Surprise at the top of the ladder

I spent the day working on repainting the exterior windows. Here's what I found when I reached the attic ledge, when I was starting to prepare the surface for the new coat of paint.

View from the top! (I took a backpack up, with my paint scraper, caulk, and camera in in it - so I could have one hand free to hang on to the ladder)





The daylilies and roses are about the only thing blooming at the moment in the garden.

Colleen and Darwin

Pam, Kevin, and Colleen stopped by Baraboo for a brief visit on their way up north. Here is Colleen playing with Darwin in the yard.

Trip to the Arboretum

Saturday we went to Madison for our monthly Asian grocery pilgrimage. We took advantage of the beautiful weather to take a walk in the Arboretum. Mom came along with us and brought her camera.

Paint scraping

In preparation for re-roofing, I'm scraping the house and painting all the trim (much easier to have a few paint droplets on the old roof shingles, than on the new ones). I'm getting rid of the awful "brindle brown" trim and replacing it with a stone gray color on the shutters and window trim. Much of the exterior woodwork is badly deteriorated, and I find myself caulking lots of details around the windows. This stone color will hopefully coordinate with our new grayish color roof, whenever we settle on a roofing company. I've never liked the brown roof we currently have, which was selected by the previous owners.

This project necessitates balancing on the rather bouncy tall ladder and doing a lot of hot and sticky work. Avinash has a height problem, as well as a time problem, and is somewhat tall-ladder impaired (as far as moving the ladder), so I'm doing it all. Evidently all my years of helping Mom and Dad with painting the houses was useful experience. This photo is some of the ongoing work on the balcony in the back of the house. I'm busy doing the front and hope to have some "after" photos soon.

Ned is hot

We have not kicked on the A/C yet this year. Upstairs it does get a little stuffy, so I get it's time to turn on the furnace fan.

Other garden plants

Morning glories - these are fighting with the grapes for sunlight on the loggia.


Globe Thistle "Echinops"



I believe this is Mockorange. It's very overshadowed by an enormous bridal veil spirea.



The impatien bed. These are the only annuals I grow.

Vegetable garden progress

Indian Mustard Greens


Marigolds, for "companion planting"





Lettuce greens (those not mixed with poppies)



Heirloom tomato patch. My plan is to get some livestock panels to train these on.



Zucchini



Pumpkin, from my $1 Viking pumpkin last year



Armenian cucumber



"Mr. Big" shelling peas



Long bean (asparagus bean)



Bean "Tenderette"



Radish (freebie)

Surprise poppy

I recognised what looked like poppies growing in one of the lettuce patches. Sure enough, I have a fine crop of salmon colored poppies now. The seed must have gotten intermingled with the lettuce seed at the factory. I picked a few greens for eating, earlier, along with the lettuce; I guess poppy foliage does no harm.

The photo turned out a bit blurry, but you can see the color.

Pruned Magnolia and redbud

In preparation for re-roofing the house (due to hail damage), Dad came over and gave the magnolia and redbud trees a severe pruning. The trees were starting to resemble a big leafy green blanket, covering the front of the house. The house sure looks different now, after the "haircut". We have a brush pile about 6' x 8' out front. I hope the city comes and picks it up before fall.

White Hollyhock

Visit to Suki

Mom and Dad went off to Milwaukee today to catch a Brewers game with a tour group of friends. They've never seen the new stadium, nor have they seen a professional baseball game since before they got married in 1965, so they took the opportunity to go. It's a beautiful day, mid to upper 80s, so it couldn't be better timing.

I went to Baraboo to check on Suki mid-day, since she was going to be left outside for 12 hours under her tree. She was dozing when I arrived. I took her inside, and she spent some time in the closet and said Hi to Darwin. Then Darwin and I went outside, where I had my lunch (take-out Chinese: Governor's Chicken, with peanuts) at the picnic table in the yard. Then I took Suki for a small walk (she wasn't much in the mood), before tying her back under her tree.

Here is Suki enjoying the fine day outside. As usual, it is difficult to get her to pose for the camera.

It's almost time for supper. On the menu this evening (for me, anyway):

Carr Valley "Gran Canaria" cheese and wheat thins
grilled "rotisserie-style" turkey tenderloin
potato torta - I made this for the first time yesterday. It turned out quite well.

Wheelbarrow, redux

I finally got the wheelbarrow project finished. It's been a two week saga to get everything done. Our 10 year old wheelbarrow had gotten rusty and broken one of the handles off (mid-job, of course). We did some wheelbarrow shopping, and any of the nice plastic yard carts I wanted to use as a replacement cost $75-100. Just a plain old wheelbarrow, like ours, cost around $50, plus it required assembling from the tray, handles, and accessories. We decided to buy some new handles and reuse the old metal parts, after a new paint job. There is nothing wrong with our metal parts, except for rust.

