I love early summertime in SoCal. I am not too crazy about late summer or early fall (tooooo hot!). But early summer when everything is blooming and there's a promise of a homegrown tomato on the back porch? Good times.
From here on until I get to pick them, I'll be checking daily for those funky big green hornworms.....or whatever they are called.
I Googled and checked wikipedia.org. The tomato hornworm (Manduca quinquemaculata) is a green caterpillar, the larval form of the five-spotted Hawk moth of the Sphingidae (Sphinx) family. Eeeeeeeeeeew!!
On to way more pleasant things. My dear friend Helen sent me a beautiful miniature rose bush at Christmas and I read that I could grow it in a patio container. So I gave it a whirl. I've been speaking encouragingly to it, and I've watered it and treated it to Miracle Gro. Success! Today's blooms:
I also got a lavender plant on an impulsive whim at Home Depot not long ago. I need to read more about this one, as I am not sure if I should pinch it back so it will bush out a bit, or not. (If anyone knows, please feel free to comment!!) But today, the first bloom started to open!
And about a year ago, my dear friend Deborah moved from sunny SoCal to the beautiful state of Pennsylvania. Before she left, she gave me some of her backyard plants and I have done my best not to kill them. I especially like how two of them are currently being used.
This spikey one is now by the front door and I think it looks really pretty there.
And just off the front porch, the jasmine I planted last year has thrived and is blooming! I have another jasmine winding its way around the posts of the porch fence and the smell of the two of them this morning was intoxicating. I do love me some jasmine!
('Scuze the appearance of the columns on the front porch. That is Himself's Summer Project 2007C: Scraping, Filling, Priming and Painting the sun-damaged portions of the front porch....yet again! It seems like that is a recurring project Every Blessed Year because that portion of the house gets so much hot late summer sun.)
I'm off to transcribe my heart out (stopping just short of wearing down my first distal phalanges), do a lot of dishes and mop a kitchen floor. If I'm really, really productive today, I might get to send myself to "my room" tomorrow and sew/quilt/embroider!
Update From the Sewing Room: Emma (my Janome 9500 embroidery machine) and I are getting to know one another.
Janet (Teacher Extraordinaire) gave me a hint and also connected me with Karen at Leah's Fabric Gallery, who gave me another hint regarding putting the downloaded files into a certain folder (previously unmentioned by my instructions). She also mentioned something regarding format which made me recheck some information I had gotten from an apparently incorrect source regarding format to be used for designs downloaded from the internet! Now that I'm attempting to speak with Emma in JEF format instead of SEW format (loosely, the equivalent of speaking French to an Italian), its amazing! She beeps and moves and lines up and is ready to embroider!
AND, my thread has also arrived from ThreadArt (fantastic ebay company with great prices), and we are good to go!
2 comments:
Wow!! Your front door/porch area looks way, way better than mine! I keep thinking that one of these days I will work on the flowers, shrubs, etc that I would love to. When is it that we get to retire?... Maybe then. I am indeed impressed. I think I may be able to pick out that blue we were talking about, from your thread "stash" pictured......
yes, well.....as Michael says, every plant I have there is actually on Death Row. He swears that for me to buy a plant is an immediate death sentence - something about watering is necessary? I'm trying to remember that a little more often this year....plus I'm going to continue to show them some love with a monthly "fix" with Miracle Grow. Teehee!
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