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Fiesty rose bushes but I won.....

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 8:18 pm

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...they kept grabbing onto my hat, my shirt, my shorts and anything else I let get within a couple of inches of them.

I started working on extending the garden to include the rose bushes a couple of weeks ago but found a really large fire ant bed....put some killer on it and noticed this week that they were gone.
I will have to work on the other side of the roses, about half finished digging then will mulch it too.
If my camera was better you could see that I planted Dusty Miller in front the roses.

And the odd looking thing at the front of the picture is a turtle form my oldest daughter bought me for Mother's day last year. I have a chocolate vine that is languishing in a spot that is too shady, it will be transplanted to the pot in the turtles back and hopefully will cover the form before long.



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Mealy Sage pictures

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 8:58 pm

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I wish I had a better camera to capture the really outstanding blue color of the blossoms on this sage, it will know your socks off in person.

This is my third favorite....no fourth favorite plant in Fred the garden this year.
#1 - Purple Iris
#2 - Lavender
#3 - Lantana
#4 - Mealy Sage
and I am not really fond of blue under most circumstances.





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Well, I thought that's what they were

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 8:51 pm

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Spring of last year I put in several plants and moved a couple of others around to better locations. Then the heatwave and drought hit and the water hose and I could not keep them alive.

This past January, since we never really had winter, it was time to get out there, try to clean up and hope some of the perennials would come back. By March little clumps of green were showing up in all the right places....and there I am gazing in awe at the persistence of those tiny plants and wondering what they were. Some of the plant markers from the garden center had apparently dissolved in the heat since they were nowhere to be found. I dug out the extra tags I had kept since I had planted at least two of each kind and made the more durable markers from the CD cases.

I got most of them right, only three mislabeled ones. What I tagged as a Sage was in fact a Texas Betony,
one of the two I thought were goldenrods has turned out to be a mini-coreopsis - only it is not so mini any more, almost 3 ft tall after being moved- I am pretty sure the other one is goldenrod since the leaves look right and one I tagged as a Purple Sage turned out to be a Mealy Sage.

I have learned not to put as much trust into "oh, yeah, I can remember what that is" and write things down....just as an aide dontchaknow, I really have a very good memory.

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Jam, Jelly and my back

Category: Puttering Around The House | Posted: Tue May 09, 2006 2:26 pm

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I was really amazed when I got up on Sunday, my back didn't hurt. I know it is because I talked Randy into replacing that waveless waterbed mattress with the old style "bag of water" That meant I didn't get to cuddle up on the couch with the heating pad and a stack of as of yet unread books all day, but remembering how back my back can get I was happy nonetheless.

Also didn't get to the jam until yesterday. Got 5 one pint jars of strawberry made. I also found containers of crabapple juice and wild grape juice in the freezer. Neither was enough to make a batch of jelly on their own, but combined was just the right amount. Got 6 jars of jelly done too. And it all set up properly.
Sometimes we end up with jars of ice cream topping instead :)

Now if only the cucumber vines would take off and give me lots of cukes for sweet pickles. We have been out of sweet pickles and sweet relish for months because of a failed crop last year.

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Sending a memo to myself

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 4:17 am

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Dear Self.....at your advanced age ;), do NOT lift and carry anything that size again.

Do you know how much a rain soaked bag of shredded cedar bark mulch that will cover 3 cubic feet weighs? Huh, Huh, do you?
I don't know for sure either, Randy guesses about 45-50 pounds. All I know is this old back should not have been in any way involved in the lifting of three of them this afternoon. There was a nice young man at the garden center who helped Randy put them on the cart and then went out with us and helped load them into the truck....I really should have bribed him into coming home with us to help me carry them to where they would be used.

I guess this means I will making strawberry jam tomorrow instead of working in the yard. The Driscoll strawberries are in the stores, minus the two quarts that are in my refrigerator and we are out of jam.

Of course, that depends on whether I can get out of bed easily in the morning. If not, then I will prop myself up on the couch with the heating pad and a stack of books waiting to be read.


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I keep forgetting it is only early May

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 3:44 pm

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Things are lushing out in the garden....that's growing more lush, not bellying up to the bar in excess.
Not a lot of color yet, but the green really looks pretty, especially this morning when the sky was still a little dark from an early morning rain....a whopping 1/4 inch, but at least it was wet.













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Gnomes - two happy couples

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 4:46 pm

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These are the gnomes who have decided to live with me.

Maudie and her hubby. Since I let him get snowed on a couple of years ago right after he took up residence by the birdbath, he hasn't been interested in letting me know his name. Maudie is much more outgoing, giving me her name the minute I saw her. They are making their home next to the birdbath and under the ever growing hollyhock.



This is as picture of Randy and I in our gnome form. We share a bench next to the (nonworking) woodburning stove. To the left you can see Smauglet.




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Day 2 of my 60th year

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:10 pm

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Not a whole heck of a lot different than the last day of the 59th year.
Day 1 of the 60th year was spent bamboozling the 6 yr old grandson and hoping to watch the NASCAR race that was eventually rain delayed until today. I did make it to Home Depot for mulch, I really like the Scotsman brand shredded cedar mulch they carry and I went ahead and bought myself a Coreopsis.

Today was spent catching up on laundry...nothing new about that, I usually put it off until someone asks where their clean underwear is anyway.
I did get the new plant in the ground and put the mulch out on the new bed.

And I treated myself to a bowl of Neopolitan ice cream with dark chocolate syrup after lunch.

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It was just too easy

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 6:37 pm

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6 year olds are just too easy to bamboozle. My youngest grandson Nicky has been spending the weekend with us. He is a quirky little kid. Causes his Mom all sorts of embarrassment when he blurts out certain lines from movies.....at a get together at their school he starts singing "I like big butts...." from the movie Shark Tales.

Getting back to the bamboozling.
He wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch today. I got sidetracked a couple of minutes and one side of it got a little dark...not burned just browned.
A few minutes later he came in and said he didn't want the dark brown part. I cut off the darkest brown, handed it back to him and asked if that was better. He looked at the remainder of that half of the sandwich and pointed out to me that it was dark too. I turned the sandwich over on the plate and said "There, now you can't see it" He said okay and finished eating.

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'Nuther piece of painted junque - picture

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:25 pm

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This piece was a platform for the birdbath for a couple of years. When I started expanding the garden area it went from place to place, each time moving as the garden grew and is now leaning up against the side of the house as decoration in the raspberry patch.

It originally started life as part of the floor of a walk in freezer unit at a small store. Randy's dad got all the pieces and used them to build his storage shed many years ago. He had this one piece left over and at some point Randy used it to put a large car engine part on to bring it home, then it sat in our shed for a few years. We were going to throw it away but my imagination kicked in and the cans of paint came out.
And the birdbath stand is the topless table now being used out front to hold my large pot of geraniums.



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