Friday's Findings.......

The pansies have held their own this year staying in bloom all summer.  I do realize now that we need to buy twice as many of them and plant them in a close bunch to really get that great pansy look.  I have still been able to go and get great specimen shots of them but they don't look so good at a distance.

The iris that were getting eaten by the iris bore have been moved in small parts to new locations and as you can see they are growing. I treated the soil in both places.  I didn't trim this one down as short as I should have  when transplanting but the leaves have grown out since I moved them a month ago.  The dark brown mulch looks like I have a very rugged looking soil when in reality it is chopped up scrap wood.  I know that it will all be less junky looking by spring.  It has been a good time to move some of the iris as we didn't have that very hot summer that we usually do have.  I didn't have to water anything.

Another progression shot of the bud.  It has either bloomed or is going to bloom today.  It is running out of time to bloom as the vine seems to be shutting down for the season.  The last two buds are the only ones I have to get an open bloom photo of them.  We will see what happens.

The petunia is putting out some of its last blooms also.  I may be able to weed a little today as the spraying has reduced the mosquitoes tremendously but they are still out there in small number.  The insect spray is the answer and waring long sleeves.

I had Wednesday off from subbing at school so I started working on the south side of my very old house.  It has the original 108 year old siding on it and I am trying to make things look better.  I had put in the new dining room window in and circumstance kept me from getting that new siding painted.  So it is almost done, four years later.  Today I didn't have work either so I will finish the painting there and I will start paint new coats of paint on faded paint areas on that south side.

Summer work the past few years kept me from even starting the job but now that I have started, I think I can get most of it done this fall. It is replacing some bad siding and in other cases it is just a cosmetic thing of refreshing an old paint job.  I have kept up most of the other three sides of the house as that is what everyone sees.  The south side is the side that  mostly my neighbors see.  They probably are in shock and amazement to see me working on it finally.




I spent the day in the Spanish classroom on Thursday.  I have had a lot of Spanish in high school and even junior high but I never used it in a conversational way.  I had to do a lot of digging back hard to remember the conjugations of things.  The pronouns of "nonostrous and vonostous" were still in my brain but it had to be dug out of there to find it.  At that time in the dark ages of the 60's when we took foreign language we didn't have instructors that spoke it regularly so neither did we as students.

I am painting today until I run out of paint.  Then we will head to the store to get more and maybe my wife wants to go to the bookstore.  I will need to make a run for some new siding to patch up one area on the house but I don't think that will happen today, maybe another day.  Our days are warmer now and it is nice to be outside.  It is still cold out in the early morning so I will have to wear long sleeves and long pants to work out this morning.  Thanks for stopping in today.

Thursday's Things.....

I spray on deep woods OFF when it is time to go out.  They have sprayed for mosquitoes and it has helped a lot but they are still out there.  I was able to catch a shot of this shorter sunflower.  It isn't as mature as some of the others so the weight of the seeds hasn't caused the bloom to droop.

I have to pick the rhubarb again and I am planning on giving it away to someone who really likes it. I like when it gets to be tall enough that it is looking like palm trees in the sun.

I am sure it is the weather that is causing the blue morning glory to have a muddied look rather than the clear blue that it usually has. The white flowers on the vine seem to be the dominate morning glory in all of the vines out there.

The leaves as you can see are turning yellow now as it is colder and the days are getting shorter each day.  I have a large amount of tomatoes to get picked  that are out there by the glories.  I think that the mosquitoes are down enough that I could rush out and grabbed them off the vine and then hurry back in with only a few bites.

All of the plants are in decline now as we have has do many cool nights.  Today it was to warm up normally but the nights are still cool.  Having carried all my geraniums in once already I will probably pace myself and carry a few each day so as to not wear myself out.  I will have to do lots of moving to get them into the bird room. 

I had a busy physical day off yesterday.  I had some touching up on paint to do to the back of the house and I crawled in under the kitchen in the crawl space.  I have a drain pipe that is cast iron originally from back when the kitchen was first installed. I am thinking that would have been in the 1930's  It is rusting away on the bottom of it and I had to do some temporary repairs to keep in from leaking down into the soil of the crawl space.  It takes crawling on my stomach to get past some pipes before I can really get to the location.  I can feel all those muscles today. 

