Welcome to the Garden Spot

It just dawned me as I was uploading photos for this post, that I have had an anniversary. I launched my blog August 19, 2010. It was a pretty brief introduction with one comment. My first visitor was Carolyn at  This Grandmother's Garden. One post from this beautiful grandmother and a look at her lovely blog and I was hooked. I have made some wonderful friends along the way. I faithfully read my blogs every day, though I don't always comment, like here in the last week. So thank you my dear friends for sharing your thoughts along with me. I'd love to take a tour of the world and visit each and everyone of you, for I think that we would get along quite nicely.

Spring came in in a blaze of glory as the crab apple
trees put on a show

Classes at the university started last Monday and already we are having our first semester holiday, Labor Day, a day to honor the nation's workers--You and Me and everyone. I told my students that it is a long haul until Thanksgiving, so they'd better rest up and get ready to tackle the next 14 weeks. I do wonder about myself, however. I have a long walk between buildings that when the weather is mild, I see it as just a little more exercise and opportunity to enjoy the fresh air. We have a lovely campus with beautiful green lawns and wonderful big trees, but as bloody hot as the last few days (rather all summer) have been, the walk wears me down. By the end of day my feet hurt, my shoulder aches, me elbow throbs, my eyes get blurry. But I carry on with a smile, for my mission is an important one. Dead tired at the end of the day, I find my chair and promptly fall asleep, waking to go search for food with the hubby. And then it is the next morning it all begins again.

So tell me how did your summer go? Here in the states we had record heat with most of the country in a drought, while our British friends suffered unusual amounts of rain. How does Mom Nature decide who will get what? Can't she be a bit more fair in her distribution of the natural elements? Thus with the  heat, gardening just wasn't much fun as it should have been. I tried to get out early in the morning and late in the evening. At least here one advantage to the heat was the lack of mosquitoes.

Good things did happen.

 The court yard went from bare and blah to finally getting the little water garden going.

   

It went from blah to POW--with a leak that I have yet to find

In addition to the heat and because of the lack of rain, much of our summer was spent under a shroud for smoke and fire and worry about our friends' and their homes. For our friends the outcome was good since their homes were spared, but for so many others their lives will never the same as they begin the years long battles with insurance companies that continue to impede their efforts to rebuild and get their lives back to normal.

Fire in the mountains. Fire in the garden as the Red Hot Pokers put on a flaming hot show of their own.

I love the knohpia, delicate and rich in color, but they don't last long.

 

The iris were glorious, but I dug them up, divided them, and moved them out by the hen house to give the ladies some color in their little world

Butterflies were scarce in the Garden Spot this summer too. Early in the summer the Western Tiger Swallow Tails flitted through yard on some impending mission, stopping to nourish themselves.

The echinacea  were so gorgeous--the ones that received enough water, that is.

And let's not forget the newest little bud in this grandmother's garden, Lily Ann

There were the 4th of July fire works, some looking a bit like flowers themselves.

 The day lilies loved the heat, but craved moisture too.

Who doesn't love the purity of a white daisy with a bit of rain--fake rain from the sprinkler.

We partied a bit, too.

And I got really brave and bought not one, but two hydrangeas at Lowes on sale. I let them sit in the kitchen a bit too long so they sorta died back. I pruned them and planted them according the Heather's instructions: dig a big whole and back fill with lots of compost and top soil. So unlike the hydrangea that I planted last summer that was in a constant state of wilt and begging for water, these two and a 3rd that hubby brought home as a surprise appear to be settling in nicely with new leafy growth. We will just have to make sure to mulch them good this fall and water during the winter if we don't get much snow.

The cabbage are all harvested. Now we wait for the red cabbages. The egg plants are all going to collegues at school, the tomatoes  are abundant, the garden flourishes.

The apple tree got an early frost, so there are few very wormy apples this year. The tree is by the corral fence and Sundance begs for apples.

Over the winter, I ran out of good garden stuff to write about, so I profiled the family pets. I didn't get around to Max. Sweet, Sweet Max. A German Short Hair retriever. He is a dog pound pup, a rescue who if not adopted would have been destroyed. What a waste. As it turns out, he is registered with championship field trial lineage. But to us he is our companion. Thirteen years ago hubby brought home this hyper 11 month old pup, green snot coming out his nose with a bad case of kennel cough, and no manners at all. The dog from hell. At 14 now, he stumbles and falls, wobbles and snores. The rabbits in the yard no longer fear him because he has quit chasing them. He sleeps a lot, but he is always in the garden with us. Our constant companion.

This little bud just keeps blossoming. Her older sister who calls herself Mother Nature is off to kindergarten tomorrow. Her other sister turned 4. Her cousin Jacob, my garden helper, is in 4th grade, and his little brother Nathan  age 3 claims the hens as his own. These are grandma's special little buds in her garden.

A garden first: Lime green zinnias. Love 'em.

There is some green here.

Hail Damage. Can't have summer without at least one hail storm The garden recovered nicely. That was the last rain we had.

As summer winds down, the sunflowers are flourishing but fading, foreshadowing the dullness of winter. A new routine is coming to the Garden Spot: Work, grade papers, work, grade papers. The weather is lady is predicting a cool down. Hope she knows what she is talking about. Soon we will begin to wish for an early spring pouring over the seed catalogues. Funny how that works. Summers are too hot so we hope for winter. Winter wears us out so we hope an early spring.

I will try to keep with my blogging with regulariety. My posts hopefully will pop up each week and I hope to be able to make comments that make sense. Thanks your visits and thanks for your own grand and glorious blogs that keep me entertained and enlightened.