Bogieblog

Seasons in the Garden

Earlier this week I promised pictures contrasting spring and summer flower gardens. I take pictures of the garden on the right hand side of the steps going to the driveway. I seem to have better luck composing pictures with it than any of the others.

This is obviously the spring photo with Iris, Speedwell, and Perennial Bachelor's Buttons. To the very right, and at the fence, you can just see the barberry putting out its new, red foliage. Irises are the main focus as the garden is loaded, stem to stern, with them.

The irises have gone by, but in there is plenty of color with Veronica, Speedwell, Beardtongue (the tall, white and purplish flowers in the back), and Astilbe (the very red flowers). The tall green plants to the very right, are the next wave of flowrs, gayfeathers, which are in bloom now.

And fro closing, I will point you to the Lady Slippers that we have in the woods, and to a really pretty Creme Brulee lily that came up a couple of weeks ago. It was the earliest asiatic/hybrid lily to bloom.

If you guys are really good, I will post some more pictures tomorrow.

Great Source for Plants

I'm going to provide a bit of free advertising here.

Saturday I ordered some dwarf flowering almonds and Rose Glow barberries to place in the newest garden spot. The note on the website said they were on vacation and would resume shipping on 7/24. I figured with a backlog of orders, it would be a while before they shipped but Monday afternoon I received an email saying that they had shipped.

When I got home from work yesterday, there was the package sitting on the porch. I immediately opened it up, and found the plants to be very healthy, strong and larger than I expected. They did not seem to be stressed by the shipping; probably because they were packaged very well.

I am very impressed with the plants I got from Moonshine Design Nursery, especially since earlier this year I had ordered 2 dwarf flowering almonds from another source and even though they have been in the ground for a while, they are still smaller than what I just received. Additionally, the price per plant was less from Moonshine Designs.

It's funny, I was perfectly happy with the almonds that I had gotten earlier, but the source that I got them from was out, so I looked around for another source thru Google. When Moonshine Designs popped up, I did some research thru Dave's Garden Watchdog to see what type of reputation they have. Obviously, they have impressed other people too.

So, I am really happy with Moonshine Designs Nursery and just hope they get some Center Glow Ninebark soon!

What's Growing

When I got home from work yesterday, I looked to see how the gay feather was doing; it started opening its blooms just a couple days ago, and I like to watch its progress. Around that and other flowers were big old buzzing bumblebees and a hummingbird moth. I rarely see the HB moths, so had to stand there a while and admire it. I finally came to my senses and went to get WS so he could enjoy the sight also.

Blooming, at this point in the Bogie gardens, are: Purple coneflowers, gayfeather, lavender, coreopsis (red and yellow), balloon flowers, hostas, tomatoes and phlox (all of which have just started blooming). Astilbes are still blooming, but they are past their prime and will fade away within the next week. Various lilies have been in bloom or will be blooming shortly (the first were the native daylilies  - which started a couple of weeks ago and they are still at it). Like the daylilies, the butterfly weed has been blooming for a couple of weeks but should continue thru most of the summer.

There are some other things that bloom continuously in the garden, as long as I cut back the spent blooms, but naturally I can't remember their names.

The summersweet will be blooming in a couple of weeks; I have noticed the shrubs are starting to put out buds. The butterfly bush will probably be later than that (as it should be).

Next weekend I will try to post pictures of one of the flower gardens; showing the spring blooms and then the early summer blooms. In another week or so I will take pictures of the same place for the mid summer blooms.

If I planned it right, I should have blooms right thru fall - the area showing a different personality every month or so. If I didn't plan right, well, it's still been pretty up to this point, so I can't complain too much.

Linking Instead of Actually Writing

Someone that I don't link to nearly enough (like, usually not at all) is Essay Canajun. She has a really funny story about the broken airconditioning at her place of work. After that is an eerie piece on noises in the middle of the night.

The Weekend Pundit is lucky in two ways: he has a boat, and lives near the water so he can use that boat on a regular basis. Unfortunately, there are other people that boat on that lake too, and it seems he had a day of rude and idiotic boaters.

mAss Backwards gives us the story about lightning, a tree, a group of people and the death of common sense.

