Sunday, August 21, 2011

Dogs + Water = FUN!!!

IMGP5294 by annbumbly

~~~

xoabb
loverly!

Photo taken at Taylor Farm - Norwalk, CT 's dog park - complete with a swimming hole.
From Connecticut Dog Fun: Taylor Farm. The pond at the park is great however your dog will need a bath when she or he gets home! Large fields, swimming pond, trails, fenced by the road. Location: Beach Road, Norwalk CT. Across the street from Calf Pasture Beach.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Just Totally Irritational!

That is for HUMAN Consumption!5235 by annbumbly


My parents are gardeners extraordinaire and work long and hard for the produce and flowers that are around their home. This year, for the first time in a while, Dad planted a melon patch. When I arrived on the first of August, the melons were growing beautifully, but not nearly ripe enough to harvest.
Almost 2 weeks later, that not-nearly-ripe-enough stage had changed. Abruptly. Two days ago, the first melon out of their patch went missing. As in, there was not a remnant of that melon to be found! Varmints do not tear off a melon and saunter away with it, they eat the innards on the spot. So where did that melon go?? We'll never know.
This morning, when Dad went to the melon patch, the above ~greeted~ him. It was still attached to the vine, but thoroughly disturbed and almost totally eaten. Some varmint had had a veritable FEAST! 
So, tonight, Dad declared WAR and set a trap... 
He just went and inspected the trap. A baby opossum has been caught. BABY being the key word. As you can tell from the before and after photos, baby 'possum did a fine job of eating the melon in the trap, but we don't think it could have eaten an ENTIRE one. Which leads us to believe baby 'possum's family is waiting in the wings to devour the rest...uh oh.

(Anyone have a melon patch guard dog we could hire??)

(For the pictures, go here.)

Friday, August 12, 2011

Snow on the Mountain. In August??

IMGP5122 by annbumbly
 Snow on the Mountain, 8/10/11: Columbia, MO 
Plant it one year in the garden, and WATCH OUT! 
You'll have it forever! (Just ask my dad.) But what a beauty it is.
It's one of my favorite flowers - so brilliant and such a butterfly magnet!

Snow on the Mountain also reminds me of my most dear departed M-I-L, Mimi. It was also one of her very favorite plants as well, and she had a hedge of it growing along her porch in front of her home. Actually, her S-O-T-M was part of the front porch hedge that was also full of more permanent shrubbery, and which she asked read: begged...long, loud and often my hubs - her son - to trim once a year. Once started, after pulling many a hens' teeth, he did an admirable job, and for quite a few years.

Then there was the year he used his mom's new electric shrub trimmers. 

That, my friends, was the last year he ever trimmed the Snow on the Mountain-laced hedge at her home.

It was also the first and we who love him fervently hope, the last time said hubs actually flew through the air. Back then before certain precautions of the electrical type were mandatory, when you cut through an electric cord, (and especially when the ground and everything else was wet), baaad things tended to happen. Yup, it's possible to fly.( It's not necessarily fun to fly this way, but it is most certainly possible!)

My only regret is that since I didn't know him at the time, I had no chance of witnessing this Entirely-Entertaining-Because-He-Lived-Through-It-Unscathed event first-hand. Pretty sure I would have laughed. Loud and long. (I'm baaaaaad!)

I'm certain that our Mimi would be pleased to know her favorite flower/shrub is still just as beautiful. (Even though her son, to this day, still isn't allowed to be a  S-O-T-M trimmer - or any other kind of ~trimmer~, for that matter!)

~~~

xoabb
expecting - and getting - cooler MO temps!
HURRAY!

Sunday, August 07, 2011

Toward the Sun...


Temperatures?  HOT!
But still pockets of beauty -
Zinnias...Ah yes!

~~~
 
xoabb
Sunday Serenity...expecting Missourahhh  heat!