new living room floor lamp

The lighting redo is continuing... We got a new floor lamp at Target today, which we put in the living room. This allowed us to move the one mica style floor lamp in the living room into the dining room. We then moved the halogen light in the dining room into my mom's room to replace the halogen lamp that she had that got broken. I think it all looks very nice, but now of course I want to get a second of the new living room lamps, a Tiffany style mission design lamp, to put at the other end of the couch.

I'm still looking around for lights for the bedrooms and I can't find anything that I really like for my room at all, so that is on hold as usual. I found a light long time ago that I liked for my mom's room and I'm currently bidding on it on ebay. I have also been very dissatisfied with the kitchen light for a while. The fixture itself is fine, but the glass was broken when we moved in and we replaced it with a really awful, cheap glass shade. I had wanted to get a new fixture until I found a really great glass shade on Rejuvenation. I think it will be perfect and the fixture they show it on looks a lot like our kitchen light. I am going to see if I can find anything similiar to it locally, as I'm not too excited about having a big glass shade shipped cross country.

I still did not get the kitchen floor cleaned, but I did finally get the front door cleaned. The steel door was new when we moved in and there was a sticker still attached to the door. I was able to peel most of it off, but never could get the residue off. I wanted to try some Goo Gone on it, but every time I thought about it, I couldn't find the Goo Gone and I only saw the Goo Gone when I was doing other things. So, finally got the residue off, I hope, and have the Goo Gone whree I can find it. The door was looking pretty dirty, so after reading on the internet, I cleaned it with Formula 409, which did a pretty good job. There are still a few dirty parts and I'm going to try a Mr Clean Magic Eraser on them and see if that helps.

It was way too hot to do anything out in the yard today other than give everything a good watering and hope for the best.

big roma harvest

I had my biggest ever roma harvest today, 3 1/2 pounds! I had planned to make a roasted vegetable tomato sauce tomorrow, but with the additional tomatoes, I went ahead and used my older romas to make a basic tomato sauce and will work on the roasted sauce tomorrow. I have also harvested 3 lemon cucumbers so far, gave one to Bobbie and the other two I have kept for my mom. There is a chance I may have a pretty good harvest of them and if so, I might try to pickle a few if I can find a recipe that will work with a small amount.

I have gotten nothing done around the house despite the fact that it is way too hot to work outside. We haven't had rain in 10 days now. The grass/weeds are still green but the plants are really suffering and I think I need to up the watering on the camellias. I had some really wilty plants I watered this evening. Tomorrow will be my big watering day and I'm going to try to really soak everything. I got eaten alive by the mosquitos this evening doing the watering and finally broke down and sprayed the yard with the Bug Free Backyard stuff, but only in the shady areas. I hate doing this as I have a really good population of bees this year, which I think is helping the cukes and all the other plants. I've also seen a few ladybugs. I don't want to hurt them, but the mosquito situation just gets worse and worse. Tonight there were CLOUDS of them around me when I bent down to water some of the shrubs. I'm hoping that this evening's spraying will help with the mosquitos and not hurt the bees.

I was playing around on the internet this evening looking at ourdoor lights, as I really want to replace our light. Bellacor was having a big sale and I got a light that looked great online at about 1/3 of its retail price. I hope it is as nice in person. I'm a tad worried about trying to install it, as the current light seems to come through the vinyl on the underside of the porch roof. I'm hoping there is a box under that, so we can easily hook in the new fixture. I do think it would look better if its base was on top of, not under, the vinyl.

more rain last night

I heard thunder all night while I was at work last night, but we never actually saw it rain, though our cars were wet when we went outside. All the way home, the road was damp, so my hopes were up when I got home. I was truly shocked to see 1" in my rain gauge! I didn't water yesterday morning because everything still felt damp. Obviously I didn't need to water this AM and this PM it seems like things are still okay. I'm hearing thunder again tonight, so I'm hoping we may still have a shot at more rain. The grass is actually starting to green up just a bit, or may it is just the weeds!

I'm not feeling well today, but I was able to go outside this evening and make a green bean harvest. We are having them in a stir fry for dinner. I also saw my second baby cucumber on my cucumber plants, so they are hanging in there. I do believe that my squash are done for though. Due to the bug issue this year, which I think killed them, I don't know if I will give them a shot next year.

first pesto of the year

I havested about 2 cups of basil on Saturday and today I finally got around to making my first batch of pesto for the season. I used some of it to make pesto pizza, enough for dinner tonight and a lunch later this week. I did not water at all today due to the rain this weekend, but I will need to water at least the container plants tomorrow morning.

second day of rain

Yesterday afternoon's rainstorm came to about 1/2", so it was about 1" overall for Saturday. This AM I woke up to the sound of a pounding rainstorm and had to sneak a peek at the tomatoes, who all seemed okay before curling back in bed. Today would have been my big watering day, but we got enough rain that I didn't need to. When I did get up, I checked the rain gauge and it showed about 3/4" from the overnight and AM rainstorms.

