Do You Know?

I have a question for my flower aficionados:

What is this?  It is on a tall stalk/stem (which is hidden by the growth of the other plants around it.)  I saw them growing in people's yards around Edenton and thought they were pretty in a different kind of way.

Now I'll let you guess what this next one is:

If you guessed pomegranate, you are right!  Obviously they are not ripe yet...

But I love the way they hang low, loaded with fruit.

This English garden is the setting for these trees...

and doesn't this make you just want to come & sit awhile?  Unfortunately, the mosquitoes like this place, too...

When we visited this place in Edenton, NC last summer we discovered this public garden that sits behind an historic house.  I really liked one bush there...

It's called Beauty Berry and when I found it at the Farmer's Market last summer, I bought a couple of them.  The vendor said they will grow almost anywhere... sun, shade, partial of either.

The berries on them are so beautiful!

Now it takes them awhile to grow as big as those in the public garden, but they've probably been there for years & years!  You can see how big theirs are!

Mine are not so big...  But this one at least has some berries.

Though they are not many, they are colorful & look just like the ones on the big bush.  However, the cardinals have decided that they are also very tasty, so they are disappearing almost as fast as they turn from green to the beautiful purple color.

The other one that I planted last fall has no berries... but I think it is fighting for its life since it is getting crowded out by the tomato plants.  However, in the long run it will win because it is a perennial and the tomato plants are not!

A variety of herbs lines the pathways in the English garden giving it a plethora of greens...

I too have a variety of herbs that are a plethora of greens... but they don't exactly "line" anything.  I can barely keep them in line!  (Notice how scraggly my Knock Out rose is?  I don't think it would knock out anyone!)

I just used the last of my pesto from the freezer, but I don't think I'm going to have enough basil this year to make much pesto...  This one is scraggly,

this one barely survived my week at the beach (truly I thought it was dead when I got back, but several long drinks of water seems to be resuscitating it),

and this one is pretty pathetic.  It has been a hot dry summer (I have used the sprinkler system on the beds, but obviously I didn't use it enough, thus the hose laying there...)  All my beds look worse than they ever have, so there are some plans in the works to rototill all of them in the next couple of weeks, incorporating some good soil & fertilizer into the hard, red clay.

Which means I'll have to move this Beauty Berry before doing so... but I think it will appreciate its new home wherever it may be.  I really don't have a green thumb, but I sure enjoy playing in my gardens...

(I had done this post about a week ago, but didn't post it... So the beds no longer look like this, as you can see from yesterday's post.)

At Last!

At last I am returning to blogging... I've taken lots of pictures over the last few weeks & each time I'd take some I'd think, "this will be great for a blog!"  But then life went on...
Since fall really is here, I realize that I need to change my header... so tomorrow, hopefully.

But I got a fun idea from Kellie (skwmjustme.blogspot.com) that I'm going with today:

1. Something I learned today: That the wood chips in a horse's stall are good to put in the garden because they are saturated with urine which means lots of nitrogen (aren't you glad I shared this information?!)

2. Something I did today: Shoveled, raked, dug, planted, made homemade pimento cheese.

3. Something I prayed for today: Safety & good health for Steve, our good friend Chip, & myself as we overhauled our three garden beds.  Two pickup truck loads of "dirt", digging up big plants, roto-tilling, replanting the big plants... lots of "opportunities" to get hurt or have an accident.

(It started with a truckload of "good" dirt...

Marking the sprinkler heads... laying edging to keep the dirt in the bed,

loading up...

2 guys working really hard all day!

(I did help, but I was the one with the camera...)

4. Something I noticed today: 85 degrees in late September is still hot, but with lower humidity it's not nearly as hot as in July & August.

5. Something I forgot today: to brush my teeth... UGH!!  Can you believe I shared this?!   I woke up just half an hour before our "helper" (friend) was going to arrive & I had one of my grands who had spent the night, so I was focused on pulling on some clothes & getting her fed before he arrived.  So they are getting a double brushing tonight!

6. Something to share today: I constantly battle clutter... my own!  I'm so blessed to be married to a man who never complains about my clutter habit!  I know it's part of being ADD, but I'm realizing too that I just need to minimize get rid of stuff!!  I started today in the garden redo by being willing to throw out some plants that just don't do well or that the rabbits keep eating, and leaving some open space between the plants we put back in.  It's minimal, but it's a start.

(These are the plants going back in...)

7. Something I'm glad I did today: took time to make a nice lunch (homemade pimento cheese; cut up cantaloupe and mango served with grapes; fresh cookies) for my "workers" & sat awhile for lunch.

The bonus was that my daughter dropped by to sit with us for awhile, and each of the grands came by for a few minutes (it helped that I had fresh-out- of-the-oven cookies & they knew it!) 

8. Something I need to do: Be more consistent in blogging!  Just need to get all those stories in my head transferred to my fingers...

