It’s seems a little weird to be posting mundane things and life here in upstate NY is just going along all the while nature is just in upheaval in other places.  Please, please everyone heed warnings for Irma and stay safe! And Jose? You can just pass on by, thank you.

It’s been a fairly dreary week here. I think there has been a bit of rain at least every day and sometimes a lot of rain. We had some city crews working on our street. This year they are revamping all the water mains on our street. It’s been a summer long project and they finally got down to our end. Last spring we had to have the end of the driveway opened up to reach a covered water main to reach the shutoff. Well, now they moved the whole thing. Why they want to move it to where the sidewalk is, I don’t know, but I’m sure there must be some reason.  I got a little panicked when they knocked on the door and told us our driveway would be inaccessible for a couple hours. Then they started sawing into the sidewalk at the end.

I thought they might go into the end of our driveway with that machine, but they worked really skillfully to just lift the one section of walk.

I would almost say it was delicately done, but it’s still big machinery LOL!  After lifting that, they then dug down about 6 feet down.

They really did only take a couple of hours to do this and our driveway is fine. Of course, the hole is filled with dirt and cinder now. I am assuming that they will be redoing everyone’s sidewalks when the project is over. I hope.

On to the blooms. One surprise balloon flower:

More snapdragons:

You can see how all of my pictures have damp in them. They weren’t taken on the same day, either!

This was a surprise gift from a friend earlier this summer:

She said she thought of me immediately when she saw it 😀

It’s mum time right now. I wanted to put mums in my tippy pots this year and lo and behold there was a sale on small mums – 5 for $5!  I only needed 4, but who am I to turn down a flower deal?

I got one different color for the fifth one, rebel that I am.  Here are the tippy pots now:

Those will hopefully fill out nicely in a couple weeks.

It’s been a somewhat cool summer and I don’t think some of my plants are ever going to bloom. I love the old fashioned flowering woodland tobacco. A few years ago I tried growing some from seed and they were such a pain and only one flowered. So, this year I bought some as plants. They look really good, but it just hasn’t been warm enough for them to really grow:

They should have tall flower spikes on them by now. Wahh. If they don’t bloom, I’m tempted to dig them up next month and bring them inside until they do.

The zinnias are really cooking along. The flowers just keep getting bigger and bigger.

You definitely need patience with the zinnias. Remind me of that next year when I complain, okay?

Joe Pye is big and strong:

It’s amazing how this was at the bare ground this spring and now 6 feet tall. Plants are just so cool!

Have a good weekend everyone and stay safe!