That Lovely Weekend

Father's Day weekend: Saturday.

L-A-Z-Y day around the garden.

The Oriental Poppies are popping, and sometimes manage to catch the bud shell inside the flower blossom.

Who knew Oriental Poppies were so co-ordinated at sports like that?

The Columbie multi-variety seed pack planting is bearing fruit.

Or should I say blossoms.

Each year I think I need more columbine.

This year...I am almost satisfied with our collection.

We've got lavender blue and white.

White on white...

Large blue on blue...

(They seem especially robust!)

Deeper blue violet with white...

And rose pink and white.

The deep rose and yellow and yellow and white varieties have yet to make their debut.

Then there is this "is it or isn't it" white on white flower.

Is it also a Columbine?

Anyone know?

I have one shade garden bed that has a mix of Japanese maples, hostas, coral bells, lobelia and random other shade happy plants.

My efforts to plant perenials and self seeding varieties has worked well in this my second full year of gardening here.

At the southern end of the garden the seasonal Neff's Canyon snow melt stream is racing by.

We keep an eye on it...knowing that the yard behind us is lower than ours and so any flooding would affect them before it affected us.

When we first bought our house, Dec. 31 2008, I insisted that funds be set aside to install a water feature through the garden.

The neighbors clued us in that we would be wasting our money to do so...a natural stream would be heard from May to early July.

They were right.  A fountain located on our deck from July to October satisfies my need to hear running water; we saved a bundle by not following through on my original water feature plan.

The batchelor buttons and bittersweet have returned after self seeding.

This year I will be more agressive in trimming them back. Last year they took over the flower bed!

A well mannered self seeder has returned as well; I keep forgetting the name of these lovely orange flowers that play so well with others.

A new addition to the garden:  The unplanted lower lot (slated to become a Japanese garden someday) has now been graced with a hammock.

The same hammock that was first hung in the back yard of the La Mesa CA house where we raised our kids.

The same hammock that was taken down in 1997 and has been moved four times since but never hung again until now.

The inspiration?

Bernie had to spend three days in Houston where the temps were soaring above 100 degrees. He flew home, went into the garage, pulled out the hammock and hung it up.

He said he had dreamed about the hammock the whole time he was gone.

I say its about time the hammock returned to relaxation duty!

It really is some kind of wonderful to sway beneath a green leaf canopy while listening to the rushing water just a stone throw away.

More relaxation inspiring additions to the area are now in the works...stay tuned for updates.

So what other sort of relaxing games did we play on the lovely Saturday of rest?

I had happened to read Judy's post on June 15 about playing with soap bubbles with grandchildren.

It made me go dig out a soap bubble bottle and give it a whirl for my grandkid substitutes.

It took a bit to get Tate's attention; soap bubble are not nearly as interesting to a young cat as the various small gnats and flying insects that are so tantalizing right now.

Tate:  Huh?

Is it dead?

A quick swat...and the thing disappeared.

Humph. Not really Tate's kind of game.

Off to the shade garden....

The game of "Where's The Kitty" begins.

Hart joins into the game.

A goll-darned squirrel spoils the game by scolding the cats from above.

Tate decides something must be done.

He soon discovered his climbing technique isn't really the best. It took him a bit to figure out how to get himself all together and come back down the tree.

Bitsy Blue Eyes joined in the "Where's the Kitty" game.

Tate is really much better at hiding.

Then  Frenchie joined in the game.

This was a hard one: there are three cats in this picture.

Good luck spotting them all.

Some times they just play another game called "Statues".

Hart is really good at that one.

Saturday was just lovely, lovely, lovely.

Sunday, Father's Day was pouring cold rain.

We went to church with our son and his wife.

Jeff had earlier offered to come over and help his dad with a few projects but it was raining so hard that we took a rain check on that.

Instead we enjoyed seeing my Father's Day gift to Bernie, the DVD of the movie Hero (so gorgeous!  Bernie loves that movie and soundtrack) on Jeff's huge television.

A phone visit with my Dad and his Dad and a quick chat with LauraRN on her way to volunteer as a nurse at the Christian campground rounded out the day.

Bernie grill during a break in the storm; I took a picture of the beautiful sunset.

The local weather map showed that we had snow in the mountains; the cold actually helped slow melting and helped stave off potential flooding issues in the area.

We gage our stream by watching the roundish yellow stone in the wall across the way.

Even with all the rain, the water level only rose about an inch, making the stream brush the bottom of the rock.

