Jacque, VS, LJB, submitted garden photos. I added some, as well. All I can say is that I have garden envy. There is a lot to be said for warmth and rain.
From Jacque, we have:
Here are VS’s bales:
While LJB sends these beauties:
Black Currents
Clematis
Borage
Hydrangea
The herb garden
Twin Two’s Marigolds
It has been cold and dry here In ND, and the garden is behind. Some things are coming along, though. The roses in the feature photo at the top are some Morden roses in our front yard. It has been a good year for roses.
The peas
Red Currents
Tomatoes
Iris (Beverly Sills)
The beans and their extraterrestrial poles
How is your summer shaping up?
Trail Baboon 
the days are getting shorter already and the month of july is upon us. my daughters play that was in rehearsal the first half of the summer is doing dress rehearsal tonight. where has it gone.
i took a job in march i got called to china april 15 and now its july. i moved in the midst of the cycle and am almost unpacked. i found my summer shirts and have the winter jackets in storage ready for recall in another month and a half.
we do live in a circle here. the hot days to be remembered on the cold afternoons and the cold days to be remembered on the hot ones. there are 10 perfect days , 10 hot ones and 10 cold ones. this year is not too anything other than quick. not early not late hot or cold rainy or dry. moderation is the key and we are in the midst of moderation this year. 2017 is the summer of understatement. i have an inherited garden with a few hosta, a few iris were in bloom a month ago and the lilies are popping now. my dogs are raising a little hell with the lillies as the bunnies seem to like to hide there. the new thing is that the dogs can look out i=onto the back yard form my bedroom on the second floor and they wake me to be let out with the whine cry of a longing dog essence. i didnt get it at first but now i do and its starting to wear a little thin. 2 15 today was the wakeup call, if i were to refuse the call turns out to be one letting me know they needed to get out with explosive bowel syndrome and my ignoring it means an hour of cleanup in the morning to start the day
my gray hair and slow walk up and down the stairs let me know why people stop having children int heir 40’s. its almost unfair to the children to have old slow wise parents with the energy of a declining bowl of fruit. the summer of just in time everything is the feel of it. i am thankful and hopeful and hanging on for the ride as i try to nudge to the front of the line and work hard to do my best in anticipation of the coming days. these are great days to be here and to be savored. fall is inevitable and wondrous followed by winter then another spring but summer is what we live for.
enjoy
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I’m enjoying all the wild and bird planted flowers that have been in bloom….as we await word on various requirements with the contract on our cabin home: holding tanks, water and a home inspection. Only after those results will the sale be sssured.
Today Kaffe Fika is here so I will be setting table and putting together ‘food’ items. I must make Kringler….for Cynthia….so my morning is planned and a lovely one it is and shall be.
Summer is a bit of a holding pattern while I simply enjoy being here.
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Tons of work. 60 hours a week through September. And a lot of that is redoing the work others have done at Children’s hospital in Dayton. Our company was originally assigned to install flooring on two floors of a seven story building. Two other companies are doing the rest. One floor has to be completely replaced. Another has about half that is very poorly done. I’d share the pictures but there is a rule against that. I don’t necessarily mind the overtime but rather than hire incompetent people and redo the work why not pay the overtime on the front side of the project and have things installed once?
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Good question.
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The question is: how did those people get so far along without be stopped? Several things. Poor oversight at every level and outright fraud. Each company is responsible to provide and install protection on their completed areas thereby allowing the other trades the opportunity to do their work. These guys covered their work within minutes of doing it. Horrible!
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It’s enough to drive someone bonkers!
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Rise and Shine Baboons,
My 2 year old nephew, Tad, says, “HI Baboons.” He also says “round,”
“Kawabunga” and “Okey-Dokey.” He is dictating words as he watches me write this.
I am in Iowa, returning to Minnesota later today. Yesterday I took my mother to a funeral down here. That exhausted her. When I returned her to her Memory Care room, she collapsed into bed after I helped her change her clothes, and she was asleep before I left.
It was a large, very traditional funeral with a little lunch following the service. The church ladies served ham sandwiches, pasta and jello salads, and cake squares with coffee. The ham sandwiches were delicious.
My summer is going nicely. I have the garden weeded. Now it is on autopilot until the veggies are ready for harvest. So I will turn to several art projects. I will make padded headboards for the guest room in the lower level, and I am planning two pieces of installation art: bicycle part sculptures for my son’s office and an antique key and doorknob compilation for my front entry at home. I must start scouring the antique shops for parts for these. That should take me until mid-August when I pick wild plums and wild grapes for jelly.
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Tell Tad Hi, back.
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It was good to get up to Eden Prairie for the Summer Solstice meeting of BBC, and to see 10 or so baboons. The gardens are doing well; friends have given us new flower transplants that seem to have taken hold, mostly shade perennials like bloodroot, maiden hair fern… Husband’s birthday is coming up this Sunday. Life is good
Sorry I didn’t get garden pics to you. Maybe there can be a Part Deux some other day for those of us who forgot to take photos…
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I think we should have an update the end of July to see how things have progressed. Send some then or whenever you wish. We can always use post material.
