sunset

Sunsets seem more spectacular when observed in an East to West valley.

beeees

I was having so much fun with bee-photography, Charlie decided to try it.

bees & more flowers

One more lily. This one is much later than the others. I've been stalking bees with my camera.

Fishing again

We went fishing yesterday & finally, it was my day at the fishing hole. We've had a few days when Charlie caught most or all of the fish & some days when it was pretty equal. This time I caught them all. I caught 2 small blue gills which we brought home & put in the fountain, 2 large blue gills which we ate for breakfast this morning, & this 2.2 pound Largemouth Bass. Poor Charlie got a few nibbles, but didn't hook anything. Tonight, I stuffed the Bass & baked it.

Orca alert

My sister, Jane, asked me if that was an orange whale in my profile picture. No, that's just Al, the 18 pound diabetic. Here's a picture of Jesus. Yesterday's official Veterinarian office weight was 21 pounds.

More garden stuff

We had enough ripe tomatoes to make our first salsa of the year today-yummmmm!-just hot enough to loosen the sinuses & enough garlic to maybe keep the biting flies away when we go fishing tomorrow. Maybe I'll eat some more for breakfast as a precaution. In 2-3 days, if we have any salsa left, there will probably be enough additional ripe tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce.


More garden pictures. Charlie walking up the front walk. Look at my Portulaca! I'm going to have to cut back the Batchelor Buttons. They're shading my hot peppers.















This poppy picture reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe. It would be fun to do a little quilt from this picture.












This is a picture of our "self-picking" Burpee Delicious tomato plant. The tomatoes are clustered so close together that, as they grow, they are pushing tomatoes off the vine. We've picked a few ripe ones & they're very meaty. I think that I'm going to want to grow them again next year.

Shirley & Ollie's party

Saturday was another party. At Shirley & Ollie's this time. Good food, good company-great time.

The Acey Deucey table was busy. Charlie even persuaded me to play. Thanks for all the quarters, guys.

Butterfly-fritillary

Butterflies are difficult subjects to photograph live, but I got lucky this time. I was able to identify it as a Fritillary, but I'm not sure which one.

Fishing again

We went fishing again today-no trout, but some yellow perch, a couple of sunfish, a sucker & a smallmouth bass. I tried to take a picture of this Pumpkinseed (sunfish), but the camera doesn't capture the iridescent blue. I think that Pumpkinseeds are the most beautiful freshwater fish.

How I spent my birthday

No pictures this time, just a report of my birthday, yesterday. It was my kind of day. In the morning, we went to the reservoir to go fishing. The first spot that we tried only produced 1 little Punkinseed-not even big enough to filet for the kitties. We moved to our other favorite fishing spot & were rewarded with 4 nice rainbow trout & a couple of Fall Fish for the kitties.

For lunch, we went to Deb's Place. She's getting ready to move to a larger restaurant & was looking at restaurant supply catalogs. I looked at a couple of them-WOW they're expensive! I wonder how restaurants up here make any money.

We then went to the cabin, where I spent some time reading & cuddling with Shadow, the cabin kitty. I also found some boxes of cookbooks that I had forgotten were in a storage area. I only brought 1 home because I need an additional bookcase in the kitchen & I haven't been able to find exactly what I want, yet.

Charlie fixed a fantastic dinner for me. He cooked a small leg of lamb with oven roasted carrots, celery, scallions, potato, & red pepper. He served it in the dining room with all the best china, crystal & silver Egervin Bull's Blood wine complimented the meal beautifully. For dessert we had
Edy's double chocolate fat free sugar free ice cream with Gran Marnier splashed over it-mmmmm.

Back & side gardens

Charlie's lope garden. There might be some cukes in there , too, but I don't think they came up. This started out as the remainder of the pile of mushroom soil & topsoil that never made it up the hill to the raised bed. He found a package of cantaloupe seeds in the Walmart parking lot, surrounded the pile of dirt with bricks 7 planted. If all the cantaloupe & tomato flowers make fruit, I;m going to have to open a produce stand.





















This is the side garden with 3 Burpee Delicious tomato plants, 6 Jet Stars,spinach, more hot peppers & assorted flowers.















These are our tomatoes around the patio. They are assorted varieties & don't get sun until about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning.











Last, but not least, these are the woodshed tomato gardens. I got a bit carried away this year & we have about 40 tomato plants in a dozen or so varieties. Do you think that will be enough for both of us?

A tour of the front garden

Our front garden is L shaped. This is the short side of the L. My sister, Jane gave me the flowering kale plants. To the left, you can see my new hollies which are at a slightly lower level than the kale. We are enjoying mixing edible & non-edible landscaping.Most of our garden space is being reclaimed from lawn so there's a lot of grass weeding!
This is an overview of the long side of the L. I've really crowded stuff together. I've got hollyhocks, portulaca, marigolds-both large & small, zinnias, poppies, lots of batchelor buttons, a Burpee delicious tomato on this end, caulflowers, about 20 hot pepper plants in 8 or 9 varieties, a Burpee Champion tomato plant & sunflowers that were planted by my garden assistants AKA chipmonks. Champion tomato, sunflowers pepper, caulflower & stepping stone.
Champion tomatoes-looking good. They will probably have flat spots by the time they ripen.

Pretty purple pepper. Mostly ornamental.


Another pretty purple pepper- note the purple flowers & peppers. The peppers will turn red when ripe.

I think this is a Beaver Dam pepper. I should have labeled them.

Hungarian Hot Wax pepper.

Sweatshirt jacket & picking tomatoes

At our guild's recent quilt show, Linda demo'd sweatshirt jackets & I demo'd reverse paper applique. I told her that I would promise to make a jacket & I hoped that she would try the applique. I'm having so much fun with this. Here's the back. I might add more quilting black on black to the background. So far, I'm loving the Bernina 440 QE!
On another note...I picked 2 tomatoes today!! Yes, I know that they were cherry tomatoes & they would have benefitted from another day on the vine, but I think thats pretty good for a USDA zone 5.

Party

Who is that in those Foster Grants?

















Why it's Charlie!














A good time was had by all. Note the tractor.





This is one reason why one should not drink & drive. Note the cup is still upright. Good thing that they had that tractor!

More garden pictures

We got a new fountain statue. Al is not happy that Julian is peeing in his outdoor water bowl.

July begins

I'm very happy with the lillies in my garden this year. This pink one was one of the plants that I bought at Walmart last year. They had already finished blooming & were reduced by 75%. I got a bargain!




The big orange ones were in the garden when we bought the house. Charlie took this picture. The rainbow was caused by a leak in the hose that sprayed a fine mist into the sunlight.


The yellow one was planted as a bulb this spring.