Dogs, Gardens, and Memories

63°f/16.6°C, mostly clear. Yesterday aas glorious, never reached 80° but it will get hotter today.

Yesterday was National Dog Day, so here are my two sweet guys. Buddy on the left, is 5, and has eyes that are brown on top, blue on bottom, and after a hectic puppy hood of constantly running off, jumping at least 4 feet over the gate on the porch, and generally frenetic behavior, he has settled down to be the sweetest of boys. Pip, on the right, is a year and a half old and drives Buddy nuts trying to play. I am pretty sure Buddy will be most relieved when Pip finally grows up!

 

My sweet Buddy.

Yesterday I picked and strung my chili peppers after I finished weedeating that part of the garden. It looks so nice out there now. I put netting over plants I want to protect, so I think I can go to Colorado easier in my mind that something might survive until we get back. Worth a shot, anyway.

Ah, here's Pip! Being still for a change.

A table full of Fall. I like to grow Indian corn, nowadays called rainbow corn actually. We only got two pumpkins from our one hill we planted, but that's enough. Larry said there were more, but apparently something helped themselves 

The white corn in the photo above is Hickory King. It sprouted in the garden from a cob we threw out. I had had a basket of this corn saved around three years ago to make hominy. Never made the hominy so while doing Spring cleaning, we tossed that corn in the garden, thinking it was no good. Wrong! So I ended up with this random patch which grew like crazy. Now I have more of it. Should I make hominy this time? Save the seed? Do both?

Here it is in the garden, in completely not the place I would have chosen. Sorry for the blurriness! It's that taller corn and as you can see it had not fully tasteless yet, so ended up a bit taller.

And here is the original patch, in either 2022 or 2023, can't renember which. It was at least 10 feet tall!

Today I will get what apples we harvested, a little over a half bushel, made into sauce. It was a disappointing fruit year, as everything except one apple tree was frosted and bore no fruit.

A few zinnias brighten any day.

Now, some memories from this time of year. Here's Larry and I in 2017 in Ireland. Nine years sure changed ny hair color!

And 2015, atop King John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland. That trip was with my sister Theresa. We did it through Travelzoo, a deal that offered hotels, flights, some meals, and bus and train transport for less than $1000 per person for a week's stay. My entire trip cost less than $1700, and we had a blast.

Inside the castle:

In a nearby pub. I had to ask if poets really met there! Of course not, it's where the old guys met and talked. After a few drinks, the guys told us, they seemed to wax poetic!

On Inis Mor, the smallest of the Aran Islands, off the coast of Ireland in County Galway.

You can see more about these trips to the Aran Islands here and here. Clicking on surrounding posts will take you to more of the places we went on those trips.

Now, to work! Those apples won't can themselves, daggone it.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.