Middle of the Week....

 

It is sort of clearing off this morning from the whole day of sporadic rain yesterday.  We will warm up today and the sun is partially shining through clouds.

 

 

Another day of clearing the flower garden in the front.  I needed to clean things up to make it look better for visitors. The neighbors to the south of us surprised us with a for sale sign being placed in the front yard.  The have bought a newer home and will be having people in to look at their house and property.  I thought the peony bush row that is adjacent to their driveway should be cleaned and spruced up immediately. The neighbor said that the sale and move has been in the works for a while but they just haven't told anyone.  He sold his  old Camaro and has cleaned out his workshop side of the garage. We will miss their dog Molly. They built the house twenty years ago and the reasons for a change are many.  I think a brand new house seemed like fun to them. They are close to our age and are empty nesters for years.  They don't need four bedrooms anymore.

While picking up plumbing supplies on Monday and had to hit the garden center.  There was not much left to buy but I did find an aster that looked good.  I removed a lot of its growing medium on it so it could be growing in real dirt.  I think they end up failing if you just stick them in the ground. I guess medium is cheaper than dirt so one has to fix things. 

I planted the aster in this front raised bed flower garden. There is another aster already growing there of a different kind and color.  I dug up my canna that never matured and put it into a pot. Maybe I can get it to grow while on the patio this fall.  The soil was damp from the one inch rain that we got yesterday.  

I had a lot of chores to do this morning and I am ready to take the rest of the day off now,  Thanks for stopping by today.

 

 

A Welcomed Rainy Day......

 We are having a rainy day.  It sort of rained in the night but it wasn't very measurable. Today it has rained off and on with heavy downpours.  We need it.

Having such dry weather means the canna never grew and the blanket flower has one flower.  I didn't water so often the past month and so this is what I get.

Dry weather also means the asters are looking puny. I have been watering them and maybe today's rain will help. 

During a break of the rain this morning I did get out to see the garden. The glory is a little damaged but it is a large bloom.

The single petaled knock out rose is putting out some meager blooms.  It will be the last bloom season so I hope it bloom a long time.

You fix the toilet and all looks good but one more thing happens. Back to the hardware to get new tank bolts with good washers, new washers and put it all back together again.  I finished my last work session at seven o"clock when I replaced the bolts so it would be completely leak free.  I have different aches and pains today as working on toilets requires working on the floor and in tight spaces.  All is well now almost 24 hours and it all is going to hold. 

We are headed to a movie tonight.  It is about a road that travels the length of Israel. I don't remember the title but we did travel up the length of the country many times from Cesarea Phillipi to the Dead Sea. It was a trip we will remember forever and it will be nice to see a movie showing the familiar places. It was back in 2019 that we made the journey and we see travel shows on PBS all of the time that reminds of the sights and sounds of Israel.  Our first hotel the first night was close to the Gaza  Strip and the whole place was made of solid concrete.  We didn't experience any bombs from the south fortunately.  It was on the Mediterranean Sea. 

Thanks for checking in today.

Old Things.....

 An antique piece holds the last of the tomatoes.  The dish is covered with roses and has gold trim ib uts edges, I really never thought about it before but why is there a hole in the one end of it. 

My wife inherited many milk glass pieces from her late mom's collection.  One afternoon her dad had Della and her brother take turns picking pieces out of the overflowing box of milk glass pieces. She ended up with nine or ten things.

My begonia still doesn't look that great.  It has taken all summer for it to bloom many clusters of flowers. 

While sharing antiques this is an old library table.  I was given it from a teacher friend from Coin, Iowa.  I was a stupid kid then and I cut the legs off of it to make a coffee table.  We used it for a long time as such but then I took it to the basement and changed the design.  I added the bottom pieces with a arts and crafts design and I painted it because I wanted a change. Yes, it is oak.  Now it is a downstairs living room table which I pull out when the grand kids come and they play on it.  It was a Lego city base for my one grandson the last time they were here. 

I was substitute teaching back in 2016. The whole high school walked many blocks down to the football field and we had our picture taken.  I am in the picture at the crosspiece of the G. I did actually try to stand partially behind a couple of kids so that I really probably couldn't be seen. I found this on an old school blog and had to grab it and share it. 

I have been busy today fixing a toilet.  I had to replace the major works on it by taking the top tank off of it and replacing device.  It is a pain but I did get it done. The toilet is 20 years old so I knew I just need to replace rather than trying to replace seals and stuff.  I hate doing this kind of work but I can do it. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Showtime.....

