Sunday scatterings.......North Shore, Minnesota

I don't know what plant this is but I snapped this at a beach near Duluth, Minnesota.
Along the shoreline of Superior, the rocks create little garden areas, when a little bit of soil has blown in and wild flowers root in to make rock gardens.
I have never been able to identify these plants but the little blue bell shaped plant can grow out of a crack in the rock with no other plant around it.
Lupin flowers grow wild along the ditches of the highways. The area I took this was near the Gooseberry Falls Park. The roads have been reworked there in the past few years and on one area the lupins bloom readily. The clearing of the trees and reworking the soil actually increased their growth. One shot I missed of one large area along the way, I will mourn forever. It was waves of lupins in different colors. We usually miss the blooms of the lupins but hit it perfectly, maybe even a little too early. Some of the plants weren't in full bloom. Thanks for reading......

Just a note to you about my following photo on your sites. For some reason, my picture has been removed from your sites and it identifies me as anonymous or not at all. I didn't do that, but I am manually putting my self back on the blogs that I follow. I have stopped following certain people a while back, but....I didn't stop following everybody.

A Vibrant Saturday........

I am still feeling punky, very punky, but am on my way to Osceola to work on the bathroom project. On my Photo A Day, I have been talking about the use of color or better yet, recognizing colors and how they land on the color wheel. This is my favorite of favorite mugs when I need to cheer up my person. The mug was one of those cheap, end of the summer left over pieces that they need to clear for Christmas goods. The red mug with the green insides is kind of a shock, but the blue and orange stripes separated by yellow makes the color just jump.
I planted a dozen glads and only two made it to the blooming stage. The two that bloomed were both red. I gave my neighbor a dozen glads from my bag and she successfully had three that bloomed, all different colors.
This is a blurry picture of the parrot at the zoo. He definitely speaks vibrant colors.
I keep harvesting my tomatoes. Some are just dropping off the vine, and I really have to bring them inside to get them to complete the ripening process. We have many buckets full of roma tomatoes. My wife made salsa to go with supper. I can hardly wait for our first fresh salsa of the year. We are eating pork chops with it, they were already thawed or we would have planned a different meat. I will barbeque them with lots of sauce so they will be contrasting in taste to the salsa.
I will give some tomatoes away to a neighbor lady who cans salsa. We froze a lot of packages of romas and will make sauce from them this winter. Thanks for reading......have a good weekend.

First flowers....Last flowers

Fall is setting in around here and the growing season will be stopping in the next month. I am not sure that the alums were exactly my first flowers, but they come just as early as the tulips.

My last flowers are going to be the black eyed susan's. I had a stella o'dora lily that keeps putting out one more flower but I think it is finally done. All that is left to do is collect seeds from the zinnias and bachelor buttons. The weeds are getting the best of some of the gardens but I will get to them a few at a time. The susans, coneflowers, and sedum are fading but keep some color out there. We didn't have a normal summer season in Iowa as the rains kept coming. Now that the tomatoes finally started to turn, the rains have slowed down, and the grass is going to stop growing. In the corn fields you can see the firing start, (the plants die and turn yellow to tan), and the soybeans are mostly dead stems waiting for the combine to come and pick them. I still don't have all my projects done. But when the snow starts to blow, I will be done, ready or not.
I bought a second hand book today about Garden Crafts. A four dollar book the second time around. It has lots of garden sculpture projects in it that I may have try this winter. I will blog about it later..... Thanks for reading.......

Let's go sailing.......

Bar Harbor, Maine

I owned a sailboat once many years ago. It was a Sunfish sailboat. It was a foolish purchase and I sold it. I do believe that I broke even on the sale. It went to someone's small man-made development lake in Norwalk, Iowa. That was about all it was good for. I did learn some things about sailing, but it wasn't the best of things for me at that time. It was a baby Starfish and that was very popular back then. Below is a sunfish being raced. Two people in one of these boats is too many.


I would be concerned about the safety of a sailboat on any large body of water. On Lake Superior the sailboats have all sorts of instruments, radar, and radio contacts to the land. It would help to have all these things to keep you from destroying oneself. On the ocean, I am assuming that they require lots of technical support systems on boats as a necessity.



I do like the way that it feels to be on a sailboat with the lack of engine noise, it is a free flowing ride. The above boat was cheating as he was using his motor and prop to get him to where he was going. Did you see the little dinghy attached to the boat?


It has been a long day for us as we were down working on the house, fixing it up and waiting for it to be sold. We both have had a long term virus cold and we find everything we do just gets done slower. The cough and tiredness should go away sometime soon. Three weeks has been said by some who have gone to the Doctor, that is the length of this particular virus and we are now at the end of that third week. When you are too weary to blog, you know that you are sick. Take some asprin, and blog on anyway, right???? Thanks for reading.......

