A follow-up to commentor PAM Dirac‘s July garden / vineyard post:
An update on the gardens that were chatted about in July, now
including the dogs.At top: Here is a view of the circle bed. Not a lot of structure to the planting, but most of the outright weeds are gone. One of my wife’s cousins took up metal working in her retirement and created the sculpture in the middle. She calls it “The Atom”. We really like it and are thinking of planning future beds for showing more sculptures.
Although they aren’t on it in this picture, the blue birds that live in the house you can just see in the shade on the tree to the left love to sit on the rings and keep watch.
On the other side of the weigela near the patio we planted zinnia from seeds. Really easy to grow, some nice late summer color and the butterflies really love them. We will be planting more next year.
The crepe myrtle next to the patio showed pretty well this year. It had been knocked back to the roots a few years ago by some nasty winters. I really like the white flower near all our reds, pinks and purples and I think the beds next to the patio need some height contrast.
Here is our old guy, Doolin. I meant to pose the dogs next to the beds, but they are pretty terrible models. We have had him well over 12 years. He came to the rescue as a stray, so we don’t know exactly how old he is but he must be getting close to 16 if he isn’t there already.
We know we aren’t likely to have too much more time with him, but he is still happy and healthy and our best dog ever, so we will enjoy what we get.
Here is our new girl, Ennis, next to the vineyard*. We got her on August 4th from an old friend who is a pretty serious lab breeder. One of the most important lab shows every year is here in Frederick, so we have been seeing our friend and her dogs for a while. My wife always hinted that we would take a “reject” and this year we finally got an offer. The text came while we were in the hotel room getting dressed for the funeral of my wife’s brother. It really felt like the universe was trying to ease the pain at least a bit.
Ennis is such a cuddlebug and a goofball and fits into our home very well. She and Doolin get along well and I think Doolin is a bit more active since she has been around. I don’t think there has been a day when she hasn’t made us laugh. Dogs are just good for the soul.
*As usual anyone wanting vineyard updates can go to Waving Free Vineyard. There are a couple of more chapters up on ripening, harvest, and primary fermentation.
Things are looking very good for this vintage.
One additional update: the 2017 Rocky Springs White that was in July’s pictures won first place in the dry white wine category at the Frederick County Fair.
***********
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
WereBear
Congrats on the wine win and the puppy acquisition!
Major Major Major Major
Wow, that’s so lovely!
I can’t wait until I decide to move out of big expensive cities and live somewhere where I can afford a garden. 5 years tops!
I’m off to Sevilla, if anybody has recommendations…
OzarkHillbilly
Indeed they are, especially Labs/Lab mixes I think. So patient, tolerant, and yes snugglebugs.
satby
Congratulations on your win at the fair and on your new family member. The gardens look good! I had mixed luck with zinnias this year, they started out great but tomatoes sprawled all over and overwhelmed them. But your pictures are inspiring me to try them again next year.
In my garden beds I have some massive bulb planting to do, so that’s the task for the next few weeks as the bulbs arrive. The back bed is all cleared out but I lost a lot of irises in the overgrowth, probably from rot. Also a couple of blueberry bushes didn’t survive. And the roses I planted in the front bed have also died in spite of my efforts to baby them, but the shrub roses are going strong along my fence, so I’m done trying roses. The weather is finally cool and less humid, so I’m enjoying puttering around the garden again.
Cermet
On the bright side, I’m finishing the construction of the observatory on my roof, today – just have left to put in the upper railings and last floor panels and its finished. Later, I’ll need to add the telescope isolation mounting stand but that is minor and can wait. The structure will support the existing scopes – just that the independent stand is vibration isolated so that will be required for planetary observations.
Patricia Kayden
Ennis and Doolin are the cutest dogs! Hope Doolin hangs around for many more years.,
Mary G
I love zinnias, but haven’t grown them since we had the bad drought. They need a lot of water, but they’re so cheerful.
That is a great portrait of Doolin. He and Ennis both look like good dogs.
OzarkHillbilly
OT but not political: 70-year-old female cyclist becomes oldest ever on Bolivia’s ‘Death Road’ race
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ? ??
rikyrah
Beautiful pictures ?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Kitten update:
They mostly have the run of the house now. The Vorwiggles are at the stage of “Who are you and what are you doing in my favorite sleeping spot? Oh, yeah, you.” We caught Miles joining in the morning run for a bit; he’s decided that having them around might be a good thing for when his brother doesn’t want to play.
