Bloom and Grow.........

The angel gets placed without thought as I just put it down when we moved things into the backyard. Maybe I can give him a better place to be but for now he seems to be watching the vine grow.

The red twig dogwood is thriving with all of its bright leaves and red stems. It is a perfect shrub to have in front of the aging fence.

This is another unknown plant for me. I didn't expo;ct to see it put out blooms.  It has wintered through and is doing well next to the deck's stairs.

I will be planting tulips with color this fall.  I really like the white tulips but I think of tulips being in red and yellow colors too.

It is Sunday and the day will warm up nicely.  It is a good day to rest and get ready for another busy week.

Saturday Stuff......

The fern leaf peony is blooming right now.  It is still sitting in the bucket that I placed it in after digging it.  I will plant it in the new yard once it has finished blooming. I have a lot of plantings of this at the old place and will probably bring one more to the new place.  I can plant it in two different location to see which place will be the best location for it.

My clay drain tile has moved to the big city.  I had trouble moving it as all the soil fell out of the bottom of it.  I put most of it back into the bottom and wrapped a plastic bag under it.  I probably will need to add loose soil at the top once in a while to get it really filled up full again. The sedum is one that we had when I lived on the farm as a kid. I was glad to find it for sale at the nursery.

I spent some time outside working on the front yard landscaped planter.  The roses, which I think are knock out roses, were frosted off from the winter.  I removed most all of last years growth and the plants are shooting out new growth.

One of the roses seems dead enough that I might remove it and put in a more substantial shrub for the  foundation planting. We are discussing what it might be but we both don't want something that will require a lot of pruning each spring. I will replant the remaining rose that has little live some where  else. It is still a free plant if it is still alive.

The larger bush has buds on it and I am betting that I will have blooms by the end of next week. It will be interesting to see what color that they are.

This is the patio area under our deck.  The chairs have new cushions and I will get those tags off soon. We had a long story created in buying the cushions.  To shorten the story, we bought three of them at one store and then drove eight miles or more to another store to buy one more.  The old guy at the first store, probably my age, kept thanking me for not making him climb a tall ladder to dig through poorly marked boxes. I didn't want to climb up there and I didn't think he should either. The patio area may prove to be a nice area in the hot summer.  The deck above will probably be too hot as it will be in full sun all day.

A project that I am anxious to work on is this corner rock garden.  I know that the rocks are low maintenance but this looks like something you would  see in Arizona or at least at the malls here in Iowa. I suspect I will have to sink pots into the rock and fill them with soil.  A hosta garden would be nice here and I will move the rock around for a better look.  I already moved it as it was sitting vertically like the stones at Stonehenge.  I think covering the sight of the gas meter  could be done.

Well, there are lots of things to do today.  We continue to put things together as a part of our moving in to the house.  We made decisions on the spacing of the bookshelf in the living room today.  Everything still hinges on the flooring going down in the office area. Once that is down we can sort books between two areas and start using the desk.  Things still are in boxes.

I hope everyone is having good weather today and wish you a great weekend. Thanks for checking in on me.

Friday's Finds.......

I brought back from up north these three Avon bottles.  When I was a kid in my teens, my mom would buy them as gifts for me.  The company promoted them as collectible items and my mom bought into that pretty much. I have tossed three of them already and I think I will say goodbye to the cars.  I like the stagecoach.  If I keep one for memories, that seems reasonable.

It didn't photograph well here but it is one of my favorites.  I think the label said it had an after shave cologne in it. I haven't been brave enough to smell it as it probably is fifty years old or more.

I also had a duck head on a glass duck bottle shape and a clock.  The pump shaped bottle had a shoe spoon for the handle of the pump. The capital of the U.S. had a plastic dome that covered the lid of the capital building in glass.

I did look them up on eBay and found most of them selling for 5 bucks apiece.  I think that it is about the same price that was the original price.  My parents' friend bought them for her husband and kept all of them in their boxes unopened. I suppose some people will pay a lot of that packaged item. Like I said, the stage coach will look good on one of my junk shelves and the rest of them will not.

The lid is the spare tire of this car.  I had a plastic top on this but I may have tossed it while I was rummaging though my past things.

