a foggy, frosty early morning

I'm not a morning person but I do envy people who are. It was the chance to take photos of fog that got me out of bed last Saturday just as the sun was rising, in spite of the freezing temperatures.

Much to my surprise there was another natural phenomena happening.

Frost!!!

Nick and I were at the family farm to check up on things, see my Mom and get together with a few relatives. I was hoping to get some really spooky foggy photos to use in a Halloween post.

Instead it looked like a UFO was landing in the corn field.

"Take us to your canned tuna!"

So is this what it usually looks like at dawn?

Really long shadows.

Mother Nature put on a good albeit brief show last Saturday morning. 

It made up for our five hour drive in the rain on Friday.

All too soon it evaporated and everything went back to late summer, except for the temperature.

A few things still did glow in the early morning light...

some signaling that summer is coming to an end.

Later that day Nick installed a new faucet in the kitchen sink without a major incident or having to call a plumber! So far so good. We did leave a bucket underneath and turned off the water before we left, just to be safe. A huge improvement over the old one that was held together with duct tape. 

It was another fun road trip. I was happy to see my Mom, Uncle Bob and cousins Kathy and Karen. Time flies, I couldn't believe it's already been two months since our last trip.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Black Cats & Grey Cats - Haunted Humpday III

Last night, while searching around the internet for some Halloween inspiration I happened upon Incipient Wings, a wonderful blog full of fantastic ideas, delicious recipes, spooky tales and the Haunted Humpday Challenge!!!

Halloween is my favorite holiday and I have been collecting decorations for years. The weather here 

has been very cool and rainy for months and it just started to feel like summer so I haven't brought out my hoard yet. Most of these photos are from previous years because I just couldn't wait to join in!

Of course Stewart is always happy to check out any decorations.

It's the Harvest Moon wind chimes! I hear the real one is out there somewhere behind the clouds. 

Spenser, disapproving from the comfort of the dining room table.

It seemed like I had a Black Cat theme going so I decided to run with it.

My pathetic harvest of habaneros seems to have scared the wits out of the Black Cat flashlight.

The cauliflower came from the Farmer's Market and is really orange not yellow.

These are reproductions of vintage designs and I never know quite what to do with them. They might be meant to hang on a banner but the backs are just plain. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Remember Emily the Strange and her kitty posse? This is a new photo since I just came across these insane cards while looking for a stamp, wonder whatever happened with her character and kitties.

Years ago I planned on dressing up as Emily the Strange for Halloween. After happening upon the cards I had to look for the other stuff but only found the Sabbath purse and Nee Chee lip gloss. 

Obviously I'm a big fan of black cats, even though our kitties are both grey. We had a black cat named Zari once, he sat on our porch one Halloween and scared away all the trick or treaters.

Every Haunted House needs a black Mustang parked outside. The giant Candy Corn kitty has a new guitar now, more in keeping with Halloween, though it still plays Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.     

This Witch by Jim Shore is one of my all-time favorite decorations. It's nearly impossible to see in this photo but she has a black cat with a very evil expression riding on her left arm.  

The Black Cat Diner finishes out this previous tableau. The skeletal pirate on top of the TV is a hold over from International Talk Like A Pirate Day, coming up really soon on September 19th. Aargh!

Thanks for the great blog challenge, see you next week. I can't wait to visit all the participants!

Oh, so it's a lanai?

Wow, it's already the second week of September! August just flew by. It's been a busy time with much celebration in our neck of the woods. Anniversaries, birthdays, along with a wedding and guests kept things moving along at a happy pace. In fact it's pretty dull now that life is back to normal. That will all be changing soon as I return to the never ending saga of begging someone to work on our house.

A home improvement salesperson recently informed me that the concrete slab with a roof and screens attached to the back of our house is not a patio but a lanai. Ok, fair enough. In a couple of months I will certainly be mulling that word over when I pester Nick to shovel the snow off the "lanai". He usually calls it the back porch. It's not like we have a front porch, that's more of a stoop (and I'm fairly confident about that terminology). Whatever it's called, it needs a new roof and screens.

Unfortunately there's not one single repair person who is willing to tackle all the various problems. Looking back, it might not have been such a bad idea to hire a contractor to oversee a project of a 150 square feet even if it didn't involve plumbing or electricity. So we blundered forward and did get the holes fixed that the squirrel made last spring and the rain gutters replaced. Then it was party time.

Having no time or person to make the needed repairs, I decided our only hope was some sort of redecorating. This happily coincided with a half-price sale on already half-priced material at the fabric store. Having never sewn on outdoor material I was pretty intimidated. Combining that with a fifty year old sewing machine and seamstress skills learned in junior high, what could go wrong? 

   

Well, the fabric turned out to be really easy to sew, even after I forgot to change the needle to the one specifically made for use with this material. My main efforts were focused on the sofa and curtains. For the curtains I used this retro-Hawaiian-Tiki-bark cloth. I laughed when I came across it, the colors were perfect and as I already mentioned it was 75% off! There was a very similar patterned fabric in our sunroom when we first moved into this house, it was burgundy and grey, of course. Ha!

