quiet weekend, shadow box progress, misc pics

It was a quiet weekend around here. No one on my street was hosting any kind of get together or celebration, at least not that I saw and I base that on the fact that at no point was the street lined with cars indicating a get together and while there were some fireworks none sounded close enough to be in the immediate area and even that was fairly sparse. Nevertheless after the first muffled boom Minnie headed straight for the closet in Marc’s bedroom, her safe place reserved specifically for fireworks. There was a celebration planned on the Square starting at 6 PM with fireworks. I have no idea how well it was attended, the only photo I saw, and I have no idea what time it was taken, didn’t show a crowd.

I got outside this weekend, moving the sprinkler around in the front in the morning and then cut back all the dead and gone by purple cone flowers in the big front flower bed. It took about 3 forays. I’d work until I started sweating. I got the rest in the back flower beds Monday morning. I also pulled up all the green beans. They were still flowering and were full of inch long tiny beans but they weren’t really growing and besides, we’re a little tired of green beans. Also pulled up three of the six tomato plants that had no fruit left and were not flowering because it’s too hot for that. I picked the last tomato off a fourth this morning so it will come out soon. Of the last two, both are still blooming and one has put on three or four more little tomatoes so I’ll just keep an eye on them.

Yesterday early afternoon at 12:30 it’s 89˚ with a heat index, feels like, at 109˚. I set up the sprinkler in the back to be moved every 20 or 30 minutes but I didn't do much else out there.

I started over with the leaves for the shadow box and got four of the five painted this weekend and yesterday. I’m much happier with the result though they are kind of busy so I may try to smooth them out some. All were done a little differently and yet similarly. It remains to be seen if I think I need to do one of them again, and that would be the first one of the second try, as the whole thing sort of arranges itself in my mind. It may be too dark and if I can’t lighten it up some…but we’ll see when it gets to the point of actual construction. P.S. The actual painted leaves are not as dark as they look in the picture.

Some miscellaneous pictures:

Minnie after a hard day of washing and ironing.

Last summer one of my plumerias developed two seed pods. The other day I noticed they had dried out and popped.

Marc was looking through our first photo album and I pulled this picture of the two of us. Not sure exactly when it was taken, before we were married but living together which would put it somewhere in the first half of 1976. I would have been 25 or barely 26, Marc would have been 24. We got married in August ’76 and will have our 50th anniversary this year. It hasn’t always been easy and damn difficult at times. The color picture has gone completely sepia (and this is a picture of the picture) so I dicked around with the brightness and color and saturation.

Here’s the full shrub of the Mexican bird of paradise, above (also pride of barbados).