A Day Outside

57°f/about 14°C, beautiful day, and yesterday's predicted storms missed us! Thankful, as the ground is still saturated.

A whole day outside, y'all! For the first time since June, it was comfortable enough to be outside to do some things that have been on hold---like painting the patio furniture.  First, though, i enjoyed the cool morning by having my tea on the porch and watching my silly dogs play. What characters. They were never still enough to get a photo, but I did catch Pip for a second. He looks like he's been up to something,  doesn't he?

It took me 4 hours to get the furniture painted, and not a perfect job, but done. 

Then I spent a while pulling weeds and cutting a few things back, and helping Larry load that #$%* mower one more time. He use it about 15 minutes yesterday before it quit working. So we loaded it yesterday and he took it back. The guy tweaked something, Larry came back, we unloaded it, and guess what? Still didn't run. So this afternoon back it went. I'm here to tell you, that thing is heavy, and I am tired of pushing it! My back is not a bit happy this evening. I tried to get him to call a neighbor to help, but nope. If I didn't help, he was going to try to do it alone. Man has no common sense.

After that,  I took a long hot shower, then went back out to take a few photos of the flowers. 

Not much blooming in this big tub, but still green so there's hope.

The roses have had very small blooms this year. Perhaps because of all the rain? I will give them some fertilizer tomorrow.

The begonias, however, are huge.

And the vinca soldier on.

The blue lace hydrangea turns various shades of purple as they mature. Have I said how much I love this bush?

By the porch, the hostas are done but the new vinca, a peachy color,  are still blooming. 

The big flowerbed:

Look at that sky! The veggies garden is pretty much done, and I know the deer will finish it off while we are away next month.

Only 2 cannas survived the winter. Makes me so sad, because I had planted 10 or 12 last year, yellow, coral, orange and red.

Lantana, however, loves our environment.  Must plant more even if it is an annual.

The zinnias that survived are doing well.

More lantana. I love this stuff.

A roee I brought inside. So pretty!

And finally, firepit time, burning up branches that came down in last week's storms. (The flowers aee silk, just brought them home from a booth and stuck them here.)

That's about it. Still a few blooms, but I know deer will have a field day while we're in Colorado. That's okay, really. The season will pretty much be over by then, and I will get some mums in to tide us over til frost.