stuck at home...

Well, the AC stopped working on the truck again yesterday. I finished the day at work, but by the end of it, I was a puddle, so back in the shop it goes. It should be done today, and the mechanic knows that I am not happy.

So today, I was sitting here feeling a little depressed, so I went outside to work in the yard... it's a little too hot to be working too hard, so I was actually just goofing off, but I did manage to take some pics...

True to form, the hotter it gets the more the Pavonia blooms...

And today was trash day, and one of my neighbors was throwing this out...

It's a banana tree! Most probably Musa basjoo... the winter hardy variety. To be more accurate, they're winter hardy if you wrap the stems in newspaper or burlap or bubble wrap for the winter, but nobody seems to want to go to the trouble. Otherwise they come up from the root and get about 3 or 4 feet tall before the next winter hits. The ones in my yard get 8 feet tall and bloom, but only because I wrap the trunks every winter...

This plant was still in it's original nursery pot, complete with $9.99 price tag, and while I'll admit that it had definitely seen better days, it's very far from dead. Bananas are oportunistic growers, given a good drink and put in the ground this one would be fine. So I nabbed it, planted it in a pot that somebody else had put out for the garbage a couple of weeks ago... (I'm such a scrounge...)

Trimmed off the broken thrashed leaves,

and in a couple of weeks I'll have a really nice plant to sell at the flea market. Or, if I put some smaller plants in the base of the pot, wait a month, then I can double what I was gonna charge.

And all the while, Phennig was sitting on the carport finding this all rather amusing...

So, I guess something productive happened, and today wasn't totally a bust...

later...

nothing much doing here...

well, I was looking forward to a nice long relaxing weekend... but that didn't work out. Friday night, a friend of the family was rushed to the hospital with apendicitis. The next day, after a run to the hospital, I ran up to the flea market, and then today I had to run to Home Depot to get some cord for the weed eater so that I could mow the lawn, (really, not one of my favorite things... I'm seriously thinking of lawn substitutes here... ) and now I will be going out to see my mom who is staying out with the friend of the family and I may just stay out there all night because there will be a bar-b-que tomorrow.

Work will no doubt be relaxing compared to this weekend...

Anyway, took a few pics in the yard after mowing... bought a hummingbird feeder at Home Depot... the cheapest one, since I'm pretty sure the birds don't care what the things look like... We have hummers here all summer, not a huge amount, but the flowers in my yard mean that I see a few more of them than most yards around here... But I never put up feeders until September. That's because around mid-September the migration to their winter grounds passes through. Some people have put out feeders for so long, that they have literally hundreds visiting every year... I end up with a few flitting around.

Also took a pic of the Cereus hildmannianus buds... should be flowering within a couple of weeks.

And the Pavonia hastata are about to bloom their fool heads off, they are really loving the late summer heat. It seems the hotter it gets, the more they bloom...

and of course the ruellias are going at it too...

more blooms today...

Cleome, or spider lily, or sparkler plant. This came home with me when I saw it at the nursery... we were talking about it on Julies blog, A Succulent Life... (see link to right) I normally wouldn't buy a plant this size. Half the fun of a plant is watching it grow up, and go through it's changes. But, it was only 3 bucks, so what the heck...

This is a Pavonia hastata... aka rock rose or swamp rose... Now I don't know the why of the swamp rose name, since it survives here with absolutely no extra water in very un-swamp conditions. That's actually why I grow it... the blooms are pretty, but not overly impressive, being less than 2 inches across... but these mini hibiscus flowers are produced by the hundreds, and all summer when the heat has pretty much brought everything else to its knees... each bloom produces 5 seeds. Which spread and sprout... a good amount of time every spring is spent pulling up extra seedlings... but before the heat hits, it produces buds that never open, but self fertilize and still produce seeds... hence it's a little invasive. (by the way, violets produce those self-fertilizing flowers too.)


And of course, a purple coneflower... I started with 2 plants, and they've seeded over the years... there are now 20 or 30 scattered around the yard. Very reliable in the heat, these are the ones used to produce echinacea, which people use to treat colds.