I am teaching Spanish today for all levels of learners.  The day has been a pretty good one.  I have to dig down deep in my brain to remember some of the conjugations of verbs.  They did not ask for a lot of help but sometimes they needed to jar their own memories by asking for assistance.  Conjugating verbs is the most  difficult part of learning a new language.  It helps if ones knows how to conjugate in English before they try to put it into Spanish.  It makes it a long day but it has been a good day.  I hope everyone is okay out there.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Wednesday's Wanderings........

This is the enlarged view of a small rose.  The bush has three blooms on it and the weather has been good not to wash them away. This is such a small bloom but the flowers on it are really great.

My gerbera daisy had put out three buds.  I bought it that way. They bloomed.  It has not put out any more buds the rest of the summer.  It has put out a lot of leaves.  I have brought it into the house now and it sits in the large dining room window.  The foliage reminds me of lettuce so I can't loose as it looks good.   I am just going to wait and see if it likes to be in the house. I am betting green house treatment is what it really likes to get those great blooms.

 We rearranged the living room the other day and the ceramic planter gained a new place to be.  It is in the bay window.  Our couch and loveseat were not overly expensive but they were not inexpensive.  For some reason the set has decided to give it up.  The springs seem to just quit working and the cushions are now have lost their shape.  It is like the foam inside the cushion reached a certain age and have stopped being foam. 

The love seat is not used as much and it exhibits the very same condition.  We moved things around and have the love seat as our main seating for now as its springs are not as bad as the couch.  That said,  they are not great.  One should not sit down on a piece of furniture and roll to the center.   Someday they will be replaced. I won't mention where we bought them but we will be more careful as to where to go this next time we buy.

I remember when the couches were made of a harsh covering and I think they were pressure packed with a straw like material as that stuff never quit holding its shape.  The covering of course faded and they looked very worn out even when it still kept its shape. The dyes of green, brown and maroon were common and you could see eventually where everyone sat as they looked like today's faded jeans.

I refused to take any sub job today as I have outdoor work to do.  I need to mow and pick up apples.  I need time away from teenagers and I declared Wednesday to be my own.  It is a sunny day now after the fog lifted and they promise it will warm up to 70,  I will still wear a parka to mow in as it will be chilly in the morning.  I heard the city spraying last night when I let the dog out so maybe the mosquitoes will be less.  Yesterday afternoon I was looking out the window and I could see the mosquitoes in the sunlight swarming as if they were knats.  I didn't go out except once to rush to the rose bush and then return.  The backyard seems less filled with the insects as there is less plants for the mosquitoes to land on and wait for their prey.

I thank you for stopping in today.  I hope you have a great Wednesday.

Action Photos.......

It was an action filled photo shoot yesterday afternoon as the mosquitoes seemed to be as big as barns and the one honey bee left his stinger in the back of my neck.  The above photo shows that I was distracted right after the sting.  I pulled the stinger out of my neck and took a few quick photos and went inside.  I was beyond disgusted with the insects out there in the garden. Oh, I now know that what I thought was mosquito spraying done by the city on Sunday night was not spraying at all.  I was wrong.

One insect was hungry as he left a Swiss cheese look to the morning glory leaf.  Between the insects and the cold air I think it is the end for my morning glories on this trellis.  The majority of the leaves are now yellowed either from too much water or cold air.  We were down to 42 degrees F. this morning. 

The plants that I bought in the mum variety were small but if I take a very close photo it looks like they are big.  Maybe next year I will have a larger set of plants. I lost another photo apparently as the brown mum picture doesn't seem to exist in my file.

At the very last moment this morning I got a call to come in and teach high school history.  It was difficult to say yes but I did.  I had planned to be gone and take the day off.  I guess I will be firm tomorrow and not work Wednesday.  I am not liking the new system that they are using for hiring subs. Anyone who calls in late doesn't allow others to pick up the jobs.  The other subs have already committed themselves on the computer to maybe lesser jobs, like a half day job, when the full day shows up.  I had told the computer to leave me alone but a person called me somewhat desperate even though she pretended not to be.  I have two extremes today with three freshmen classes and the rest senior or junior classes.  The freshmen still want to act like sixth graders and they take a little work to get them on task.  The upperclassmen are so well behaved.

