ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW ~ THROUGH A WINDOW ~ PICTURES AROUND THE YARD ~ PARTING SHOT

ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW

I am not the only one in the family who takes great pictures. Linda is also a very good photographer as well. She's gotten better over time, as I don't think she was too much into photography until the past few years. She posts a picture a day on Instagram, along with a related haiku that she composes herself. I am very proud of her accomplishment in doing this, because I know it takes great discipline to commit to something like that every day. For that reason I decided to highlight a sampling of her recent pictures.

Below is a picture of our largest sunflower, the one I had to cut down because it had fallen over on top of my peppers. I believe I like her picture better than the one I took!

Love the brightness of this picture!

The River Rose

This beautiful variegated-petal rose above is named after a little girl who attended the Montessori school where Linda used to work. It's a miniature rose, but is a prolific bloomer and has the most gorgeous little flowers.

Butterfly Bush flower

This close-up is of one of the flowers on our butterfly bush. This picture gives a true depiction of the color of these flowers, a deep fuschia.

Golden Currant bush

Our yard is almost surrounded by a hedge of these native bushes, the Golden Currant. We bought one plant a couple of years after we moved here, and that plant kept having babies. Linda transplanted them to create a hedge along our back and side yard. They have beautiful yellow blossoms in the spring, edible berries in the summer, and they display an array of green, red, and orange in the fall.

The latest puzzle

Linda took this picture of the latest puzzle, which she put together all by herself. I did not put down even one piece on this one. I believe she did a fantastic job on it, considering it took her 18 days to complete and was quite difficult.

These are just some of the pictures that she has taken recently. Quite often I include one of her pictures in the blog, but sometimes I may forget to give her credit for it. Mind you, she is taking all of her pictures with an iPad Mini, not some fancy camera. I think she does an excellent job!

THROUGH A WINDOW

It never ceases to amaze me how I can sit outside for hours, waiting to take a bird picture, and the opportunity will not present itself. But just let me come inside and sit down in the recliner, and then I see all kinds of birds out in the yard. I know it's because they stay away when they see me, and come out when I disappear. For this reason, it is sometimes necessary to take a picture through the window. I don't like to do this because it adds another layer of glass in between the subject and the image sensor, resulting in a somewhat degraded (fuzzy) picture. But we do what we must to get the picture. Yesterday, as we were watching TV, I spotted some big birds out in the back yard. I got my camera and snapped a few pictures through the sliding glass door.

These two pictures above show what is either a juvenile or female Northern Flicker. We see and hear these guys all the time around here, but they rarely come into our yard. So I was quite excited to see them out there, poking around in the ground for insects.

This guy above is a Black-Billed Magpie. He's one of the largest birds around here (except for the hawks and eagles). They are quite noisy when they are fussing about something, which is most of the time. The black and white color is very striking when you see them fly by. When the light hits them just right, you can see their beautiful blue color come through.

Black-Billed Magpie

PICTURES AROUND THE YARD

I've been a bit lazy this past week and have neglected to take as many pictures as I should have, and I actually took no video this week. It's a fact that the available subject matter for photographs is changing with the season. Since I didn't have very many pictures for the blog, I decided to take a walk around the yard this morning, with my camera, to see what I could see. Here's what I came across on my walk.

Golden Currant

It would be hard to miss this Golden Currant bush that Linda had previously photographed, because the color on it is just stunning. I decided to zoom-in on a leaf cluster so you could see the leathery quality they have.

Agastache bush

It's too bad this close-up of an Agastache bush flower does not have "scratch-and-sniff." This bush is one of the favorites of hummingbirds. When you brush up against the flowers they emit a sweet, minty aroma. This plant is also called "Hummingbird Mint" and "Bubblegum Mint."

Some kind of caterpillar

I searched high and low for some kind of critter to include in my pictures. I wanted to snap a photo of a Praying Mantis, but luck was not with me and I couldn't find one. But I did happen upon a bunch of caterpillars munching on the spent lettuce plants. I tried to find out what kind of caterpillar they are by Googling a description, but there were just too many images to look through and I had to stop before I made myself sick looking at wormy-looking things. I can only take so much of that!