. This old man is showing you a picture of a table.  I know he is going crazy.  It was a great accomplishment to figure out how to  dismantle the legs.  I could barely get the top in the back seat of the car. I did get it moved down to the house.  I had brought one chair at a time down by placing one patio chair in the back seat each time I worked and made the trip. It is a sunny day again today and will warm up by this afternoon.

I am working here at the new house today.  I have three rosebushes in the front of the house.  Only one of them wintered through and the other two are coming up from the base.  I don't know what kind of bush they are but they may be knock out roses. It will be a lot of cutting back on them as the roses are large.  I was hoping the dead look was just dormancy but I know now that most of it has to go.  They sit in a rock garden and at this point two of them could be replaced.  I haven't lived here long enough to know what I would want to replace the with that would survive the winters.

I hope everyone's weather has improved some and that spring is good for each of you.  Our spring is slow compared to some of my blogger friends.  Compared to others in the northlands we look like the deep south in development.  I hope all are fine and thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday's Things.....

A photo of an old stoneware bowl sitting on a piece of newspaper.  I had washed it and didn't want to set it wet onto the oak furniture top.  The bowl has to be from the great grandparents home of our sons.  It is large and I could see people mixing up a big batch of bread in it.  I am going to put it into a display above our kitchen cupboards.

The sequence of the sunrise show that the clouds intended to be in the road of the view of the sun. The clouds did break up later into a bunch of spotty clouds.

Barney continues to get us up a little earlier than we would like, but it is a nice quiet time in the neighborhood at that time. An hour later adults and kids are getting ready to leave for their destinations. One set of boys hurry out to play basketball before they have to go to school.  Others are being picked up by the bus.  Adults are busy leaving with coffee cups in hand.  The all have different start times for their jobs.  I always wonder how far they have to drive to get to their jobs. My wife and I pulled a fun thing and went out for breakfast this morning.  We have not done that before except when the boys were here to help us move.

I was at the old house this morning and can see a few stray tulips are in bloom.  The fruit trees are still blooming and the peony bushes are all budded with large balls of petals getting ready to explode open.  The peonies will be way earlier than the iris. I transplanted some more plants into my new garden area from the home garden area. I wished I could see blooms on them this year but I know that won't happen.  I do have a fern leaf peony in a bucket that should be in bloom today.  I brought in a bucket and thought it best to leave it in there until it had bloomed. Photos will be possibly shown tomorrow.


Busy day but things are being accomplished.  It is good to get some things finished and work in progress is good too.  Thank you for stopping by today.

Middle of the Week......

Morel mushrooms grow wild in our state and can be found in early spring.  It usually takes a special area for them to grow and some warm sunlight helps to make them pop up out of the ground.  While mowing at the old place yesterday I looked down into a peony plant and saw five of the large mushrooms in a bunch.  The sun was shining on the area and it was warm enough to make them develop. This is just a shot of the top layer of mushrooms that are being dried from their ice water bath. We enjoyed fried mushrooms with grilled burgers and my wife's world famous potato salad.

The last of our furniture order arrived yesterday.  We were waiting on a couple pieces for our bedroom and a piece on which our television now sits. We can now organize our clothes and place them into drawers where we can find them.  It has been a long wait but we are so happy with the furniture.

The moving process is more than just getting all of your things from one place to another. The rearranging and finding a spot in a totally different house for everything is so time consuming.

This may be a reposting of the shot but it does represent what I saw yesterday on my one apple tree. It was a dumpster day yesterday as I spent time mowing and throwing things away from different piles around the garden shed.  The barn boards saved from the tornado damage many years ago are now all headed to the landfill.  I tossed other things that are just not needed including a nail keg that was falling apart and pottery pieces found in the shed from my former students.

I won't share all the shots I took of this spot but this one will show you what I had to do.  A trim piece that was decoration at the bottom of the window outside had become dislodged from its original installation 13 years ago. The piece leaned out just a bit but collected rainwater.  The water would dam up and leak back, up into the vinyl siding and come through the outside wall. The inside wall revealed nothing. When the flooring people took up the carpet it was hiding a rotted section of the floor.

I removed the rotted section back up under the sill and replaced it with plywood.  Plywood is a stronger wood than the OSB board. Because of this discovery the floor guys stooped work and now weeks later they will return to finish the job.  The two guys have a big job going on right now so we were thrown onto a schedule for late next week. It takes a lot of patiences but we will be able to move into this room finally in 9 days.

