Yes, we did miss you and now we envy you!! lol. You just took my hubby's dream trip and I'm glad it was so wonderful for you. Which port did you sail from and did you book through a local agency? We may get to go one day. Waiting for pictures. Ginny

I built 2 raised beds and filled them up with dirt this spring. One was for veggies, and the other was an extension of my partly shaded flower bed. I was late starting my tomato seeds and then the near triple digit heat in May hit. I've picked one grape tomato so far this year. The rest were split or stolen. I had 2 large green tomatoes, and yesterday I noticed that the squirrels must have twisted them off the vine and carried them away. My squash produced a few blooms and then got scorched to death. I planted potatoes for the first time, and I did have a pretty good harvest. I also picked a few cucumbers. My cannas and elephant ears never did come up this year. I usually cut them off after the first freeze, but I didn't last year. My guess is water/snow/ice collected in the stalks and turned the roots into mush. It seems I remember it got colder last winter than it has in many years as well. I planted a bunch of lily, iris, and canna bulbs in the new raised bed. Maybe 4 lilies came up. I think the squirrels dug up the cannas. I'm too depressed to even try to see what happened to the irises. After languishing for a few years, it looks like the gophers finally killed off my rose bush. It has been a great year for them. They've been in my flower beds and another hosta literally disappears each night. They've been celebrating in my fescue lawn as well. I've been on vacation this week, cleaning up and assessing the damage in the early morning hours. By 8 a.m., my shirt is already sticking to me. I planted a couple of knock-out roses I got a good deal on. I wrapped poultry netting around the roots and flooded all the gopher tunnels I could find. I purchased about $35 of starter plants and seeds on eBay just now trying to replace some of what I lost. They'll have to be babied the rest of the year and maybe grown in containers and overwintered inside. It can't stay this hot forever, can it?

Oh My! Started?...some people have started? That's almost depressing to me. (only kidding...I think) I can have a hard time with Christmas. It's difficult for me to live up to my own expectations...or what others expectations of Christmas are. It's easy for me to feel like a failure. Can you tell...I'm feeling like that right now? The house is not decorated, I have no baking done, only a few little gifts are bought. It feels like Christmas is sneeking up on me...again! But how can that happen...It's not like it's a SURPRISE...it's been on the calender for OVER A YEAR! Oh Well...it will be fine. Christmas will happen, with or without me being ready...it happens all the time! sooey

We've had rain the last three days which is typical for this time of year and it didn't take long to cool off. We're back to long pants and jackets and umbrellas. I was tempted to turn on the furnace but refuse to do so until Thanksgiving. (Canadian which is second monday of October) But right now it is clearing up, just in time for rain tomorrow and we'll be seesawing back and forth like this for the next month.