Gardening, anyone?

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......)

Flaviarose like you my garden starts to bloom in July.

Jackie good looking plums

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.

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.

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

Ice cream, whipped cream, or solo?

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

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.

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.

We got skunked by the other skunk. (

Lookforward.. Love your produce 😃

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

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".

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!

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!

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

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.