Cinema Marquee, Bar Harbor......

I was surprised to find this on one of the streets of Bar Harbor. The Criterion is original in the town and the hearsay said that it was all still originally decorated inside with a balcony and old original seating. Needless to say I had to get some shots of this. It is one of the nicest marquees that I have seen anywhere. It looked very out of place among the New England flavor styled building next to it.


That looks like real stained glass in this one end panel. I never got a chance to see it lighted, but I bet there is lighting installed behind the stained glass.


The front of the marquee tells of another movie with a special showing but this is the movie that was showing was as seen above. They had enough letters to do the whole title. Sometimes when you see these old theaters they lack some letters.


This is the wonderful design that is on the ceiling of it. The whole thing shields you from the rain, and also probably creates a great effect at night, standing under the lights, just like in Hollywood. It will be nice to return next year and I will plan to make an excuse happen to be able to see this building at night.
Thanks for reading......

Death Stairs......

Meet you at the top......or you can find me at the bottom!

My wife and I booked a motel on the internet before we went to Maine. We thought we were booking a small free standing cottage which consisted of a small one room. There were lots of them there. When we arrived, the very nice owner said that since we got such a good deal on our rate that we get to live upstairs in one of the rooms in the main house.
The house was a cape cod, that had two dormers added to it so four individual rooms could be built above the main house with a central hall. They were very nice clean rooms with a bathroom built into the corner of the room. You know that I don't need to say how small it was but it was very nice.
The tough thing about the situation was the stairs. They were attached to the back of the house and they were not very sturdy. Two platforms were created and then a stair was added between those two platforms and also a leaning deck at the bottom. The whole stair was built in theory in a correct way, but in reality, they were scary. The railings were too short and the way that they were built allowed the middle stair to actually lean away from the house. Because the house was covered in vinyl siding they couldn't or wouldn't lag bolt the middle stair to the house. When it rained and the wind blew, it was a very exciting experience. The short railing at the top made it a very unsafe situation. We may stay there again when we return, but I will fork up more money and stay down on the ground. Thanks for reading....

Dog Show Observations.....

The dog show in Des Moines is held once a year and is sponsored by the American Kennel Club. One's first impression when you walk in to the big building is the various staging, grooming areas scattered all around the show rings. Many people groom their dogs before showing, including washing and blow drying as well as trimming and combing out of the dog. The dogs are placed on grooming tables and have a collar to hold them in place. They, the dogs, don't mind any of it and have been doing it for a lot of the time of their lives.
Most people groom their own dog, but some families bring lots of different dogs and they may have one person designated or hired to groom them to get them ready. During the judging, we noticed one woman who showed up with different dogs under the different breeds. She could have been a trainer who showed for others or she raised different dogs and show them all.
I didn't know that I would like to see a dog show or not but once I had been to one, you just can't stay away. I snap pictures continually along with my wife all day. I would love to snap pictures of people too, as their are a lot of interesting people out there, especially those who show dogs, BUT I don't.
This is a judging going on with Afghan hounds. The one lady with the black dog, I had photographed earlier, as she was practice running her dog all over the building in and out of the crowd. She stopped for a pose for me, she and her dog, and I took their picture. I liked how her haircut allowed her to look like her dog with they were both running with their mane flowing. I noticed she tipped her head back just like the dog did when they both ran. She was proud of here beautiful animal and she should be. This little long haired Dachshund is sitting on the lap of a young girl who had just shown her dog in the ring. I noticed the little girl later and she was there with her parents, who had a large number of Retrievers that they were showing. She was helping to groom some of the dogs.
This young man had a apron on which made him look a little more serious as a groomer than some of the people there working on their animals. There were a lot of Retrievers there and they have to show them in different groups, with brackets rating until they have a final group to show for first, second, third, and fourth place.
The crates are everywhere in the building. These Papillon dogs were owned by one person or a mother-daughter team. They actually had seven carriers so one was carried separately from the others of those that were rolled in. The dogs take everything in stride and you can tell they are pampered and loved. It is a friendly circus atmosphere with a lot of dogs and a lot of people who love dogs. Some people bring their own dogs along with them to watch the show. A young family with two young girls in stroller were being pushed around by their mother, while the father walking around with two very large Mastiff dogs. I have more stories to tell about this with lots of pictures. I seem to be jumping all over the place with my life and what I do, but I will settle down as soon as the snow starts to fly. Thanks for reading......