Our Autumn Front Porch and 7 Year Blog Anniversary

Many thanks to everyone for your sweet wedding anniversary wishes on my previous post! 

On our anniversary I burst out laughing when I read my devotional for the day. David Zahl wrote about unconditional love:

Imagine if I locked my dog and my wife in the trunk of my car. After an hour, only one of them is going to be glad to see me.

That tickled my funny bone and it kind of reminds me of something I question anytime I publish a new post here at the Window after doing one of my disappearing acts for a few weeks, or in some cases months.

Will they still be glad to see me?
 

  

 Tomorrow will be seven years since I published my first blog post at Across the Way, here: https://awindow-lookacrosstheway.blogspot.com/2012/11/our-fledgling-flight.html

There have been times when I've stopped blogging for a while but I always came back. I even started this blog at the Window and thought I'd given up Across the Way only to end up keeping both going.

Going yes, sometimes sporadically, true.

I remember when I announced that I was leaving blogging at Across the Way and one friend asked if I could just check in occasionally, even quarterly. 

Sometimes I seem to be doing just that. Like all the things on our front porch, I'm not getting any younger. In fact we might even qualify as antiques.

We may soon even be obsolete.

There are occasions when we decide to pretty ourselves up a little.

 Pretend like we're still Spring Chickens.

Times when I ask RH to buy me a beautiful corsage.

He bought me two beautiful corsages for the porch for our anniversary and a trunk full of pumpkins for both porches, the back garden and the house. 

All without rushing me in my choices, following me around with a big cart as I wandered around the Nashville Farmer's Market, a special place to me as I'd gone there since a child with my little sisters and our father who bought produce for the middle Tennessee Kroger stores.

The best anniversary present ever!

RH also planted a new tree, (see picture above) his 4th Japanese maple since we moved here almost three years ago, his 12th new tree planted in the front yard alone--how's that for a man past the three-quarters of a century mark?

You can also see the new project he started behind the new Japanese maple. Not sure what it's going to be when he finishes it but a trailer full of beautiful rock sat on the grass in front of the park bench for two months while he pondered the design. 

I'd asked for a pretty sidewalk/path but I have a feeling this is going to be more than that. And it may be spring before it's finished as my guy started another project in our back yard that's now taking up his time.

Meanwhile, I decided the old girl--I'm talking about our front porch--deserved at least one new accessory, a pretty rug.

I spent hours online searching for one with just the right colors. I hope you like it because I am so in love with it!

Thank you so much for visiting here! Even when I sometimes play hide-and-go-seek with you. 

Old and cracked as I sometimes feel I still want to make like The Terminator and say...

I'll be back! 

 

Celebrating Our Wedding Anniversary

Could I just have one more moondance
      with you, my love?

 

In the Garden On A Foggy Morning

I woke while it was still dark and went to my office after letting BreeBree and James Mason out to go potty and back in again, trying to keep the house quiet and let RH sleep in for once. I got lost in Instagram far too long--and I don't even post there.

When I got up to open the curtains and realized there was fog I grabbed the camera and went outside. 

As always when I open the kitchen door, I looked at the pond but it was lost in the mist, as you can see below, beyond the grass.

The garden seemed more colorful this foggy morning, and I wondered if it was because my eyes were still dilated from my ophthalmologist visit the day before when colors did seem more vibrant.

To my surprise when I stopped to google this to see if there was a possible scientific reason for it I discovered that there was.

While water vapor is colorless, the condensed water droplets that form and allow us to see fog can highlight the colors of their surroundings, taking the rich colors in view and fading them to the background like a natural gradient.

 May 5, 2009 post, colourlovers.com/blog

So that explains why these pictures look as if I had enhanced the colors but haven't as shown by these zinnias planted by the cupola.

The foggy conditions really show up the marvelous colors and crusty texture on the cupola roof. RH saved this piece for a focal point in our new garden when we moved here, and it covers an old well. I love looking out at this cupola from my kitchen window.

I don't think I ever showed you the second terrace that RH finished this summer, with the help of a grandson, made out of old concrete roofing tiles. I love how it turned out.

RH left a triangle area of sand in the corner for the birds to sand bathe in. Our thrasher family love it. And between it and the small first terrace that RH and our son made the second spring we were here is a flower bed that got planted to caladiums last summer. Like many garden projects this summer, it never happened but we'll plant it full of spring bulbs soon. 

The green garden chairs are all askew, pushed back for the sprinkler that RH has run every evening in our record-breaking heat.

The large canna musifolia hasn't suffered from the heat. It came back this year and again is huge.