I appreciate you stopping by today.  I hope you are having the kind of weather that you want today. Take care.

Monday Morning.....

They continue to bloom in spite of the cold.  They all look weather beaten.  Today the weather is better so I hope they show off better.

Zinnia's are tough but they are now starting to deteriorate.  I think they sprayed for mosquitoes last night as the smell of fuel oil was in the air.  They mix the insect killer with something that smells like that.  We needed to have the town sprayed as I haven't stayed out in the garden for longer than three to four minutes at a time. There were so many of them.

I lost this photo and I had to learn about my iLibrary to search for it.  Sometimes photos that I edit usually end up in my month's folder file.  Sometimes, apparently if I am not paying attention  they go into a iPhoto file automatically if I don't watch for my right folder.  I don't want to take the time but I am curious as to how many photos are lost in the iPhoto program file system.





I am sitting in Middle School math right now with nothing to do but watch someone behave properly.  It is the second time in this classroom today so I do know the material when the assignment is given.  I am assisting with special needs, five different students, today as they go to their classes. We are warmer today and it looks like there will be no rain.  I need to stay home sometime and start to mow the yard.  I hope everyone has a great Monday.

Sunday's Stills...........

I cleaned up a lot of dead stems from around this rose a month ago.  The rose is rewarding me for the trim and clean up of dead leaves.  This is my small pink rose and there are three blooms on the bush. It is so cold I am sure it wishes it were still in bud form.  This rose survived the hail storm with bruised blooms at the beginning of summer and now it faces the very fresh air.

I did get all the hardy geraniums back outside on Saturday.  It was hard to walk around with all the pots of geraniums.  

These few remaining flowers are doing their best to finish off the season.  They have had a few flowers in bloom for almost two months now.

I found this "Autumn Fire" on sale for half price.  I bought it hoping that it will not collapse at the end of the summer and let its blooms lay on the ground.  I will still divide and move a lot of my other sedums once we have warm sunshine and the ground dries out a little.

I know that this is like a daily report on these vines.  What I do want to report is that the mosquitoes are living in the vines and they came swarming out at me within a ten second period. I do hope the town does spray for these irritating buzzards soon.  I just went back inside and didn't bother to look around. I was fighting the insects and the dead battery warning so I was not a happy camper.

It is good to have Sunday and we will be home for an afternoon of rest.  Our schedules at church has changed so we can actually get home 45 minutes earlier than what we did in the past.  That is great to have more free time on Sunday.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Saturday......

I had to tip the nail keg over onto its side as the thing was filling up with water.  I haven't taken it the rest of the way into the garden shed and I really didn't know that it was going to hold water. I will leave sideways for a while until it gets thoroughly dried inside.

 With a frost warning for last night looming I picked a few of the ripe ones to bring inside the house.  It would have been a real mess if we had a hard frost but we never made it any colder than 38 degrees F.

I did carry in all the geraniums last night and now when it warms up enough for me I will carry them all back outside again.

Among the different kinds of sunflowers that I had planted, this small one looks like it will be a deformed bloom.  I don't understand the curled leaf but it could have an insect inside of it. I will probably show the full bloom of another sunflower like this tomorrow on my Photo a Day blog.  The blooms look a lot like large daisies rather than sunflowers.

The weathered zinnia is a great thing to see.  I had forgotten how sculptural they become as they start to decline. I have orange everywhere with the tomato plants sitting right next to this one zinnia patch.

It is a cold Saturday with it starting to act like fall.  It slows down the outside activity when it is this cold.  I discovered that our timer on our thermostat to the furnace is not working anymore.  I like having it turn the temperatures down at night by about 5 degrees but the clock mechanism is not working.  The thing is older so I will need to replace it when the full heating season starts.  I hope we can quit running the furnace in the near future as it is too early to be paying for fuel in September.  We may make a trip to the lumber supply store to buy a new thermostat and then will hit a bookstore for awhile.  The interstate rivalry football game is on today so it should be pretty quiet at the bookstore at the mall.  I hope you all have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by today.