We could hear huge boulders clump clunk glumping down the streams during the night. At one point I got up and using a flashlight watched human sized rocks rolling along in the water.

This morning the stream is still racing hard but no more boulders have passed by.
I suspect an investigative hike will be in order later on...

For now all is well in the garden...

And Tate is on-call for look out duties if needed.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four...

Early last summer the garden center had red potato seedlings. I planted a few in the yard just for kicks.

We had had fun growing potatoes in straw beds years ago in San Diego...maybe planting them in real soil would give us a crop worth talking about.

After all, are we not just one state down from Idaho, famous for growing potatoes? Wouldn't it be probable that being nearby would mean we would experience a great degree of potato growing success?

I had dug up a few by the time Bernie came down to snap a few photos of our "harvest". His back was tweaked out, and there was to be a hard freeze, so I "pioneer-woman'd" up and did the necessary spade work to lift our taters out.

(BTW: My grad school, TWU, are the Pioneers. And we are still undefeated this football season!)

May I just say that digging up potatoes planted in straw beds is a whole heck of a lot easier than digging them up in heavy soil?

I'll bet you already knew that.

I dug and re-dug the dirt, determined to unearth every single blessed spud.

This was fun for about, oh, say, four minutes tops.

If more potatoes had popped up after the first turn, I might have enjoyed the activity more. As it was, I also realized that I would have been wise to have put on a pair of gardening gloves. Dirt beneath my nails: not pretty.

So there they are, fresh from the dirt, with a few other veggies plucked against the upcoming cold.

That lone shallot and yellow bell pepper sure made for a meager crop. When I think of how much good soil we hauled in to the vegetable plot, and all the watering and feeding we did....sheesh. What a rip off.

See? I really did dig out every blessed potato, and I didn't care how little they were. They were MY potatoes!

Take note: I will concede to Idaho's glory and purchase potatoes from them at the grocery store or road side stand in the future.

Lord knows my family didn't risk everything leaving Ireland to come to America back in the late 1800's so future generations could still be digging potatoes.

Especially not as woman with an advanced degree from TWU. Pioneers make for a great mascot, but I do not aspire to play out the role when really I don't have to. I maybe blond, but I'm not that dumb!

(They do look nice all scrub up though, don't you think?)

When Autumn Sets in...Think Spring

It is clearly autumn around here now....and time to think and dream about spring.

I put on a Spring Bonnet...thought hard....

...and bought some 300+ bulbs for our garden!

NOW is the time to plant bulbs, according to those in the know in SLC.

Sept 27 to be exact...but we decided a Saturday work day was better than a Sunday workday so the bulbs got planted on Sept. 26th instead.

I confess...I had been dreading the digging part of this project.

Then I saw a miracle product in "This Old House" magazine:

A planting auger to fit on a hand held drill! Talk about bliss! A pull of the old trigger finger, and SZsssszzzzszzzzz....the needed hole was dug in less than a minute.

Daffodils, narcissus and tulips bulbs were dropped in the holes and then the dirt was just raked back over the holes and stomped down.

I also cleared along the fence below the grapevines and planted two sacks of wildflower seeds.

Tiggie snoopervised for awhile, then headed back inside. Later Bernie went in, and found Missy the neighbor's cat sitting inside, on the laundry room window, with Hart staring up at her wide eyed.

Tiggie came by with tuffs out on his back. Tuffs of orange fur and Missy fur covered the downstairs carpet.

It must have been on heck of a brawl!
Tiggie just does not take kindly to four footed visitors in his realm.

(You can learn more about the on-going relations between Missy and Tiggie here.)

I do wish he would be more diligent about chasing squirrels though. Every potted plant in the garden has been dug into and a stash of acorns hidden away for winter.

I picked up one empty pot that had been stored in an out of the way corner of the yard; it was empty no longer: it was now full to the brim with acorns!

I asked Bernie why he was putting acorns in the empty pot.

Duh...not Bernie's doing. It was those crazy squirrels again!

Bernie's bouganvilla bonsai is flowering.

The temperatures are supposed to drop dramatically on Wednesday...and this and other tender bonsai will need to be brought inside to avoid frost.

This one is more than welcomed inside...in fact I consider it to be a real treat.

Just about the time we were knackered from general yard clean up, the newlyweds pulled up.

They hung out for a bit, then we all headed out for Indian food. Good thing too...I was simply too pooped to cook...and Rachel was mostly dead from a ten mile pre-half marathon conditioning run.

Sometimes eating out is an especially good idea!