The birds continue to put on a show each morning now that  the sun is shining.  I did discover we have doves that eat from the patio below the deck.  I haven't put out a tray feeder yet but do have plans.

I am working around home today here at the newer house.  I need to mow my yard here today.  Everyone on both sides of me have their yards done but I will catch up today.  We are putting together an art table for my wife today.  It does take two to follow the directions and assemble.  The most open space in the house right now is smack dab in the middle of the living room floor. It will be up and ready for her to use soon.

With the weather better we will do some errand running today. It is still very cold out but we are to warm up this afternoon. I wish everyone to have a good day today.  Thanks for stopping by.....today.

Second....Day of the Week.

Barney loves the hardwood floor in the kitchen-dining room area. It is cooler to lay on than the carpeted areas. I don't know if he can sense temperature with his nose or with his paws. He does like living here but has less freedom without a backyard fenced in area.  We will resolve that sometime this summer.  We have a long extension leash that seems to give him the feeling of roaming.

I brought home a new set of tulips picked from our older property. This should be the last of them for now.  I think iris will be the next thing to bloom but that will be a long time. before that happens.

I moved a hosta and some flag iris last week and both are now in the ground at the new garden.  The flag iris will have to revive and they won't bloom this year, now that I disturbed them.  The hosta acts like I had never moved it and is shooting up its leaves quickly.

The tulips look a little worn out from all the rain.  We are having sunshine today and it certainly is welcomed.

I really had to work hard to get this photo.  The tv remote kept being in the photo.  The inside of the tulip has dirt in it so I couldn't shoot it in front.  The dog's water dish shows up in some of them and everything on the kitchen counter wants to get into the photo. The lilac blooms also seem a little weary from the continue three or four days of rains.

As you can see from the deck we do have no rain.  I have two yards to mow but I can't do all of it in one day.  I may finish a section at the old house this afternoon and just maybe I will mow the new place tomorrow.  I am certain that both of my neighbors on each side will mow today. Some hired mowing guns were mowing the neighbors down the way, yesterday, in the rain. It really is trivial stuff and my neighbors know that I have two places going at the same time.  I brought down another lawn chair yesterday.  All four will be down here eventually.  I don't know how the table will come but maybe I can see if it can be dismantled.

Thank you all for stopping by today.  Have a good Tuesday today.

The Bus Is Here........

There are two different buses that stop at the house across the street. The one always honks to let the parent and child know that they are here for pick-up. If I would watch the clock I bet I could figure out how prompt they are on their regular route.

While viewing the winter photo of this place the trees and one shrub were in the picture.  My reaction to the shrub was a negative one as in the winter it is an ugly shrub. The shrub has won me over now as it is a wonderful specimen.  It is new to me as to its name but I will find it on the net one day and call it by name.  I think there is a locust tree in the front yard, not in the photo, but I am still waiting to see the leaves.

The white tulips are now blooming.  They are much later to bloom compared to the neighbor's red tulips which are gone now weeks ago. We will have to watch the plants in this one planter and see what we would like to do to it to make it our own garden.

I need to fertilize my grass.  The yard is actually more clay the black dirt.  The tradition for years were to have the black soil removed and sold to dirt companies and leave good old Iowa clay behind.  You can see that in the spring when you look down at the ground as the soil is not black.  That is why I found clay in the backyard.  One neighbor told me that you have to keep buying dirt at the stores and mulch with leaves every fall to build up the soil.

We are having goldfinch wars now as they fight to get to the seed sock. I counted three males at one time trying to get a position on the sock.  I have another feeder at the old place and may bring it back with me when I travel up there today.  It is suppose to dry out today but the deck is still wet.  I know that it is a mild sprinkle but I won't be able to catch up on any mowing at either place today if it doesn't get really dry.

Warmer weather is promised soon and that will be good.  I have a few different chores to get done today and plan on moving slowly as I do them.

I hope all are well today.  Thank you for stopping by today.


Between the spell check, choosing wrong words, and my wobbly fingers typing the mistakes in spelling, the wrong words continue On a busy day I don't proof it until later.  Please ignore the blips and bloopers for now until my typing skills come back.