Some "End of the Summer" Flower Pictures

 Hi everybody, how are you all doing this wonderfully bright and sunny day, September 17th??? Well, right now I am sitting at this computer doing this blog....as you can guess. But afterwards, I plan on getting dressed and going outside for a bit. Need to get the garage ready for a "garage sale" this week and next. Hopefully I can make enough $$$ to buy a new computer. (Dream on)

Now for a small tour of my flowers. In the above picture is my "Star Clementius" they cover the whole side of the porch....they are amazing!!! We have to cut them down every fall, down to the ground. But as you can see, by this time of the year they have grown to the roof. The flowers usually last for about 4-6 weeks there about. Then they start to fall off and leave a BIG MESS!! But they still are pretty for the time they are with us.

 This is what you see on the stairs going down from the porch...I put my hibiscus plant on the stairs to catch the rain water...she was getting kind of dusty, so the rain washed her off. Those are giant marigolds down there with a sprinkling of little purple flowers, (forget their names right off hand)

 Now this is my volunteer sunflower with a bee attached to it. In the back ground are 3 roses and the star Clementius. Anyways, the sunflower came from the compost pile, apparently I had some sunflower seeds in the compost that decided to grow. We must have planted some flowers and JP used the compost for extra dirt and "wa la" DAISIES. There are a couple more flowers that are about to bud....just as soon as they do I will take more pictures. This is a first.....probably won't happen again, not unless I plant some daisies from a package of seeds. Ha...and then they may not grow.

 In this picture, is our little cottage type house. It is over 125 years old, one of the first houses to be built on this block. Although you would not know it by looking at it....it's been updated quite a bit. It's a very sturdy house with a 8x8 solid, center beam running down the middle of the house. The joists are 2x8 actual beams and floors (not 2x4). In previous years there used to be a big tree growing in front of the house...a wind knocked it down and it landed on the roof....you can still see where the front part of the roof is a little tipsy.

We had the house resided with new doors and windows added. The roof was redone also. Sad to say, it had never leaked till we had the roof redone...now it leaks. There was like 3 layers of shingles, so no leaks were allowed. Then, the roofer took all the shingles off, and put on new ones.....ever since then, we have had roof problems. Guess we need to get the roof re-done....but alas, no money.....maybe I need to do a garage sale for the roof.....lol!!!

 These lovely flowers are my zinnias......I loves my zinnias. I have planted these flowers along the side of the house for the last 5 or so years....maybe more, guess now it is a tradition for me....the bees like the flowers too.

 Ahhhh yes, my apples.......I really enjoyed my apples this year. The tree is about 15 years old (or more) and this is the first year that it produced so many lovely apples. The lady at Sprangers Apple Orchard told me, now that my tree knows that it can produce apples, we will most certainly have apples next year too.....oh yippie, I can hardly wait. So to date, I got over 115 apples and the birds and varmints got the rest. I made lots of apple pie filling and have about 18 containers in the freezer....lots of pies and smoothies coming up!!!

In this last picture are my roses....I have 4 rose bushes and these are the red ones. Sweet huh?!? I shall have to remember to get a picture of each rose before the season ends and post it here....I love roses. I have this red, a coral, yellow and white rose bushes....I used to have a bright pink one but it died after 20 years. I am sure I still have pictures of it though.

So there you have it, a few pictures of my "end of the summer" flowers.....each year I say I will do less, but more seems to show up....I probably will eventually go with perennials, rather then annuals....less up-keep. But for the mean time this is fine with me.

Well, you all have a great day and keep looking up for your redemption draws nigh. Cheers ~ Louise