Perimeter Patrol*

*AKA - what's going on around here? First of all, you will notice a change in the Chances R picture. It is of the clematis and was taken five years ago today. This year for the first time it did not bloom. Neither did the poppies nor iris. I don't know why. 😕

As summer begins fading into autumn, the sun moves along on it's southerly slide. (Photo from last evening.)

This morning I ran the furnace for a few minutes, mainly to take the 5:00 a.m. chill out but also to check that the furnace still works. 

Outside the deck is getting a much needed straightening and shoring up. 

In the past HD has taken on this task. This year we hired the experts and they are doing a very professional job.

Next spring/summer - time to paint it again.

Of course everything had to come off the deck with the table, chairs, etc. going on the side deck and the pots of plants on the patio.

These few items are in the corner at the top of the stairs.

I didn't do it on purpose, but I think it makes a pleasing, if temporary, arrangement.

This is on the north side of the house where Bud (Hubby Dearest) got a head start on the fall clean up by mowing off all the flowers there.

The snow-on-the-mountain had completely taken over and was looking very straggly.

It will all come back next year and look more orderly if I get a few things dug and moved closer to the house - mainly the ferns.

The peonies won't get cut back until after the first frost - which just might be earlier than usual this year if the forecasters are right. 

The one volunteer sunflower I let grow is doing its cheerful sunflowery thing. 🌻

All the pictures of the big sunflower fields are beautiful but I'm happy with just one stalk.

At the bottom of the right hand corner is a glimpse of the bird bath that was here when we moved in. It had a crack in the basin part so I asked HD to get rid of it. He was going to put it on the curb with a free sign but the neighbor said he would take it. A little tube of concrete repair, a little paint, and it will be as good as new. 

This pink Rose of Sharon (hibiscus syriacus, part of the mallow family) is beautiful this year. The pink and white one next to it blooms first and then this one.

This one is my favorite.

I mentioned that all the deck plants were on the patio now, but this planter, the old mailbox that was on the farm since I was very young, is always here, next to the steps on the patio. 

Planted in different flowers each year and most oftenly herbs, this was the year for goreous pink, glowing, impatiens.

With another pot of them on the table between the chairs.

The water can has developed a fine patina.

The little turquoise bead is one Bud picked up on his walk and brought to me. I may have aforementioned his likeness to a jackdaw. 😍

Not a recent photo - one I took a two or three weeks ago after the a/c ran during a very warm night.

At first I didn't know what was going on in the top left on the outside of the window.

Then I realized a spider had made its web; condensation did the rest. 

I'm also remembering, and missing, my dear friend Kristina. Today would have been her 78th birthday.

Bud and I were reminiscing about the wadi behind her home in Tucson and how much we both enjoyed it. Him running through it, me walking and picking up rocks - lots and lots of rocks.

On this date in1783 the Treaty of Paris was signed which ended the American Revolutionary War. Strangely enough, the book I began reading yesterday is about the start of the American Revolution.

It's late afternoon now. Their job is done and the workmen have gone. Much of what was on the deck is back on the deck.

It is unbelievable how solid and straight the deck now is. What a difference - time for a late summer deck party?

August '25 Books

 Another ten books month....

The Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel is about the men and woman who worked to retrieve and save the European artworks stolen and hidden by Hitler during WWII. George L. Stout, an Iowan from Winterset, was extremely instrumental in their successes.  

Mean Streak, Low Pressure, and Blood Moon by Sandra Brown are three more of her books that I've been reading. These pretty much all follow the same formulaic - romantic suspense, action, intrigue - eye candy for the mind.

The Listeners is the first book I've read by Maggie Stiefvater. It is based on true happenings during WWII. I never knew that diplomats from Germany, Italy and Japan who were in the US when war was declared with those countries, were confined to large luxury hotels until they could be exchanged with the U.S. diplomats in their respective countries. As I've said before, I really enjoy novels based on true historical events.

South of Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver is the latest in his Colter Shaw series. It is a race against the clock to save a flooding town from total disaster when the protecting levee begins failing. 

The Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters is the first book I've read by this author and the first YA book I've read for some time. The setting is San Diego in the middle of the 1918 influenza epidemic. 

The Last Midwife by Sandra Dallas takes place in a small Colorado mining town in 1880. It follows a respected midwife as she cares for mothers and their babies until she is accused of murdering one of the newborns. I have always liked books set in previous times. The surprise for me in this one was that I thought I had read all of the Sandra Dallas books at my library. Now I have.

Zero Days by Ruth Ware is about a husband and wife team who are hired by companies to test their security systems. When the wife finds her husband murdered, she is the prime suspect. Before she can be arrrested she works to stay ahead of the law while trying to find the real killer. I didn't care for the first book I read by this author, The Woman In Cabin 10, but I did like this one.

We Are All Guilty Here is by one of my favorite authors - Karin Slaughter. This is the first new book of her's that my library has gotten since 2020 and the first in her new North Falls series. Set in a small town where everyone knows everyone until two teenage girls are murdered and they realize they didn't know their neighbors at all. As much as I enjoyed her Will Trent series, I think this new series might be even better. 

Until next month, wishing you all a Happy Labor Day.

