Friday

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a good week. It's Friday, so it's time to join Nicole for Friday Face Off and Gillena for Friday Lunch Break.

    I don't  have any  exciting faces to share this week as the art I've been working on is for September challenges. Plus it's been our week to have my mother-in-law's house, the last for this year. After Labor Day (the weekend of September 5-7 for those of you who aren't familiar with the holiday) there are no assigned use times and anyone in the family can go up there whenever they want.

   I can show you the 2 owl faces in my rose garden. I was worried I was going to lose these roses early in the season when all their leaves turned brown and fell off. It was weird having empty stems/canes with blossoms on them. But with some fertilizer and lots of watering, you can see they have mostly come back. 👍 Hurrah!!!! I had wondered (back when they turned brown and lost their leaves) if they were just too dry because at that point we were still in the drought that started summer of 2025.  I guess my guess was exactly right. 

   The dogs and I have been up to my Mother-in-law's home  to go walking a few mornings this past week too.

   And after our little walks and after a quick dip to cool off, here's their faces.

   Wednesday while at the lake I saw a bald eagle. He flew in my direction  and landed in a tree a few houses down, but was still too far off for a photo with my phone. These aren't the best photos, but again, all I had was my phone.

   

 Here's the lake one morning after our walk. We've  had some beautiful late summer days lately as well as  cool nights that make great sleeping.

 I can also show you this post of petunias which may not look very exciting except, I never planted any petunias in this pot this year. There must have been some seeds in the pot from petunias I must have planted in it last year.

    It's a nice surprise though, and the pot with the flowers looks great.

   That's it for me. It hasn't been a bad week by any means, just not one with a lot of faces. I hope you have a super Friday and start to the weekend ahead.

                               

Friday Flowers and Faces

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has sped by, hasn't it? 

    Today I have a bunch of random garden photos to share. I'll be linking  up to Friday Face off over at Nicole's blog and also Friday Lunch Break over at Gillena's blog. And just an FYI- this is a photo heavy post

                                        

     I'll start with these faces on these wild turkeys. I haven't seen them around for a while. I want to say "They're Back!" 😁

   Do you see the grape vine growing over my arbor behind the turkeys? Usually the new growth comes off the old woody vines, and this spring there were none. I thought I'd lost the plant. Then we had a couple days of actual rain, and after that, new shoots came out of the roots. And look at it now. No grapes this year, but the plant certainly wasn't dead. 

     How about the deep red of this lily flower?

A dragonfly hanging out on a tomato plant.

  This year I bought a few plants for a tiny spot next to the deck that usually just filled up with weeds. One plant I bought was a Black Eyed Susan, a favorite plant of mine. It's very happy there and looks amazing right now. Plus there's a face in one of these next photos of the flowers too.

    OK, I guess I got a bit carried away with black eyed Susan photos. 😉 Next up some golden-rod with another face, and then another favorite of mine which are now blooming.

Zinnias ❤

    The other day I noticed 3 Great Spangled Fritillary butterflies on this one bunch of zinnias at one time. I only captured a photo of 2 of them because one flew off as I walked over in that direction.

   These tiger lilies blooms have seen better days, but I still think the flowers are very interesting to look at.

Here's another face on some milkweed.

   This first dandelion photo is slightly out of focus, except for one seed that is breaking away over on the left.

   You can still see the dandelion break away seed here, but it is not so dramatic.

  I visited my daughter the other day, and my son-in-law pointed out this swallow-tail caterpillar that was in his garden.

And to wrap up this post, the son-in-law's sunflowers look AMAZING! 

   Have a wonderful Friday and start to the weekend everyone.

T Stands for Pickings from the Garden

  Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's   blog for T day.

  So what's new with me? By next T day I will have had my first physical therapy session, but I must say since I've been resting my shoulder, it is improving. That is good news. 😊 Hopefully in another month I can go out and do some heavy duty yard projects that were on my agenda for this year. But if it takes longer to feel better, it takes longer. Getting the shoulder/rotator cuff improved is the most important thing.

  This past week I went out fishing one day (didn't catch a thing), went over to Maine to go to Costco, and rested my shoulder. Luckily we had some beautiful weather so I was able to do a lot of afternoon resting in my hammock with a good book, and maybe, but I'm not 100% admitting to it, I also took a couple of nice naps in between pages of my book. 😉

   I've also been picking lots of things from my garden, including a whole lot of cucumbers and zucchini. I made 2 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread (sorry forgot to take photos- I gave one loaf to my daughter and have frozen the other one), and I also did some pickling.

    My first pickling project was to make some chunky sweet pickle and onion relish. I halved the recipe for the cucumbers and onions because I didn't need jars and jars of relish. You can see in this next photo the pre-soak with some salt. If you aren't familiar with pickle making, the salt pulls out the excess water, which you then drain before you finish.

   I wasn't sure how much pickle juice I would need with my chopped veggies, so I made a full batch. I actually only needed about half of this, which make sense since I only made about half a batch of chopped cukes and onions.

 I decided instead of wasting the extra juice, and since I had more cucumbers, I would make some bread and butter pickles.

   Here's all my finished canning after I put them in jars and then processed them in boiling water.  

   Before I filled any jars I took a photo, and I happened to get my mug filled with some homemade ice tea. Here's my drink for T day this week. 

   I'm letting my pickles and relish sit a few weeks to really flavor up, and then I'll be having some. I can't wait to try the pickles especially. Usually homemade pickles beat the kind you buy in jars at the store.

   That's all for me. Wishing everyone a happy T day and week ahead. 

 

Time

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I'm posting again this weekend because I want to share another page for Mia's Background challenge at Art Journal Journey. This time my background is made entirely from stamping and then over-stamping images.

    I'll  also be linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

   In my ledger journal I started with a large (6x6 inch) crossword background stamp and black ink. Then I stamped with some reddish brown ink and a 6x6 grunge style stamp. I finished with navy blue ink and a different 6x6 grunge style background stamp. All the inks I used are from Versa Fine Claire. 

   I then took some paper clock images and layered them. The colors made me think of autumn, so I added a mushroom. The mushroom needed something to attach to (so it wouldn't be floating in air); to fix that I used some clock printed washi tape. To make the tape not look like it was floating, I used some scraps paper that I had die cut an edge from. I thought the left over had some  design too, so I trimmed the straight edge and added it. Finally I added a small piece of clear tape from a roll that had crows printed on it.

   I should have stamped the quote onto a separate piece of paper to make it stand out better, but I didn't like how the paper looked when I tried it, so instead I just stamped onto the page directly. Here's a close up of the quote. 

    The other day I had to meet someone in the afternoon, and where I was meeting them was not far from my local botanical garden (Bedrock Gardens). Since I haven't made it to the gardens since opening day in May, I decided to leave early and go for a walk around the gardens with my camera. It was a lovely day for a walk, and the gardens were not crowded. I didn't realize how mentally good that would be for me until after I got back in the car and realized how relaxed I was. ❤👍😀

   Here's a few flower and late summer views photos from that  walk. I hope you enjoy them. 

       Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week.