August and Surprisers are Here

Back in July, I noted that the color of one of our Caladiums reminded me of the Surprise Lilies, and I noted that they should be appearing any day. A couple of days after that post on July 18, the first few bare stalks appeared in the border by our north fence! They have been in glorious bloom now for about a week. Some creature stepped on a couple of stalks, breaking them off at the base, so I brought them in and they are still blooming in a vase on the windowsill that has the hummingbird feeder. I don't know if the lilies attract more hummingbirds or not, but the little winged jet fighters are defending their territory more fiercely than ever.


We had a busy week as Norm was preparing his sermon for today, and I finally got back into the sewing room and started to work on some more Gypsy bags and a small quilt I'm going to try to finish for the Flower Valley Quilt Guild's biennial show in September. On Friday we helped prepare the church newsletter for mailing (we hope it shows up in mailboxes soon) and that night we went out to eat at a Mexican restaurant with our friends the Dixons, and then plotted how many of our hostas we could move to their front flower bed, since they have embarked on a modest landscaping project. Saturday morning I spent an hour volunteering at the Ferguson Farmers Market, counting the number of shoppers arriving. Click, click, click... it was the least I could do, take a shift, since doing a count was my suggestion when market director Kathy and I were talking about the market's attendance while we were exercising in the pool last week. When my shift was over we had counted almost 900 people, and there was still an hour to go. I had a great time and saw lots of folks I knew from UMSL, exercise, quilt guild and other connections.

We continue to enjoy our cooler summer (July had only 3 days above 90 degrees! Unheard of!) and our amazing flowers. What a gift this season has been. The dazzling blue flowers by our back door (photo above) are Plumbago, one of my new favorites. We got the last planter that Thies Farm had. This is also Peach Time. Every Saturday I bring another bag of them home from the Farmers Market. Tonight we had fresh peaches and vanilla ice cream. Yum. My goal is to freeze contents for several peach pies this week. Soon our garden raspberries will be ripe enough to pick, too. And our tomatoes are getting bigger. Norm moved one of the hummingbird feeders to the middle of the tomato patch. We thought we would see if the hummers would see an invading squirrel as a threat to their nectar supply (since they challenge all humans, cats and dogs who come into their sight) and see if the warrior threatening pose of the adult male ruby throats is enough to keep the squirrels away! We will report on this experiment later.....