Again this evening we had a storm that hit just when we had gotten back from the store. This storm wasn't as long, and we got about 1/6". Still 1" yesterday and almost 1" today has been great. The weather report is still calling for rain for the next few days, so I really hope the storms keep coming.

really pouring now

I finally decided I needed to run out and get some more staking tape, as my dahlias and some of the tomatoes needed to be tied up some more and they were calling for rain. On the way home there was HUGE crack of thunder that made me jump. I got back home and started tying up 'Pink Accordion' to a taller stake. It had started to rain when I was pretty much done with that, then I ran over and tied up 'Lavender Perfection' dahlia, that was starting to lean some and got back inside before it started pouring. Looking out the window I'm already wishing I had gone out a bit earlier, so I could have staked my 'Black Pineapples'. They are all young, so none have stakes and they are really blowing in this hard rain. I don't like the staking tape I got at Home Depot. I don't know if there is something wrong with it or if it is always this way, but it is thick, oily and not very stretchy. I'll get it at Lowes from now on.

This is the first really hard rain I remember in it seems like months now.

rain at last!

We have gotten 1/2" of rain this afternoon. It isn't all that we need, but it is so much more than we have gotten, so I'm happy for that. I'm hoping that it won't be all for the day.

This AM I was out in the yard and there were bugs ALL OVER my squash. No wonder the plants have not been doing well. I think I may just pull the squash plants. I don't really need anything that attracts munchy bugs to my yard. I did reseed the squash today, but that was before I found all the bugs, so I'm going to think about it overnight.

I also discovered today that what I thought were new flower pods on my Stella d'Oro daylilies were actually SEED pods. Two had split open and only had a few seeds left in them. So, I collected the few seeds I saw and sowed them out in a little 4" pot. I'll have to look up growing daylilies from seed, as I think one of my others has set seed as well. I'm always looking for more daylilies for the ditch!

I also moved 2 of the 3 purple hydrangeas outside for at least part of the day. They are doing well, but the 3rd has a bad case of the wilts and is staying indoors were I can mist it regularly. If it starts to look worse, it may go back in the water.

I have decided that I really want to do something serious about replacing the porch light, which I have always hated. I'm going to have to look around online and see what I can find. I'm still not sure what size light would look the best, but I think at 8"- 12" would probably be the best as far as scale goes.

I hate fireworks

I have been a bit slack about keeping up with the blog lately, as not much has been going on other than the almost constant watering. I've been getting some nice tomato harvests lately, but I'm still waiting for enough ripe romas to try to make a tomato cream sauce. I don't want to sauce the big heirlooms, as they are supposed to be for fresh eating and saucing the cherries would be too much work. We had the roasted cherry tomato pasta dish again and it was very good again. We will probably have it next week as well. Last night fore dinner we ate two of the eggplants. I do want to try and make an eggplant and tomato dish that we had last year that I really liked. I found the recipe again, so maybe later this week.

Today I got a really late start on the day, but did give the yard a good watering. It was in the mid-90s today and I got hot and tired just from that little bit of outside work. I did repot the 'Blushing Bride' and 'Merritt's Surpreme' baby hydrangeas I'm growing into trade gallon pots. They can grow out in those until next spring. I am also working on getting the 'Double Pink' rooted cutting to start living outside. The last time I left it outside all day it almost died, so I'm trying a much slower approach this time. In other hydrangea news, I potted up the 3 cutting Mrs Phillips gave me from her purple hydrangea. They had been in water for 3 weeks and grew roots a ways up their stems. I actually had to cut leaves off one cutting, as the roots extended past the leaves. They will try a few hours outside tomorrow as well.


Hydrangea 'Penny Mac'

I'm tired and would like to go to bed, but there are constant fireworks. There have been fireworks for the last two nights and I'm sure it will continue for several more nights. These aren't even the pretty ones, just the ones that make a little explosion and the awful whistling ones. Times like this I wish they were illegal.

The really ugly house across the street from us had been on the market, but it never sold. Then they put up a for rent sign ($690/month- wow...) and it was rented in about a week. We saw the U-Haul for the new residents and have seen a van there, but we still haven't seen them.


Dahlia 'Lavender Perfection'