Morning all, Well my computer is finally fixed! Woohoo! Doug is a genius. I had some type of nasty virus/malware/spyware/Trojan.. something that completely gummed up the works. I couldnt keep a browser window open for longer than a minute and they it would randomly close, couldnt open aol and in general, nothing on line was working. Anyway, Doug spend the better part of 24 hours or so eliminating the damned things. They seemed to propagate themselves because hed get rid of one thing and then another two would show up. What a pain in the neck. I have no idea how I picked anything up because I almost never download anything off the internet and only when Ive checked out the source. Anyhow, it appears that my computer is fixed and thats a wonderful thing. The gardens are really going into their late summer foliage die off which makes me a bit crazy. I cant keep up with it. I just love daylilies but I wish they didnt look so bedraggled this time of the year. LOL I also had some powdery mildew explode on the lilac, heliopsis and a couple dahlias practically overnight. Id run out of my Garden Safe fungicide so Ive got to get to the store today and get something to treat this or its going to get really out of control. Oh dear V. I just hate those hornworms! They are so huge theyre nasty and give me the willies. I hope your peppers will be OK. I had a similar but different evidence of pests in the house yesterday. I had some sawdust appear under the light fixture over the kitchen sink. I didnt think much of it but wiped it down. When it showed up again I knew there was something chewing behind there. Well, midway though the day I walked through the kitchen and had a little mouse run over my toes. Euuuuuwwwww!!!!! It ran like h e l down the cellar stairs then hid behind the bookcase at the foot of the stairs. I told Doug about the situation and he ran outside and got the cat. I said to him, it doesnt work that way, you dont just put the cat in the house and hell find and get the mouse. Well, Mr. Rahjii, made a liar out of me. Within ten minutes he started sniffing at the base of the bookcase (I thought the mouse would have been long gone) so I moved it out and the cat pounced and ran up the stairs with a mouse in its mouth. He seriously caught that rodent in less than a second after I moved the bookcase. Incredible! Well, he proceeded to bring the mouse into the dining room and drop it to play with it there and it immediately ran under the sofa. Doug moved the sofa and Rahjii caught it again, brought it into the middle of the room and dropped it again. We finally caught the thing in a colander relocated it to the great outdoors. What a drama. Kathy, your daylilies are nestled comfortably in my holding bed here and theyd even put out some lovely new roots into that newspaper youd packed them in. They are amazing plants. ~~ Love those agaves! ~~ Ill have to grab some photos of my brugs for you. They are finally starting to bloom and it looks like they will be smothered with flowers in a couple days. Mary, how lovely to hear from you. It sounds like you had a terrific visit with Fuquan. Thats just marvelous. It seems that your summer vacation was just a whirlwind of activities. How are the gardens doing? Cindy, so sorry for the continued heat and drought you are dealing with. I use oscillating sprinklers here too. Ive used soaker hoses in the past but they dont uniformly wet down the borders and then I have to hand water the dry spaces and other problems. Then Ive dealt with the clogging problems too so I just do overhead watering. Its a lot more even and if done in the early morning or evening there isnt so much of an evaporation problem. ~~ Thanks much, so happy you liked the pictures. Martie, great score on that Bonfire. Ive got three of them and I read on the begonia forum that they overwinter well! How cool is that? ~~ Marvelous that youve got buds on your camellia. Bug, it sounds and looks like you had a terrific vacation. That wedding looks like it was fun and interesting. Brenda, you are absolutely a scream! I love it that you went out and bought a television with DVD player. So glad your Princess Weekend was a great time. Woody that photograph with the Disco Belle hibiscus with the Bacopa is lovely! It makes a beautiful combination. Michelle, I agree with you 100% about the joy the gardens bring. I love it that I go to a different place in my mind when gardening. ~~ Thanks so much, so happy you liked the photos. Yes, that is a four year old Sunray fuchsia in that photo. Its an extraordinary specimen and I just love it. Eden, lovely news for your family! OKie dokie, Ive got to get my day started. Have a good one everybody! Deanne

Sorry, David, it's hard to take a picture of myself, LOL, and I was so busy in the kitchen I didn't even think to take a picture of Mother! Gina, that is indeed a "spray on" tan. You know she didn't get that tan in Michigan in May, it's 51F and raining right now, not much beach time. :-) RR, it was a bit crazy but it all came together in the end, although I only got out of the kitchen long enough to watch the cake cutting, the bouquet and garter toss and I had ONE dance with the groom. Other than that, it was all cooking, serving and cleaning up. Ah well, it kept me out of trouble and it was Ashley's party, not mine. She was happy, so it's all good! David, I do have a long weekend and I think maybe I'll make Elery take me out for dinner for my birthday. I'm sure not baking a cake... Oh, and for those who wanted a picture of Bruvver, before he ate cake and lasagna and had punch and ate too much candy from the candy buffet and threw up, while his shirt was still white, here's Bruvver: Annie Annie

Stupid I know but I just breathed a huge sigh of relief! My guys came to work today said their hello's and got right after it. Called me in the kitchen to show me how they had fixed the drywall that was bowed behind sink and is now flush and level with cabinets installed. Great! Close to templating! Woo hoo! The head guy says what's the blue tape on the doors? I said "I see there is another ding in the cabinet here now from the work on Friday. These dings are really bothering me and I don't want any dings in my new cabinets. I said had it been down low or inconspicuous maybe it would be ok but I need these doors replaced." He said OK. I kept going with my spiel saying "I'm happy to help do what I can to protect the others going forward" Wait what did he just say?! He said OK! That was easy! He then says no problem. I want you to be happy. :) I smile he smiles even tho he probably wants to kill me ;) Geez, I'm really going to be a nervous wreck when counter tops go in. Just thought I'd share for anyone else going thru the same issue. Hope this helps.

