Wednesday's Ways and Means......

This is the first bloom of this Asiatic lily.  It has many buds on it so I can take many more photos of it.  A distinct memory of this lily comes from attending a flower show.  A group of people who belong to a local lily association had a both set up.  An older couple who loved lilies suggested this flower and I bought it.  It has been many  years now since then. I just remember as to how concerned that I would plant it just right to make it grow. There were three bulbs and now it has multiplied to a dozen.

Another first time bloom this season is this small lily.  It has a subtle color and it is about the a third smaller than the other varieties. I really don't know where I bought this one but I bet it came from the arboretum that is north of us near Boone, Iowa.

And now you see the one lily that I photograph most.  It is the field lily, ditch lily, that grows wild at all the old farmsteads.  I am thinking that I brought this home from a ditch across from the Zenia, Iowa cemetery.  It is an old cemetery from a now gone town.  The town was full of coal miners and their families. The lilies were growing there but there was no farm left to see in the area. It had been cleared away as it done a lot when farms are bought up by one person.

Another new appearance last night was this fellow sitting on our roof.  I had seen him before in the dark and once as he crawled up the porch pole to escape me as I walked outside.  I think he use to eat the maple leaf seeds from the roof but now I don't really understand why is is up there.  He lives in the silver maple tree but wants to sit on the house and look out over the world.  It was dusk and I had a hard time getting the shot. I really don't want to trap him but if someone else wanted to and take him back to the timber outside of town I would be glad to see it happen.  When the cornfields become a part of his dinner menu he will be out there all of the time.

I give the neighbor tomato plants that I have started and she eventually returns the containers.  I get my containers back and also all the other containers she and her friend buys at the store.  I then high grade them all and toss some of them for her. There are only so many of these things that you need to have around.

It is going to be another very warm day around here.  It warms up so quickly in the morning and then doesn't cool down until late night early morning the next day.  We had some rain in the state and we had sprinkles from it while the sun was shining.  Thanks for stopping by today.


Did you see that blogger received my complaint and they reset my header gadget.  I found this morning that I then had a header and then the side header that I was allowed to put on yesterday afternoon.  I am not sure if like the new template but I was trading things around trying to get my header gadget to work again.

Tuesday's Things........

Early morning sky kept changing by the minute.  I took many shots and this one had the most pink showing in the sky and clouds. The clouds are leftovers from whatever weather that was going on south of  us.

As you can see by this photo it was more blue for a while before the sun changed it to more pink.  I tried to crop off most of the bottom of the photo as it was not the Grand Teton mountains that I had in front of my sky.  I really never know what to expect when I go out with the dog in early morning but this is good.  Yesterday there were clouds and no colors.

I am jumping from pink to green here with this top view of one of my tomato plants. They are loving the warm humid nights.  They seem to be growing quickly now. My store bought cherry tomato plant has blooms on it already.  It was of course larger from living in the green house before I bought it.  The ones that I started will catch up to it though with the weather like we are having right now.

Switching to violet is a good thing. The creeping blue bells are doing well agin this year. When they stop blooming the dry up quickly and become not a great foiliage plant to see.  I guess it acts more like a weed in the aspect that most desirable plants that we like to put into our gardens.

I have some other lilies right near to this group that are just about to be open. You can see the stem sticking up out of the bunches of blooming ones.

My hostas are so healthy but I can see they are all becoming a problem. The raining in early spring made them large and they are crowding out their neighbors.  I should do a major dig some of these and move some to new  area.  I see my neighbor lady could use some in her flower bed.

I did get my first round of picking of the red raspberries.  We cleaned them and added sugar to them to make a great ice cream topping.  They are always good tasting and it is a treat to get them this year. Our last years crop just didn't happen because of dry weather during the wrong time of the year. The whole patch died back and it had to restart for this year. I have a lot of new stems which will be next years crop bearers.

I am have difficulty with this blog.  The header and all the other stuff has disappeared.  I messed with it until I became angry.  So I clicked their little sign that says Complain To Blogger. We will see if it comes back.  I think I tried to download a photo that was too large. Normally it just says the photo is too large. I guess that is just the way things go.  Barney was outside this morning with me and cooling his belly on the concrete patio.  He normally looks away but I think his eyesight is less so he couldn't see that I had a camera pointed at him.  It seems like a cooler day today so I should get some outside work done today. I wish you all a good day.  Thanks for stopping by today.

The Monday Begins.......

The first bloom of the season for my coneflower matured quickly.  I guess the hotter weather put it into a mature common shape as not long ago it was still looking like a daisy.  The colors are so intense that the automatic camera seems to shutter and shake.  It was hard to get a focus on the flower.

I really don't know why I slanted the shot.  It just happened as I share how this lily matured into many flowers.