9. If you want to do a "Something" post: please, feel free to do so!  I'd love to read yours!

Buggin' Me!

These little feet were in my yard the other day getting ready to help me do some pruning under the huge holly bush... but before we started he said, "Mimi, look at that spider!"  It was about a foot away from his feet.

In rapid response I stepped on it, and then since I wasn't sure if it was dead I used the clippers in my hand and cut it in half!  So this is not two spiders... it is one cut in half.

I'm not sure what kind it was, but it was bigger than a quarter... without the legs!

I tried to put it back together to show what it looked like, but I didn't do a very good job. I'm just thankful that he saw it before stepping on it!

One thing we have trouble with around the pool sometimes in the summer is horseflies that bite.  And they are huge & the bites really hurt.

These are not exactly what we usually see out there....

But these had obvious stingers!  And this picture makes it pretty obvious what they were doing!  I sure didn't want more of these, but by the time I could lay down my camera & get a shoe in each hand, they took off... together!  The one really good thing about first frost is that it gets rid of all these critters!  Bring on the frost!!

Beach "Babes" & Beaus

The only day that I had the camera at the beach was the last day when the waves had settled down...
But as you can see, "old folks" have fun at the beach too.... (oooh, got to hold that tummy in!)

Though one tries really hard to avoid the beach at all costs....  What a sport!  He came, he saw, he conquered.... and he left.

Dinner Change

A couple of weeks ago I bought the ingredients for a recipe that some friends had talked about.  There were few ingredients but two were things I don't keep on hand.  Since we were at the beach last week I was waiting until we came back to fix it.  I thought I remembered that the chicken was marinated in Italian dressing, so I put it in to marinate.  I also remembered that you poured a can of whole berry cranberry sauce over it & baked it for 1 hour.  But I couldn't remember what the third ingredient was that  I bought especially for this.  I asked on FaceBook, I looked on websites, I asked a friend who I thought might have it,  I checked a blog I thought I saw it on, but I couldn't remember who had talked about it.  I finally saw a recipe on Allrecipes.com (one of my favorite websites for recipes) that triggered my memory:  it was CATALINA dressing instead of Italian!  Since I never buy Catalina I wanted to do it according to the recipe.

So I didn't heat up the kitchen with the oven.... We had chicken done on the grill tonight!  And it was delicious.  I'll try that recipe another time.

Biking vs. Biking

I love to bike at the OBX because they have sidewalks & trails that are for bikers... and because most of it is fairly flat with only a few hills.  So we went biking twice last week there.

The first day we biked was shortly after we got there, & we had beautiful weather.  Sometimes we have a big group trying to stay together, but that day we just went with one other couple who are our dear friends.

We rode at a "leisurely" too slow for this guy who is an avid rider pace and even carried on some conversation (parts of the "cement trail" are wide enough to ride side by side.)

Taking off from our house-for-the-week (that's our driveway, but the house here is the one across the street which is a brand new house for sale), we rode 6 miles up through Duck and back (total of 12 miles).

A couple of nights later we had torrential rains during the night, so there were a lot of really big puddles to ride through and eventually flooding of the road.

We got to ride with another couple who are also dear friends, & it started out much the same as our previous ride...

But when we got back, we were a little bit lot dirtier...

Now I'd like you to think that the mark on my shirt was sweat....

But it was just plain dirt/mud that splashed up on me when I rode through the really big puddles!  Oh yeah, it was shower time!!!  But we sure had fun!  And rode another 12 miles that day (so how could I have gained 2 pounds over the course of the week???!!!  Oh yeah, I guess all the ice cream bars, M&M's, snacks, desserts, pasta comfort food, and fried seafood might have had something to do with that...)

Vacation Over

I admit... I have been AWOL for the past week!  But I had a good reason... VACATION!
We just spent a week at the OBX (for non-Carolinians... that's "Outer Banks"), post "Irene".  Fortunately "she" didn't cut off the part of it where we had planned to be.  There was evidence of damage; mostly piles of yard trash, piles of dock pieces, soaked carpet, some mattresses, and other odds & ends.  There were some businesses on the sound side still unable to open but for the most part the community had worked hard to get things cleaned up for the Labor Day vacation crowd.  We had great weather the entire week & missed the predicted daytime rain.

Somehow I forgot to take my camera each time I went to the beach, but I can tell you that the surf looked nothing like the picture in my header!  I've never see such high waves crashing on a North Carolina beach!  They were coming from both directions & crashing into one another.  It was beautiful in an unusual way.  God's majesty was once again almost overwhelming!

Waiting for Irene

A little visual update of our special overnight (see 8/27 post);

Oh yeah, we had fun!!!

The photo is a little fuzzy, but I wanted to share the "action"...

and then there was action in the pool....

the smiles went ear to ear!  We still had power at this point....
Love these kind of memories!!!