Friday funny

One of the other teachers comes into preschool to do art projects when her own students are having a special class like PE or music. The red paper with the black C for cat was the example, but it was not shown to the preschoolers. 

They were given verbal directions.

Maybe that's how Salvador Dali got his start...

*    *    *

The kids were told to color three apples: one red, one yellow, and one green. I received several which were varying shades of red/orange (okay), very pink (hmm), and most definitely blue (BLUE!) 

One of our students who didn't use red, yellow, or green looked right at me as I assessed her blue, purple, and magenta apples and asked, without batting an eye, "isn't that hilarious?"

*   *   *

Take your teacher friends out for ice cream and let them tell tales. You'll be hard pressed to hear funnier stories. Have a good weekend, everyone!

 

Labor Day weekend, indeed

 Here's to all of you who don't know how to sit down and relax with a little umbrella drink over Labor Day weekend. We are right there with you. The Tuesday before we had a big storm including wind gusts up to 70 mph. Now, all you coastal people, I know, you're used to such winds. We are not. Neither are our trees. Hence the multiple day clean-up. The very top of one of our locust trees snapped off, taking multiple pine boughs down along the way. Two of the neighbors' trees went down, one along our property line. Generally just a mess. We have just about every type of tree that drops something. I think we are missing pear, obviously citrus and coconut, and hickory. We have small apples (from our sole remaining apple tree- we inherited four when we moved in), black walnuts, pinecones, cherries, acorns, pine needles, leaves, you name it. Locusts send down merry flurries of tiny leaves... and nasty twigs full of thorns. Osage oranges are also slyly thorny in addition to dropping those spider-repelling balls. Some of us like to go barefoot, but it is pretty darn treacherous to do out back, especially!

We initially felt really bad for the crews around town who were slated to pick up the piles until we saw how smart they were about it- one has the dump truck and the other has some big thing with "jaws" that open sideways so it scoops up entire piles to dump. Good thing, because I have gotten a handful that had something sharp in it and I rate it with absolutely no stars- would not recommend!

An autumn tradition

 We go for the apples, for the cider, for the choose your own pumpkins, and for fun photos in the Edith Ann chair, haha!

End of summer visitors

For those of you reaching for the pumpkin spice, you can just cut that out. Until next Sunday night, it is still officially summer. 

I was stealthy and got close to a groundhog who had his back to me, contentedly munching away on our apples out back. He wasn't quite sure what to do when he did figure out I was there, haha!

Pap came with his dog, Precious, to celebrate his 76th birthday. We love having both of them around. Pap gets into mischief with Dada while Precious helps wear Bosley out. Everybody wins! Except Pap, who then ends up in the doghouse...

I told Aunt Chris we were borrowing her monsoon. We received warnings on our home phone and cell phones about "severe weather alert" and "severe thunderstorms in your area" and sure enough, it came down pretty hard for about two minutes. 

Then the sun showed up again and I scurried outside because I just knew there'd be a great chance for a rainbow, and I was right! Woohoo!

And then it rained some more.

We decided to take off with an idea our friends Randy and Jess had success from and started Friday Night Games to kick off the fall season for small groups. We want to be a fun, safe place for kids of all ages to hang out, especially the ones who aren't interested in sitting through football games. Two families came over to play with us so we got some Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan action along with snacks and fellowship. I should have taken pictures...

Anyway, bring your favorite games to Lalaith Havens at 6:30 on Friday nights. Or you can play some of ours. Or both. Just come play with us!

Then the almost full moon came out in all its gorgeousness.

Sunday we had to almost call the fire department over Pap's candles...

We had a chuckle over Pap being the one on the smartphone while both the boys were reading actual books. Don't despair for those Generation Z kids; they're better than you hear.

Happy birthday, Pap! We're glad you came to see us and that you're home safe, too. 

Everybody enjoy your last few days of summer!

"How does your garden grow?"

Uh, well, ours is a complete disaster. Thanks for asking. 

I guess we had other things going on this summer. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Here is our garden jungle: 

I can hear Ray Stevens in my head, "embarrassing." So let's have a closer look at things.

Here are the tomatoes:

We planted Cherokee Purples and either Big Boys or Beefsteaks, but I haven't seen anything other than teeny cherry ones come up...

