Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ukey and Kenzie spent their first week of summer vacation at our house as they always do.  It was far too rainy this year to do everything we had hoped to do but we did manage to do quite a bit and we had fun.  We even got quite a bit accomplished with some new additions to the backyard due to the help of Lukey and Kenzie! Lukey helped me assemble this new pergola.  We've always had some umbrellas to shade ourselves from the sun but the big umbrellas were problematic in a number of ways.  The wind would grab them and they would break as they slammed to the ground.  Replacing them every few years was getting expensive so it was time to look for another option.  I was tired of spending money on umbrellas that, really, were less than ideal anyway.   I found this pergola at Wayfair and it was 40% off.  I also found a decent outdoor sectional couch with a coffee table.  I saved both and then showed Sheila...  she liked the idea so we p...

I grabbed one of my oldest digital cameras yesterday to shoot a few flower photos.  This camera is from 2005 but it has a very unique and irreplaceable sensor that I like very much for certain things.  It does exceptionally well with flowers, landscapes and macro photography. For those interested, these were shot with my Olympus E-500 using my Olympus 70-300mm lens.  The sun was bright and this old camera has limited dynamic range from brightest whites to black shadows so this allowed me to easily get the busy daylight backgrounds to appear almost completely darkened.  The sensor in this camera produces lush colors and sharp images...

Today was Valentine's Day so I stopped to pick up a dozen roses, some candy and a card for Sheila as I was driving back home from another medical appointment.  Sheila seemed to be pleasantly surprised by the gifts when I arrived home.   My health has been so lousy with COVID since before Christmas that we sort of skipped Christmas, our anniversary, New Year's, and even a long weekend out of town with friends.  It has been a period of nothingness, overwhelming fatigue, pain and lousy health.   I had a medical appointment this morning while Sheila worked from home which provided me with an ideal opportunity to get a few things to show my love and appreciation for Sheila.  As I said, I believe she was pleasantly surprised and thankful! My health...  uggg...  COVID is a miserable, debilitating and highly contagious virus and, at this point, I seriously wonder whether I will ever get in front of it.  It has been over a year now of being well ...

S heila and I spent a good part of this past holiday weekend cleaning up the outside of the house.  The rain finally stopped for Labor Day weekend after an entire summer of daily rain and dark overcast skies.  We spent almost the entire summer indoors sheltered from the terrible weather. This past weekend, we washed all the windows, inside and out.  We cleaned screens.  I even cleaned mold, algae and mildew off one side of our house including the oil tank and gas tank.  The amount of moisture we've had this summer seemed to cover everything in filthy growth, some black, some green, some very crusty.  I also did some landscaping and Sheila did some gardening attending to our remaining flowers.  The gardens are still looking pretty good for this time of year even though they got very little sun through the summer! While I was cleaning windows on the back side of the house, I noticed that our neighbor's lawn is completely covered in leaves already!  ...

O ur flower gardens took a big hit with all the rain we've had and the lack of sunshine didn't help at all but, surprisingly, I've been able to keep most of the flowers alive.   I found that all the rain was flushing all the nutrients out of the soil in the gardens, window boxes, planters and flower pots.  Once I noticed that our flowers were wilting and dying, I realized that all the rain was probably flushing out all the nutrients from the soil so I started fertilizing the flowers daily rather than weekly.  Once the flowers started to look a bit more healthy, I cut back on fertilizer but I'm still doing it far more frequently than usual.  Of course, we're still getting more rain than usual too.   As I said, the lack of sun has been a problem too and, unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about that.  I suppose we can just make sure the flowers are getting everything else they need.   The other thing I didn't think about is that...