As with the coneflower  the camera reacted to all the deep colors of the lily. There is not yellow on the lily but a reflection on the lily shows up as yellow or sometimes white.  After the success of the move of this bulb I am thinking that I will move more of my Asiatic lily bulbs.  I have single bulbs planted as single plants scattered throughout the garden.

 I really don't know why I did that. I think that when I was younger that I thought all the bulbs would multiply and spread.  This variety and a few others that I have never did multiply.  I have other smaller Asiatic's that have spread and there are dozens of blooms now where I originally had planted a couple of bulbs.

I forced the job to get it done. I guess I was waiting for the roof to be finished with the layer of shingles.  I had to do problem solving to figure out the hanging device.  The local racoon used to crawl up the white pole in the foreground as you can see his muddy paw marks on it.  I witness that same creature rush and crawl up the new pole.  So when I designed the hanger for the trellis I knew that I needed to make the trellis hold the weight of that masked bandit. Earlier he would crawl up there to eat the maple seeds that had fallen on the roof but now he really has no reason to be up there. By the way, one could put a level on both of the poles and they are perfectly vertical.  The camera distorts things in relationship where you are standing with the camera.

Raspberry season is here and I need to get out this morning and pick the ripe ones.  The patch isn't big enough to get enough berries for pie.  I will  pick every other day and we can make a sauce with them for ice cream.  Raspberries on ice cream is so good.

It is Monday and I guess I am ready to face it.  The heat is bad even though it isn't as bad as the southwest is having.  I will water tomato plants while the  rain barrel water lasts and then I may go ahead and use the garden hose to water everything that needs it. I will stay out there only long enough to get the jobs done.  As the weatherman mentioned today, we will be wearing the humidity today. Everyone take care out there and thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday Evening.....

As I blabbed  on about the hollyhocks I discovered late afternoon yesterday that I had blooms.  It didn't start at the top of the stem but at the lower bottom of all the buds. The sun shines through the top flowers as the front one was in the shade.

Another discover is this red hardy geranium. It had been in the basement over the winter and a part of it has come back to life. The camera picked up the color of a deeper red when in reality it is the red that is more orange= red in color.

The sun was strong and to the west.  It created a shadow that I rarely see or capture with my camera.

We are back to having 90s and it isn't going to cool off much during the night. We may have storms in our future. Tomorrow is a Monday and a new day. Thanks for stopping by today.

Saturday Show Offs..........

I am out early in the morning and I discovered that this particular daylily closes up at night.  By the time the sun is up they are all back opened showing off their colors.

Ditch lily and daylily looks a lot alike but the blades of green on the ditchlily are wider.  I have a daylily planted on the edge of the patio next to some ditch lilies.  I wonder if you can see which one is which.  When it blooms you will see the difference.  One hint is that the ditchlily puts out a tall stem for its flowers.

When I do a search for a spelling of daylily, the two words are combined. When I type it, blogger things it is misspelled. That drives me insane on some days as when I think I have the correct spelling, blogger just does not know the word.  It isn't in the memory banks.

There will be photos of hollyhocks this summer.  I don't have many of them but the ones that I do have are tall and stout with many buds on them. The ones that I had out on the corner didn't get rescued.  I don't think that I even tried to move them.  They were smashed down.

The ditch saga continues.  I was informed through the neighbor grape vine that they will be reworking out ditch one more time. None of us have mowed or tried to maintain any of it other than take down the edges.  A neighbor asked the mayor about the possibility of the city workers coming in and do the work.  The mayor said to stay out of the ditch that they didn't want anyone to get hurt  working in it.

So the mayor says the plan has changed one more time and they are going to contract a company to come in and put a concrete pipe at the bottom of it and bring back all our dirt.   I am skeptical but will wait and see.  I do know that others in town have had that system where there are inlets for the water to enter and the water flows through the pipes.  It has been that way for years.   So maybe I will have new pictures sometime to show my ditch going away.  I won't be holding my breath until it happens as I don't look so good being blue faced.

There is contact now between the morning glory and the fence.  I looked at it this morning and they are going to climb the fence with gusto.

I mowed the yard this morning before I started blogging.  It was a cool 70 degrees F. when I started and it did warm up quickly after an hour of work.

I still have lots of sucker trees that need to be trimmed out of everywhere.  That will be on another day.  I refuse to let them bother me.

My tomatoes that I started from seed in March are now looking like this.  They are planted along the pet fence, opposite side of the pen.  They have grown with leaps and bounds with all the warm weather.  I try to water them most every day.  There are 12 plants along that side of the fence.  I am going to call it the neighborhood patch and as people to just come and help themselves.  There are two different families that could use them.  I have another eight or more of tomatoes planted out by the garden shed. I couldn't kill off the hand grown started plants.

