Gardening, anyone?

Jazzygirl

Flaviarose- I grew up in CT (think I told you that already) and remember my gardens from July. Like I said, I may just move in (oh but those winters, I remember those too......)

Jackbirdie

clematis and more plums. I could smell them several feet away in the garden. They are ready! I've been eating and giving away recklessly. Tomorrow making jam.

Lookforward

Flaviarose like you my garden starts to bloom in July.

Jackie good looking plums

Wren44

Jackbirdie, Plums look wonderful. The raccoons get them all around here.

Flavia, Your flowers are just gorgeous. It's so nice when everything finally decides to bloom it's head off.

TwoHobbies

OK Jackbirdie. I've come to the conclusion there is nothing you can't grow in Oregon!

Such pretty pictures, everyone. All the plants in my back yard are looking pretty nice. I'll have to take some pictures. My front is suffering a bit now. Too dry perhaps? We cut down a big crabapple tree this spring and I think it provided some shade for things that now are not looking so good. I'll try to water more and hope that will help.

Lucy I also adore all the succulent ideas that are out there. Have you seen the walls that people plant. Wouldn't that make a great patio screen! So pretty. Maybe that's what I should have planted in my south facing front porch pot this hot summer. You just never know if we're going to have a hot summer or sometimes we have a cloudy cool one.

Lucy55

Twohobbies.. Yes.. I love the succulent walls too.. 😘.. I love them every -which -way..by themselves , in displays and in amongst other plants in the garden beds as well..

Flavia.. Loved your photos..

Katy... Those plums look yummy ! :-)

Jackbirdie

here's what I did with the plums, besides leaning over the sink, dripping juice into the sink!

Added vanilla and cardamom pods to the jam and the liqueur

And I still have more plums! I will probably make more jam and more tarts. One cannot have too many plum tarts.

TwoHobbies

I'm coming over for some of that plum crisp! Yum! Although I did make a treat last weekend.

Jackbirdie

oh that pie looks SO good! Love the festive stars for the holiday. Very creative!

Ice cream, whipped cream, or solo?

queenmomcat

Jackbirdie thankfully, you've also got enough friends, now drooling all over their keyboards, that you needn't worry about who's going to eat (and drink) all that with you.

Scottiemom11

Have been away from the boards due to crazy busy work schedule.

Beaver update. . .they attacked the other side of my hill two weeks ago. We now have beaver traps on our lakeside. They did catch a couple of them on the other side. We cried uncle anyway and cut the rest of the roses down to a foot tall. These must be smart beavers after all because they haven't come back since we took the fun (or maybe food) out of their midnight forays.

Dh swears he's seen a hummingbird finally, so going to move my feeders away from my now huge butterfly bushes and see if I can catch the hummers with my camera.

Scottie

Blessings2011

Just got on to check out the pics.... soooo envious! Spring - and the all the blooms - came early this year, so now in July, everything is looking tired and sort of naked...

So wish I could have more plants in pots... just have to rig them up to the drip system. Hand-watering takes me an hour or more after dinner.

Just got a call from Best Buy - they are going to replace my computer, plus restore all the data and functions, at no charge to me. Yay!

Will take a few days before I can take the old equipment in... I have a.... "procedure" on Tuesday at Kaiser that takes some advanced prep, and I won't be able to leave the house, if you get my drift!!!

Keep those pics coming... I can always look at them on my iPad when I'm, uh, "prepping".....

TwoHobbies

Jackbirdie I let myself have the pie but I didn't go so far as to top it with ice cream like I would love to.

Scottie I finally found my hummingbird feeder and got it up this weekend. Now I wait.

Blessings it's kind of dull and dry here too. Even my annuals are dried out on the south facing side,

so I watered and trimmed them down yesterday hoping they will spring back to life. My pots on the north side look good though.

Teka

I'm enjoying the chitchat and pics!!

We weren't skunked by Whitey. ;o))

We got skunked by the other skunk. (

*ditch lilies*

Back to weeding the 3 flower beds!!!

TwoHobbies

So hot and dry here(except the air is wet). I'm just hoping my perennials survive. After removing a tree, my hostas and heuchera are suffering.

Our house got skunked once. Possibly under the deck? It smelled for a week. That was close, Teka.

Lucy55

Beautiful photos ladies 😃

Teka

We got skunked by the other skunk. (

Lookforward

Lovely pictures. Teka oh no that is awful, we don't have skunks near us. starting to get vegetables from the garden now.