They’ve discovered that the downstairs is a circular track. They don’t have to veer far off of it to get onto the cat trees, so there’s some parkour added into the route.
Pixel is more of a resource guarder by nature. He spent much of his first year at a communal rescue, and he’s slower to warm up to possible competition for the food and litter boxes. Their distaste for seafood is helping here; he loves it. There have been “We’ll sit about a yard about and wash while pointedly ignoring each other” encounters that didn’t end in hissing and growls, so progress.
rikyrah
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Awe . Send more pictures ??
Sally
@Major Major Major Major: You must go to the barber!
JPL
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Sweet and as rikyrah said send more pictures.
raven
We’re a week out from the Boolebark doggie parade and my wife has been working her ass off even thought she said she was going to take a reduced role this year. They did a per calendar ala BJ and it’s nice with a goat, chickens, snake and a horse! The cover pup will be 20 this year so the thought it fitting to feature Floppy!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Floppy looks fit as a fiddle there.
NotMax
Tech blech.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax:
Are they sure about this? The story I read said they were capable of detecting pedestrians, so much so that they did in fact speed up in order to insure a hit.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
//
WereBear
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Parkour always added!
I consider cat trees a must-have.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear:
Much easier than trying to grow cats from plants.
OzarkHillbilly
Popehat has been remiss and decided to do a series of “getting yelled at by judges” stories. I am laughing my ass off with tears running down my face.
/6 Dude elected to contest the violation so I had to prove it up at a brief hearing. Subpoenaed the drug testing clerk. Claim was that defendant used a fake weenie filled with someone else’s urine to try to defeat the test.
/7 (At this time they had you pee in a cup with someone standing sort of behind you to monitor you.)
/8 So the judge takes the bench and immediately intones forcefully “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?” This is not an auspicious beginning, I thought.
/9 “MR. FED,” said the judge, whose speaking voice was somewhat forceful. He also couldn’t remember AUSA names and often called us Mr. or Ms. Fed, which led to one of my first online handles.
“MR. FED, HOW EXACTLY DID THIS WORK? THIS FAKE GENITALIA?”
/10 There was no law school class about this precise situation, I thought.
MomSense
The gardens and the pups are wonderful., Kim. Congrats on the wine.
Last night I went to a dinner party at the home of some friends who have a lot of Bernese Mountain
dogs. Nothing quite so good for the soul as playing with a bunch of lovable dogs all vying for skritches.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Tricky dicky, indeed.
;)
MomSense
@raven:
My friend who moved to Athens is planning to be there with her pup and family.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: /3 Judge Nameless is not exactly liberal or conservative, but during trial, can be very tough on defense lawyers in front of the jury. That’s not necessarily a good thing for a prosecutor. Jurors can develop a sense that it’s not a fair fight and become sympathetic.
/4 [It is, of course, manifestly NOT a fair fight, but I was like 12 and didn’t grasp this fully yet.]
/5 Anyway, in the course of this somewhat idiot-proof trial Judge Nameless was yelling at the DFPD quite a bit, and she was somewhat flustered, and I saw that the jurors were looking dewy-eyed and sympathetic towards her and the youthful defendant.
/6 They could nullify this and NG the case just because the judge is being a cad, I thought. I had heard this happened sometimes.
I concluded there was only one sensible course of action.
I had to get Judge Nameless to yell at me as much, or preferably more, than at the DFPD.
/7 This turned out to be somewhat easier than I anticipated.
In fact, in all humility, I think it would be fair to say I had rather a knack for it.
8 What did I do? I interrupted my own witnesses. I talked from a seated position. (A no-no in federal court.) I called Judge Nameless “judge” rather than “Your Honor.” (ditto). I stepped into the well – the space in front of the bench and between the lawyer’s tables.
/9 Judge Nameless was soon magenta with rage. I could still muster a young-kicked-puppy look and the jury was soon looking sympathetically at ME.
The DFPD came over to me during a break. “I know what you’re doing,” she hissed.
And SHE started to step it up more.
