Strawflowers.

Took Sunday afternoon, 11-16-11. Beautiful day, big clouds.  I will add more pics later. 



Late in coming, these strawflowers are really taking off.

An illuminating fall.

I usually associate fall with bright autumn colors and shorter days.

This should brighten (and lighten) things up;

Moon flower pods and Chinese lanterns.

Straight from the garden.

I picked as I was cleaning up brush so I could find and dig up my dahlia bulbs.

As much as I try to keep order, by end of summer my dahlias are entwined with moon flowers,
morning glories, and new this year, thunbergia vines.

Sunday 9-21-08: Summer meets Fall.

Bears vs Tampa Bay football game this afternoon.

Also it's the last official Sunday of summer.

Beautiful out. In the low 80's.

I have potatoes and other garden stuff to pick.

Will I regret missing any of it?

Bear's dig in and hit paydirt.

Field goal: Bears 3 - 0. Then another: Bears 6 - 0.

(I could lie and say there are 6 potatoes in the hole. ha)

Scoring scattered all over the place (visual metaphor).

Tampa 7 - 6.

Tampa 14 - 6.

Tampa 14 - 9.

Bears 17 - 14.

Looks like a successful afternoon.

Bears 24 -14 in the fourth quarter.

Especially with their defense.

(The Bears are the potatoes).

Got bit.

(that on my arm is one of those little yellow bugs that looks like a ladybug but bites)

Lost 10 point lead in the last minutes of the game.

Their QB?

Brian Griese who wasn't good enough to stick as our QB last year.

Bears 24 - 24 tie. Game goes to overtime.

Seeing red part one: Stupid penalty.

Tampa was going to have to punt from its own 10-yard line early in overtime,

setting the Bears up with premium field position,

before one of the all-time boneheaded

Bears' penalties moved the chains for the Bucs.

Cornerback Charles Tillman was singled out in the fracas for squaring off with

Tampa wide receiver Michael Clayton and called for a

15-yard unnecessary roughness penalty. For his part,

Tillman said emotions got the best of him.

Seeing red part two:

Dropped passes, can't advance the ball in overtime.

Bears lose 27 - 24.

Sunday afternoon outside turned out to be the right choice.

Shooting the Moon.

Beautiful day.

Everything is maturing in the garden.

Too many green beans and I'm out of freezer bags.

Supper: burger and green beans.

My neighbor gave me a cutting of a Moon Flower this spring.

I put it in next to my dahlias.


This is the Moon Flower from 2 days ago.




This was Sunday morning about 11:00 (I'm not an early riser):



Later Sunday afternoon, just before dusk (hence the name Moon Flower):

I took this for perspective - the dahlias are about 2 to 4 feet high.

(Notice the Japanese Beetle damage on the morning glory leaves in the background - they look like green swiss cheese):

I was looking for Van Morrison's Moon Dance.

Couldn't find his but I like this version and she has nice legs:

A black cat, a shovel, a shallow plot, Bloody Sunday.

Aimer's new cat, Teddie Bear, scared the hello out of me Sunday morning. I went to get something out of the closet and saw eyes looking back at me. It was really dark in that corner, so dark I had to use a flash to take this picture.

The shelf is at eye level. I'm amazed Teddie was able to get up there without pulling all my stuff down. It sure doesn't stop him around the rest of the house. I'm constantly picking up something he has knocked to the floor and then started playing with. Usually it is pens or papers but he has also dumped a couple of our things off the coffee table (remotes for the digital receiver, regular TV, DVD, stereo receiver,VCR, and the cordless phone Amy never put in the charger - which unsurprisingly is usually dead).

By the way, looking at the picture, I can see where I put my gloves away last spring. I've been wondering where they went. Good, I thought I had lost them.

We got our first real frost Saturday night. It killed off almost all my flowers. The ones above survived because they were next to a fence of cucumber vines that must have blocked the chill. Most of my plants in containers survived too because they were close to the house.

I spent the afternoon digging up dahlia bulbs. I have them in the garden, behind the garage, and outside the house. After they die from frost, you need to dig them up (they are in clumps). I hauled them down to the basement where they can dry out and then be stored till spring. It took me most of the afternoon but in I at least feel that I accomplished something. An alternative would have been watching the Chicago Bears play Detroit. (I can't believe the Bears were in last year's Superbowl. And I can't believe in 8 games I've only picked them right 3 times.)