Lucy55

Lookforward.. Love your produce 😃

Teka.. Coming from Australia I don't understand " skunked by the other skunk " ??!!? 😱😃

Scottiemom11

We seem to have every vermint under the sun this summer. . .beavers, copperhead, raccoons, rabbits and Dh swears he saw a Doe with three (not a typo) fawns on our front lawn. I'm waiting for them to come back so I can photograph them. Something is definitely eating all my hostas though.

Meanwhile they don't call it HotLanta for nothing. Uggh. We need rain.

Scottie

TwoHobbies

I have seen opossum, deer, coyotes, skunks, foxes in our back yard. Even saw a duck one time? Of course we have ducks , geese, swans, nearby. Plenty of other birds and rabbits and chipmunks and squirrels. We had cougar sightings but I never saw it. At first they said it couldn't be. They don't live here. Than they had so many people report it that they didn't dismiss it entirely. Then one day in Chicago a policeman spotted one and shot it. Told y'all".

Blessings2011

Teka - love the blue and white kitty on the deck...

Lookforward - yum!

TwoHobbies - supposed to be 108 here this week.... and almost zero humidity. We're on watering restrictions (3 days a week, on specific days) and we've taken to saving excess water from the house to go out and pour into rain barrels, from which we can hand-water plants in the yard. (My front-porch umbrella seems to have done the trick - no fried hydrangea!)

Scottiemom - if you get any rain, send some our way!

Our development is ten years old, but the land used to be out in the country, close to the foothills. We have lots of Canada geese and hawks, and I've seen possums in the yard, along with an occasional squirrel, and pesky field mice and rats near the waterfall.

But last year a BIG coyote walked across the top of my back fence (only 4" wide), so I called the cops. (We have neighbors with small pets and kids, and the cops are cool.) When the cop got here, he looked at the fence, at me, back at the fence, and said "That would be highly unlikely, Ma'am." Then I showed him the pics on my cell phone. He started laughing and said that when the guys heard the dispatch, they thought I was imagining things. He asked me to forward him my pics for proof.

Blessings2011

Sheesh... 112 degrees here today with 9% humidity. What with the high temps, bad air, and nearby wildfires, it hurts my lungs to breathe the minute I walk outside. The air quality is officially UNHEALTHY for everyone, and many outdoor events have been cancelled.

I spent just a few minutes outside this afternoon, deadheading some shrubs and cutting some smaller branches, and was wheezing and panting and my heart rate was double what it usually is. There was no way I could hand-water any plants after that. I had to shower, wash my hair, use my sinus rinse, my oxygen concentrator to get my heart rate down, and then my asthma nebulizer to open my airway.

If you are in the middle of a heat wave, BE CAREFUL OUT THERE!

If you're in the middle of a rainstorm, send me some, please!

Teka

Lookforward,

I would love some beet greens.

Lucy,

I meant we were skunked by papa skunk not mama skunk. ;o)

We now have 4 skunk kits eating bird seed and playing under our closed bedroom window!!! The fox is even wary while looking for mice.

Scottie and TwoHobbies,

Rabid animals are the biggest fear in the North Country.

Blessings,

Daughter got ceramic cat at a yard sale. That was some coyote. ;o))

*hosta*

We've had a hot July!

Jazzygirl

Well, my garden has been hanging on in this very hot summer. We are getting some more rain this week and ready for fall. One of my seedums that blooms in August is looking like it will be out soon!

Wren44

Jazzy, Love your patio furniture and the garden around it.

Jazzygirl

Thanks Wren. Guess I should post it here too....

Teka

Yes, a perfect patio set and lovely colors! ;o)

TwoHobbies

Jazzy your table set is lovely but would look better with a big pitcher of sangria on it and some chips and salsa. I do love the blue. I have a set with a tomato red. It has really faded after a couple of years so I was thinking it would be nice to replace them with blue because we have a blue hammock Turns out the cushions are dang expensive so then I thought maybe I'd Rit dye them the same color

Blessings I hope you got a break from 108 heat. Yep that's dangerous temps.During the heat wave I moved my pots to a shadier part of the deck and after a couple of days of reasonable temps I moved them back. Now I see it's going to be hot again! Sigh.

queenmomcat

TwoHobbies/Jazzy: also surrounded by a coterie of friends enjoying one another's company. (not hinting. Much.)(