Impatiens

There is still a bit of color here and there around the yard, although nothing like what we have during the height of summer. This plant has been doing extremely well since Linda transplanted it from a pot into the ground in the back yard.

PARTING SHOT

Of course, anytime anyone is out in the yard, you will come across this little rascal. Summer Girl just loves being outside, and here she is taking a much-needed rest at the entrance to the vegetable garden. She's even showing off her toe beans!

Lazy girl

That's all for this week, so join me here again next week, when I share with you some of the cooking I've been doing lately!

SADDEST TIME OF THE YEAR ~ OUT IN THE GARDEN ~ HURRICANE UPDATE ~ PARTING SHOT

SADDEST TIME OF THE YEAR

It seems like the summer goes by quicker and quicker every year. I'm not sure if that's because I am getting older or because it is actually getting cool a lot sooner. At any rate, it is a sad time of year for me for many reasons. The main reason is because the garden starts slowing down. The tomato plants still have lots of tomatoes, but they are all green. The pepper plants start dropping their flowers because of the cool nights, which means no new peppers. Even the cucumber plants do not produce a bucket full every few days like they used to. It is to be expected this time of year, but it always seems to hit me "all of a sudden." It's almost like turning on a light switch, because in my mind it happens that fast. Another reason it's sad is because I don't get to sit outside in my chair as much. At the height of summer, I love sitting out there in the shade in my shorts and t-shirt, with Summer Girl on my lap. It doesn't matter how hot it is, we both love it. Now, if I sit outside, I have on sweat pants and a hoodie...and I have to keep moving my chair around to stay in the sun! It's just not the same. Still yet another reason that this time of year is sad is because all the baby birds are grown. It is such a joy to see the babies out in our yard and to watch them grow up. Now I can no longer distinguish the babies from the adults. I guess I should be thankful for the cooler weather. I am getting daily reports from my sister on the weather in Jacksonville, Florida, and this past week the actual temperatures there were hovering around the 100 degree mark. The heat indexes (or "real feel") have been 113 and 115. Unbelievable! Here is today's forecast from her.

Check out that humidity!  Actually low, as the Sept average for Jacksonville is 81%

The big sunflowers out in my garden have a bad case of the "big head." The seed heads are getting so big that the stalks are drooping over. I had to cut off the biggest seed head because it was drooped over so far that it was sitting on top of my banana pepper plants. The seeds are not fully developed on it, but I hope they will be soon so the birds can eat them. Here is a picture of that seed head.

This is what happens when you get the big head!

The stalks are almost as high as the roof on the house behind us! These have to be a good ten foot high.

We grow them big in Yakima

The sunflowers in the front yard are still pretty in spots, but a lot of them have fully developed seed heads. When the seed head gets fully developed, the flower petals fall off and all that is left is the head with sunflower seeds. The birds love them at this stage. The bees, however, love them at the flower stage.

Bird's Favorite

The favorite of the bees

Busy gathering pollen

While I was getting these pictures of bees, I noticed that one guy had really long antennae, as compared to most of the other bees. Of course, when I got back inside I Googled him (don't you just love that we can do that?) and found out that he is a Long Horned Bee (click here for more info). Here's a picture showing him, along with a "regular" bee.

It is a beautiful day here in Yakima, although still a bit cool, at least to me. The sky has a few clouds floating around, which always makes for a lovely shot.

The sky's the limit!

The rose blossoms are pretty much bloomed out, as you can see in the background, but I did manage to see one little rosebud that hasn't opened yet.

The Precious Rose

OUT IN THE GARDEN

Since the garden is winding down it means that cold weather will soon be here. Linda and I usually pull everything up by the middle of October. We decided this week to start digging up the potatoes. We had a few potato plants out there that had turned completely brown, but most of them were still green. So we only dug up the ones that were brown. After digging up about four plants, we got about half a bucket full. The plants we dug up were volunteers, so I am hoping that we get more potatoes out of the ones I actually planted this year.

