Friday's Few Findings............

Flower and water weed sit side by side. I need to get out there and take care of the freeloaders in the flowers.

My tomatoes are really growing taller and they all have blooms on them.  I started them all from seed so my patch is not as mature as those who purchased greenhouse plants.  I will catch up with them and be glad that they put out red tomatoes of all sizes for us to eat.

 My zinnias should be starting to bud even though they are not very tall yet.  They seem to form buds and put out more branches as they bloom. I have two patches of zinnias to make up for not having any last year. My neighbor bought me another packet of seed but I won't plant them until next spring.She must have seen them on a sale.  I planted her two patches in front of her two wagon wheels and she is anxious to see them bloom also.

Granddaddy Long Legs is probably not the official name but that is all I have ever known of this spider.  They seem to be everywhere and for some they are not as afraid of them.  The smaller dark variety seems to be more dangerous.














Summer is going by quickly.  We are half way through July already and once August hits we will see signs of winter around the corner.  I still have some things that I need to do to the outside of the house and I hope things work out for me to get them done.  I seem to have the garden things under control but I still have things I want to do with that.  My last day that I will be working at school will be the last of July.  I will be back on my own getting some projects done.  I hope everyone is having good weather and thank you for visiting my post today.

Thursday's Things.......

 

I am now having to start a watering schedule as we are starting to dry out in Iowa.  Our ground isn't in bad shape.  It is just good to have plenty of moisture when the plants are doing such quick growing.  The pansy seems small in comparison to the petunia.   I need to do a little weeding in this flower bed as the flowers have to compete with the quick growing water weeds. 

The transplanted lily from the shade of the spreading  juniper is acting like it is enjoying its new location. It has very little foliage but it has put out two stalks of blooms.

I worked today with the door guy hanging many doors and preparing more doors for a painting procedure for tomorrow. I won't work with the door guy tomorrow but I have a job to help the floor guys helping spray water and vacuuming up water on terrazzo floors. It will be easy work tomorrow compared to hanging doors.   Thank you for stopping by today.

Wandering Through Wednesday.......

I really haven't planned it that way but I seem to have mostly yellow and orange flowers with accents of red.  The spring brings out pink colors of peonies but otherwise it is continually bright colors from my flowers.  To contradict myself I will have pastel phlox colors to calm the nerves.  The blue pansy rally stands out in the one flower bed.  I wished the flower would spread out more but it is spotty blues among the petunias planted around them.

I mentioned that I had installed my bracket to hold my flag during the 4th of July.  I never made a photographic record of it but I did catch this a couple of days ago.  I had to put an old pole back together and put the flag on the pole with some strong rope and duct tape. The duct tape really doesn't show much. Did you know that duct tape was used to cover bullet holes in planes during the war.  I find out great stuff on PBS.

To contradict myself in my own blog from what I had rambled about in the first paragraph, here are some pink petunias.  They seem to be struggling but maybe by fall they will take off and grow faster.

I don't know what the stray green thing is that is growing next to the plant but I am too busy taking photographs to weed  my garden.  That particular garden is badly designed as I have a whole row of volunteer hollyhocks in the front part of it and then the short stuff is all behind it with the blue boy statue.  The hollyhocks look great in August and it is nice they want to do so well. I guess I need to buy tall flowers to go behind them.

Out with all the hollyhocks this daylily continues to do well making a great show of color.  I am thinking this plant will get lifted and thinned and I will move more of it to other parts of the property. It seems to be a tough plant that blooms such large flowers compared to the average size lily.

I really do think the hardy geranium has become my main stay to get color in the garden.  Iowa weather seems to be good for them other than in the drought season when you have to water them a lot.  They are a tough plant that doesn't need much care.

I didn't work at school today.  I needed a day to rest up for more door hanging tomorrow.  I helped deal with doors part of the day yesterday and created shelving in an art room cupboard for the art teacher. She now has 23 more small shelving areas in which to store her students' art folder. I stayed late yesterday to get the job completed.  I hate leaving something like that not finished when a little more time will finish it off. I don't think I mentioned that the full time worker is planning to have 100 or more doors painted by the time school starts.  The doors are taken down and moved to a shop are for spray painting of a new shining surface.

Good weather today again and I will be mowing the property for sure as one of my chores.  We are almost done with the student senior composite.  Of course we are missing one photo and I had to make calls and arrangement to bring that one last photo in to me. I may just turn it in with the blank space and when the photo shows I will work it in and take it to the school and fill the hole. Lots of odd jobs to do today which is good to do when I have nothing major planned to take away my time.  We may make an art store run today as I have some things to purchase for another framing project and my wife usually needs paint or pastels for her work.  We shipped off a portrait painting to Florida yesterday and she has another one in line to be worked on for a customer.

I appreciate your stopping by today.  Good weather is helpful to make things look better out there in the world.  I hope all of you are doing well.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Tuesday's Tools and Stuff..........

 

It is good to keep you tools handy but I do need to put them away to protect them from the weather.  These are the tools that have been getting a lot of use as I have been taking out volunteer unwanted trees and also they were used to prune back a lot of oversized shrubs and trees. 