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Or to catch the things that aren’t in bloom yet. I’ve got lilies and foxglove and some other things that haven’t bloomed yet.
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It was 38° last Friday night, so it doesn’t feel as though summer has even started. Today it will be 94°, so we hope to have some veggie growth. The winds have been terrible and cold.
I am finishing up a power point for a family therapy workshop I am doing in South Dakota in a couple of weeks. Summer is going too fast.
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But your red currants are way ahead of mine, even though you feel like summer hasn’t started. Mine are totally green. I can’t wait until they turn red. There are not many things in my yard that are prettier than red currants with the sun shining through them. They look like translucent jewels.
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We put netting over them, much to the disappointment of the robins, who hoped to feast on them. We also put netting on the strawberries. They seem to leave tbe raspberries alone, and we have more than enough of them to share, anyway. Now the robins have to be content with the worms that emerge when we turn on the soaker hoses. We check every day for robins caught in the netting. None so far.
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Summer is not my favorite season with the heat and the humidity so I’ve really enjoyed the past week which had below average temperatures. I hope to make at least monthly trips to Duluth during the next several months – I say it’s to visit family but we all know the biggest motivation is to go out shooting.
I have an out-of-town guest coming in a couple weeks and I need to get her room cleaned up: I hauled some stuff out of my mom’s apt. the last time I was there and put it in the basement bedroom where my guest will be staying and now I have to sort through it. Tons of thread and fabric scraps in the home of a non-sewer; I don’t want to trash it all, but I sure as heck don’t want to keep it all, either. I also started deep cleaning and organizing the kitchen and need to get some pictures framed and put on the living room wall because I’m getting tired of that big blank wall …also am working on putting up a website, that should be fun and will keep my late night hours filled as I figure that stuff out. Also need to go out shooting at least once a week or I shrivel up and die inside…
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The fabric and thread would be gladly accepted by Artscraps.
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Good to know. Daughter has a friend who took some of the stuff; she is not just a seamstress but a designer but she was thrilled to find things with historical significance such as scraps of old feed sacks, as well as the old cotton formerly used for people to sew their own sheets.
If there is anything usable left over after she is done picking through it, I will be making a trip to Artscraps. Thianks for the tip.
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We have had germination troubles this year, snd reseeded spinach, kohlrabi, and potatoes. The basil is germinating nicely , which is surprising since it needs warm weather to get going.
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The property next to mine is about 4 acres, and has been owned by the same wealthy family for 150 years. Two years ago, when the owner, Judy, died from the same kind of cancer I had, her partner, Barbara, inherited the whole property. She sold it two years ago for five million dollars. Rumor has it that the new owners are going to build a six-million dollar mansion.
Last week, I wrote about immersing myself in overhauling my 2/3 acre and creating a botanical garden. The biggest, most labor intensive work I did was creating a 40′ long landscape bed where there had been a tree stand so full of weeds and small trees that I couldn’t enjoy Judy’s lake view. It was also such an eyesore that I was embarrassed to have my soon-to-be neighbors have to live with it.
Since 1935, there was an old, slat cedar fence separating our two lawns. This also blocked much of the view. The fence came down from heavy equipment when they leveled an old, ugly cottage next to me. This opened up a spectacular, expansive view of the lake. My agenda became making a mulch and timber-lined tree stand so pristine than my soon-to-be neighbors would relish it and accept it as an organic marker dividing our two properties.
I was able to track down the new owner via email to ask about his plans for our mutual property line. To my horror, he said there would be a black, metal fence from the back of his property extending all the way down to the lake. He told me that it’d be far more attractive than Judy’s old fence. I was heartsick that, after nearly two years of having a wide-open lake view, there will now be a black, metal barricade.
What is it about multi-millionaires who come in and create blight with McMansions??? And spoil their neighbor’s view. My strategy was foiled, but I’m still proud of the tree stand I created.
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Ask him if he can’t find some see-through material for that fence!
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Same old, same old. Such beautiful weather and it goes way too fast. Still haven’t even gotten to the Big Lake beach yet. No tan — just work, commuting, making meals, doing laundry, cleaning, ignoring cleaning, etc. But I have 5 days off — Friday 6/30 through Tuesday, 7/4 to enjoy some time off, but I need to start making jewelry. I just ordered a ton of beads and need to make stuff to sell!
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Plan to take some breaks during your jewelry-making and get outside!
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tim said “…parents with the energy of a declining bowl of fruit. …” and no one commented on that. I think that may be the most perfect phrase I have ever heard.
Gardens and crops definitely need some heat. Things were a little late in the first place out in the field and they are losing ground with this cool weather.
I like it, but it isn’t helping anything.
I’ll send a couple pictures of my straw bales too.
I’m waiting for the ending of the final show of night at the Theatre conference.
So far it’s been busy mornings and shows in the afternoon and evenings. It’s been pretty fun. Four more days!
And I traded tractors by phone yesterday so that’s kind of exciting…
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I like that timism, too, Ben.
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