Yummy potatoes!

The worst part of digging up potatoes is this...

Getting my hands dirty

In years past I had way more pepper plants in the garden. I remember one year I had 25 hot pepper plants, not including the banana peppers and bell peppers. This year I only planted 8 jalapeno plants and 2 habanero plants. I wasted my time with the habaneros as I only got 1 pepper off of each plant. The jalapeno plants did not seem to yield as many as in years past, and the peppers took much longer to turn red. This is a picture of one harvest of red jalapenos. I already picked about this many, and there are 2 or 3 left on the plants that are trying to turn red. Since I have so few of them, I need to decide if I want to dehydrate and powder them (I've already done that to a few), or if I want to make hot sauce or pickled peppers.

Decisions, decisions!

We do have one thing out in the garden that is just now getting ripe enough to pick. It is the Delicata Squash. The plants did exceptionally well this year and we have quite a few squash out there ready to pick, and more coming on. I roasted one in the oven last night for a recipe, and it was absolutely delicious!

Delicata Squash

HURRICANE UPDATE

It makes me very sad to report that Hurricane Florence hit my hometown of Lumberton, NC, very hard. I've been looking at pictures and video from Lumberton for the past few days and it is just heartbreaking. The devastation is very widespread and extensive, especially when you realize that these exact same areas flooded almost two years ago from Hurricane Matthew. The communities weren't even fully recovered from that when Florence struck. We are not talking about a coastal area here. Lumberton is 90 miles from the coast. Both of those hurricanes dumped so much rain on the state that the rivers around my hometown were not able to handle it and they flooded. Some of the rivers have not even crested yet. Many other areas of the state are flooded as well. So many N.C. roads are under water that the Department of Transportation is advising motorists to avoid the entire state. Click on this link here to read an excellent article by The Washington Post about the hurricanes and floods. If you would like to help with recovery efforts, click here to go to the American Red Cross to donate.

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl heard me say that things were winding down, so she decided to wind down herself.

Summer Girl at the top of her form

That's all for this week, my friends. Please join me again next week for another edition of Southerner in the Northwest!

WANING DAYS OF SUMMER ~ BIRD UPDATE ~ ANOTHER DIY PROJECT ~ RAIN? ~ PARTING SHOT ~ A WORD TO OUR FRIENDS IN NORTH CAROLINA

WANING DAYS OF SUMMER

The official first day of Fall this year is not until September 22nd, but it is already feeling like Autumn here in Yakima. We have had daily temperatures in the low 70's, and overnight temperatures have been down in the low 40's. The forecast is for temps to go down into the high 30's towards the end of this week. Needless to say, the garden is winding down fast. I am getting a bumper crop of tomatoes now, which is always a good thing, but they didn't have to wait until the last minute!

Big Rainbow tomato (top) and Black Krim & Big Rainbow (bottom)

The cucumbers are falling off a little bit, as is the yellow squash and zucchini. We haven't started digging up the potatoes yet, but we intend to do that in the next week or so. Linda took this picture below of an onion that stayed too long in the pantry. Although I did not grow this Walla Walla onion, I thought the picture was absolutely stunning, so I am including it here. It looks like it's out-of-this-world!

An Alien Onion?

While out in the garden the other day, I saw that some of my asparagus has turned brown. Although it is supposed to turn brown at some point this fall, it has never done so this early. I got my camera to get a closer look and found these guys all over the plants.

What in the world?

What an ugly bug! My first inclination was to try to get them off my plants, but I decided to see if I could find out what they were first. I came inside and Googled "black orange spiky bug" and found out that they are the larvae form of Ladybugs! (more info here). I put my camera on the "magnify" function (which is used only for focusing) and I could see literally thousands of aphids all over my asparagus! The ladybug larvae were doing their best to keep them in check, but I wasn't sure they could handle the job. I looked closer into the asparagus and finally found this below.

