Happy long-weekend Saturday, everyone! Our weather is kind of like Bug's: overcast, hot,sticky. Not really nice. I too have given up on the gardens for the most part. I spent a goodly time in the middle of the night planning steps to take this fall to improve things for next year. I hope I can find a bale of peat moss this fall, to dig in to aid water retenetion next year. Everything here is fried. Next year is going to be different, by gum!!! Old kitty arrived at the breakfast table this morning with a robin. It was being held by the head and was flapping its wings and "running" with its feet. I picked up old kitty and she quite happily handed said snack to me, and I was able to release it safely on the wine deck. TCS refused his breakfast (true to his name,what else is new) and said he would never eat again and he would never touch Paws again either. He also supervised while I washed my hands. I must admit that I will be pleased at the beginning of school. I had a very hard time intersting TCS in anything this summer, although Programming School and the backyard pool were big hits. Grade five already! Most of my decision fatigue (what a great turn of phrase, by the way) relates to TCS. Syndrome diagnoses, medication options, school related stuff, nutrition ( a big one for a non eater) etc. etc. leave me feeling completely at sea. There are times when I look around and wonder how I got here. But things roll along day-by-day and I am lucky in comparison to many. Sorry for the whine! I managed to find a home for my ten year old double Hibiscus; I just have too many big plants to bring in! We have a great column in our local paper called Reuse?recycle. Here you can make an "offer" of something free, or make a "Request" for something free. I have used both and have been ecstatic with the result. The ads themselves are free also. The young girl who gave my Hibiscus a home was thrilled, and I was happy that I didn't have to chuck it out. Mr. Banana has usurped most of my other large greenery for now. Which makes me think of Deanne: FYI, Deanne, J.D. Robb has a new book out: "New York to Dallas". I think it was you who commented on the "Death" series. Today I am concentrating on one thing: food. Cleaning out fridge and freezer, making menus for the next couple of weeks, big shopping, pickling beets (the one thing that was hugely successful in my veggie garden) and making lime/mint jelly. Well, the pickles and jelly will likely be done next week; cooler and TCS will be at school while DH can still beon the golf course. Welcome back Chelone! and waves to all the rest of you! Cheers, Julie

It's so hot I'm outa here! I'm so tired of the heat keeping me indoors. I'm truly blessed to have a wonderful place to go. My father fell in love with the mountains of Southern Utah (above Cedar City). He planned to retire there. My mother was never thrilled with the idea of moving away from all her children and grandchildren. My Dad went ahead and built a beautiful home on a secluded mountain. My mom never did change her mind. It became the family vacation house. They enjoy spending time there, but most of time it's empty. I am tired of being cooped up in the house. Nothing in my garden is very happy. I've put every pot into the shade and my parents have agreed to water. Enough of these over 100F days! I'm going to escape for a while. Lisa

There is some great progress being made by so many of you this month, thanks for sharing! @cpartist don't give up! It's taken us two years to get to where we are from when we first bought our land. City and environmental planning seemed like it would never end, then one day we actually got to break ground. Our home exterior is almost done, the final masonry for the entrance is going up today then we are ready for soffits and fascia. We finally found a good carpenter who fixed the old ones mistakes and passed our framing inspection with flying colours. Although it took ripping down and rebuilding some interior walls, which felt like moving backwards, we are now confident it's done right. HVAC is complete and we just got started on plumbing and electrical. The process has been a bit slower than we originally anticipated because hubby has went from general contracting the job to doing a lot of it himself. That's what happens when you are a perfectionist architect who wants to oversee your design/want to keep the borrowing to a minimum. We are looking forward to making more progress on the interior and hope we can move in by Christmas with our new baby. It has been good keeping track of progress on our blog and seeing how far we have come when things feel like things aren't progressing as fast as we want www.casadivillani.blogspot.com

Update: 12-9-22 The Picea glauca (spring of 2021), spoken about in the last couple of posts, looked a little off with about 1-1/2ft. of top main leader broken off from the compacted snow load from both residences piling on top all winter then melting and settling down like an iceberg, taking the main leader with it. It's very narrow between our driveways so the snow gets piled pretty deep there. Early spring of 21, I noticed one of the top branches that were left began to 'curl' upward, like it wanted to take the place of the broken leader. I've seen this before with damaged leaders on my Hemlock, but this would be a first for white spruce. (eta: added picture taken 5-17-21 below). Anyways, I took a 24"L. steel rod, 3/8" dia. and tied one end several inches below the old break and bent the volunteer branch upward to the top of the steel rod and tied it there too in several places. This picture is from August 2021 so the new growth is already hardening off. It really looked better than expected. Removed the stake for winter '2021-22 but then the unexpected happened. By now my neighbor caught on to the idea that they could blow their snow on top of my little tree to aid in having enough place for them to put their snow. :-/ By mid-winter it looked a lot like the winter before and in my mind, I knew it was destined for disaster again in the following spring. So, some time in February 2022, I took the time to dig around the tree in hopes of preventing further damage. You can see the tree was showing signs of bending over with two feet of compacted, frozen snow resting at the top of the pile. The property line is the center of the utility pole and the neighbor only has about 3-4 feet from the line to the edge of their driveway, so they really have no business putting much snow at all on my side of the line. I think sometimes they have friends do their snow removal they don't have a clue to what's going on. I did tell her why I was doing this, when she saw me shoveling and asked what I was doing and hopefully educated her about snow loads crushing my tree. Anyways, crisis averted; the tree grew normally season of 2022. Here it is today 12-9. I'll have to keep an eye on it this winter and possibly a few more (not every year we have this much snow). Big storm forecast for Tue-Wed-Thurs. 12+" possible. Bring it on! :^)