A Second Look, June 24, 2023

 We finally had some rain, real rain. Meaning we had rain, drizzle, and more rain on and off for two days. Already you can see things greening up. It was wonderful.

Here are a few things I saw during my Second Look this week.

They're hard to see, but honey bees were all over the hydrangea blooms.

Meanwhile, less than 10 feet away, the spirea were covered with bumble bees
 but no honey bees.

And in the vegetable garden, it was bumble bees. I don't know if all of the orange color in the pollen sac came from the tomato blossoms or not. 

However, in the beans, I found an insect that I didn't want to see, a Japanese beetle.
Time to get the traps out. 

As it turns out, the volunteer plants that I thought might be Mexican sunflowers are four o'clocks, named because they open in the late afternoon and are closed during the day. With the rain came the wind, and you can see its effects in the picture I tried to take of them.

We finally got some mulch in around the vinca.

The butterfly bush is starting to bloom, but cabbage butterflies are the only
ones we've seen so far.

The baby house wrens should be fledging soon.

Until next time...

Happy Father's Day

Today is Father's Day. We're going to celebrate with my father-in-law and Ward's siblings. Yesterday, Ward, Wally, and Theo celebrated while I was at work. They spent the day cooking using the sous vide and the grill. Fun toys for them. I was at work all day but contributed a cherry pie that I made the night before. The carnivores enjoyed their time together.

For today's celebration with Ward's family, we are taking most of the food. We're taking hamburgers and hot dogs, pasta salad, fruit salad, spicy baked beans, and another cherry pie. I think it will be a good day. 

But, of course, among the present-day celebrations, I am thinking about my own father. He passed away 10 years ago but is always present with me. He was a fine man and a good father. That fact is somewhat remarkable, considering that he didn't grow up with the best example. His father had problems with alcohol and was mean when he drank. Being the oldest boy, my father was often in the firing line of his father's problems. But I think that made him all the more determined to do the right thing. 

As I remember my father today, I am sharing again one of my stories about my father.

When I was little, my father was larger than life. He did the obvious of working hard and providing for our needs, but it was the other things I noticed. Youth is like that. Nothing could equal the thrill I got from riding on his shoulders or the feeling of flying when he pushed me in the tree swing. I loved carrying his lunch pail and was proud when I could stretch my legs to match his stride. When I got too big to ride on his shoulders, he made things fun in other ways. He fixed the lights at the local swimming pool so we could swim all summer for free. And he made sure we always had ice cream.

Then there was the summer I turned thirteen when I was at camp on a week-long canoe trip. One night we ended up camping unscheduled in a farmer's field because of a sudden thunderstorm. We got permission from his sons to camp in their field but not from their father because he wasn't home. As we were pitching our tents, the dad showed up and was quite upset about our trespassing. After a bit of explanation and negotiation, he said we could stay the night. However, it was obvious that he wasn't happy about it.

After things had calmed down a bit, I mentioned that my family used to live in the area. He asked a couple of questions and soon realized who my father was. His face lit up because my father used to be his fishing buddy. He said that Red (my father's nickname) was a fine man. The farmer said no more, but soon his sons showed up. They carried our water, gathered our firewood, and did anything else they could think of to help. So even though he wasn't there, my father was still making things right. He turned what could have been a tense, difficult night into a good one.

On this Father's Day, I want to thank my father for watching out for me in many different ways and for making sure that we always had ice cream.

A Second Look, June 15, 2023

 It continues to be dry here. We did have drizzle a couple of days, but not enough to wet the sidewalk under the trees. Thank goodness the rain barrel filled up earlier in the spring, as much watering needs to be done. Otherwise, the weather has been pleasant - perfect for sitting on the porch and listening to the birds. 

Here are a few things I saw this week during my Second Look.

The sour cherries are ripe now, and we have been picking and freezing them.
Unfortunately, we can only reach a small portion of them
 because the tree is too tall to pick most of them, even with a ladder. 

We have apples on the tree we planted a few years ago, and I think some of them will make it to picking time. Last year we had one apple that promptly fell off before it got this big.

The peas are starting to bloom. I was beginning to think that we were only going to have vines.

While weeding, I found two oak seedlings planted by the squirrels. Two different size acorns and two different kinds of trees. Finding original seeds underground is another thing that gives me a thrill every time. I'm easily entertained, in case you haven't guessed. :)

The first squash is forming. 

And the radishes are blooming. I guess it's time to do some more harvesting. 

And as with most years, the pear trees are full of fruit. However, there is not always a good harvestable crop because of various diseases and insect problems. We will see what things look like in August when they get ripe.

A new color of day lily is blooming.

It is in this bed with the coral bells and salvia. I enjoy the combination of colors.

I have strategically placed this geranium close to the porch for ease of deadheading. I like geraniums but don't always keep up the maintenance required to keep them blooming. 

We did venture away from the yard last week.
We had lunch with Wally and then took a hike in a local park.
Wally always tries to have a new place for us to explore
 each time we visit.

A Second Look, June 9, 2023

We continue to have dry weather here, and the green, luscious grass is turning brown and crunchy. We may get rain next week. I hope so.

