August 30, 2007
roses!
The white polyantha ('Yvonne Rabier') repeating this morning. The pink one beside the gas meter is close on its heels:
August 29, 2007
the front garden last week
A sort of late summer portrait of the front garden. I'll take another when the native perennial sunflowers (the tall ones at right) bloom, which they've been on the edge of doing for a while.
Since this was taken last week, I've cleared out some of the tithonia (orange flowers at left), which was crowding smaller plants, and transplanted a rose to the northwest corner, where it will get more sun. The other two roses, the white and pink polyanthas, are both reblooming and seem very content.
The tithonia was a dramatic companion to the sunflowers, which is what I was hoping for, but didn't play nicely with others. Live and learn.
Click on image for larger version -
August 18, 2007
sunflowers
The enormous one is 'Russian Mammoth,' which is - mammoth. I ordered it from these people in the spring, along with bachelor's buttons, tithonia and nasurtiums, all of which thrive.
RM was the only quote-unquote traditional sunflower they stocked. It does tend to lean, which I can live with, but it also has trouble carrying the weight of its own flowers. Next year 'Pacino,' I think.
August 17, 2007
IKEA
... sometimes gets it and sometimes doesn't - C's chest of drawers, which came from them, is both cheaply and oddly designed. With honest cheap construction, you can often make things much better with more screws, glue and and angle brackets than the designer had originally had in mind, but it defeats any attempts at reform.
On the other hand, we chose the second cheapest option for our kitchen cabinets (the cheapest was white melamine) and it turned out just fine.
And to give credit where credit is due, their high chair ($24.99, tray extra - tray extra? - for another $5) is essentially perfect:
- It's easy to clean. We spray it down in the sink with a scrub pad and the vegetable sprayer, 25 seconds or so.
- It can be sterilized. This has been necessary; enough said.
- It's really cheap. You can buy high chairs ten times as expensive, which are perversely far harder to clean.
- It disassembles into six parts, and is very, very easy to transport. Here's Mr. Wuzzle enjoying his lunch on the grounds of a 14th-century Tuscan monastery:
on the side of a mountain in Radicofani (is that still in Tuscany?)
and in Muskoka:
August 16, 2007
Massasauga, redux (part 2)
After our canoe trip last week, we rented a cottage on Three-Legged Lake, on the edge of Massasauga, and brought the Wuzzle. He was a reasonably good traveller, but easily bored in a canoe. We think he had fun –