 

Metal and plastic watering containers seem a little ironic.  The bucket dips the water out of the water barrel and the sprinkling can helps keep me from drowning and destroying the newer transplanted flowers and shrubs. I also am still using the rake as I put down some mulch to give the dogs a better path surface.  It was muddy most of the time and the dogs were getting dirty paw prints in the kitchen.

The stump from the overgrown spreading juniper. I am thinking that I will work to remove it from the area.  It will have to be a good day, cool day, and I am going to have to feel strong to tackle the chore of cutting it out of there.

The next bud is about to open to show me a Chicago peace rose.  I am hoping the rain stays away for a couple of days while it is bloom.  I guess I could go out and cover it to keep its petals from being messed up with rain water.

While the pizza was baking in the oven, I went out and planted my three yellow privet shrubs. They really needed to be taken out of the pots as they were so well rooted that they were not getting much in nutrients.

I have two of them planted in my new garden area and figure that I can still move them next spring if I think I placed them in the wrong spot. It will be interesting to see how they start to grow now they are in some good Iowa black dirt.










I am working in the art room today building shelves for a cupboard.  I did a similar job last year for another cupboard and the art teacher liked the job so well that she wanted a different cupboard gifted with more shelves.   We were cold last night but it really does feel great.  We don't have to have air conditioning working with it that cool.  We closed the house up early last night to actually keep heat in so we would not have to turn on the furnace.   I hope everyone is doing well.  Thanks for checking in on my blog today.

Monday..........

Diversity in height must be common with the coneflower.  If I had the sound on you could hear all the mosquitoes ready to take off and head my way. You can see a couple of sunflowers shooting up, double in size since last week.

My neighbors throw away hardy geraniums are doing well in this planter. I didn't get to coordinate any colors in this situation.  I just wanted to keep them alive.  You can see a stray white geranium bloom at the far end of the planter.  It will be fun to see it all in bloom.  It reminds me of a circus color scheme.

My last photo for today is this one of a daylily.  I took roots of this from my parent's property when I closed down the house. I had purchased this for them and it is nice to bring it home.

Hanging doors  at the school is on my schedule for today.  I hope all of you are well.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday........

The camera tends to pick up red glows of blooms but you can see how well the hardy geranium is doing.  I picked this up late fall for a couple of bucks and they all survived inside the winter.  I really didn't know how well it was going to do but it must have fertilized soil that gives it a good boost to bloom.

As these roses were not marked I really don't know what kind that they are.  I am thinking it is a knockout rose. I mentioned earlier that the other bush that I bought has pink blooms on it.  The rains are hard on them and I have a lot of petals on the ground.

We have fog this morning and it will be gone soon.  The high today will be 85 degrees F. and the humidity will be very high.  It makes the corn and beans grow.  Also I waded through the mosquitoes yesterday and the tomatoes jumped a foot in height this week.  I have blooms on most of them now which is late for most people's vegetable gardens.  I didn't get them in as soon as others but I bet we will have tomatoes.   The neighbor who had the same plants that I started in the house are putting out tomatoes right now.  Mine plants stayed in the house a few weeks longer waiting for me to recoup.

We will have a quiet Sunday planned with teaching our classes and then grab a sandwich for lunch. We will head home and stay inside to stay cool.  Thanks for stopping by for a visit. 

Sliding into Saturday...........

A surprise bloom for me this year is the daylily out on the corner of my lot.  I haven't seen any blooms on it for a couple of years so when they buds started to develop I was curious to see what it really looked like.  I really had forgotten. It is wonderful. 

It is big and has a really strong color of reddish orange.  When I planted it there it was a good location but all I had was foliage.  Now it is a bright accent at the corner T intersection next to my property.





 The oxalis is enjoying the new pot of soil that it was planted into a few weeks ago.  I didn't want to buy more bedding plants so this really did work out well.  It should have some room to spread over the summer.

My cheap rose blooms just like an expensive one. It is covered with blooms.  The other one just like it has now shown that it isn't just like it.  I see pink buds on the other rose bush.  They both are now planted in the ground and fertilized to make them happy.  They really were not cheap roses as they were planted in pots.  They just were closing out the plants as quickly as possible. I should have bought all that they had there.  It is the first planting that I have done now in the new garden area.  I still have not committed on the planting of the three privet shrubs.  I feel the plants pain as they are still in crowded little pots.

The phlox will bloom this year as evidenced in the above photo.  It isn't in full bloom yet so I can keep taking more photos of it.  The phlox plants are very tall this year which should be great to see when they all come into bloom.

We are moving back into a rainy season again.  I think we must have had another inch of rain last night as the buckets, my rain gauges, have that much water in them.  This particular daylily really suffers in the rain.  I keep thinking that the blooms are too destroyed to shoot photos and then I do find one that looks a lot like it is suppose to look in good weather.





We are headed to ISU territory today to visit a bookstore.  We have the forecast all figured out and we will be dodging the next rain that will come in late this afternoon coming from the north.  I am looking forward to a good cup of coffee and some book searching in a nice quiet bookstore.  It is non college student season right now at the college area so it will be less crowded than when the university is in session.  Everyone enjoy your Saturday and thanks for stopping by today.