Good Morning Monday-a Little Catch Up

   Good morning Friends,

I am a bit sore but I did manage to get the main things accomplished I wanted to over our 3 day 80's F long weekend-that was wonderful to be outdoors and with no humidity. Although the humidity has moved in today as any time now we have lots of rain coming in over two days. We do need the rain but not so much at one time. The rivers here in this area will be over their banks for sure.

  Larry also finally got help to get the roof on the rest of his dock. We had two people working on it Early in the day the lake was pretty quiet.

 

         Looks like a dock now-it's almost finished finally

I was able to clean up the perennial garden area. I have zinnia and marigold seeds drying now indoors. I wanted to get the flower heads in before the heavy frost last week

   I started to trim back the butterfly bush and decided I better look that up first-glad I did as I am not suppose to trim it back. smiles  I did cut off all the flower stems. I left a few plants that were still blooming as I wasn't sure which were annuals or perennials. I laid out allot of mulch around the plants too We have had two hard freezes in the 20's last week but the lemongrass still looks fine-however around here the lemongrass is an annual plant. I did dry a pretty big bag full for teas I also planted a big bag of large yellow daffodils in this area.

   My other project was to dig up all the grass and weeds that I had killed off and then added in the garden soil-5 large bags I will need to add more next spring. This area has been used by too many people parking here and I wanted to stop that.     Sooo the top area was hard as cement and full of rocks. So difficult to get through. I decided to save time and just skim off all the dead plants-lay them back on top of the ground and then add the soil on top-this should break down and hopefully loosen things up a bit over winter. I will put ground cover plants in here next spring and I am thinking of planting annual seeds like cosmos etc.

   I didn't get to the edging work though-I need rain first for that to loosen up things. so perhaps end of the week or next weekend I can tackle that project before winter.

  Our property line is just past that new sewer system down by the lake (a round plastic green cover on ground) and just in front of the row of trees on the left facing the little road we made down to the lake. So part of this area I worked on is the neighbors-just the top little corner. They gave me permission to do what ever-and will save them needing to weedeat that space.

 A glorious sunrise for my birthday today. sorry these are not in order; the sky was dark and then more and more reds came in, and then greys, purples and pinks-the yellows is the sun behind the clouds.

  We have been enjoying some really beautiful sunrises this month-above photos all taken early this morning.

    I am not making a special birthday dinner today, but I did make up some awesome baby back ribs to enjoy over the weekend. This afternoon I will bake us up a from scratch lemon meringue pie-one of our favorite pies.  Actually I am doing something with our leftover hamburgers that I had grilled on Friday for our main meal at 2 pm So a simple meal for today-I  sautee'd  mushrooms, sweet pepper, poblano peppers and sweet onion-heated up the hamburgers on top of the hot sautee'd veggies. 

Update on this: It is raining pretty good now, so thought perhaps not good to make the meringue on a rainy day-so I looked that up-yep says don't bake this pie on a rainy day, as the meringue will turn out sticky.  Bummer as all the ingredients were at room temperature. Will bake after the rains have moved on.

    I have been enjoying little surprises in my mailbox last week. I also received a couple happy birthdays through email  The small card in the middle is from a friend in Colorado, it's her photo of the aspens beginning to change-she knows I loved Colorado back in the late '70s when I lived there. At peak color the aspen yellows are a lovely bright yellow.  In the front is the too awesome stamped card from Elizabeth along with a couple napkins for me to craft with.

   Thank you all so very much, nice to be remembered-hugs

Happy new week everyone