Goodbye, Chlorophyll, It's Been Good To Know Ya

Autumn has its charms:  apples, pumpkins, brilliant color, 
cool clear days, stupid-easy seasonal decorating
(just plop a pumpkin or a mum anywhere) . . . .

But I am not a total fan of watching Summer shrivel up.

Perhaps it makes me think of the skin on my neck, now that I'm past 60.

Oops.  Sorry about the trash can full of weeds.  Not a staged picture!

 Leaves are frisbee-ing themselves off the trees,
most flowering plants have retired for the year,

but our tomatoes are still grunting out babies, trying to outrun Jack Frost.

These guys are doing their best to beat the coming frost.

Yes, we added a mum and a pumpkin to the sunroom doorway.

The Rieger Begonia that was blooming so beautifully there

totally gave up the ghost -- folded like a cheap suit, the coward.

An occasional Knockout is still outing itself.

The Russian Sage is soldiering on.

The bees are all over it, bless their little pollen-spreading hearts.

But Fall is winning.

In the sunroom border, the portulaca is kaput.

Thank you, wax begonias, for hanging on.

I've never much liked you, but you are tough buggers.  Respect.

Hmmm... okay.  A fresh mum does bring new color to the fading garden, doesn't it?

Although a glance down, and the very dead cosmos stalks

make an interesting, Addams Family display.  :-P 
Yes, weeds everywhere.

(Bad back the past few weeks. No weeding.)

But Autumn brings many blessings, as I try and remind myself.

It is pretty.

It brings families together for Thanksgiving ....

And ... then ... there's Christmas.  :-)

Thanksgiving.

Don't panic, my friends,

but it's fewer than 50 days to Turkey Day!

And I am still working on making my TBDBT List.

(To Be Done By Thanksgiving List.  Always made.  Never finished.)

I wish you a happy Thursday.

-- Cass

Chaos Reigns, And A Happy Anniversary Wish!

I love beautiful, well-tended, orderly, tidy gardens.
Sometimes I go and visit one, just to see what a 
beautiful, well-tended, orderly, tidy garden looks like.

Because here at That Old House, our garden patches are

enthusiastic, but tidy and orderly they are not.

Right behind the sunroom, along the old stone wall . . . this:

As the late Bob Ross might have said, "Happy, happy little flowers . . . . "

(By the way, this is after a bit of weeding.  Primping for the camera.)

My favorite spot to have morning coffee, right in the corner.

 Do you do this?  Get all your stuff planted (thank you, Anne!) and

then realize you've still got some plugs languishing in their flats? Those are white petunias, shriveling up.

Why don't I pop them in the ground?  Why?

Eh, sometimes lazy has no explanation.

Our local supermarket had Knockout Roses dirt cheap (haha . . . 

dirt cheap!) back in May.  I love me some Knockout Roses.

The smaller Knockouts, 5 in this picture, are rather hidden by the big fluffy balls

of bleeding heart foliage.  Doomed foliage.  It won't last till August.

 I know they aren't the breath-taking, showstopping divas of the Rose Universe,

but wow, those babies can bloom.  

The big, arching dark red rosebush on the left, across

from the Grandma Swing, is old.  Old.  Like, really old.

In this non-cropped view, you can see the back of the house; the old rose grows up against it,

right outside the powder room window. and just south of the really ugly air conditioning thingy.

Every year we cut it back.  Ruthlessly.  It comes roaring back.

Definitely likes punishment, that old gal.

But unlike its distant Knockout cousins, it has its first flush of blooming and then it goes on vacation, only sending out a couple of roses, like brief postcards, every few weeks.

 I'm starting to like the look of the picket gate on the steps leading

up to the driveway.  Rather cottage-y, don't you think? 

And a lovely shot of our trash can, up along the driveway.

We are nothing if not classy. 

The tomatoes and peppers were a little late settling in this spring;

I didn't trust the weather after the winter we had.

But they're taking off.  Ripening tomatoes on two out of five plants, 

and the banana pepper has a 5-inch long baby growing fast.

