The Things for Today

 

 

I worked in the backyard this morning until it got too hot. Itook shots of monarchs with my iPhone and then decided to go get the big camera. I had three monarchs, one painted lady, and a eastern tiger swallowtail in the zinnia patch. I did not get the swallowtails picture but the others I did manage. 

I snapped the painted lady quickly not knowing really what it was, I did see that it was out there as I came to my senses. 

 My red canna is showing off now. It had bloomed earlier and I thought that it was done, It kept developing more buds and now it looks grea, It has the dark leaves,

 

Earlier in the morning the morning glories were all in bloom. At the later time when I took the shot in the day when it was warming up, they were starting to close down. 

The yellow rose died back from the winter cold but it sure has shown itself to have great blooms again this season.

 I built another one on the opposite side of the lot. I am trying to rescue my iris as they are wet, rotted and some have grubs. The move will bring them back to life. I have cardboard on top of the mowed grass and I will put four or five inches of soil on top of it. I will plant on the raised soil area and by then time when they need to root down the cardboard should be crumbling.  Some of the iris had been there six years or more and they needed to be dug and separated. This side of the yard the new area will have full sun all afternoon. It should work for iris. 

I have the yard to mow again. It will be a little bit easier with the rains slowing down now. I had my neighbor mow next to me in the heat of the day today.  I will wait for morning tomorrow up to his lot when I it is cooler.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week

 The clouds were few in number so the sky looked pretty plain.  Les clouds mean a less dramatic batch of color.

 

 

The beginning of a bouquet lays on the chair waiting for a vase. I cut all the dangling flowers that were sticking out from the core bunch.

It isn't an outstanding grouping but we do get to be a lot closer to the flower garden. 

 

 

 We had a nice day today with the temps are at the low 80's. We were out and about visiting a bookstore and also Hobby Lobby. We needed to get out for a while and it was a good day. Thanks for stopping by today. 

Second Day

 It has been a long time coming to get this first bloom. The vines were so slow at maturing and yesterday the first bloom did happen. 

 The morning seemed to be a dull start with all of the clouds in the sky. We did clear up though and we have sun now. We didn't get the forecast rain. We made it up to 80 degrees F.

 I found an older feeder in the garage and brought it out of retirement. I hung in down onthe main ground floor and can sit and watch them while I am resting from garden work. We have four or more hummingbirds so one more doesn't hurt to have out and in use. I do see the hummers hitting the zinniaa and phlox.

 My trellis is getting good use finally as you can see the glories climbing up the slats. I have had to water the boxes to keep the vines growing in spite of the frequent rains. I planted leftover seed in there and right now all I have is magenta colors. I will wait and see if any other colors show up.

 

 

 

 

I have too many photos to be able to share them all. I guess I will work at finding the just very best photos and start tossing the rest.  I have a new project starting again and I may have to mow the yards again as the grass looks so shaggy. Thanks for stopping by today.
 

Monday's Mentions

 

 Our newly hatched birds are this male and female cardinals. The fluffy feathers is a clue that says they are still growing out their feathers. I  would hop that they hatched more than two so we will be watching to see if there are more. 

 There are goldfinches out there but I am not getting any good shots yet from me. There were three of them out working my sunflower patches and I do see them. I just need to get my camera out and stand and wait for a shot. We saw a female finch on the seed sock this morning and it isn't as yellow as the males. 

 I had forgotten how the hummingbirds like the sunflowers. I was out checking the yard to see if it was dry enough for mowing and three different birds were humming around my head.  The flowers are d maturing and there are new blooms too. When the seed gets to be more mature the goldfinches will be really working the flowers. 

 We woke up to cool temps this morning and the grass was wet with dew. I had to wait to mow until late this morning. To keep busy I went ahead and dug up iris along the back fence. They are so wet that I will have to lay them out in the sun just to get the dirt off of them. With all the rain in the area it is a extremely wet. There really was originally a creek bed going through there but it has been tiled out to help stop the flooding. It is like an underground creek with grills along the way to catch water from the rainfall. We live on a re-engineered corn field hill with a low water line at the back of the house. 