It is to be another warm day today.  I discovered that I needed to do the cooling vents of my air conditioner a very thorough cleaning. Even with a vent filter, the metal plates get coated with dust.  It keeps the air from flowing through those fins and thus slows down all cooling.   Once the fins were washed out and brushed out the air blew through the conditioner as if it were new.

No plans for today but picking up odd chores to do and maybe rest.  It will reach a point where I won't want to go outside and I can leave that off of my list of things to do.  I hope all are doing well this weekend and thanks for checking in on my blog today.

Friday's Here......

My first coneflower is now if full bloom.  It took a few days to get all those petals unfurled.  I have less plants of these this year and I really don't know why. I am going to get the sunflowers planted out there this morning.  It is probably too late but I am hoping they will catch up and bloom.

The few hollyhocks that I do have are doing well.  I think the rains earlier gave them a good start.  They are stout and tall with many buds on them.

I planted a new packet of zinnia seed out in this same area.  It is a sad situation when the whole packet yielded out only two plants.  I will have to rethink that problem.  I did find some collected zinnia seed and will probably prepare a new place to start them. I take hundreds of photos of zinnias and I must get something to grow.

My clematis plant is looking sad.  I didn't have blooms last year so I am grateful for these.  I  just think they look sickly. My response is to water the plant but I think it has had too much rain. We have rain but we continue to have hot, humid days.  It really is typical Iowa weather but somehow it seems to too much continue heat.

I discovered that our upstairs air conditioner, window type, is not working correctly.  We have had a hard time getting the upstairs bedroom cooled.  I think now that isn't the excessive heat but the declining cooling machine.  We will fix that today and make a trip to Menards.

My remaining silver maple is looking great with its towering limbs and reflective leaves. It looks like it has a flat top haircut  in this shot.  Of the three trees of the same age, the two they took down were not very good looking anymore.  This last tree is still looking good and has filled in with leaves to be an impressive tree.  I guess I am really enjoying the last piece of history of the property and the fact that it is so old.

We had a very fun evening eating out for our anniversary.  We had a sweet young, tall guy as a waiter.  He couldn't believe people could be married for so long.  He was young and I did tease him once in a while and he would smile.  We ordered the 30th anniversary cheesecake which was layers of chocolate cake and cheesecake with wonderful frosting and whipped cream.  When he brought us our cheesecake to share, he had the bakery write happy 32nd anniversary on the rim of the plate in chocolate sauce. I had not brought my cell phone or you would have seen this great photo.  Oh well, I just don't remember that I need to carry it everywhere.

We will be eating light today to make up for all the food we had last night.  We are not use to eating large amounts of food.  Those days are to our past.  When there is free pie day a Bakers Square we usually split the one piece of pie and bring the other one home. People all around us find room to eat a large meal and also a big piece of pie.  I would pass out eating that much at one time.

I am off to do odd jobs to day and to the store sometime today.  I hope everyone is safe and staying cool inside.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Anniversary Day Today........

Who are those young people?  Why are they so dressed up? Whatever happened to them?  Well they are out there, living the good life.

Everyone says it and I will say again, "where did that time go?"  It was 32 years ago today that Della and I were married in a Lutheran Church in Grimes, Iowa. We will go out to eat at the Cheesecake Factory eatery and will probably also have cheesecake.

On a side note the church in which we were married was sold to be a cafe, flower shop, art gallery and frame shop.  They catered weddings and dinners.  The Christian couple who owned it were sued, which was disguised as a political correct issue.   So it has been shut down and a different church has bought it.  Most of the stained glass windows in the church were paid for and donated to the building by Della's Seibert relatives. We are glad that the outcome was that it became a church again. Our person who was to make our great day wedding cake, canceled out on us at the last minute due to her back surgery, so we went somewhere else. Our second choice of cake probably was our best choice.  One of Della's aunts admired it saying it was not crumbly.

The small sculpture in the garden is fun when you glance over and see the squirrel under the hosta leaves.

The first bloom is finally out.  The camera doesn't capture the true color of it but I will take more pictures in the evening.  I wont pretend to count all the buds but this is a better set of buds than the three or four that I had in its old growing location.

This coneflower bud is still in its preliminary stages.  I would think it will bloom very soon.  I have a lot less coneflowers  this year and I really don't known why.  I do have hollyhocks this year though and didn't have a single bloom last year.

I am headed out to mow this morning.  It cooled off last night but remained very humid.  I opened up the house for a short time and that was a big mistake.  Cold humid air really didn't have a positive effect on the quality of air in the house.  I can see I have lots of weeds and things that need to be tended to but the dog's yard really needs to be shorten so the little dog can get around better out there.   Thank you for stopping by today.