Nothing so far from the slacker eggplants except blossoms.

Not all of the perennials survived the winter, but these did.  Yay.

(The other threadleaf coreopsis on the other side of the door survived, but barely.  It's got one shoot!)

When I look at the crazy quilt of plants here at this

kind of crazy quilt of a house, I'm okay with it.

And I remember late March, when the borders looked like this:

  (Nice.  Thumb in the picture.  Nice.)

What's happening in your garden today?

In ours, Gilda The Red is soaking up the sun.

Dylan DiPoochy doesn't stay still long enough outside

for a good shot, unless he's in someone's lap.

Yes, like that.

Have a lovely Wednesday, whether you are indoors, or out.

-- Cass

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And . . . lest I forget, let me wish our daughter Alida and her husband Josh a very happy
Third Wedding Anniversary!
Long time readers of That Old House may remember the frantic weeks leading up to their wedding,
when we were racing the clock to get the house painted, repairs made, landscaping done,
fence installed .... but in the end, all that mattered was that these two got hitched, 

. . . and they're still honeymooning.  :-)

Not the Best of Times, Not the Worst of Times

For about forever, our days here in northern New Jersey
have started with sun, and wound up with rain.

Yesterday was pretty much all rain.

This doesn't encourage a lot of gardening around here;

I am not a mudder.

Okay, who else is channeling Kramer?

But today started with the Sun.

Mother Nature, being the hilarious practical joker that she is,

tossed in some heavy morning clouds to tease us,

but it looks as if we've got some clear days ahead.

We will finally get our Spring planting done, just days before Summer.

Right now, ain't a whole lot going on in the yard at That Old House.

Thank goodness for perennials.

Up on the top of the stone wall along the patio, lavender thrives among the hydrangeas and ivy.

Our beautiful silken poppies are all pooped out.

Their foliage is being trampled by spearmint;

the good thing about yanking mint is how great your hands smell.

Climb into the Time Machine, and you are sitting on someone's floor,

listening to a Jethro Tull record on someone's stereo.  Have we dated ourselves yet?

Well, here is a different Jethro Tull -- a hybrid Coreopsis that is amazingly prolific.

If you see it -- buy it and plant it.  Trouble free and beautiful.

It doesn't play the flute, but its petals are fluted.  Ha!  I just got the connection.

An old fashioned ramblin' rose at the back of the house, outside the powder room window.

I've never seen the roses get this shabby on the branches;

other summers they were eaten by trespassing deer.  Who are mysteriously absent this year.

The hedges along the driveway are coming into bloom.

The smell is heavenly.

It's a Fern Fest, along the shady part of the stone border.

There were a handful when we moved here; now there are a ba-jillion.

Should we be frightened?  Ferns are such primitive, alien life forms.

Down from the ferns, some good ol' orange daylilies.

Mother Nature sure goes to a lot of trouble for a blossom that lives one stinkin' day.

Atop the stone wall, along the driveway, Sedum and Daylilies.

Personally, I am not a big Sedum fan.  For most of the season the blossoms look like broccoli.

Then, in the Fall, they get ugly.

But I do like Daylilies, with their short, tragic lives.

Ah, my red minivan is chomping at the bit for a junking adventure.

Now that the weather is improving, it's time to get the Russian Sage

and the Knockout Roses and some show-off annuals in the ground

or into pots.  And the weeds out of the ground.

'Cause we are having a party.

June 30th.

To celebrate Anne's grad school graduation.

Yes, I have a TO DO List.  Don't ask.

So like last year, in late June, That Old House is getting slapped into shape for a party.

Thank goodness it's already painted, and the white paint hasn't worn off yet!

Take a look at the front part of the house, on the right of this picture.

See how uneven the clapboards are?  All wiggly, and different sizes?

That's cause they are 180 years old, and are the original cedar boards,

cut on site from local trees when the house was built in 1832.

I have to say, vinyl siding won't last 180 years and still be in great condition.

But then again, neither will I.

Cass

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