Look Who Came to Visit at Work Yesterday

Sasquatch!

  Our hotel is hosting a production crew and actors for a fishing reality show.  Sasquatch is making commercials for Jack's Link's (beef jerky ), the main sponsor for this show.  He has been spotted all around the town doing all sorts of crazy things.  The whole town is enjoying our week of fame.  We cannot wait for the shows to air, beginning in January.

 

Since I had my camera at work, I snapped a shot of one of the four containers I do each year. 

There are a  couple of Tropicana flowers almost ready to bloom.  The creeping jenny has been gobbled up by the Ipomeoa. Jenny is not as aggressive as I had hoped.  I really wanted that shot of chartreuse to hang down in the front. 

 

Here is a close up of the foliage plants -- Persian Shield, Coleus, Ipomeoa and licorice plant instead of Jenny in this one.

 

 

This container is on my porch at home and Jenny behaved beautifully. Of course the container is shorter and has no Ipomeoa.

 

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The licorice plant shows up nicely in the containers flanking my garage.

I will have to remember to use the golden licorice plant instead of Creeping Jenny with Ipomeoa.

 

I always enjoy my containers in late August when the perennial garden is pretty much done!

Sunday Morning on the Deck

What a beautiful Sunday we are enjoying today.  It was very cool (40's) at 6:00 a.m. and 80 degrees by 2pm.  Perfect weather!

I was outside early taking pics of the deck before the sun got high enough to cast shadows.

Last year I bought this container of switch grass 'Rotstrahlbush'. I overwintered it in it's original pot. I thought it had died until a few weeks ago when it finally came up! Really...it was late July before anything began to grow.  It is still not very tall. I decided to put it in a deck vignette where I would get much more enjoyment then I get looking at it alone in this ugly plastic pot.

 

I love its soft feathery panicles against the rough 'Tropicana' leaves.

 The panicles should get taller and turn a reddish color as fall approaches.

I love August on my deck.  This is the time when my tropicals began to flower and I can move the containers around to make different combinations. 

 

This Rembrandt dahlia began blooming this week:

The petals look paint splashed ....I love it!

 

Here is another Rembrandt in golden yellow and red:

 

The coleus planters I bought the first week of July have really exploded in size.

 DH and I are both enjoying them.  It is wonderful having containers with no blooms to fade and fall onto the deck floor.  J gets all the credit for the deck plants this year. He has been super diligent in his daily watering/fertilizing. 

 

 

 Look at the size of this coleus sitting on the floor:

 

They look so good I am wondering if he is singing to them each afternoon....LOL. 

 

I hope you are all having a great Sunday, too!

The dark foliage planter Finally has two Flowers

Tropicana 'Black' is only about 3 ft. tall this year (usually gets over 6 ft) and right now it has one bloom.  I like it short and I like the reddish orange color of the flower:

About two feet higher, Canna 'Wyoming' has its first bloom in a lighter orange:

'Tropicana' still has no buds:

If it ever blooms, it will have a medium orange flower. But even without a flower its striped leaves are stunning.  The purple plant is Persian Shield.

Two weeks ago I bought my first hedge trimmer. 

It's electric with a 100-ft cord.  I'm in love!  I have been trimming all my shrubs with just a small Felco hand pruner for over twenty years.  I had no idea how easy this would be to use and how fast I could trim all the shrubs.  Today I used it to cut down gazillions of daylily foliage.  In less than an hour I cut down more than I used to do in a full day's work.  Love, love, love this tool!! I am sure you all have something like this already. Nobody but me would do all that hand trimming for so many years without one.

I am going to use this cut down all my perennial foliage this fall!

3 New Clocks

One day last week  I was surfing around in the wee morning hours and I found a blog that mentioned a site I had never heard of.....Joss and Main..................strange name... but I liked some of the items that were purchased at that site, so I wandered on over for a look.

I did not purchase anything that day, but I did register my email.  So, of course, they sent me advertising emails daily.  I think I went there at least five times before the temptation was just too much and I ordered.......................................clocks............................If you had told me I would be ordering clocks, I would have laughed and asked what you had been drinking...I had no idea I wanted clocks! :)

Somewhere in the inner recesses of my brain, I wanted clocks because I ordered three of them.  They arrived this week.  I opened the box and wondered where I would put these three clocks.  My original thought was to use them on my dining room table as a centerpiece...unfortunately the backs are not finished so that did not work. 

I ended up using them in these spaces:

 On top of the dining room curio cabinet:

 

On top of the dining room china cabinet:

 

 

Over the television cabinet:

I think they will be great decoration for a New Year's Eve party dessert table!  I have never had a NYE party, but maybe someday I will.....If I do, I will be prepared!

It's been a Pretty Dull Week in the Garden

It's that time of year when I wonder why I do all that garden work.  Everything looks dull, dying or drab. Everything that's interesting has already finished blooming. The daylilies are not very impressive this year. I cut down a few wheelbarrow loads of dead perennials today.

Even my deck containers are blah this year. The Ipomea vine in the center container has not grown at all since it was planted the beginning of June--that is unheard of!

This dark-foliage vignette still has no blooms:

I still like the color combination of the striped Tropicanna,  the silvery purple Persian Shield, greenish-brown canna Wyoming, Tropicanna Black , the Mystery plant (I still have never found out what the dark rubbery thing in the front is) and Sedona coleus. There are two buds on the Trops, so I should  have orange and orangish-red flowers soon.

The only colorful spot right now is the entrance to the deck.  DH gets the credit for this display.

He choose and planted the red and gold combination that flanks the main steps to the deck.  J loves marigolds. I am starting to like them more -- I told him it would look nice if he planted them all the way down that sidewalk border he cleaned out last week. That border leads to the deck entrance.
 

 

He had flowers left over so he planted a number of small containers in the same flower combo and placed on the steps  He insisted on doing all the planting himself.  I think he did a great job!

 

I am really enjoying J's new hobbies--helping with the garden and cooking.  He is even cooking on the weekends.  Last night he grilled this steak and foil-wrapped redskin potatoes with onions:

He also tossed some yellow squash with olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled it.

 

 The meal was delicious.

 

I have always envied women who had husbands who cooked for them. Now I have one-- I am a lucky woman!

 

I also did another project this week that caused this:

This pic was taken after 7 days of healing....No kidding!  If you want to find out what caused this click here.

 

Star of Bethlehem Finally Gone

See the small white flowers near the ground? That is Star of Bethlehem.  It is a pretty little flower in the spring, but it's very invasive.  This area has thousands of tiny little bulbs underground.  The only way to get rid of it, is to dig it all out.

Abracadabra! It's gone!

OK, it was not really that easy.  My sweet husband  spent a good hour removing all of the top soil--at least six inches deep.

He hauled it all away and will cover with plastic and rocks in hopes of killing the gazillion bulbs.  I don't even want them to grow in the woods because I know they will find their way back to my gardens. 

He looked up from the spot he was dumping them in and saw this:

At first he thought mosquitoes were buzzing around over his head. Good thing he looked up before he begin swatting!

He ran to Home Depot to get bags of top soil and refilled the area (I think it took 11 bags).

Once the sidewalk gets power washed, it will be ready for planting.  I have no plans to do any planting until next year.

J (DH) is becoming quite the grill master.  He made these potatoes for dinner:

He seems to really enjoy cooking and so far I enjoy not cooking. It's a good retirement hobby for him.