Perseids Meteor Showers

Did you catch any falling stars during the Perseids meteor showers earlier this week? Perhaps - if you are a night owl and younger than I am. It's been a long time since I put down a blanket, laid back and watched for the annual show. But there is this:

Nocturne II By W.S. Merwin

August arrives in the dark

we are not even asleep and it is here
with a gust of rain rustling before it
how can it be so late all at once
somewhere the Perseids are falling
toward us already at a speed that would
burn us alive if we could believe it
but in the stillness after the rain ends
nothing is to be heard but the drops falling
one at a time from the tips of the leaves
into the night and I lie in the dark
listening to what I remember
while the night flies on with us into itself

The Details You Learn From Reading

There was a little girl,

Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good

She was very very good,

But when she was bad she was horrid.

My mother used to recite as well as sing this little poem to my sister and me. She could have changed it to boy if she wasn't concerned about it rhyming, as both my brothers had curlier hair than Betty and I. 

The amazing, to me, fact is that this wasn't just a little ditty made up in the 30's or 40's, it was a poem written by none other than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. And I didn't know that, would probably have never known that, had it not been for the book I am currently reading. 

Being able to read, enjoying doing so, unimaginable what my life would have been without those.

From KRNT to KCCI - A 70th Anniversary Celebration

From the time I moved to Des Moines in 1968 until moving back to SW Iowa in 1995, I was a staunch Channel 8 viewer. So this week I have been enjoying the "Where Are They Now?" clips of former KCCI staffers as they come back to help celebrate the station's 70th anniversary. 

This morning I watched part of Eric Hanson's "This is Iowa" 60-minute special featuring clips from the past and interviews from then and now. 

Dolph Pulliam hasn't changed much but I did not recognize Mary Brubaker in this picture. I attended many Drake basketball games in '68-'69 where Pulliam helped lead his team to the Final Four. Later I watched him as a broadcaster on KCCI.

I also watched The Mary Brubaker show where she interviewed local and national celebrities and featured medical, political, home improvement, and fashion news as well as cooking segments.

I was once a very nervous guest on her show but for the life of me I can't remember why. I certainly was not any kind of celebrity and I wasn't a good cook with some new recipe. I vaguely remember wearing a jumpsuit on the program. They were popular at the time and I had sewn several for myself. Or was it for a makeover or a new hairdo? Maybe some day I will recall the reason. In the meantime, I'm going to watch the rest of Eric Hanson's special. 

July '25 Books

 Ten books read in July.

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall is the first book I've read by this author and a Reese's Book Club pick. I don't think of myself as an Anglophile, but it does seem that English movies, books and TV programs are smarter - better story telling than American fare. This was my favorite fiction read of the month.

All That Life Can Afford by Emily Everett is also a Reese's Book Club choice.  A Smith College scholarship graduate from a working class background moves to London to pursue a master's in literature. She falls in with the upper class. Billed as a Jane Austen inspired 'coming of age' book

Sting and Overkill are two more of the books by Sandra Brown that I'm reading my way through.

We All Live Here is the newest novel by Jojo Moyes. When I saw my first book by her, I didn't think it would have much substance. I realize I was basing that entirely on her first name. I'm so glad I read that book anyway and many more since. She is a great writer. The 'all' living in a house that is in need of much repair includes her two daughters and her step-father - then her wayward, absent for thirty-five years, father shows up. This is such a fun, serious, thoughtful read about what it means to be family.

Isola is by Allegra Goodman a new author for me. Not only a Reese's Book Club pick, it was one Bud picked that he thought I would like - based entirely on the cover - a woman standing high upon a cliff. It was a good read, inspired by the real life of a sixteenth century woman.

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is by another new author for me, V.E. Schwab. It tells the stories of three young women living in different centuries. It is not a book I would have read had I not been so far into it before realizing it was about vampires. However, it was well written and interesting and I hate to give up on a book once I've started it.

Friction is another of the many Sandra Brown books I've been reading.

Remember Us by Robert M. Edsel begins with Hitler's invasion of the Netherlands May 10, 1940 and follows the lives of twelve main characters over a six-year span mostly set in the small rural province of Limburg. This is my favorite non-fiction book this month barely edging out....  

Taking Manhattan by Russell Shorto - a book of The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America. Also non-fiction, but not quite as well written as the previously mentioned one. 

What totally got my attention on the first page was the footnote: *There are many names for the Indigenous people native to the region, including Lenape, Munsee, Munsee Lenape, Lennie Lenape, Delaware.

Lennie Lenape - that was the name of the tribe my 7x great-grandfather was a chieftan of - which made the book even more interesting. And there he was on page 94 - Lenape chief Lapowinsa - the same photo, but in black and white, as the one I pictured on my April 27, 2024 blog "Meet My Native American 7xGreat-Grandfather".  This book was more about the Dutch and English than the native tribes but just finding this familial link made it more interesting to me. 

Incidentally, Bud picked these last two books for me, too, which reminds me - I should listen to him more often and I should be reading more non-fiction. 

It is time to head back to the library. I wonder what my August books read list will look like. 😉

Place to Be

How quickly July has passed - one more poem before August arrives:

Place to Be By Robert Creeley

Days the weather sits
in the endless sky,
the clouds drifting by

The winter's snow,
summer's heat,
same street.

Nothing changes
but the faces, the people,
all the things they do

'spite of heaven and hell
or city hall—
Nothing's wiser than a moment.

No one's chance
is simply changed by wishing,
right or wrong.

What you do is how you get along.
What you did is all it ever means.