A new plan of action..................

Now that's it's nearing the middle of August, I am getting tired of all this heat and humidity, and am reluctant to go outside in it.  So my garden is suffering because of it.  So my new plan of action is to go into the garden for 20 or 30 minutes a day, and focus on one patch of garden to weed and tidy up.  I have to say so far, so good.  I guess it's just like inside of the house, doing a quick ten minutes tidy up, when you have ten minutes spare.

Below is my rhubarb patch, and it is still growing like crazy.  I was talking to my mother about it, saying I was surprised it was still going strong and could I still pick it.  We thought as long as you peel the stems it should still be fine to stew.  Are they any rhubarb growing "aficionado's" out there that could tell me if that's true or not?

Also growing there are two honeysuckle's and two clematis.  I cut them down to nothing last back end (our word for Fall/Autumn), so was surprised at how well they have grown, albeit with very few flowers on this year.

I also picked up two lilac "twigs" for a couple of dollars each.  You can see a tiny bush on the right hand side, with a black plant pot protecting the stem.  They too are growing quite well, but it will be a few years until we see any flowers I am guessing.

The rest of the photos are just some flowers in my garden.  Nothing exciting, just some coneflowers and some lillies.

I included the photo below, as I put in that cork screw grass into my annual tub.  There is nothing much left alive in that tub, but the grass.  I first saw that grass in Tennessee, in a garden centre, and had never seen it up here, so was surprised when I saw it this year.  You can read more about this plant here.  Our gardening zone is 6a where we live, so I may cut this grass back and cover it with mulch and burlap to see if I can over winter it?  It has two choices, it either survives or it doesn't........😁

Finally this photo shows my hanging basket sitting on one of the rocks in the garden waiting for it to rain!!!  We were forecast for thunderstorms when I took  the photo, so always take them down to get watered by mother nature.

Although I have tomatoes on my three plants, I have yet to have one ripe enough to pick.  I would have thought they'll all be ready in another couple of weeks; no doubt all at once.  However, I am not going to complain as a neighbour gave me them, and they were seeds from her late father's plants.

How is your gardening season going?

Also I have managed to get a few posts written up to publish, so this week, my goal is to catch up with everyone's blogs to see what you have all been up too.  

What that's it?

 I hope not!!

(First of the daffodils flowering)

Friday was a glorious day.  I spent most of the morning in the basement, stripping down the basement windows and washing everything.  Not sure when washing three windows became a tiring job, but it was!!  I was pooped afterwards.  However I did go outside and did some tidying up on the front porch and in the garden as it's yard waste week, and honestly it was so nice outside, I just wanted to feel a bit of sunshine on my face.

Fast forward to Saturday and it poured down, I mean really poured down.  Perfect weather for ducks but that's about it!  I hope that the one day of nice weather isn't it, before the summer heat hits.......just saying!!  Spring is a bit of a one day it's here, and then the next day it's gone situation!!

Do you clean windows at your home?  Or do you get a service in to do them?  I clean ours though not every other week, like I was taught to do while living in the UK.

Container Garden

I purchased this modular container garden at Home Depot.  It was on clearance for $79.  I then picked up some plants in the clearance section of Home Depot, along with some herbs and soil to plant them up.

I am too late to plant more veggies, so figured flowers and herbs would do for this year.

I put petunia's in one section.

Basil, chives and parsley for the middle section.

The third was filled with two dahlia plants.

There were a couple of dahlia flowers out.

All in all very happy with how it all turned out.

Just stunning..........photo heavy.

It's that time of year when my all time favourite flower is in bloom.  My red poppy; it's stunning.  It's such a shame it's never in bloom for very long.

Now despite being British I have no luck when it comes to growing roses.  I have one mini rose in the garden, and it's hanging in there by a thread!

My white peony is coming into bloom also.  I need to pick some, as every year we get a summer storm and it gets bashed to bits.

I also have a couple of white clematis in flower now.  The purple ones are all done.

I "think" this may be a Columbine?  Not 100% sure.

One thing I need to look for are Irises.  This is a mini one.

Finally my bleeding heart, I have a white one, but it's all done flowering for the year.  They are hardy plants.

Are you busy gardening?
 

A couple of things

On Tuesday I had to run a couple of errands, went to the library, Dollarama and Zehrs.

I have this bush in the garden, that I have no idea where it came from.  I didn't plant it and as you can see by the photo, the top of it is all over the place.

I bought a plastic stake at Dollarama for $4 to try and "tame" it a bit.

Does anyone have any idea what this bush is called?

Also in Dollarama I buy this damp trap.  It works a treat.  I put it down the basement.  Although our basement isn't damp, it is below ground, so it doesn't do any harm to put one down there.

The one I have down there now has been there since April 10th.

