Granny Pam

A few years ago, I wanted to have more perennial plants, and reduce the amount I spend for annuals in our flower beds. I purchased the two outside plants, and the center one was a gift from my daughters.

They have been in three places in the yard, and I think we finally found a place they like. This is the best they have looked since I planted them. D3 studied up, waved her green thumb, and added iron to the soil. The have beautiful blooms this year.

I hope they continue to do well, they sure look great right now!

D3 helped me plant planted our patio pots just before Mother’s Day. She has a green thumb, and I can use the help. We have had to move and cover them several times since that day, but I believe the frost danger has passed now.

These will be placed in the beds between the roses. I had to gather them up to cover them, but they will be back in place soon.

These hang on the privacy wall. Well, they are supposed to hang there. I have the brackets, and I hang them up there, but they don’t live there every day. It is just too hot and dry out back. I have to put them down on the patio and water them twice a day to keep them alive. I should put cactus out there!

D3 planted a small raspberry patch at the edge of the garden a few years ago. It is a lot of work, but we get quite a few berries from the bushes. They are looking strong this spring.

If you strain your eyes, you will see my cabbage and broccoli at the right. It is pretty happy in the cold wet weather. Go, cabbage go!

We like strawberries, but really don’t have room. D3 found this solution this year.

She purchased bigger plant with the strawberry row-marker, and it is doing quite well. We thought it was such a good idea, we bought some plants and planted them in the hanging baskets we save from year to year. Papa makes the row markers. He has tons, for many vegetables.

I wonder if we will have enough berries to do anything with? I might have to move my base of operations out to the patio and eat them as they ripen!

For many years we had a basketball hoop here in the yard. Our two oldest grandsons lived here, and used it every day. Sometimes if I close my eyes, I can hear the ball banging on the driveway out front.

The boys are long gone, one in the Navy and one in the Army. This year, a new family moved in across the street. The snow was not quite melted when the middle schooler in that family knocked on the door and asked if he could shoot some hoops. I was thrilled to say yes.

Papa went outside, got the snow blower, and freed up the hoop, and helped our new neighbor get the entire works rolled across the street. That left me with the spot where the hoop had resided looking a little empty.

A little trip to Costo solved that, and a week ago, D3 planted some annuals in my new container.

Now that space does not look so empty. Sometimes I can here our neighbor bouncing his ball, and it brings back memories.

We are headed up to Waterford to see J.D. Crowe tonight. I looked around the yard to see if I had anything to take up to our friend, Matt, and this is what I found:

Really that picture is after I removed what I needed. Here is what I had after I picked and gave a bunch away.

Something is in the oven.

Travel safe, guys.

Crazy happenings in my cyber world, and I will probably never understand them, so why try? I noticed this morning that my Count down timer on the sidebar had disappeared. Looked at the administration page and could not find it in the plugins. DRAT! So I downloaded, reinstalled and activated it. Funny, all my events were still there, even though the plugin directory had been missing. It must save the events somewhere in the MySQL database. In spite of my annoyance, I did learn something from that.

I am preparing for a trip out to New York. It is dual purpose trip, I will be seeing my cousins, and doing a bunch of genealogical research. Papa is not making this trip with me, for a couple of reasons. I will miss him, we do not spend much time apart. I plan will sleep in a little, take a few pictures, hit all the libraries, cemeteries and courthouses that I can, and enjoy the journey. I did find a couple of bluegrass concerts in the area, not sure if I will be taking advantage of those or not.

I have a place to stay, people to see, a packed suitcase, computer bag, and other essentials ready to go. I am grateful that Papa and our daughters will be here to hold down the fort. I am a little apprehensive, since they may find that I really don’t do much around the house. We shall see.

In the meantime, head over to one of two fine bluegrass events scheduled for this weekend. We will be attending an appearance by J.D. Crowe at the Waterford campus of Oakland County Community College on Friday night. I am excited since this will be the first time we have seen our friend, Matt, with the group.

The West Michigan Bluegrass Music Association is hosting MayFest Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the fairgrounds in Lowell, Michigan. The Chapmans are headlining the show. You can find out more on the West Michigan site.

The season is here, support live music!

Since we have lived down here in southern Michigan, I notice that the leaves fall off the trees pretty late in the year. Up at (our old) home, there had usually been some snow by November, and the leaves were long gone by mid October. Autumn is longer here, but always pleasant. This year has been cool, as the summer was. Last Sunday, Papa and I cleaned up all the leaves from the yard and made a couple of other strategic moves.

We put the mowers in the shed and brought shovels and this lovely appliance into the garage:

I really don’t know how to run it, it never seemed as interesting to me as the mower. But, to be fair, one can ride on the mower. I know we will need this sometime, and I am glad we have it.