 

 

 

 

 Thanks for checking in today.

Stuff on Saturday....

 Only one bloom of the red morning glory is out this morning.  The vines are almost all gone for fall.  I did see one lonely blue one on the trellis today but I did see more buds on that vine.

I worked on one chore of replanting an indoor plant into a larger pot.  The larger pot was from a failed attempt to grow a palm plant.  This fits into it perfectly but gives me a very heavy pot with plants to carry up to the main floor.

I get things messed up with loose dirt so I lugged the pot around the patio area and up the stairs. I took a garden hose to everything.  Later when it had all dried off I took the now heavier pot up to the living room.  Some people call the taller plant a snake plant.  It is also called a mother-in-law-tongue. Sansevieria is the true identity.  I had some shorter variety of it to plant in the front of the taller one. I was given the dwarf variety many years ago and I keep dividing in and now have many ports of it. 

The pot that I removed the tall one from is now filled with less impressive dwarf snake plant.  I could see buying a young tall variety to put in to this one.  

 

Here is the evidence of the second stalk of iris that was blooming the last couple of days.  It is the reblooming variety that actually rebloomed this year. I have had it a couple of years and this is the first tim that it did its second bloom.  I took the blooms to a light box and took lots of photos that  I will share some other time. 

It was great to get a little bit more rain. It was hardly a tenth of an inch but we need all we can get.  The water sealer works well as the water now stands on the deck and has to evaporate off of the surface.  When you put the sealer on you wonder how it will even work but it does.

We are headed out to our favorite Chinese place for supper.  The food is always great the the service is superb.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Fall, here it is.....

 

Two variety of sedum grow side by side.  Some seasons I couldn't tell the difference but this year one can see the two kinds.  You can see the withered leaves of the hosta from our drought.  I have deliberately watered the sedum even though they aren't the kind of plant that normally needs it in the fall. 

 

 

The coneflowers are ready to be cut down.  Sometimes I leave them for the snow season because they look good in the winter. 

 

I can't keep from taking photos of the blues. I didn't have to water them today as we actually got a very small rainfall this afternoon. My red morningglories are not blooming anymore. 

 

 

I was busy pulling unwanted water grass.  I was planting in the area some moved wildflowers.  I was checking on the whole area when I looked down at the white splash.  Another stem to the reblooming iris was developed and it had three buds on it.  It is an amazing task that they figured out how to get iris to bloom in two different seasons.  We had a rain this afternoon and I had not picked the second stem  I hope the iris isn't damaged from the moisture. I will pick the second one now and it can go into my milk jar to replace this one which probably will be gone in the morning.

Worked in the yard and am clearing more things.  It is dry but it at least is not hot.  I needed a flannel shirt again this morning and it is a good thing.  Thanks for checking in today.

Thursday's Things.......

 The yellow rose is done blooming except for one tall branch with a bunch of buds.  It is a climber and I just keep it trimmed down to control it.  

This illustrates the dueling rose bushes.  The red one belongs to the neighbor while the pink one is on my side of the property line.  The neighbor has weed blocker material down and rocks on his side.  He still has to weed the rocks as th seeds do start in the cracks. 

One of my summer projects was to eliminate the diagonal stepping stones that went from the stairs to out by the bird bath.  You can see that the leftover holes are nicely growing in with grass. I assume the former owner wanted to  walk the diagonal to the vegetable garden without getting his feet wet from dew. 

 

 

I like my plan better as I can come out of the walkout basement door and walk towards the stairs to go up them. I moved all of the stones one at a time and had one leftover.  The grass has grown in nicely. Moving the stones were a lot of work and I did do only a couple of them per day.  I actually moved the stones before I did the wooden stairs project.

I moved a plant today that was one of the former owners wildflower plants. It had numerous roots all blended together. It sat near the yucca plant.  I liked it but it got so tall when growing in front of a rose bush that it blocked the view of the rose.  I dug it out with a spade from soil that I had wet down with the hose.  Our soil is so dry.  I ended up dividing the plant into five sections and planted it elsewhere. I sort of just wander and look for blank spaces where I think it might look good.  Digging holes for the plants was a challenge.  I carried black commercial topsoil with me and filled in the soft black dirt in the holes to help get them started. 

It is a comfortable day out there even though it did get hot in the sun while I was working.  We are having cooler temps at night.          Thanks for stopping in today.