Remembering 2011 – Part Four

Things not posted throughout the year, part four . . .

August

Here’s my townhouse yard in early August. Lots of leaves, not many flowers.

“Cooking” ice cubes. We took advantage of the curiously cheap organic raspberries ($1 a box!!) to make raspberry mint cubes. They were great in water or lemonade.

The Supertunia petunias I bought as an Easter gift for my parents.

After years of not being able to use their front door, my parents have a new deck!

The railing is old wrought iron from my great-grandparents farm.

Priscilla and Skippy are having a good day.

Best buddies.

September

The community garden at sunrise.

Interesting objects in a garden.

Dewy asparagus

“

When I run out of money, make the kid play for some change.

(That’s a joke for you humor-free folks.)

This is what happens when you are too busy to garden and ignore your watermelon, they explode! KABOOM! Five of ‘em! I never have to buy watermelon seed again. I’m sure they’ll be coming up all over everywhere next summer.

Finally, some flowers in my back yard. They took forever and a day, yeesh!

And the Chilly Chilis finally have fruit!

My pots never turn out quite like I planned them. I should know better by now, alternanthera (the purple-leaf monster) is a giant.

 

Here’s to not forgetting May through August 2010

. . .

Things to not forget from May 2010

A freshly shorn dog

My little sun worshipers, doesn’t matter how hot it is

Things to not forget from June 2010

New barn kittens

Cooking fruit salad

Cilantro turns to coriander, almost

Why, Virginia, what is that creeping up the wall?

Things to not forget from July 2010

4th of July parade

It seemed like it rained every day in June, by July, the lake looked like this

Things to not forget from August 2010

Four dogs, one picture, an August miracle!

We vacationed in Colorado at Rocky Mountain National Park

Calypso Cascade

A pretty pond

Horsing around

. . .

 

Easter odds and ends

Here are a few odds and ends from Easter, no egg hunting pictures, though eggs were hunted. Oh yes, those eggs got hunteded.

Here’s N in her Easter dress with my mom. It is a very special dress, my grandmother made it for my mom when she was a little girl. Grandmother passed away last October. She made a lot of her three daughters’ clothes when they were young. She would go to expensive children’s stores and look at the beautiful dresses, then she would go sit in her car and sketch them. When she got home she would make their dresses from the sketches. This is one of those dresses. My mom had to put new buttons on it. Grandmother would cut the buttons off a dress when it became to small and use the buttons for the next dress she made. I think this is the only one of the dresses she made for her daughters that still exists. I should take some close-ups of the dress, the details of it are really amazing.

When the vinca blooms around here it is time to go morel mushroom hunted so that is what we did. Unfortunately the vinca LIED! Or we are terrible mushroom hunters. This little forest is right across the road from my parents’ house. It is mostly cottonwood trees, with a spring running through. There is a lot of leaf litter and fallen limbs, great for morels.

Looking up at cottonwood branches, it seems like they were more leafed out the last time we hunted and found morels here, a couple of years ago.

Then we went to check cows, it was nearly sunset.

Two of my parents’ dogs, Priscilla and Skippy, came along with us. Skippy, the little terrier, flushed rabbits. Priscilla just trotted around. She is fourteen and arthritic but when she gets out in the pasture the obvious stiffness of her joints seems to disappear.

The end

 

December 13 – Frost and Fog

 

My gardens, part two – At my parents’ house #1

I say "NO" to you!

We lived with my parents for much of the past four years and I told them I would continue to help out with the garden when I am at their place. My version of “helping” is doing what I think needs to be done. They tend to overlook things like six foot high shrubs that are planted a foot from the house’s foundation and are happily scrapping paint from the siding whenever the wind picks up, not to mention freaking me out whenever I was home alone in the evenings watching TV. “Somebody is scratching at the window! Oh wait, those are just the GIANT EUONYMOUS.” Now there’s something truly terrifying, giant euonymous. Sounds like some sort of giant, puppy eating slug. One summer when my parents were out-of-town I cut them back to a foot, the next summer, when they were again out-of-town, I dug them out. That’ll show them to go on vacation without us. Here’s the former home of the giant euonymous. I’m now attempting to turn it into a herb/strawberry/shade garden. To which my parents’ dogs say NO! much like my daughter, when she went through a phase where she would say (while pointing her finger at you), “I say ‘NO’ to you!” That is what the dogs think about my endeavor to replace the eunoymous because that is not herb/strawberry/shade garden, it is doggy digging garden for digging doggies. Since there are plenty of places to dig I don’t know why they are digging in this bed, my parents’ live in a doggy heaven: no fences, no leashes, plenty of wilderness, and lots of vermin to chase. I keep on trying, the strawberries look decent and so do the larger plants that I put in but everything else has been removed by sweet old Priscilla who is impossible to get really mad at since she has soulful eyes and stiff, arthritic joints. I planted parsley, dill, borage, basil, and something else, I can’t remember what, this weekend. Hopefully it will germinate and survive.

In front of my parents house is this large limestone planter. My dad, ever so kindly, filled it up with new topsoil so I can plant stuff, probably gomphrena and petunias, when the seedlings are ready.

Where plants go to die

I also will take care of this flower garden. I was pretty aggravated when my mom moved a small clump of pampas grass into it cause I knew it would get huge and eventually need moving.  It is fast approaching hugeness but the idea of wrestling with it is very unappealing. This is a good garden for testing a plant’s toughness. I’ve literally planted hundreds if not over a thousand plants in this garden over the years and most of them simply did not make it. The soil is heavy clay (with rocks! no less) and the climate is, well, Kansas. Too much rain or too little. Too hot or too cold. And windy. I actually managed to kill monarda, pretty amazing.