While I do all my chores outside, Cubbie just follows me around, hardly ever getting under my feet. We have a lot of dogs in the neighborhood so he is constantly marking spots or sniffing those spots marked by other dogs.

U2, Bloody Sunday. I just happen to like this song and it fit with this post's title.

Monday Night Pictures.

Liatris spicata. If you knew great. I didn't. Actually they are tall stalks of purple flowers about two to four feet tall. I took a picture looking down at a short one.





Phlox from the garden. Purple, white, and red flowers seem to be flourishing this year. Except for the sunflowers, all my yellow flowers are taking a beating. It seems cyclical. Some years it is the opposite.




I'm still trying to get the aperture mode right. On my old camera it was set the F-stop, focus and click. This one keeps trying to autofocus / adjust settings on it's own. Even with auto turned off (I think). Anyway, I want to give the impression of tons of them growing together. I'm impressed they all have come back from seed the last couple years.




Cubbie follows me around all over the yard and garden, and who do I take a picture of instead? Bob (the cat). He didn't even notice me.

Tony, Weeds, Poppys.

Just curious: was I the only person with HBO that didn't watch the season/ show finale of The Sopranos last night?

I added HBO and hi-speed internet to our cable package last November because it was on special. I never saw one show of the past five seasons because of not having HBO. If I ever do watch The Sopranos, I would want to start from the beginning with either reruns or DVD's.

In fact, I'm doing that with HBO's The Wire. I'm about half-way thru season two. That is a fantastic show. Very realistic (I think?) - I'm more rural. We don't get the big city crime out here. (Irony: we are about 20 miles from Delavan, Wisconsin where 6 people were found murdered this last weekend.)

The only premium channel we had was Showtime with its excellent Weeds and Dexter - a pot selling soccer mom and a police forensic analyst serial killer. A little dark but much better than shows I've gotten sick of: Desperate Housewives, Gray's Anatomy , etc.

Below is my veggie garden. Peonys and some buttercups are blooming next to the little white fence. Its harder than hell to get the fence straight so I purposely put it in crooked to give it a whimsical look.

This wouldn't be a bad place to bury a body either, right Tony?



Buttercups with aperture mode setting. This was easy with my old film camera. I am just learning with digital. The focus seems to jump out of manual mode. Its probably something I'm doing.



Wider view of the back yard. Its a little dark but it was taken at dusk. I just like the look after mowing.



The wildflower sand box below. The poppys hopefully are starting to take off. (and I was wondering how I could tie in The Sopranos and Weeds with garden pictures.) Poppys. They just sound illegal.



Below is a peony taken in macro mode.

15 Second video and Red blues.

Being a gardener is never ending. Once I get everything growing I have then committed myself to about a half hour a night watering after work. Real smart. Ha.

Following this is a bar clip of Geneva Red of The Original Delta Fireballs. Six foot of red haired harmonica playing woman doing the blues. Local artist. Made her High School's wall of fame.

Clint and I saw them in February for the first time about 4 blocks from home at the local bar. We had a front row table. Jackie 5 and 10 (Woolworth is his name) came up to me and introduced himself. Cool. He knew my sister and I guess remembered me from some of the parties we had thrown just down the street (Prairie Ave - ha). My mom still lives there. I remembered him after a little reminiscing. Something about pulling some beverages up the side of our house with a rope for a party. Small world. Things were different then. Or not.

Geneva Red puts on a great show. (Geneva being the name of nearby town.) Her version of Boz Scaggs Loan Me a Dime (not the original version but this link gives you an idea of the song - fantastic guitar - Gregg Allman) made the whole night worthwhile.

By the way, this wasn't the bar we saw them in but it could have been. People walking in and out, cars going by. Reminds me of Storefront Hitchcock. An excellent Jonathan Demme music video film

.

Geneva Red:

Spring plann(t)ing.

I'm so behind. Spring came early; 70's then snow. Lately it's been cold, then as it warmed up, wet.

I have dahlia bulbs to plant pretty soon. They spent the winter in the basement. Each spring I hope they remember to start growing sprouts. Sometimes they are late but never have they failed.

I also have to start some morning glory seeds. Soak them in water a couple days till they sprout - score them with a knife first.

An old sandbox in the yard is perfect for wildflower seeds. I like the poppys best.

The hardest thing is figuring out what are wildflowers and what are weeds.