They generally last around three months.  I would recommend this product, as it does work.  Especially in Summer when it's humid.

My most favourite coffee is this one.  We have a Keurig, but I have an insert where I can just use ground coffee instead of the pods.  It was on sale for $12.99, plus I got 2,000 points back which I save and cash in for free groceries.

Do you drink coffee and if so what is your favourite brand?

Sorry.........

I haven't been around for a while.  Been busy and have been sick.  There is a nasty viral infection going around and I caught it.  Couldn't breathe and had no energy.  Spent a delightful 8 hours in the emergency department 😠for them to tell me I had a viral infection and it had to run it's course.  Got a puffer with a steroid in it and its opened up my airways.  Today is my last day of using it.

As hubby said, "I'm back to the Gill he knows," and after a bit of prompting, "and loves!"  After I had told him off for something he had done!!

I have to thank Pat  for this post as she messaged me to see if I was okay, which was super sweet of her.

Gardening season is in full swing and with all the rain we have had everything looks lush and green and as I said to Pat very UK like, as we are both from the UK.  I am behind in my gardening this year, due to being sick.  Will post some photos when it stops raining.

I will finish off this post with a funny story.  If you're from the UK you will find it probably funnier than others.

So while I was sick I was talking to my mother.

She said, "You need a tonic as you are run down (I was)."

Me: "Mother no one will know what a tonic is over here."

After going back and forth with her, I said fine I would look for one.

The nurse practitioner called me from the doctors office to see how I was doing.  So I told her about my mother saying I need a tonic.  As predicted she hadn't heard of such a thing.  So I was trying to explain what it was for.  She said she was googling it and said, "and you spell ATONIC?"  So I said no again explaining it was two words.  Of course me and my mother found this whole conversation funny and we refer to it as you need ATONIC now.

I did find a TONIC in Walmart after asking an older pharmacy assistant.  I got this one:

Is it doing me any good?  Who knows.........LOL  But it's keeping my mother happy!!

All done for 2023

 It was a nice day on Sunday, so we tackled the last of leaves to be picked up outside.   We have been picking them up for a while now.  The trees with the leaves on are oak.  Sometimes they drop at this time of year, other times it's not until the new year.

The back yard looks so much better tidied up for winter.

Front all spruced up, it was such a lovely morning.

To try and save the amount of bags we used, hubby mulched all the leaves, using his leaf blower.

Can you see the green bits on the floor of the shed?

That is grated up Irish Spring soap.  We have had a mouse problem all summer.  One of the things we were told to do is grate up Irish Spring soap as the mice don't like the smell.  Neither do I....but we have the freshest smelling shed around.

We have got rid of the mice, but only because we inserted steel wool in all the ventilation gaps in the shed.   We figured out they were getting in there.

As I said another bonus now is our shed smells so fresh!

Have you  got your garden put to bed for the winter?

Teaspoon Fairy

Will get to the teaspoon fairy in a minute.

Been busy with trying to get the outside all "put too bed," for the winter this week.  Have to say I am nearly there.  The one major thing that still needs to be done is all the leaves raked up.  There is only one problem though, due to the weather being unseasonably warm, the leaves are still on the tree!

We finally got a little bit of frost on the ground the other morning, so they are starting to drop.  Had the sprinkler guys round yesterday for 20 minutes to blow out the sprinklers.  $113 later, but hubby's compressor isn't really big enough to blow them out in one fell swoop.  Also paid for next years feed and weed lawn service, $350 later.  They are supposed to be coming round with a Fall fertilizer application that I got for free when I pay up front for the next year.  Also got 10% discount for paying before the end of October.  Every little helps.

Now for the teaspoon fairy.  I was talking to my mother the other day and she had just come in from grocery shopping.  I was telling her I had just popped to the store to pick a couple of things up and had spent $40 and had only one bag of shopping to show for it.  Though one of the things I had bought were some teaspoons.  It turns out I am not the only one who has the teaspoon fairy visit their house and take a few teaspoons with her when she leaves.  My mother has the same one visit her.  

Teaspoons seem to disappear in a poof of smoke around here.  My mother was agreeing as she has the same problem.  When I was looking for an image to add to this post I came across this book:

I would have bought this book, but it's in Spanish and only on Kindle over at Amazon.  I neither understand Spanish, nor have a Kindle.  

Do you have a teaspoon fairy visit your house?  Or is it a knife, fork or other utensil fairy?

A bit of this and that

(photo credit)

We finally had a quiet weekend.  Saturday the weather was glorious, so we spent time in the garage, shed and garden doing some tidying up.  We cut the grass and although it looks lovely and green the lawn is full of weeds.  We have been going back and forward as to whether or not we'll use a lawn service again to do the weeding and feeding of our lawn.  However after working out what it would cost us to do it ourselves, we would not be saving any money.  We have around 4,500 sq ft of lawn, so we need quite a bit of product.  It's the weed killer that costs the most amount.  So I will be calling them in the next week or two to book their service for 2022.  Calling before the end of the month will give us a 10% discount which is better than nothing I guess?