The Source

This is the only adult ladybug I saw, so I am wondering if she laid all the eggs that hatched into the larvae on my plants. If so, she was a busy ladybug! Now I am afraid the part of my asparagus that is brown is actually dead from the aphids sucking the life out of it. At least a good part of it is still green and the larvae are still out there working on getting rid of the aphids. I just checked and there are significantly fewer aphids than there were before. I guess we will find out next Spring how much of my asparagus survived.

There are still some flowers to be found out in the yard, despite the cooler temperatures and shorter days. I hope everyone enjoys the flower pictures below, because it won't be much longer before all of our flowers will be gone and we'll be taking pictures of snow.

This rose below is named the Precious Rose. We named it after our kitty, Precious Baby, who passed away two years ago. This is the most fragrant rose that we have in our yard, and it is right beside the front walkway. That way everyone who comes to our house in the summer can smell its wonderful aroma. It is sweet, just like our little Precious Baby was.

The "Precious Rose"

Linda and I were sitting on the front porch the other afternoon, as the sun beginning to set. I took this picture below because the sun was shining behind the flower, through the petals, and the color was beautiful! An added bonus was the tiny ant on it.

My sunflowers I planted out in the garden have finally bloomed. They have the biggest seed heads of all of our sunflowers, measuring over 7" across the seed head (the dark part). The rest of our sunflowers (like the one above) only measure 2" to 2.5" at the most. So these are much bigger.

Lots of sunflower seed forming on this one!

BIRD UPDATE

I haven't seen any quail around the house lately, so I don't know how any of the babies are doing. I suppose the quail families are looking for places where they are going to spend the winter. We don't get to see much of them during the colder months as they are sheltered up somewhere. We have seen a great number of sparrows, though. The babies that we had this summer have all grown up now, but they still remain in large groups, as they are very social birds. Linda and I have been delighted that they have finally discovered the purpose of the bird bath. "Last one in the pool is a rotten egg!"

ANOTHER DIY PROJECT

I've had an on-going project this summer in addition to my table refinishing project. Since we got a new front door in the early summer, I decided to replace all of the doorknobs throughout the house so they would be the same color as the lever on the front door. I've been doing one or two a week, and I've gotten quicker at it the more I do. I still have two more to go, and those will be done in the next day or two. I do believe the new knobs look a lot better than the old ones!

New knob on left, old ugly knob on right

RAIN?

Yesterday, after I finished grilling our supper, we had a little rain, "little" being the operative word here. When I went out to move the grill back under the porch, I noticed it was wet. We got just enough rain so that you could see a few drops on the part of the patio that is out in the open. Linda and I hurried out front to see if there was a good sunset photo opportunity since rain meant there would be clouds. The sun was not low enough in the sky for a good picture, but when we turned around and faced the East, we saw this below. So appropriate to see on September 11.

Always a beautiful sight

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl always seems to find a nice shady spot somewhere to take a nap, even if she has to use a rock for a pillow.

S'up, puss?

A WORD TO OUR FRIENDS IN NORTH CAROLINA

As I write this, Linda and I are well aware that our previous hometown is in grave danger from Hurricane Florence. Our former city of Lumberton was completely inundated by water just two years ago, from Hurricane Matthew. I am sure the recovery from that is still in progress. Now the entire state of North Carolina and surrounding states are threatened with what may be catastrophic flooding from yet another huge hurricane. We want all of our friends to know that we are thinking of you and hope that everything turns out as well as can be expected under the circumstances. Please stay safe.

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE ~ ODDS AND ENDS AROUND THE HOUSE ~ FINALLY COOKING AGAIN ~ OUR LATEST PUZZLE ~ PARTING SHOT

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

It's been a couple weeks since we took a walk at Randall Park so we did just that this past Saturday. The Parks & Recreation Department has made some progress on paving the back parking lot. Other than that, things were pretty much the same. It was a bit chilly that morning, but it felt good once we got walking. Of course, a "walk" with me is mostly a stroll, especially if I have my camera with me. And whenever we go to Randall Park, I have to take my camera. This couple greeted us as soon as we started walking.

