fashion one came from the old place. 

 

 I was happy to see that I still had this iris alive. I thought it was one of the ones that had rotted in the area. It is my Uncle Leo's favorite iris. My cousin brought the iris with her from Oregon where he lived and planted it in Chicago. When he died from Lou Gerhig's, ALS, disease she planted it on his grave. The grave is one row from my parent's grave so I did harvest some of it. The iris covers the entire grave area of my Uncle and Aunt who are buried there. It was allowed to become overgrown. 

 It is a new iris for me. It didn't bloom last  year but it is a true blue iris that I like a lot.

 It is in the same area of the blue iris is this pink rose bush. It will bloom all summer if I keep it dead headed. 

 I got a water treatment applied to my new bench today. It has  been fun building it. It has a lot of flaws as it is made from two by fours and one by fours. The gluing and use of long screws has secured it solidly. 

 

 I am fascinated with the designs that the pieces make. As I coated the treatment on it I kept my eyes open to favorite design compositions. I have more that I will share tomorrow. The bench can be seen in its full view as I can carry it upstairs to be put on the deck tomorrow. It has to dry out, or soak in for a day. 

 While out there I also brought out some of the plants that had wintered over inside. They will need to adjust to the outside and maybe will normalize their behaviors instead of stretching for light. I do have a new project develop as the board that they are sitting on has started to rot. 

Thanks for stopping by today.