The mowing is now done. The front yard that I mowed on Saturday was so tall that i had to fight it clogging continually. The back yard  was not so tall but it was a little bit slow moving to get it done.  I could have collected the grass but it would have been too much to store. A neighbor up the street was using a broom on his grass after he mowed it, to take off excess grass.   After two years of drought in the past it is a welcomed problem to have too much grass. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

Steamy Saturday

 It is so humid out there in the morning but the morning glories don't mind. I thought hot sun was their thing but I guess not. The white spots of pollen look like sprinckles of salt. 

 I do think my tomatoes would do so much better with some sunshine. We won't get any today. The season has been strange. The weather guy, Jason, says we will have two drier days but then we will go back into rain again. 

I got my iris bed filled up yesterday with soil and there was a short rainfall yesterday afternoon that helped to settle it all in better. I mixed some sand with it as well as some leftover potting soil to make my raised bed soil be more desirable. It was great to work with this morning as I did plant in all the iris that needed to be put back into the soil.

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 Experienced gardeners will all tell me that I planted things too close. I know that, but I am going to thin things out as I see what actually will root down. I had five new iris from the Oregon company that I got scattered end to end. Some of these are cemetery iris that I may just pull once I see a good grouping does mature. I also had iris from along my stairs that were just not blooming and were in a watershed area of water coming down through during heavy rains.  When I dug them they were so wet. I was glad to move them out of there. I didn't get all of them planted and they are several laying on the concrete slab right now drying out. I will find a different place to plant them.

 Some of you know where we went to eat at last night by seeing the mural. It was Friday evening. We went early and by the time we left it was getting too crazy. Lots of kids everywhere and too many people to be able walk back and forth to the buffet tables. Pizza, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. It is the best. Lettuce was minimal and they put out lots of watermelon for the salad area where they usually have lots of lettuce. It is better to be safe than to be poisoned. 

 I had to mow a front yard that had gotten overgrown. It could have been mowed while raining but the mower would just clog up with wet grass. It was so long that I had to push it through at half the speed of normal. The front yard is smaller but it still took a lot of time to get it done. My neighbor's young grandson was out mowing earlier and I am not sure how he got it done. 

We are at 84 degrees F. right now and the sun is really shining through. The humidity is very high also. For a while this afternoon the whole neighborhood was roaring as many people were getting their yards mowed.  I mowed later and the neighbor boy across the street mowed at the same time. 

Thanks for stopping by today.  

 

 

Working with Dirt

 

 

 

 

 

Why not put an iris start in my favorite antique flower pot. My brother grows iris in pots in California  because he is too lazy to put them in the ground. I got my four bags of soil spread into my new iris bed. I added sand and some left over potting soil to give it more volume. Maybe tomorrow I will go buy two more bags to be sure my raised bed is really having a raised soil level. 

I am really anxious to plant all of my iris back into the ground. We got almost four inches of rain yesterday and this morning we had more rain. I could work outside as the rains did pass but I want all the soil to settle in a little and have it dry out. I would rather work with dry loose soil when I put iris into the ground.  We haven't see sunshine for the second day and I think maybe this afternoon we will finally see it.  I did get a new butterfly bush planted this morning. I hope it does well. I saw a monarch butterfly on it at the nursery so I thought that it was a sign that I should buy it.   Thanks for checking in today.

Glaring Sunlight

 A painted lady butterfly came to my zinnia patch for a photo shoot. I found in research that it is one mostly scattered over the world. It didn't spook from the camera as most butterflies do. 

 This shot makes it look like it is a part of the flower. It flitted from one flower to the other sometimes landing right close to my face.

 After a morning full of rainfall the skippers were welcoming all that hot sun in the afternoon. It did feel good to be out in bright sun. We traveled to and back in a rain storm this morning for an appointment. We got an inch and 65 hundreds of rain this morning. 

 This variety of tomato must be tasty for the chipmunks as both of them have been chewed on unfortunately. The munks did have the ability to eat on the as they were close to the ground. 

 The front raised bed is looking water weary as the rain does damage hardy geraniums. I don't have to water the bed though as it keeps raining.

 

The camera actually doesn't like the strong sunlight and it struggles to focus. I had my eyes dilated this morning and myself and the camera struggled not knowing what was a good shot. It helped to download the photos and work on the computer manipulating the values.  Yet, the computer screen is somewhat glaring to me yet this afternoon. Tomorrow with a good nights sleep my eyes should be back to normal. 

Thanks for checking in today.