The pond there is such a draw to all the local waterbirds. I walked over to it to check on the baby ducks that we saw last time. The thing is, they have all grown so much that I really couldn't pick out which ones were the youngsters. It was nice to see so many of them swimming around.

The sun was out in full force that morning. Noticing the play of sunlight on the pond water, I had to take a few pictures of the ducks swimming among the diamonds in the water. (Thanks to my friend Alyssa for this photo idea!)

Shimmering Water

Not everyone was out on the water. About half of the gang had decided to take it easy and catch a nap on the shore while they had the chance...before all the little kids got there!

One of the pond residents took the opportunity to grab a quick snack.

This female Mallard below posed pretty for me, to show off her beautiful feathers.

Trying to be coy?

There was other wildlife around besides the ducks, but you had to look closely to see it. Linda spotted a huge dandelion that was about 3 feet tall, so I decided to get a picture of it. When I snapped the shutter I caught a bee mid-flight, on his way to check out the dandelion.

Bee coming in for a landing

The chill in the air was a sure sign that Autumn will be upon us soon. The trees already know this and have begun changing the colors on their leaves.

Fall is on the way

ODDS AND ENDS AROUND THE HOUSE

I often walk around the yard with my camera, looking for suitable photography subjects. On one such foray I happened upon this guy below. He was clinging to the stalk of a sunflower. Judging by the length of those legs, he must be some sort of Daddy Long Legs.

Leggy critter

I took this picture below of a garden statue that we brought back from Dad's house. It belonged to Linda's mom so we decided to put it in our back flower garden to remind us of her. I think this little guy is just adorable!

My companion in the back yard

Speaking of things we brought home from Linda's dad's house, below are a few pictures of the two teak tables that I refinished. Not too bad for an amateur, I think!

Had to glue a couple of splits on this one

After sanding (bottom pic) and finished oiling (top pic)

The first table I did...back in June

FINALLY COOKING AGAIN

During the summertime my culinary adventures take a back seat to working in the garden and grilling. With the high summer temperatures, I wind up grilling a lot so we don't heat up the house using the oven and stove. And who doesn't like veggies on the grill? With the advent of cooler weather, I have been able to get back to cooking in the house. As soon as it was cool enough, I turned on the oven to bake something. Since I have an abundance of zucchini right now, I decided to make Zucchini Banana Bread. It turned out to be delicious, and the house smelled great while it was baking!

Using up some of my zucchini

When we went over to Seattle for the birthday celebration I took a jar of my Jalapeno BBQ Sauce. This was one I made last summer and put up in the freezer. Everyone seemed to like it, so I decided to make another batch. I am not sure if this is my favorite BBQ sauce, or the blueberry one that I make. This one is easier for me, though, because I always have enough jalapenos this time of year to make several batches. For the other one, I have to buy the blueberries, which are quite expensive and sometimes hard to find. I added a tiny bit of my ONE habanero pepper to this, but I think I actually could have added more. It was still a bit spicy, and I told Linda that it would turn her wrong-side outwards! (She doesn't like spicy food.)

Sweet and Spicy

OUR LATEST PUZZLE

After starting and stopping on a couple of puzzles that turned out to be just too frustrating and difficult, we landed on one that we had done earlier this year. Although I didn't get to work on it very much due to working on the table refinishing, I still think this is one of my favorites.

Perfect summertime puzzle

ARTY PHOTO

This week's "Arty Photo" is dedicated to L.H., who has told me that her favorite part of the blog is all the pictures of flowers.

The Mary Rose

PARTING SHOT

Summer Girl can be a little devil when she wants to. A lot of the time she has this sarcastic attitude, choosing to be aloof and unconcerned. I think she believes it adds to her street-cred. However, every now and then her softer side comes out and she appears to be an absolute angel.

That's all for this week, friends. Please come back again next week and check out what we've been up to.