Another Japanese maple waits in its pot for RH to plant when cooler and wetter weather comes, the fourth Japanese maple he's planted since we moved here nearly three years ago. He got this $100 beauty for $11 in the September tree sales.

Hi James Mason, come on down and join me in the garden! The new steps here are especially for James Mason who has IVDD and needs easier access up and down.

The kitchen porch looks a little messy by summer's end. A tarp covers a piece of furniture that will go underneath the big kitchen window outside that is RH's grilling area, but first it needs to be weatherized. And a cherry tomato plant has sprawled over the railing onto the porch. We have to watch our steps or squash little green tomatoes.

This little path leads back to the HVAC unit past pots of herbs. A gate keeps my babies from digging in the area. See the little maple tree growing up by the fence? RH always digs up maple seedlings and transplants them in the fall but will have to cut down this little guy. He grew up outside the fence but then grew inside so it will be impossible to move. I've asked RH to at least wait until after it puts on its autumn coat.

Let me show you a little beauty we got this summer, a garden obelisk sundial that sits on a favorite rock by our cupola bed.

Thank you for coming to my little foggy morning garden tour. Would you do me a favor and look at the plant growing in front of the zinnias? It has the prettiest leaves but so far no sign of flower buds.

Does anyone know what this volunteer plant is? We used to feed the birds in this area before moving their feeding station outside the garden fence so perhaps it's something that was in birdseed?

BreeBree doesn't have a clue.

And James Mason couldn't care less.

Had any foggy mornings in your garden lately?

 

Hello Again & A Followup Post

Hello dear friends and family! While I haven't posted here very much this past summer there is something about October arriving that makes me want to create more often on my blogs. 

All of your comments on my Labor Day post about the jobs you first held as a young person meant so much to me. I feel as if I know you a little better for it. 

If I recap some of those jobs here would you overlook that the pictures are tail-end of summer pics and not in any way reminding you of our beloved Autumn? Which has not actually showed up here in Nashville yet. We're still breaking records for high temps.

I was first hired as a shopping center sidewalk Easter Bunny and one commenter, Obscure, once had to don a Hello Kitty costume at her first job as cashier in an upscale supermarket. She did not say whether anyone tried to pull her tail. 

Melanie worked in her father's grocery store before a wide variety of later jobs, and Brenda worked in the same one that her mother had when she was her age. Sweet!  

Karen put the curly Q on the top of iconic Dairy Queen ice cream cones, and Vicki worked at the local Wee Tee Golf.

Both Lorrie and Madame Là-Bas had berry picking jobs, raspberries for one, blueberries for the other. And if these jobs were in the amazing climates where these women live now, that wouldn't be a bad job at all.

Many of you were babysitters but only one, Kim, had a paper route too. That was RH's first job, starting when he was eleven years old. 

And hurrah for the nice woman on his route who called his stepfather on the phone one bitterly cold snow and ice morning and demanded he come pick up little RH. She insisted it was too cold for him to be delivering papers on his bicycle that day. She's my hero!

Of all those who said babysitting was their first job, one babysitter's mother-of the-children also left a list of chores to be done. Tammy, Christy had one that did the same thing and she never went back. I mean, really!

Diana began as a timer in a lingerie factory while Sandy worked in one that made televisions. Later on Diana worked for NBC in the same field as our Christy is in for CBS. I'd like to match those two up for lunch!

Sheri's first real job was a stenographer, and Beach Gypsy was a waitress.

 Poppy was a hostess at Kentucky Fried Chicken but as a senior in high school was chosen to read announcements on the loudspeaker. If you've ever heard her voice on Instagram you'll know why they chose her.

Carla started her sons out working on their grandparents' dairy farm when they were little boys -- and now one of them is proudly serving in the defense of his country!

Cathy packed things to be mailed out at a relgious store, which made me think of my first post-high school job that was typing things up to be mailed from a religious publishing company. I hope she was as lucky as I was.

Much earlier than Cathy, I'm sure, my workplace was as far from the Mad Men 1960s office atmosphere as was possible. I never saw any male executive make a pass at a girl working for them. Women were treated with courtesy by the men, who were all gentlemen.

I know you're waiting for the "but" or the "except" --there isn't any. Squeaky clean. Whether we wanted it that way or not.

My last two pictures are of foraged wild stems that RH cut last week, my attempt to bring a little Autumn feeling into our house that is as yet still bare of pumpkins and gourds. My annual trip to Nashville Farmer's Market must wait until we at least drop 10 or 15 degrees outside.

But the glorious red gladiolas are always a summer must for me, and this year I only remembered them as summer was ending. 

Thank you for visiting me! Are you decorated for fall or Halloween yet?