Thanks Moc; photos, photos, photos.

This is what it looks like about a half-mile past my backyard this time of the year.

Jon

Jo, it was a pond dug out to be a water supply to flood a cranberry bog that was dug out, but never built. There is a path around the pond and the total trip is 1 1/2 miles, 3 times a day as Shasta demands. Nice except for the deer ticks which are horrible and dangerous because of Lime disease.

Jon

You
know how it is late in the summer.

==>> maybe in AL ... but i have had 3 nights below 32 ... thats called a freeze ...

the garden really doesnt care what the calendar says ...

great to hear from you ... great to read your prose ...

ken

I'm glad to hear you are still enjoying your garden. My Squash Casserole still looks perfect, thanks for touting it so highly! I love being enabled. Hope you are happy with your renovation.

Kathy

A lovely view through a hostaholic's eyes! Thanks for allowing me to come along with you on your twilight stroll---the next best thing to being there!

So glad to have you back on the forum! I've missed your input---your enthusiasm, your thoughts, your pictures. I am hoping that we'll be "seeing" you here at the forum more frequently now.

And this year I, too, purchased a Squash Casserole. I'll be thinking of you when I see it.

Thanks for sharing.

What variety of clematis are you growing?

bk

BKay, my most favorite is clematis florida sieboldiana, but that died and I have my name on a waiting list to replace it. Then of course I have jackmanii, which has lasted for years. It is in the container near Our Lady of Grace and blooms amidst the passion vines. I discovered a great source online for all sorts of clematis, and I created a whiskey barrel with 4 varieties which have yet to bloom. Until they bloom I won't go to the trouble of noting their names....but for you I could look for my order...although if they are not outstanding you probably would not be interested in knowing.

I've meant to also share a bit of local information with the Hosta Forum. It seems that growing hostas in Mobile is not exactly an unheard-of thing. My friends who have a nursery background grow them, and they tell me a neighbor of theirs has quite a few. These are all IN THE GROUND, and come back every year. Plus MY two neighbors, who have about two each--which they think sould be split every year or so. I try to head that conversation off at the pass, as it were...because I have no desire to split anything. I will, however, find them other hostas, and as my garden gets more crowded, PERHAPS give some of my duplicates...unless it be the Squash Casserole family, or some of my beloved fragrants....you can never be too thin nor have too many hostas!

However, I am moving pots around at this time, since the time has come to take out the two aged pecan trees which keep dropping limbs on my garden, and I know sooner or later one will take ME out with it. After the rains of the last few days, most leaves are fallen and the place is a MESS, but just the right time while the garden is in distress to wreak havoc with the trees. Then I can complete my remodel efforts by replacing the old wooden gates that the cement trucks and the dumpster essentially destroyed, and heal all the old compacted lawn issues. By next spring I expect to have all signs of change, all overgrowth of the shrubbery, back under control.

Yesterday was a significant day here. It maked the end of exactly ONE year since the remodel began. Essentially, it has been complete for a while. BUT, the carpenter called yesterday and asked if he could come today to add a shelf around the dining room, up high, which will house the LED rope lights for my romantic dimmable lighting for dining or watching TV. Yeah, I hung the TV on the wall of the dining room, and made it swivel so I could watch/listen while I cooked. The window seat is a most welcome addition, since I sure do not like to sit in a dining chair to watch TV. I gave away the big (to me 42 inches is big) TV and this one 32 inch is great in a 12 foot square dining room. My DH began the remodel saying he did not like a bar, but since the first night we've eaten there instead of at the table....so I made the table smaller and no complaints. Turns out he LOVES the bar. He also built me a garden bench which has quite a humorous story attached to its design and execution, and well worth the telling at another time. I failed to get the picture of its metamorphosis from his interpretations of what I said until it was actually complete....and it involved 5 90 lb bags of cement and holes three feet deep for a two-legged bench. Sigh....engineers can be so DIFFERENT from us "creative types."

LOL! LOL! LOL! "I failed to get the picture of its metamorphosis from his interpretations of what I said...." LOL! Priceless imaging! Cannot wait for the telling of that story! (Somehow my coffee maintained its path when I was swallowing...)

Mocc, I have been wondering how many of your hostas have matured this year? There must be many! Have missed looking at your pictures.

My Squash Casserole, and Jujen, had a terrific season their first go-round in my garden. I'll be waiting in great anticipation for their emergence in spring. Looks like you've enabled a number of us with SC.... and we are glad you did!

Hostas in the ground in Mobile! Well! That is promising, isn't it? Does that news entice you to plant more in the ground? Perhaps in the allee against the white stucco building (tea house?).

Which reminds me...how is the driveway bed coming along? I've followed some of your posts on Houzz re the Renos and found a photo of your home but it looks like an earlier one perhaps...because the driveway bed cannot be seen in it.

Jo, it was just about a lost season in the garden for me. The driveway bed caught holy hell from equipment and lumber and sawdust flying over it, and the neighbor cat making itself comfortable beneath Sum & Substance until it was near dormant. I lost Love Pat, Blue Angel, Grand Prize, Winter Snow, Fragrant Queen, Alabama Gold, and I think Patriot and Minuteman. Sugar Daddy kept struggling because I had two planted together, but I think it went dormant during the drought we had, broken this week by the left over rains attending the big Mexican hurricane, Patricia. My undivided attention was on the details of my kitchen, last part of the remodel to be done, and the cabinetmaker disappeared, I think he had other "affairs" on his mind, which is what it looked like to me. So what he did not finish I am living with today. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow and must give up control or drive yourself crazy. I gave myself to this once-in-a-lifetime remodel experience whole heartedly. As a matter of fact, I am more adaptable to change than is DH, who goes berserk when things are not the same same same forever forever. I adore change, find it exhilarating, an opportunity not a threat, never like to drive the same route to the store, nor go to the same place to eat, hate the same meal the same night each week, don't do the laundry the same day each week, and I might as well put wheels on my furniture to make it easier to move, but DH would nail every piece to the floor so it could NEVER move. He doesn't like different color SHEETS ON THE BED. He follows recipes to the letter, and his dishes turn out the way the chef intended them. I, on the other hand, read the recipe for the GIST of it, and then ad lib. I have some spectacular failures, but also some pleasant surprises too. So where was this going? I put the garden on autopilot for the duration. It held up better than you might imagine, with supplemental watering regularly. But the falling pecan tree limbs made it difficult to keep it photo worthy.

Those damn pecan trees...which will be history soon!

It's an understatement alright that you were "otherwise engaged" and how difficult, if not near-impossible to find some solace in your garden during those hellish days and months! Should have sent a posse out for the errant cabinetmaker.... what a nerve some people have...how do they sleep nights?...... well....let's leave that ..... ;-).

Aaahhh, opposites attract, don't they? lol. Bill's lucky to have you! I'm more like you...in so many ways. You just have to look at my gardens and you'll understand the personality behind it! Constant change! lol!

I am disheartened to read about your hosta losses and I hope next spring brings a revitalization in every sense of the word, Mocc. Hang in there and stick around - it is so good to hear from you! Sounds like you had quite a year yet you still manage to infuse some humour in your writing/telling that speaks to your own resilience. Gotta admire that! :)

just for you....a pic of Squash Casserole two weeks after I brought her home :). She sure spread her wings fine after that!