/10 It was at this point that things arguably went somewhat off the rails.
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly: The lab show in Frederick gets over a thousand entries and every one of them are goofballs. It’s a pretty amazing scene. It is impossible to not smile and laugh with labs around
OzarkHillbilly
Simone Biles gets two more skills named after her at gymnastics worlds
Her performance.
PAM Dirac
@MomSense: When we picked Ennis up she was in a house with 12 other labs. (The big room with all the custom made crates has big screen TV, piped in music, and all kind of other luxuries). The whole gang was let out to play in a big yard. My wife sat down and was soon covered in labs climbing over her and other dogs to get their skritches. She was in heaven.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac: Boneheads indeed. My Willie helped raise my sons. The things those boys did to him… Never a growl or yelp or whine, just a look to make sure they were OK.
PAM Dirac
@satby: We are eyeing the bulb catalogs, but a bit wary of getting carried away.
JPL
@PAM Dirac: Ennis is a sweetie.
Raven
@MomSense: Oh great! The weather looks good. Do they live in the Boulevard neighborhood? Bodhi is going as, well, The Bohdisattva and the cart will be a play on the Steely Song. I couldn’t find a Countdown to Ecstasy shirt so I have a Can’t. Buy a Thrill.
eclare
Great pictures, and congratulations on the new family member!
PAM Dirac
@Cermet: Setting up my telescope is one retirement project I haven’t quite gotten to yet. I do photometry and I have been able to capture some exoplanet transits, but dragging everything out and setting up is quite the pain so I’ve been thinking about how to get a more permanent set up. Hope your setup works well for you.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac: Get carried away? Moi? Why I never...
chopper
@OzarkHillbilly:
i was gonna say, maybe they had the switch accidentally set on ‘american driver’. “my god, morty, when you put the dummy on a bicycle the car actually speeds up!”
JPL
Anne, Thank you for posting the Sunday morning garden chat. After such a long week, it’s a welcome respite. It’s finally cooled down here so I plan on doing some garden bed cleanup.
Jeffro
SNL’s cold open last night had all the rats abandoning ship, leaving Pence holding the bag.
Stephen Miller was portrayed as a whispering cobra in a basket. I can’t even… =)
Amir Khalid
Doolin looks like a sweet old guy. Nice to hear that having a younger dog around has added some spring to his step.
There’s an English Premier League match today whose result no football pundit can predict: Newcastle United vs. Manchester United. On their dreadful current form, one would expect both teams to lose.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Everything else too, but yes, most especially the Garden chat. It is nice to look at beautiful creations of god and man and discuss things other than a broken jar of rotten marmalade.
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly: Well there’s nothing to do in the vineyard til spring, so a couple thousands bulbs will just be filling up some time, right?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: I was just thinking that same thing. What a nice thread to wake up to. My blood pressure is not rising. Remember when we used to do this all the time? Trump ruins everything.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: No recommendations I can recall, but we loved Sevilla. Enjoy.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac: Right, and besides, if you didn’t spend all that extra money on bulbs you’d probably waste it all on wine, woman, and song.
PAM Dirac
@OzarkHillbilly:
I can tell you are an old married man as you used the singular :-). You are absolutely correct, there is only one woman in my life. Right dear? (She does lurk occasionally).
Gin & Tonic
So the masons begin the chimney project tomorrow, so yesterday and today are deck removal for me. To those one or two who participated in the discussion about replacement, it truns out that using one of these tools I was able to get the existing material off, only damaging two out of the 25 boards I had to remove. So I will not have to replace it all, and if it’s only one or two, I can easily improvise.
Some of the joists have to come off, too, but I’ll just cut through them and rebuild later with a “sandwich” of 2×6 and some bolts. Not very worried about that. But I doubt I’ll have time to do that before winter.