Avinash and Dad dismantled our defunct barrow, using the help of Dad's bolt cutters. I painted the tray, stands, axle, and "lip", and got some 5/16" carriage bolts and nuts from the hardware store. I used the old nuts and bolts as a template. I soon discovered that while the new handles were designed to replace any old tray, the pre-drilled holes were not. Evidently, they started standardizing wheelbarrows after I had purchased mine. I began to drill new holes in the handle section with the biggest drill bit I had (thank you, Dad, for the cordless power drill). It turned out to be 1/16" too small, so the bolts would not go in. So, off to the hardware store again to buy 1/4" bolts and nuts. Fortunately, this only set me back $0.46. Strangely, the handle kit did not come with shims, like the old wheelbarrow had to hold the handles steady under the tray. The old shims were pretty deteriorated, so I tried putting the thing together without the shims.

The new bolts went in with some encouragement, and although I had to take the handles and stands apart about 10 times to get everything together "just so", it's now ready for business again. I pumped up the tires, and it looks better, if not brand new.

Here's a photo of the new, improved wheelbarrow.

More Garden Photos (and one of Ned, naturally)

This year I will try to collect seeds from this lupin and propagate them. I grew this one from seed last year.



I think this is a hollyhock. I didn't plant it this year - it must have come from the packet of wildflower seeds I planted last year.




This is my best rose bush, "Carefree Sunshine". My pink "knockout" roses both died in the winter, and one of the David Austin roses did too. :( I still have 5 "Carefree wonder" roses, all salmon-colored, but they are afflicted with some sort of bug and don't really prosper.




Here's the promised photo of Ned, the blue-chip cat.

Sunny Sunday

I had a rather dull day at work. It wasn't the usual hectic environment today. I tried to do a continuing education on anticoagulants for deep vein thrombosis and coronary syndrome, and fought with the ASHP website to get into the testing area for about an hour. I've never worked with such a terrible website. Several times I tried to get in, it said their website was down. Then when I finally got the page to load, it said my password was incorrect, and none of my email addresses were valid. When I clicked on "send me my password", it said that it was sending to the email address on record. Needless to say, I never got anything in the email. I re-registered as a completely new person, and I finally got in that way - although I know I am registered because I have done CEs on their website before. Then I couldn't access the free test I had the corresponding booklet. It said I had to pay, although my booklet clearly said free. There are hundreds of tests on their site and control-F "find" didn't hit on any of the words in the title of my booklet. I finally found the test, pulled it up by brute force (browsing through the hundreds of tests available for the specific one I needed), and ended up with completely different (although related) questions than were in my booklet. At that point, I figured I might as well wing it, since I figured I'd never get in again, so I guessed at all the questions. I passed the test with an 80%, so I printed off my certificate worth 2 hours of CE and called it a day. I may not have studied for two hours, but it certainly took me that long to get into their testing area - so I feel I earned it I then proceeded to lock myself out of the pharmacy when I left, and ended up calling Matt in to let me into the pharmacy to get my keys. If I weren't on call, I would just forget about it and walk home. Fortunately, Matt was home and didn't mind coming in to help me.

After that debacle, things improved. I took down my laundry. Then I worked on gardening since the weather is so nice. I planted some of Dad's old bean seeds, in hopes some of them would sprout, and watered the garden, and lay down some landscape fabric and mulch around the pond since it's too narrow to mow there. I dug up two 10 gallon buckets worth of soil from the old compost heap, and planted Dad's pepper plants in those. All of the tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, mustard greens, lettuce, marigold, morning glory, and peas are doing very well. We've already had our first harvest of snow peas, and our red pepper from last year is bearing ripe red peppers any day now. Only the beans are doing poorly, with many of the leaves skeletalized. I have put out a beer trap for slugs and will try Dad's pesticide dust tomorrow. I'm not sure which critter is eating the foliage, but I'll try to kill it.

Brown sari

Since the weather is now warm enough, I wore a sari to work today.

Garden Views

The spring bulbs have finished their annual show, and the hostas are now starting to take the place of honor in the garden. I probably should have removed the catbox from this scene before I photographed it, (I took it outside to hose it off), and the large trash can I've been using in lieu of a wheelbarrow, too.

The weigela and shrub roses are also putting on a nice display.



The white rose is a wild climbing rose. It goes up to the second story, perhaps to 20'.












The pink rose is "William Baffin", a Canadian hardy shrub rose.








The red weigela is doing nicely under the grape loggia we put in last year.



Here's how the little pond is landscaped now:

Tradescantia (Spiderwort)

The spiderworts have started to bloom this week. Click on the photo and take a look at the fancy centers!