Also, we've had a couple of days of bad air quality from Canadian wildfires that have kept us inside and away from yard work. But things should be clearing up in the next couple of days. I hope they can get the fires under control soon, for everyone's sake.

Here are some things I found when I did a Second Look this week.

Uncle Billy's strawberries are doing very well this year. We have picked enough for a strawberry pie, a strawberry-blueberry cobbler, many for snacking, and some for the freezer. I love fresh strawberries with their sweet, tangy taste.

The oak leaf hydrangea is starting to bloom.

Nearby, the fig bush is continuing to leaf out from the base. Ward suggested
we trim the dead branches, but I like the sculpture they form. 

There are a lot of bees all over the spirea blooms. Notice the pollen sac on the bee's back leg. I am always thrilled when I see one.

The bees also like the salvia blooms a lot.

This is the spot where the fig tree was last year. I decided to fill it with some herbs for the kitchen. I started with seeds in the pots (except for the oregano I got from Miss Landers), but none came up even after waiting several weeks and keeping them moist. I resorted to buying plants. 

Look what I found when I took the parsley out of the pot to plant- a heel of bread.
Not sure why that was there, but it was a first for me. 

At the same time I bought the herb seeds, I bought some sunflower seeds for another bed. None of those came up, either. However, we have sunflowers coming up in various places that were planted by the birds. Not sure what bit the top off of these two.

The Stella d'Ora day lilies are blooming now.

As are the wallflowers.

And more bachelor's buttons have bloomed.

In the same bed, I have a lot of these plants that I think are Mexican sunflowers. I had some in this bed a couple of years ago, but not last year. I am waiting for a bloom to know for sure. In the meantime, I really need to thin these out before they take over.

I can't see into most of our nests, but a house wren has been sitting on these eggs. See the white fuzzy stuff on the bottom and upper left side. Those are spider egg sacs. The wrens add them to the nest, so the spiders eat mites to keep them off the baby birds. So many interesting symbiotic relationships in nature.

Theo got me a miniature rose for Mother's Day. They are hothouse plants that look good but usually don't survive. However, I repotted it, put it outside in the full sun, and kept it watered. But all of the leaves and flowers shriveled up and died anyway. However, I am starting to see new signs of life with little leaves emerging. Very exciting. 

That's it for this week's Second Look. 

Until next time...

Busy, but Not Crazy

 The last couple of months have been busy. Now, if I could only remember with what.

This past weekend, we celebrated my father-in-law Leo's 90th birthday. Ward did a lamb roast for his father per his request. Ward had never done one before, so much research was needed. He learned a lot from the experience but probably won't do it again.

My FIL's 1st dog. His mother went on
to raise collies for the next 50 years.

As I have mentioned here before, I put together a "This is Your Life" type book for my FIL. I spent a lot of time on it over the past couple of months, but it turned out well. Leo (and others) are thrilled with it. It was fun to watch him see a picture and launch into a story. He's a good storyteller. So now, all that's left is to organize the hundreds of photographs and papers I didn't use into some kind of order and return them to my FIL. Let me explain a bit about that. When Leo's mother died, he inherited all of her pictures and papers. Somehow, I got roped into going through them, which was not easy since I didn't know many of the people or things I was looking at. And there were very few labels on items. Anyway, I have gone through 3 big tubs of things so far that I returned and had another at our house to sort through. That's where I got some of the material that went into the book. The rest is strewn about in a mess. My goal is to work a little on it each day, so I can return it to Leo sooner rather than later.

And speaking of stories from the past, sometime I will get back to my Storyworth book. I have a hard copy, but it is in sore need of editing for typos before anything else happens with it. But that's not happening anytime soon.

One of the things I kept from my parent's boxes.
My idea is to plant herbs in it for the kitchen.
We shall see if that happens.

But back to recent activities. My nephew got married in May, so we were privileged to attend the happy occasion. My sister from Maine was in town, so it was nice to have all four sisters together again. There was more looking to the past when we spent a couple of days going through boxes in my garage from my parent's house. We put them there several years ago when we cleaned out their house. They were full of things we weren't ready to get rid of but not sure what to do with. Now, most things have been decided on, and I have a few follow-through things to do to complete the job. I have one of those ready for today- a package of mementos to mail to my cousin.

Annie

And as you know, we are down to one cat now because Leo died last month. Now, we're trying to figure out Annie, our only remaining cat. She and Leo were littermates and had never been separated. I wouldn't say that she seems lost without him. However, we are finding places around the house where she is now peeing. Whether that is coming from old age (19 1/2 years) or a reaction to being alone, we don't know. But it's a problem. We've moved litterboxes around to hopefully help. In the meantime, Ward has had to take the Roomba apart twice to try to get the pee out.

And this time of year, there's plenty to do outside. We don't have everything done that needs to be done, but we are making progress. Slow and steady wins the race, right?

Until next time...

Comment: Sorry about all of the different font sizes. I am happy to have Google's services, but sometimes you get what you pay for. (Blogger is free.)