Flowers of Summer

Time to show off our summer flowers which are in full bloom now. We don't have to plant anything anymore, these are all perennials. We do plant a few pots of bright petunias to add some color while we wait for the lilies, purple cone flowers, and black-eyed susans. Enjoy! We do!



Purple Cone flowers Provide a meeting place for the Bumble Bees!
Later the dried seeds will give the birds a change of diet.



This stand of Moonbeam Coriopsis has been around a long time.



Asiatic Lillies make splashes of color.





Day Lillies add their color too.



A Black-eyed Susan vine and Clematis adorn the mail box.





And the Petunia pots are bursting!




The tomato and pepper plants are bearing fruit, but not quite ripe yet, but we did get a couple of ripe grape tomatos yesterday - mmmmm! Even the upside down tomatoes have fruit on them, but they don't look as healthy as the regular plants, which are also planted in pots.

Winging It Solo!

Shimmy and her family have arrived from LaLa land. It's always good to see them. Sysguy was only here for a week and returned to CA yesterday. Shimmy and the 2 Things will be here for another 2 weeks.

Well, not here exactly. She is staying with her sister, Cricket, in Forgottonia! That's where all the kids are. WonderMom has gone to spend a couple of days of quality time with her daughters unencumbered by spousal demands! Well Paco will be there to manage the combined broods - he has a great way with kids. Anyhow, I'll go pick WonderMom up on Friday, before I starve to death!

We spent the 4th of July with them and went to their local celebration and fireworks in the evening. Paco played in the municipal band and performed a solo.

We (WonderMom and I) were introduced to the Wii game platform by Cricket and Paco. I'll have to admit, the Golf and Bowling games are very realistic, and provide a surprisingly accurate challange. Some of the other games, not so much. Sysguy brought a Mario game with him and we watched him and Paco play that for a while, but it held no interest for me. Both Cricket and Shimmy have Wii now, as well as a friend or 2 of ours. We're being surrounded! Don't think we'll be indulging though. Too much computer and quilting stuff to keep busy with.

I'll be back in a few days with photos of the summer flowers and my upside down tomato plants.

Happy Summer!

Summer is finally here! We can trade those wet gloomy spring days for hot humid days!

The past week has been a busy one. I put on a little dog and pony show with my MacBook Pro laptop for the Miller Senior Center Computer Users' meeting. I am one of only 2 Mac users in a sea of PC users, so I like to get Apple products on the agenda once a year if I can. The show went well, except I couldn't get connected to the wireless router.

WonderMom and I ran an AARP Driver Safety Program class in Minier. We had the largest class we've ever run, and the folks were great. The only problem was, the class was at 8:30 AM on Tuesday and Wednesday, in Minier! Have I mentioned I'm not a morning person! Well, in order to drive the 30 miles to Minier and get there around 8 AM, we had to leave home by 7:30. That means I had to get up before breakfast - twice!

I made it through the class OK, but came home (after stopping for lunch) on Tuesday and finished sleeping! Wednesday was better.

On Friday we had our monthly dinner engagement with some friends from UPSTATE! We meet in Bloomington to share the driving distance. They used to live in Morton, but moved "back home" after he retired from CAT. We really enjoy these monthly get togethers.

That's about it for the week. I did put up some additional fencing around our paltry tomato & pepper garden. The deer are voracious this year. They've done a number on some of my tomato plants, our potted petunias, tulips, iris, and Osteospermum! Anyone in the market for some pick-your-own venison? Come on over!

It's Her Birthday!

Today was Cutie Pie's 3rd birthday and she was just adorable about it ALL DAY LONG! What a doll! She is having a hard time winding down. It's 10:40PM and she is still singing to herself (and her siblings) in bed.
Mommy took her and Sweetie Pie and Scooter to see KungFu Panda at the local cineplex. Cutie was all excited about that, too.

We watched her open presents after Daddy got home from work,





then went outside to watch her open her BIG present!




The pizza man came so we had dinner, then it was on to the cake and ice cream!




An exciting (and exhausting) day was had by all!

I'm Baaack!

Stagnate! I think not! Material is just harder to come by this month. I'm not getting much (any) help from WonderMom, either.

Where to begin? Oh! I know! New toys! Technophobe Alert! This next part is geeky!

As mentioned earlier, our ESR was 'earmarked' for a new digital TV so we could watch our many recorded Movies and TV shows on a better display. The delay in making the purchase was deciding how I would get the recordings, which reside on the MacMini's disc farm in the basement up to the TV in the living room. I didn't really want to move all of that computer hardware into the entertainment center. There was also the question of fitting a new wide-screen TV into the corner entertainment center that was designed to hold a 27" max normal screen TV.


Solution one: Purchase an Apple TV unit from the Apple refurb store. This unit has a 160GB internal hard drive for storing videos, a high speed (802.11n - you were warned!) WiFi card built, and takes up minimal space in the cabinet (7-1/2 inches square by 1-1/2 inches high). It is controlled by a small Apple remote control. Files are transerred from the MacMini over WiFi, so cables was needed.

Solution two: Find a TV whose widt would fit inside the cabinet from inside the doors to the corner of the wall behind the cabinet. Then build a platform on heavy duty 18" drawer glides that would allow the TV to be turned and pushed back into the cabinet. Clever, n'çest pas? The TV turned out to be an LG 32 inch purchased from a local merchant (not a big box or Wal-Mart) so some of the ESR money would stay in the country. I paid a little more for it, but hey, it was Dubbya's dime! Turns out the Olevia I talked about in Homeward Bound earlier is made by an American company, but is manufactured in Asia! Photos follow!




The TV is turned to face the right here, but can be turned to face full forward or to the left. This model LG has a built in swivel base and an exceptionally wide angle of view. The Apple TV is the white horizontal stripe in the middle of the upper right hand glass door.







Close up of the rolling platform. The outer drawer glides let the platform roll out in front of the cabinet. The inner glides let it roll back out of the back of the cabinet.










Here is the set pused all the way back into the corner of the wall so the doors will close. This was taken before I cleaned up all the dangling wires.








Next toy! This is my first blog written on my new (to me) from the Apple refurb store MacBook Pro 15" laptop. The new operating system, Leopard (10.5.2) is taking some getting used to.
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OK! Well, the iris really haven't bloomed much yet, but I better put som photos in here to stop your head from spinning from all the techy stuff.




Here's a shot of my black (really deep purple) iris.

All of the little pinkish buds you see here will become blossoms soon, like the ones on the left.











This is one of my new blue iris that I planted last fall.









That's it for now. More when something happens!

Scooter's Turn!

Saturday was recital time again, this time it was Scooter's first piano recital. He did a great job! I think he was pretty happy with his performance too! Here's a video of the performance:




Cutie Pie is taking all of this in and plotting for her turn in the limelight.

Wish we could attend recitals for our CA grandsons, Thing 1 and Thing 2. Hopefully Shimmy will record and post them for us.

OK! So I Lied!

I said I wouldn't post anymore flower photos until the Iris bloomed. I lied! The Iris haven't bloomed, but our scrawny little flowering crab tree is just bursting with beautiful pink blossoms this year. Just gorgeous IMHO. What do you think?

And this little guy showed up! A mutant (double) tulip! I don't remember planting it, and there is only one. It sure looks like a tulip from the foliage!

Oh! Those pretty purple tulips I showed in my last post; the deer thought they were good too! Hope they tasted as good as the looked!