Weather looks crappy most of the week – I don’t know to what extent that’ll slow the guys down, but this will be a 2-week job in the best of circumstances.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac:
You caught that, eh? Don’t worry, your secrets are safe with me. ;-)
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: Huh, rather ingenious. Wish they’d made them when I was still working. Would have saved my back and shoulders a lot of grief.
debbie
I’d forgotten how much I liked zinnias. My parents had tons of them, but until a couple years ago when a neighbor planted lots of them along her alley, I hadn’t given them a thought. The colors are beautiful and haven’t seemed to suffer surrounded by cement on hot summer days.
germy
Always good to see a story about a hero cat:
https://www.wbir.com/article/news/shelter-cat-saves-claiborne-co-man-from-venomous-copperhead-snake-inside-home/51-d86fc4fc-085d-4844-bc0e-36f3991acb53
satby
@PAM Dirac: @PAM Dirac: Here’s the best bulbs at the best prices I’ve found. Most of my bulbs come from there, but this year I fell in love with this one at another site. I do mostly daffodils because critters don’t eat them. And I am slowly naturalizing with squill and Glory of the Snow on the shady side of my front lawn, because they’re done by the time the grass needs the first mow in the spring.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
Wow, memories —
One of the first Judges I practiced before in Miami called us (the two public defenders), “Mr. And Mrs. P.D.”. Great Judge. Later indicted for taking bribes….
PAM Dirac
@satby: Thanks for those tips. Looks like some good stuff.
OzarkHillbilly
@germy: Sheeit…. Miss Kitty, Breaker of Chains, the Unburnt, Killer of Copperheads and Queen of the Ozarks took care of one in our bedroom a couple years ago. I even bragged about it here.
She’s a pretty good mouser, too.
Immanentize
Pam D. Great garden shots. Even better pup pics.
Zinnias — I love them, but they are always getting powdery mildew up here near Boston. I have done quit ’em.
House got painted. Yay! I had some ice damning five years back which really tore through the top clapboards. Now, all nice new cedar 10″ wherever it was needed (about 180 LF). It really looks so clean and crisp, greatly improving my mood every day I walk home from the train.
My two tomato plants are still putting out big beautiful Rutgers. Just enough this year for me and the Immp, but no extras for sauce making, I fear. I solarized my garden all summer (waiting for the painters who showed up mid-September). I am hoping I managed to kill the pernicious snids, nematodes and wilt.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Yep. Over the years, I have had some entertaining moments in court watching other people and their lawyers go thru what I was hoping to avoid. I have to admit that this:
made me think of you: “I wonder if Immanentize covers this in class?”
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
I thought her name included “Storm Crow?” or somesuch.
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I considered it, but Title IX and all….
ETA. Never underestimate the creativity of an addict on probation.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: In all likelihood, her heraldry probably changes every time I state them because I can’t remember them correctly at all.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:
That tool is cool. And saved you boodles of bucks on decking to boot. Congrats!
Immanentize
@satby:
One more year trying these roses things myself….
Then I sweat I will quit them too!
PAM Dirac
@Immanentize:
Yes, I’ve noticed that. Since I have a vineyard I have a pretty large arsenal of anti-fungals so I am prepared. In the past I’ve sprayed some of the ornamentals with leftovers from a vineyard spray, but next year I am planning to work out a dedicated spray program just for the ornamentals.
Immanentize
@PAM Dirac:
By the way, I don’t think you can really brag about your dry white (my favorite) until this Judge has an opportunity to weigh in…. Shall I forward information where the case for judging ought to be sent?
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: It was dear wife who found it, so I can’t take the credit. Worked like a charm, though.
PAM Dirac
@Immanentize:
Too late for the 2017, it is all gone. I have two whites from 2019 that I think will be even better, so make an excuse for being the the Frederick area sometime next summer or fall.
Immanentize
@PAM Dirac:
That sounds like a lovely reason for a nice trip.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Or a union carpenter trying to pass his piss test.
OzarkHillbilly
@PAM Dirac: Checks calendar….
debbie
I hope Momsense had her radio on and heard this lovely piece.
debbie
@debbie:
Lovely, as in evocative of a place. Larch Hanson reminds of Verlyn Klinkenborg’s essays.
MomSense
@Raven:
I’m not sure where they live. When she told me where she was moving I told her about it and last time she emailed she said she was going because they are crazy about their dog and wanting to meet people.
I can’t wait to see photos of you and your pups!
Last night I saw some photos of my friends’ Bernese Mountajn Dogs from a Christmas parade. They were pulling a cart with a Santa and a tree and they were wearing bells and antlers.
germy
R.I.P. Ginger Baker!
satby
@germy: wow, he was 80?!?