Hackberry Trees, etc, #6

Very interesting, Christi.
And also appreciate your sentiments too, Sharon.

I'm going to have a few words with Mother Nature.
But whatever the case, I'll still be on course for that star!

Nite lovely people,
Charlie

Hi Sharon and Christi.
Back from cottage.
Emmy's made hats and rings (and a toy for Buddy) for a surprise 40th wedding anniversary party for us.

Blowing out the '40' candles.

Computer games.

Card games.

Canoeing.
Chris (a favorite sister-in-law) is a breast cancer survivor and has dragon boat raced in Australia, Hong Kong and elesewhere.

Learning to water ski.

Kids find a dock, broken loose by winter ice.

My kind of place:
the garden centre at Dwight, Lake of Bays.

Hi Charlie,
Happy Anniversary! And what a great surprise from your family. The pictures are great, looks like everybody had a great time. I really like your crowns, and after 40 years, no doubt you deserve them! You both have earned every star in them.

The cabin also looks very nice. I am glad you had a good time, and the lake was calm, I can see sunshine, so surely it was an all around good time.

I do like surprises.

I have my little guy tonight, and we have painted rocks, read stories, and made a list of things to do tomorrow. My son brought him about 8, Ethan didn't want to go on to the boat with is dad, he wanted to stay with me. So we sat down and made a list of things we could do, and painting rocks was at the top of the list. I had told him I was writing an article about stones and he wanted to help. So we painted stones. Had a good time too, and we had very little mess to clean up. He is serious when we have a project to work on. Then we read till I nearly fell asleep. I think he finally did too.

Glad you had a good time, and good to see you back. Thanks for the great pictures. I might not be around tomorrow, but will check again tomorrow evening to see if you have left more.. Take care...

Thanks for the congratulations, Sharon.
Love the comments about the crowns.
Weather was great and everybody got on with everybody.
Great to hear Ethan with you and enjoying himself, as usual.
You sound like a couple of soul mates.
Enjoy tomorrow.
Charlie

I tell you Charlie, this child is priceless.

We were in the floor playing with something, and he said: "I have two Grammas (he's including his step dad's mother) but you are my only Nana. How old are you, Nana?"

So I told him. And I said that I thought I was the oldest one in all his family.

He said: "Wow! Nana, when I get old as you, then I'll still play with you just the same."

Sheesh. Made me very nearly cry.

Nite now...

They can certainly lift your spirits. We have been keeping our little Erin for a time every Friday night. Sometimes she stays the night but she is never ready to leave. We watched "cars" for the umpteenth time yesterday and her facial expressions are priceless...it is always as though she has never seen it before.

Happy Anniversary, Charlie. Glad your family honored both ofyou with a party. We passed our 48th this past June. I used to think people who married 25 years were really old. hahaha

Hope this is a super day for everyone. Starting well for us as it has cooled down some and we are on the deck. Wonderful!

Christi

What a nice grandson, Sharon. A very cute little guy.

Thanks, Christi. 48th! Wow.
Very happy, you've got Erin. Sounds like Sharon, you and Mike are all popular grandparents!
Hope your area's not cooled down as much as ours.
In evenings, it's really feeling like fall here.

Back gardening. Also, went to see David's to get some weeds identified for a friend who just moved to a house with an established garden.

A few pictures from David's and Garden #3.
Little flowering in the alpine garden at Merlin's Hollow, but lots in the perennial garden.

Clematis at David's.

Love gentians.
Gentian pictures from our garden have not come out well,
so here's one from David's.

Garden #3.
Helenium, phlox, Goldsturm, turtlehead, Chrysanthemum serotinum and white Echinacea in flower. New England asters not out yet.

Close-up of helenium (sneeze weed).
As said am very fond of helenium
and with all the rain, it's a great year for it.

Still lots of echinacea in flower.
Saw second migrating Monarch butterfly of the season today.

Find wood aster a very useful plant.

Gosh nearly everything I have is fried. Gone to seed. Shut down for the year.
Except the tropicals and they will last until first frost and then they just fall in a heap on the ground. Charlie, yours looks like spring.

Amazing, Christi, how different gardening is in different areas.

Would say, for our area, gardens I do have perennials selected so that there will be perennials in bloom throughout the growing season. That means colour (at least in many places) from more or less late April to late October. Also means a lot of work in staking, deadheading and cutting back.

On the other hand, location is everything. It seems clear from your entries on this thread, that you just don't have the climate for the kind of extended-season, layered perennial gardening David or I can do. Know you were saying this has been a particularly hot year, but I'd certainly think the problem is the general climate.

As said, we've had an unusually wet summer, but the main significance of that to me (at least) is that I haven't had to do so much watering. The time gain has been offset by even more weeding. The weeds have also had a great summer!

