Missourahhhhh Sunset

Sunday serenity...it's found in Missourah, always in Missourah. 

If you haven't been, you really need to go.

~~~

xoabb

expect anything!

Varmints Not Welcome!

Master Gardener

trying in vain to protect

his ripe melon patch

~

alas!

~~~

xoabb

expect failure, because of possums, at times

Just Totally Irritational!

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.)

Snow on the Mountain. In August??

 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!

Toward the Sun...

 

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

~~~
 

xoabb

Sunday Serenity...expecting Missourahhh  heat!

Just Sleeping...

No, ducky is not dead, but just sleeping.

Fell to sleep, then fell straight back...

It's hard work breaking out of that egg!

Go see the hatching here!

~~~

xoabb

Jalopy

This old car has obviously been a part of the landscape around my parents home for many years longer than they've lived here. So tell me why I've never been aware enough of it to take even one photo of it over the 25+ years they've lived here?? Observant, aren't I?

Just beyond this ~beauty~ is a junk yard of old that is loaded with all kinds of glass which our family has rooted around in for all the years our folks have lived here.

And I've never noticed that old jalopy? Really? Just put me out to pasture.

~~~

xoabb

Update: That old car is a '46 Chevy Fleetline. Friend Kacey figured it out.

Thank you!

Go here to see a Fleetline in all its glory.

Missourahhh Mosaic

Having troubles with this mosaic thingy. To see better images, click once, and then once again, on the photos and they'll be clear, and, I hope, pleasing for you to look at. Sorry 'bout this! My first attempt and it didn't go like I wanted it to. :(

~~~

xoabb
expect good MO things
(even tho a bit blurry)

BIG thanks to both Kate & Mary whose tutorials taught me about this mosaic photo thingy!

Ah well...

Not all is lost:

Beautiful Missouri 2011 Spring Daffodils
Courtesy of my mother, Mary Bum.
Not only the photo, but the poem,
(one of my favorites) too,
thus, this post! Thanks mom!
~

The Daffodils

I wandr'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:—
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company!
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
~

William Wordsworth

~~~

If I can't have my Connecticut daffodils, I'll just have to swoon over the daffs that are once again gracing the front of my parents Missourahhhh home. (Spring-time in Missouri is just beautiful...usually...unless there's a killing April freeze - and that's happened more than once!)

Our daffodils began to bloom, then it became overcast and a cold-front moved through. Must say other folks daffodils are blooming in gardens around us. I don't know what's wrong with mine! :(

Enjoy the above MO view, and if I ever have a CT view, I'll share it!

~~~

xoabb