The walnut tree looks pretty bare, as do the bushes behind it.

All the leaves we mowed up and put on the garden will help it some. Papa said the soil was getting pretty heavy. By spring they will till in easily.

Over on the other side of the house, the leaves are finally falling from the old silver maple:

The snow blower is out, the rakes are gone, and I guess we are ready for another winter. Or maybe is is just comfortable to think we are ready.

Happy birthday to Papa today. We had a nice calm weekend, in contrast to the exciting time we had on his birthday last year. We were both pretty tired yesterday afternoon, after dealing with another batch of tomatoes. We have canned 72 quarts of tomato juice so far this year. We are past the peak of the tomatoes, so there won’t be a lot added to that total. I will be working on beets and carrots soon.

I went to a genealogy seminar on Saturday, and accomplished nothing around here. But Papa had a big day, he picked the tomatoes, mowed the lawn, and ran some errands. Sunday was tomato day, and I was pretty tired when that was finished. I did clean up the floor and stove, but most of the house looks like a tornado went through. I need to get the cleaning done right away, or perhaps next week…

This morning a wrote a couple of posts, and started the laundry. I have also carried the juice down, and reorganized and inventoried the remaining empty cans and brought some up to wash. I have a long list for this week, I hope I can keep the energy up.

Friday, we had a very enjoyable time at the Glass City Opry. Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper performed that evening. It marked the first time we had seen the band since Tom Adams joined on guitar and vocals. There were a lot of smiles on stage; the band seemed to be having a great time. I each configuration of Flamekeeper we have seen, the guitar player/lead singer has acted as the MC and that was true Friday. Tom Adams is a veteran performer and has great stage presence; he seemed to fit right in.

I enjoyed the show, and I’m sure Papa did to, in spite of taking some time to take a few pictures.

My favorite is this one on Michael.

The rest can be seen on Papa’s site.

The garden has been a real challenge this year, mostly because we just haven’t had the rain. We didn’t get a lot of cucumbers or zucchini, but we have had lettuce and green beans. We also have broccoli and cabbage to eat.

I gave up on the beans a while back, a kind of enough is enough situation. We will pull the plants, harvest the remaining dried pods and collect the beans from them. We cook them into soup just like any dry bean, a trick I learned from M-in-L. Right now it is tomatoes, and how. I had a meeting Tuesday night this week, so I asked Papa if he would pick the tomatoes. He did.

I canned 32 quarts of juice the next day, and my counter is still piled with those that weren’t ripe enough to use. I was going to finish that today, but they still aren’t ready. The tomato relay will continue for a month or more. I must say that it is my favorite time of year, I like garden tomatoes better than anything.

I’m also on a diet (again or still).  I lost 20 pounds earlier this year, and it turns out that that is not enough. My blood pressure has been a problem for most of the last twenty years, and these days it is getting much harder to control. It is hard for me to be physically active my bad knees and sore feet have really slowed me down. I am working on shrinking right out of all these problems, so wish me luck.

Tonight, if you are anywhere in the Detroit area, you should be at the Glass City Opry to see Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper. Tom Adams is new with the band, playing guitar and singing. Michael and Tom recorded an album several years ago, “Live From the Ragged Edge”, and have worked together in the past with Rhonda Vincent and Dale Ann Bradley. We last saw Michael Cleveland at the Red, White and Bluegrass Festival in July, and are looking forward to seeing the new line-up.

Have a great weekend!

I said I would take yet another photo of my morning glories and I remembered! But the picture does not show how glorious they really are.

Here is another:

They are all colors, and there are tons of flowers, which come out when it is still dark, and bloom most of the day. They do close sometime in the afternoon.

This is a volunteer, I pulled another volunteer out, but left this one:

The one I pulled out was on the black and orange bird.

I didn’t have any hollyhocks this year. The must have been mad after we rearranged the border. But the ones that will bloom next year did pretty well, considering the little water they’ve had.

Well, there was one hollyhock. I have a problem with volunteers around here. Basically, if a plant or tree will grow well here, is will also be fruitful and multiply. I must have pulled 3 dozen tomato plants out of my roses this spring, and they are still growing in there. I hauled some garden dirt up to fill the bed, and every seed in it sprouted. Gives me something to do, I guess.

Anyway, the hollyhock I have is a volunteer, which blooms every other year. Here it is, completely hiding a huge barrel planter D3 has near the patio.

The hollyhock is a dark color, and it is a very happy interloper. The kinda-red flowers behind the hollyhock are a geranium that we have had for a couple of years. We put it in the basement last fall, and this year it has reached new heights, and widths. It completely fills the barrel, and blooms constantly. So, I guess for every little bit of bad luck, we have some good luck.