Flowers and a Birthday Memory

72°f/about 22°C, mixed up day with occasionally bright sun, haze, clouds...no rain in sight for this afternoon.

I went out early this morning to cut basil and oregano for the bruschetta I am making right now. The gardens are doing fine despite my lack of attention, but they are beginning to get that autumnal look about them.

The blue lace hydrangea is actually blue, not pinky purple like the photo.

Below, a mae anda female goldfinch were unconcerned by my approach. He just continued singing 

Mrs. Hummingbird didn't care either, although I had to zoom in to get this not this not very good photo.

Not much better.

There were two Monarchs on the Brazilian Verbena, right beside the finches. That is one popular flower. I see so many insects and birds visiting them.

A Great Spangled Fritillary, I think?

This garden by the porch is becoming a favorite of mine. With its varied greens and foliage, it gives me a tropical vibe. I stuck that birdbath together with part of a lamp and a lampshade I found at Goddwill. 

Find of an untidy area; I need to paint the furniture on the patio, but not today.

The big flowerbed, toughing it out despite the heat. 

Along the walk to the herb garden, fireweed seems pretty happy. I keep looking for the Magic Lilies but none yet. I have noticed that places in town that usually have large patches of these lilies have none, or very few. I hope mine won't be as sparse as the ones I have seen so far this year. 

In the herb garden this basil, a cross between purple and green, has been so pretty. It has a few deep purple branches that I didn't catch in my photo.

 

Thyme is in full bloom.

I dug the fireweed from a roadside ditch years ago, and was warned that it would take over. Apparently my garden isn't quite the ideal environment for it, because it has stayed about this size for the past 10 years, at least. 

A $3 planter bought on clearance is happy too.

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I have spent this very hot day in the kitchen, putting up dill pickles and the bruschetta.  Tomorrow we will finally see the weather break. I really think dog days arrived a week early this year, and are ending early too. Usually about this time of year I start noticing the shift to fall---some leaves begin showing a yellow tinge, grasses ripen and ironweed and goldenrod start coloring the fields and roadside. I look forward to August, because even though the days may still be hot, evenings cool off more quickly and mornings stay comfortable longer as summer begins the slow slide toward the equinox. When July finally closes in its usual blaze of heat, I perk up! 

39 years ago on this day, and right about this time (4:30pm) I started labor with my youngest son. I had just come home from a typing class I took on my days off work because I knew that I would need that skill if I wanted to find a better job---at the time I was a security guard, making a dollar an hour more than minimum wage. (I had given up the substitute mail carrier job, which I was working along with the guard job, when I was 6 month pregnant.) The photo below was taken 2 weeks before. We had big gardens then too, plus about 3 acres of tobacco, hay, cattle, a couple pigs, turkeys, of course chickens...life was busy. And being pregnant sure did complicate things, but we were happy because we both wanted this baby together. My older sons, all in their teens, were by my first husband, and Larry did not have any other children.

I remember getting out of the car and stopping to pick some zinnias for a bouquet when the pains started. I walked into the house, and called my friend Debbie to come get the 2 bushels of tomatoes I had planned to can that evening. My son Aaron was the only other person home at the time and he was too young to drive, so I packed my bag and drove us to the hospital. Larry was at work an hour away, but was soon at the hospital too. The rest of the boys were at the county fair and there was no way to reach them, but somehow they word and when Tommy finally arrived, around 11pm, they were all waiting. 

What a night. A couple weeks ahead of schedule, but Tommy arrived well and strong, with a great lusty wail! 

I missed the final exam for the typing class, but the teacher gave me a C. I say gave me the grade because I was truly terrible at typing, partly due to my big pregnant belly and partly because I just could not get the hang of it. To this day i do not keyboard correctly, but my 4 or 5 fingers that I use can fly along pretty well anyway. That was the only C I got in a college class, the rest of my college years were straight A's. Pretty funny really, and probably explains why I could never learn to play guitar---another class I took when I was 8 months pregnant, back in 1973! You would think I would know better, wouldn't you?

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