Fall is probably the nicest time of the year here. It's not too hot. There's more water (rain) available to the perennials over a longer time. Also, for gardening, it not typically humid and there's few or no mosquitos. Our long fall is typically a long comfortable Indian summer. Though the mainstay of fall gardens here is non-hardy fall mums (often in pots), it also makes sense to extend our summer perennial gardening into fall with plants like New England asters, hardy chrysanthemums and fall monkshood.

It's a lot easier to do this though if you're retired (e.g. me), or if you pay somebody else to do it (e.g. my few customers)!

Beautiful gardens, and it's over for me too, except for phlox and roses. I do depend a lot on nice foliage right now, and I am not as hot consistently as Christi, so I still do have a lot of green as opposed to brown.

Can't linger tonight...got too many things going on here, but did want to stop by for just a short minute.
Take care and have a good new week ahead. The beginning of fall here for sure!

Will talk more tomorrow...I had a fun weekend with my little guy, but left other things undone...so..no rest for the wicked or something like that.
See you.

Smells like Fall this morning. Considerably cooler than it has been since early last Spring. The greenhouse is a disaster area as it has been way too hot to do more than just pitch things in the door. Have been dead-heading all along and have collected tons of seed. Think I will empty the greenhouse and get the seeds a little more organized today. The mosquitos are still very active. I have my new laptop on the "veranda" and had to spray with Off just a bit ago.

Sharon, tomorrow would have been Aaron's 26th birthday. It has now been 4 1/2 months. Hard to grasp the reality.

Hi Sharon and Christi,

No rest for some of the wicked, plus some of the good. The workaholics!
Guess the best combination for us would be good and inert. Pity we find it easier to be good than to be inert!

Interested to hear you have a greenhouse, Christi. We had one in England.
My Mum used it extensively and it was nice to sit in it and think of warmer weather.

Also you have mosquitos. We get them with wet conditions and humidity. The area we live in was formerly woodland with wet areas, prime mosquito terrain. They really like the cedar hedge at the back of our garden. Of course, they're the kind of wildlife we just don't like.

Went to see Tim this Sunday. Tim's apartment, like his former room at home, is very 1960s 'retro', a style that became popular again with some students and others. Tim's also quite an antique collector. The pictures are some of Carol's Mum's early oils. Tim was quite close to his late Grandma.

Walked past a huge block of Goldsturm in a church garden.

Golden dew drop in a local public greenhouse.

Downtown park wildlife.

Sorry about the repeat, but there really were a lot of roosting pigeons!

Well, my "greenhouse" lacks a lot. Purchased it from Costco on-line last year for a clearance of $549. It is only 8X6 so it barely fits the name.

Since I was married in 1961 it is hard to realize that my wedding gifts are now considered antique. Oh dear me.

Christi

Re ' antique', know how you feel, Christi.

If I had all of what was around when I was a kid, think I could make a bundle now. Even what we called antiques then, e.g. Tudor pottery and antiquities, e.g. ancient Egyptian figurines, were much cheaper in the 1960s.

Actually, reason I ended up in Canada was I came here dealing in antiquities, but found though I sold everything I bought, I couldn't do a large enough volume of business for viability; too specialized a market.

Ended up living in a fraternity house, liked the parties, went to U of T (Toronto) to join, applied for immigrant status in the country (could do that then) and got citizenship after five years. How's that for careful planning!

Hope I can do this now,
but pictures from garden #2, worked on for a short while today.

Continued.

Not such a wide variety of perennials seem to be both available and useful at this time of year.

So beautiful. Looks like Spring. Didn't mean to be secretive with Sharron.
Aprill 14th of this year our 25 year old grandson drowned. Tomorrow would have been his 26th birthday. I haven't done very good these last few months.
Cry a lot.

Are annuals also in this part of the garden (I call it the formal garden), e.g. the celosia.

The blue is giant blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). Apparently, the Indians and then early colonists thought it cured syphilis, but it's a nice plant anyway.

Christi, please don't apologize.
I didn't want to mention it, unless you did.
I'm very sorry about your tragedy.

A number of years back, Carol had a somewhat similar thing happen.
She had three brothers and the middle one suddenly died in his early 40's
from a growth related obstruction to his windpipe. He had a five year old daughter whom he was very close to. He worked from home (was a labour lawyer). His wife had just had a son. Everybody liked Peter.

Apart from the obvious disaster for his wife and children, his death permanently changed the dynamics of the larger family. He was very sociable, lots of fun and a peacemaker (always worked to avoid silly conflicts).

Smiling at the lobelia, Charlie..yes, it's a nice plant anyway!! Beautiful photos, by the way, I am really enjoying them. Crazy how you all are posting twice so often, wonder if it will happen to me too.

Christi, I'll be thinking of you tomorrow. You'll make it through this, I know you will.

Writing to do tonight. Again....I am so swamped this week. Goodness.
See you both later!
More pictures, Charlie, they soothe my soul!

Deaths change us all.
I know.

God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform. He has brought both of you to me and for that I am grateful.