Dax Montana has a tribute to the late Acidman. The comments may actually upstage the post itself.

Deb and Jay, at Accidental Verbosity always have cute pictures of their kids. AND, to top it off, they host the Carnival of the Vanities 200th edition (which is also an Acidman Memorial Edition).

I can't point to any one post at AMCGLTD - they just come up with oddball and scientific gems.

That is all the blogs that I have visited today - but I'm sure there is more goodness to be had at the other blogs listed in My Favorite Reads and More Blogging Goodness lists over to the left.

Bear Damage

So it's been a while since the bear did its damage and forced me to bring in all the feeders. I have finally gotten the film developed and thought I would share some of the pictures with you.

Here is a full-view shot of the tree, and the poor limb that got torn down, along with two of the three feeders that were involved.

This is how the bear got into the yard (and subsequently the dogs got out to roam the neighborhood for a short time).

The outside post was actually rotated and pulled enough that the concrete was pulled up out of the ground. The next post over wasn't so lucky though - it was broken:

New Monitor and Keyboard

The monitor made it here in good shape. I got it set up and the (minimal) software loaded. The first thing I noticed was the screen is super bright. I had to bring down the brightness to 20 (from a preset of 100).

There are no dead pixels (the dread of anyone that gets an LCD monitor), the realestate on the desk used is about the same as my old, old 17" monitor (my previous monitor was a 19" beast that took up massive space). I still have to set my resolution to 1024 x 768 in order to have the icons large enough that I can see them and the monitor complained that it does best at 1280 x 1024, but that is life.

The only complaint is that the controls (brightness etc.) have very small icons on them so it took me a while to figure out what was what - not very friendly for the hard of seeing, but I guess I shouldn't have to touch the controls very often so I can deal with it.

The most amazing thing is that I now have an "Off" button. I haven't had one of those since my old Gateway monitor. I really hated that my last monitor didn't have one. Okay, so that really isn't that amazing but I am happy about it.

All in all, I already like my new monitor!

Law of Demand

Since last weekend, my monitor has been acting strangely. For a while about 1/2 the width of the screen will actually be used, although everything is shown - so everything is distorted. I will manually change the settings so that the picture widens out to fill the whole screen.

After about 5 minutes, there will be a couple of clicks and the screen will go to normal size - which means it now goes off the screen. So, I will manually adjust it to fit the monitor again. Then a couple minutes later, the clicking sound again and the width shrinks.

The setting for the monitor width is usually around 50%. I adjust it up to 100%, then back to 50%, back up, back down etc.

My Driving

Your Driving Is is: 59% Male, 41% Female

According to studies, you drive both like a guy and a girl. This means you're a pretty average driver, with typical quirks. Occasionally you're frustrated and or a little reckless, but that's the exception - not the norm.

Do You Drive Like a Guy or a Girl?

Thanks to Deb, over at Accidental Verbosity for the link

Overnight Flight

When last we left our intripid heros, they were trying to get a new bike tire. It's a really good thing I didn't hold my breath on getting a call, because it didn't happen. WS went to pick it up at noon and by the time he got back, got it on and we packed up the bike, it was about 1:30.

Jimmy and his latest companion went with us. She had to stop at a particular bank in Concord, so that is where we headed. Then, Jimmy being Jimmy, we had to stop and get some lunch (not a bad thing since "lunch" was the first thing WS had eaten that day). By the time we got on the road, it was late.

We headed up towards northwestern NH to visit a few places we haven't been to before, but by the time we got there, they were closed. Not being people that are inclined to waste really nice weather, we roade around for a bit, then headed off for Plymouth to find a place to stay.

Finally

Well, I can finally post something. Monday, I got up late so only checked email. Tuesday, I did get to Typepad but then everything slowed down in the middle of the typing (a 5-letter word would take almost a minute to show up on the screen - other websites were the same so it was my ISP) so I gave up and shut down. Then yesterday, I couldn't get to Typepad at all. According to the note at the top of my screen right now, I am just as glad I couldn't get there since I might have lost the post anyway!

So, back to our regularly scheduled program.