The strawberries are still doing their thing:

And we have a humungous basil:

The borage I planted for the bees is hanging in there:

Heh. That would be the purply blue flowers in that mess. As ever, you can click on any photo to have it open in a more eyeball-friendly page to better investigate.

I have no idea what these adorable yellow flowers are, but they have carroty-looking tops/stems so I purposely didn't weed them as I wanted to see what would happen. Anyone have a name for them?

Cilantro has gone all to coriander:

Butterflies are visiting the apple trees:

Spiders are everywhere:

This particular one is either brave or crazy, having built a web just outside our back door. I can't tell you how many times I've opened the door just a few inches to holler out to the boys and/or the dog, remembered the spider too late, and have had to apologize. It's a good thing I have no hair, or this poor thing would have to redo the web several times a day. And it's right at face height, so it's usually, *door opens, I take a big breath to begin to holler, pull head back a little bit as spider takes cover, apologize to spider, commence hollering while keeping door as closed as possible lest any bugs make it past the web and into the house, slam door shut* The spider is doing a good job as I've only seen one stink bug make it in so far...

The zinnias and marigolds did well! I even saw a hummingbird enjoying the zinnias.

And this, my friends, was lettuce in its former life:

The back "garden" was overtaken by the ghosts of last year's veggies. Apparently we'd tossed zucchini out to die and they reincarnated, took over, and had to be chopped back by PaPa during his last visit:

We did get a few zucchini out of the deal except they were so huge by the time we found them that they were really seedy and not much fun. I guess that's why Aldi sells little skinny ones, haha.

And it's almost apple season already! Eeeep!

Dada bought some fun shades for the deck this summer, which give a whole new resort-ish feel to the place:

Yes, that would be Virginia Creeper, creeper-ing along. There's also poison ivy in there, which all the menfolk currently have as they just can't stay away from machetes and chopping vine-covered branches and oy vey...

And my lovely, tough, good thing they take care of themselves hostas. Hosta? Hmm.

Those poor guys were completely dug up and tossed aside when the geothermal install happened. The guys doing the digging asked what they were and then shrugged, "well, they'll probably figure out how to come back." And they did! Yay!

I sure hope nobody was depending on us for tomatoes (unless they're cherry ones) or cucumbers or anything this year. None of my cucumbers tasted like anything much, and I can't tell if it was just because of chemo affecting taste buds or if it was the ridiculous wet spell followed by months of hot and dry without being watered or what, and nobody else in my family eats them to compare notes with. If nothing else, we helped birds and bees and butterflies, which is half the fun anyway. Uh, I mean, sorry I didn't get out there to weed very much, honey...

Visions from yesterday

If you dislike bugs, feel free to skip down to the tree photo and pick up the conversation there. 

I spotted this fascinating guy on the railing of the deck out back yesterday during my lunch. I was afraid to get too close as I had no idea what kind of bug he was and I didn't want to be attacked. The yellowjackets swarming around all our fallen apples and walnuts were bad enough. 

He didn't move when I poked him with the tip of my knife, so I assumed he was dead and turned him around to get a better look. I texted Dada who proclaimed, "it's a flying triceratops!"

I think he might be right.

He's really cool looking, though, from that spiky armor to the long probiscous that was wrapped around his leg. He looks like he sat on a stink bug (more power to ya, buddy). He's about two inches long and I've never seen one like that around here before. Any ideas, internet?

And then there are our trees. I think I've mentioned previously how we have just about every kind of tree which can make a mess here on the property. We have apple trees, black walnut trees (below), pine trees which are tossing both pinecones and needles down at us, Buckeye trees, locust trees that pitch sharp and thorny branches down as well as a bajillion tiny leaves that stick to the dogs until they're inside, and even one Osage orange tree that launches those spider-repelling balls that are green and wrinkly and stinky and don't ever let your dog eat them unless you're trying to induce vomiting and even then I wouldn't recommend them... 

Look at all those walnuts! And we've already picked up a gajillion! Anyone want black walnuts? You may come claim as many as you're willing to carry away! Help yourself!

Somebody's been eating apples

I know, I know. Not a vacation post or a now-we're-into-our-school-routine post, but another flora post? Come on!

So we took a wander around the property after the storm(s)* and found this:

There were also plenty of leaves that had been munched. We decided we'd be detectives and investigate further. Here's who we found:

Will the guilty party please stop eating everything!?