The rain has been pouring down with enough frequency that I haven't watered in about a month. This planter was installed in late March and filled with brand new seedlings. The heat makes things grow slowly but with the rain, I haven't lost a single plant. By next year, I expect it to look fantastic. When the weather cools off, I'll have the energy to stop being lazy and pull a few weeds.
This beauty is called Ebb Tide and should be a deep purple. The sun plays havoc with the colors sometimes, but this rich magenta isn't all that bad. It's the same color as my toe nails.

I just ran out to fill the hummingbird feeders. There's an ongoing battle for the feeders with the hummers trying to drive off each other and the goldfinches. The wasps are even meaner than the hummers. After hanging sugar-water bottles, I figured I could tie up tomatoes. Just as I was picking the 7 little orange tomatoes that were ripe, I looked down and saw maybe 10 mosquitos happily making breakfast on my legs. Okay - that's it - back inside for the Bactine and A/C. The tomatoes taste really good - now that I've stopped itching enough to enjoy them.


So much time flies by and it seems only yesterday I updated this. If three months ago is "yesterday" then tomorrow I'll be 90 and wondering where my life went.
The birds and bugs are happy denizens of the yard but Tim and I, Boris and Daisy, hide inside from the mosquitos. In the mid-Atlantic, people are crying over heat day after day in the 90's. Here, it's not so bad because temperatures are only up to 90.
This week, I even walked 4 blocks to lunch on Thursday and Friday - okay 3 blocks, but they were really long blocks.

The castle is undergoing major work. While I was in Dallas a couple of weekends ago, I asked the handyman to rip out all the carpets, baseboards, nail strips and the old flooring in the kitchen.
For simplicity's sake, I will just say that I make a better general contractor than Tim. He's nice - I woudn't have been. So now, we are in the state of finishing the removal. I believe there is a power-tool floor scraper in Tim's near future. Still, the concrete doesn't look too bad and the removal of the baseboards showed us some water damage that has stopped but needs to be cleaned up. Next steps are glue removal, floor cleaning, painting, polishing and new baseboards. Painting means the whole house, since we're clearing every room as we go along. Timetable? Oh, good grief. We've been in the house 4 years and the dead-mouse carpet just got ripped out. At the rate we go, I expect the floors to be cleaned of glue by the end of August. The rest - well, I get my left knee replaced in December, so hopefully before then.