We are planning on putting things away for the season next weekend as it's Thanksgiving weekend.  We don't normally do much of anything with the family.  Hubby will be helping our son close his pool for the season one day and we'll do our things around the house the other two days.

Sunday as it was raining on and off all day was spent in the house.  I am working on a project for the grand's for Christmas.  I will share with you when I get the first one finished.  It was nice not having to do too much after having such a busy three weeks.

Hubby is back to work today so it will be a bit strange not having him around the house.  He has decided to work until he is 65 so only another two years to go.  We are lucky though that if he decides he has had enough he can leave work when ever he wants.  We have been working on putting all our "ducks in a row," ready for retirement for a while now.  He just doesn't want to leave his work just yet.

Hope you all have a great week😊  Are all your ducks in a row?

October 28th and no jacket required........

I have been out in the garden raking leaves and got so hot that I had to take my fleece jacket off and finish my gardening in my t-shirt.  I am guessing this will be it for nice warm weather.  We did have some snow forecast for the end of the week, but I see it has changed to rain, which is perfectly fine by me!!

We had a hard frost on the weekend, plus a lot of rain, so it resulted in a lot of leaves falling.  Now I don't know about you, but I prefer to rake leaves when the weather is nicer, even though they were wet.

 Good exercise and didn't take too long.  Also raked up the leaves by the sewer drain and some in the back and side yards. 

 Looks a lot better but that other tree has to drop it's leaves yet.  Look how blue the sky is, it's a wonderful day out there for the end of October.

Back Garden, and produce bags

We finally got the back garden finished this weekend.  The corner is a low point and always wet so nothing much grew.  We have added drainage and put a small retaining wall in the front.  All the hosta's were from another part of the garden and our son was getting rid of the tree from his garden.  All in all we are really pleased with the results.  It's a sheltered area and gets plenty of water so I think it should do well.

 I have planted up some sweet peas this year and they seem to be coming along nicely.

In between everything else I have been doing some sewing, and made these produce bags for the shop.  I am selling them in sets of three, one bag is 12 inches, the other 11 inches and the third 10 inches square.  I am hoping they will sell?

 Which print do you like the best, the onions or the mushrooms?

Garden/people/dog watching while walking...

I have to say when walking around the subdivision there is plenty to see.  I enjoy looking at other people's gardens seeing what they are doing, or in some cases NOT DOING!!!  I am always confused as too why people live in houses and do no gardening what so ever!! Why not live in a condo or apartment where you don't have a garden to look after?

One house I go past has grass that is knee high.  I saw the other day they had finally cut it, but what a mess.  You can tell the lawn mower was struggling and it chopped the grass all up.  Just looked like a bad haircut.

I tend to go walking first thing in the morning.  I try to beat the heat.  It seems we have rabbits galore around here.  Some are even verging on to being quite tame.  We have a number of woods around so plenty of birds.

There are a lot of dogs and their owners.  I am still wary of the smaller dogs, but have made friends with a number of the bigger dogs.  One huge boy is so friendly and was a rescue and couldn't be more friendlier if he tried.

There are a number of people who walk, but not as many as where we used to live.  On Thursday morning I was laughing to myself, as Thursday is garbage day.  It was Canada Day on Monday so garbage pick up is a day later this week; on Friday.  It was crazy how many people had put their garbage out.  I guess people just forgot this week? 

I walk two to three times around the subdivision, takes me around 50 to 55 minutes to walk three times around and I do around 6,500 steps.  I walk up a steep hill three times.  By the time I have done that three times I am pooped!!!

I am trying to walk 10,000 steps a day again!! 

I think we will end up calling this summer........

The wet Summer of 2019.  You get the odd dry day, interspersed with lots of wet days.  So whenever it has been dry I have been trying to make an extra effort to get outside and get some gardening done.  Wednesday just happened to be a dry day and I was home, so in and out of the garden I was all day.

One job I did get done was get an edge dug around the tree closest to the road on the front, as it had merged into the grass.  This was the before:

 This was the after.

 We have two trees in the front garden, this being the other garden bed.  I got that dug over earlier in the week.

From these photos the grass doesn't look too bad, but believe me when I say that it is more weeds than grass.  Luckily for us the weeds are green 😉

I also dug up a bag of weeds using my handy dandy dandelion/weed extractor that I blogged about here.  I also cut the back grass, and the side of the house grass (the one we re-sodded) and "whipper-snipped" all the edges.  So all in all a productive day gardening wise.

My goal is to try and get one area a week cleaned up.......figures crossed I succeed.  How is your garden doing?