Nancy, I hope your nice weather lasted. I wasn't watching the weather much last week other than trying to keep an eye on our own. Tim said something to me yesterday that reminded me what a tough summer it has been here. He said he couldn't think of any community in our county having two such awful losses of members in such a short time, and after I thought about it a while, I think he is right. We are in a little unincorporated rural to semi-rural area of Love County in between the towns of Marietta and Thackerville, and our neighbor who was the lineman was the second tragic loss of a community member here in the last couple of months. The first was a gentleman who perished in a fire after the gasoline tanker truck he was driving was cut off in traffic, overturned and burned. Two horrible losses suffered by two families in such a short time in such a small community as ours....it is unfathomable. The first was one of those things that your brain refuses to believe when it hears it, and then the second one was exactly the same.....too horrific to be real. I think all of us here are just so done with 2018 and trying to remain positive and look ahead to what hopefully will be a better year in 2019. I wonder if your burnweed will be burnweed? I still think when Jason IDs a plant, you can take his ID as gospel. I don't think I've ever seen it here, but y'all have such different soils and different climate up there in some ways that it is like we are in a whole different country----ha ha, at least you are in the Green Country and we're in the Mostly Brown Country. That would be funnier were it not so true. Larry, In August of any year, I still think it is better to be too wet than to be too dry. We had good rainfall last week, but the dry ground slurped it right up. Well, at least the rain did fall. Since you came back and posted a photo of your little Yorkie (he is so adorable!), I guess you and the tractor survived the mud and are not stuck out there in it. Jennifer, I didn't try Vick's on the feet because we didn't have any and I wasn't going to go anywhere for any reason. I am starting to feel better but it was a rough week, and I think the recovery is going slowly. I am bored, but that's a good sign, because I don't start feeling bored until I start feeling better. It sounds like you had a really fun day babysitting that six year old. I bet she was disappointed to learn she was going somewhere else the next day! There will be time later to catch up on outdoor work. Just take care of yourself. Nancy, Heavy rainfall in August is such a gift that you just have to get over the pouting, you know! My grandmother always admonished us to never look a gift horse in the mouth. If I whine about rain in August I know what will happen----the following August we won't get any rain at all. So, I hope you got the pouting and all out of your system and can appreciate the gift that August rainfall truly is. Sometimes when we say we are bored, I really think that what we mean is that we aren't able, for whatever reason, to do the things we really want to do. Sometimes I'll be whining to myself that I'm bored, but it isn't because there aren't things to do---they just aren't the things I want to do. Because of that, I don't do them and just sit and say that I am bored. Your 90 degrees sounds nice to me (unless the heat index was, like, 99 or 100). We were 97 on Friday and 96 yesterday. I think today is supposed to be closer to your 90, but I guess I haven't looked at the forecast in a couple of days so I'm not sure. Larry, Hercules is so precious. I love Yorkies but we always have medium to big dogs. I'd have a Yorkie in a heartbeat though. It is hard to watch our furbabies get old and sick. We have been down that road with so many dogs over the years, and our black lab mix, Jet, who is now 13, has chronic kidney disease and, according to the vet, is in the final months of his life. He is on medication and a special prescription diet and I try to treasure every day we have left with him because there likely won't be too many more of them. He was never supposed to be ours. Born to a stray dog, Honey, who followed me home when I was walking our other dogs, he was one of a litter of four. Tim's best friend picked out two of them, Jet and Duke, to adopt as his own when they were only two days old. He got the pick of the litter and we promised Ken we'd reserve them for him and not give them away to anyone else once they were big enough to leave their mother. The following week, Ken was diagnosed with a glioblastoma brain tumor. Again, we promised him we'd keep his two puppies with us until his treatments were done and he was ready to bring them home to his ranch. Sadly, his cancer progressed quickly. Diagnosed in late March or early April, he was gone before the end of May. By then, we were too attached to "Ken's dogs" to let them go, so we kept them. His wife didn't want them, as she felt she couldn't cope with two new dogs while coping with his death and trying to keep the ranch running full time while also working full time in Dallas. We understood and were happy to keep Jet and Duke ourselves. Duke left us three years ago and I've been all too aware ever since then that Jet's time is coming too. It is hard. I wish they aged at the same rate as we do, but they don't. As hard as it is to lose our furbabies, I have accepted that we just have to endure the pain of losing them----it is the price we pay for having had such wonderful pet companions to share our lives. Dawn