 Originally my scheme was to go for a boho look, as that usually works when I have lots of things that wouldn't necessarily go together. So basically, the plan was to get fabric in a color and pattern I didn't mind too much. I'll probably redo the sofa cushions next year as I didn't make piping for the edges due to being pressed for time and worried my old sewing machine wouldn't be able to sew through four layers of fabric. Anything is better than the horrid greige tweed it is underneath, yuck!

This is the embarrassing before photo.  

This is around the time of Nick's birthday,  and it ended up not looking too bad. I've decided ferns are to disguising household flaws as whipped cream is to covering up birthday cake disasters. We didn't have enough time or dry weather to stain the concrete floor and there's still one whole side of screens that need to be replaced and then it all needs to be painted. It just goes on and on. Maybe next year?

I still can't decide on what color to paint my funky vintage chairs. Right now they're the faded yellow-greeninsh tan they were when I bought them. Currently I'm leaning towards off white to go with the table but I can see them in the bronze/brown color of the sofa frame, too. Any thoughts?

I'll end (as did the month of August) with the birthday boy.

Quite a blaze, good thing we didn't burn down the lanai.

Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend.

Things to remember next spring.

Summer is short here and this is the point in the growing season when I try to figure

out what went wrong and how to avoid screwing it up next year.  

It not a good idea to rely on the bunnies to prune the smokebush.

Even though Cotinus coggygria is the funniest scientific name ever  and it possesses

fantastic spring and fall color, it just gets too big and keeps the poppies from blooming.

I will not walk barefoot under the oak trees (Quercus Alba, another silly sounding name).

Don't pass up unique plants because they're too big to carry. I love peonies and there

were some beautiful dark rose plants at the Farmers Market this spring. Why didn't

I buy them when I had the chance?  Afterwards I looked everywhere for them with no luck!

Planing impatiens around the Elwood's pond is a thing of the past. This was early July...

and this was mid August. Downy Mildew is the culprit and it is everywhere now.

The water lettuce disappeared too, but that is a mystery yet to be solved.

On the bright side, the ones in the window box just a few feet away are still fine.

It's most likely due to the fact that they're off the ground and stay dry even when it rains.

That doesn't change the basic problem though and I'll miss those pretty colors.

Speaking of window boxes, last April this little lady was after a snack she'd buried in the

one outside my kitchen sink. A few weeks later she gnawed a hole in the facia of our patio

and raised a family in the space between the roof and the ceiling. They were adorable babies

but the patio now has a steel facia so she's going to have to look elsewhere next spring.

Cherry tomatoes definitely grow better in pots than the regular varieties.

Volunteer hollyhock do not succumb to diseases like the hybrid nursery plants or the ones planted from seed. There's no choice of color though I love the black and deep burgundy ones that started

coming up a couple years ago. Where they decide to plant themselves is not always perfect but they're easy enough to weed out. Can't be picky about details with healthy freebies.

False Indigo also needs support to stay upright and not flop over on top of the

foxgloves and catmint. This is in reference to the cages I forgot to put around them.

How did I forget to replant these? Some new ideas and an optimistic plan or two are all I need to

put current disasters in the past and look forward to next year. Honest. Chipmunks and squirrels

will always dig up the seeds and hide nuts in the planters, but there are things I can fix or remember to actually do next year. So what did you learn from your garden or do differently next year?

Cute Bees and Hairy Spiders

There's always been lots of bumble bees in my backyard and they seem

particularly happy with the new Carl sedum. It's one of those reliable

old plants that blooms late and looks pretty good until the first frost.

Though the older varieties can be a little on the dull side, new ones have come on

the market lately in a neon pink and I just couldn't resist adding a couple to my garden.

The rainy weather pattern continues, even when the sun is shining.

At least now that it's hot and humid it finally feels like summer.

Meanwhile, the Morning Glory occasionally tosses out a bloom or two

while continuing to weirdly transform itself into the "Jolly Green Arbor".

Hiding underneath all those leaves there are actually a few blooms.

I've been chasing after the Cabbage butterflies with my camera for weeks but they're just so fast!

They mostly end up as blurry white blobs in my pictures, this one must have been tired.

Judging by the look of the ornamental cabbage, there will be a few of them next year, too.

It's been a struggle all summer to keep my most calamitous window boxes looking

at least half-way presentable, especially the ones near the front of the house.

Last spring I made a bad choice in the front window boxes by planting calibrachoa and

petunias with ornamental cabbage and bacopa. They looked great for a couple of weeks.

Then the cabbage plants and the bacopa grew way too big and crowded out the poor flowers.

Last week I gave the bacopa a haircut, dug out the spider infested cabbage and replanted them

with purple chrysanthemums for fall. It's just too embarrassing to show the before photos.

 Of course there were spiders EVERYWHERE!!! Look at those hairy legs.  Eeeek!!!

These two showed up when I was nearly done with the replanting. I'd become sort of used to

them so I decided to stop and take some photos. What happened next was pretty creepy.

          

All of a sudden the big spider jumped on the little one,  there was some blurry movement

and well, let's say it was time to get busy and finish planting the window boxes.  I also

needed to check out how many of our neighbors noticed me standing on the ladder screaming.

Okay, and it's back to the cute bees. Sorry for being absent for so long, we entertained

out of town guests and had repairmen show up two weeks early to fix our patio. Quite an

unexpected but pleasant amount of excitement. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!