Tag Archives: plants

Saving plants

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Our weather has turned much cooler this week. In fact it’s supposed to get close to freezing tomorrow night.

Just to be on the safe side, I brought my outside plants in for the winter.

I’ve had that asparagus fern (in the middle) for at least 10 years. I repotted it this spring and left it outside all summer. It really flourished!

The coleus on the left has also been around for a few years. I was surprised that I could keep that planted alive that long. The bright green one was pinched off the one of the plants from the planter on the right and just stuck in the soil. It took root and seems to be quite happy.

The planter on the right was new this year. It’s getting tall but scrawny. I think I’ll need to cut some of those plants back and hope I don’t kill them.

They are sitting on the “formal” dining room table for now. If we get company this fall or winter, I’ll have to find another place for them so we can sit at that table instead of crowd around the small table in our kitchen.

I think I need a new garden flag as that one sticking in the planter is so faded. “It’s Always 5 O’clock Here”

Do you try to save plants from one year to the next or just leave them outside and let Mother Nature do her thing?

Patti nona

Sewage, drainage, and rock walls Part II

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Welcome to Part II of the sewage, drainage and rock walls.  Click here for Part I.

To get to the front downspout the raised flower bed had to be torn down.  Well, at least part of it.

003-Rocks

My daughter and I built this rock wall about 22 years ago,  It didn’t hold up as well as expected but I learned a lot about building a stacked stone/rock wall in those 22 years. And I got to use that knowledge to tear it all down and rebuild it.  During the hottest part of the summer.

As usual I didn’t get a picture of the before but the wall undulated ( fifty-cent word)  in and out three times from the steps of the front porch the side of the house.  The downspout is behind that bush and the pampas grass.

001-Pampas-grass-corner

Daffodils and lilies of the valley were strewn about that section so as I torn out the rocks, I rescued those plants/bulbs to replant later in the fall.  I put off that project for a few years but it’s funny how one thing leads to another.

002-Pampas-grass

 

Landscape fabric went between the rock wall and the soil.

Rock-wall-001 Rock-wall-002 Rock-wall-003

There are better other ways to keep the soil from leaking out and stabilize the wall but it’s the way I chose to do it.

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The raised bed/rock wall went doesn’t come out as far as the original and does circle around the side of the porch.  It kind of eases into the same height as the added soil around the foundation and heat pumps.

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All this work happened over the course of about three weeks…mostly because I couldn’t work on the raised bed/stacked rock wall for more than a few hours in the mornings and evenings at a time.  We’ve had some heavy rains and our basement is dry.

Grass is growing over the newly seeded areas though we will reseed some of those areas again this fall.

After the tomato plants are finished for the year, I’ll work on the other side.

Rock-wall-010Whew!

Reactions: Installment 2

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Mr. Aitch wears white socks.  Every.  Day.  He used to get holes in the toe so I started buying him Gold Toe® socks*.  No more holes in the toe.  Yay!  Now he gets holes on the bottom of the heel.  I need “Gold Toe and Heel” socks for him.  It seems that no matter how often I wash whites, he always runs out of white socks.  So I bought him another package of six pair last week.

Socks

Now the rest of the story:

This past Saturday I planted all the flowers and herbs I bought the week before.  I had to wait for a day when Mr. Aitch was available to move the bags of soil for me.

No sooner than I got started, I felt something on my arm.  Without looking I just brushed it away.  I have no idea what is was but my arm started itching immediately.  I ignored it until I was finished.

flowers

Please ignore my faded and stained planters.  I scrubbed them first.  Really, I did!

I got myself cleaned up and noticed the raised welt on my arm.  A drop or two of hand sanitizer usually calmed the itch for hours.  This time it worked for about two minutes.  I figured it was a spider bite since this has happened to me before.  In the past the site of the bite would swell up to the size of a small grapefruit.

Mr. Aitch suggested I take some Benadryl.  Benadryl and I don’t get along very well.  It makes me drowsy enough to be nonfunctional then causes nightmares when I do sleep.

When I went to the market Sunday morning after church, I asked the pharmacist what I could use to stop the itch.  Hydrocortisone cream.  I felt relief instantly.

I applied more to the bite area (including the gelatinous glob forming under the skin) before I went to bed but needed to cover it so the cream would stay on my arm and not get all over the sheets.  So I cut the top off of an old pair of holey white socks Mr. Aitch threw away as a way to cover the bite.

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You’re going to have to trust me on this.  I cropped out the discolored holey part.  You can thank me later.

I asked Mr. Aitch to help me get the sock top over the medicated mess.

arm

I told him I cut the top off of one of the new pairs of white socks I just bought him.

Wha…..?

The look on his face was priceless.  I thought he was going into shock.

Just kidding, Honey!  It was an old sock.

Rarely do I pull one over on Mr. Aitch but I did this time.

*Note:  The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone.  I received no, nada, zero, zilch compensation from the fine makers of GoldToe® socks.  I just wish that I did.