Trimming Maple Branches

The Saturday before our trip, we were working in the yard and decided to trim the maple branches that hang down in the next door neighbor's yard. See if you can spot anything important in the picture that I missed:

We set up a ladder under the branches and had the pruning shears ready, I climbed up there and pulled the branch down and hit myself in the back of the head with a huge hornet's nest. It made the hornets very angry. I jumped down, stumbled, and splatted flat on the ground, then jumped up again and flailed my arms around, running and yelling like an idiot. I had to get the hose and hose myself off before I got them out of my hair and shirt collar.

Green Industries Seem to be Booming (in Mexico)

Driving in on I-80 toward Omaha, we kept passing windmill blades being transported on trucks going the other way. We were behind another one going the other way and took pictures of it at Little America.

The transport escort said that they were driving up from Mexico and going to Washington State. They must have been resting up for the night before facing the canyons in Utah.

Yard and Garden Update

We tore out the overgrown bushes along the garage, so now the walkway (where I go in and out every day) is a part of the side yard. The bushes were replaced with a rock run that will handle the rainwater from the downspout that would otherwise come down in the new foundation shade garden.



View from the back patio:



Things are growing well in the butterfly garden. We will have to do something with the stray maple tree soon.

Foundation Shade Garden

As built:

1. Hardy Cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifclium) - 3 bulbs
2. Sister Theresa Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) - 1 plant
3. Mixed Hostas - 5 stumps
4. Amethyst Astilbe (Astilbe x. Arendsil) - 3 clumps
5. Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) - 3 twigs
6. Mulch - 3 bags
7. Red Scallop Edging - 12?
8. Dirt

The Earth Holds Many Secrets

Here's one... a 240v electric line buried within five inches of the surface:

An immovable stake or fence post of unknown length:

This Week's Garden Project

We had a "Foundation Shade Garden" kit come from the nursery on Tuesday evening. Kind of need to get them in the ground, but there is a lot of preparation work to be done in the place where I want to put them. Here is the "before" photo:

Zach Griffith came over to help. Some of the young men in the ward are trying to earn enough money to go to summer camp, so I am offering $10/hour if they will just come over and work. One, with six hours, so far.

Baby Butterfly Blue Bloom

One of the Butterfly Blue Scablosa has a couple of flowers on it this morning.

The First Flower

There it is, the first Billberry Ice flower:

It was out there this morning, but tonight it is gone. Here is how the garden is looking:

Vacation Day Five - Uncle Sam's Boat Tour

We had dinner and stayed the night in the Thousand Islands Inn. It was a hundred years old and showing its age. But, you have heard of the salad dressing they invented, right?



Our room faced the park across the street (and the river). The places in the grass that look worn out are where a huge slab of rock shows through.





On the drive from Clayton to Alexandria Bay, we saw a huge nest on top of a utility pole (and a second one a little further down the road). I think that it is a baby Osprey or Seahawk sitting there.



In Alexandria, they flagged us right into the parking lot for Uncle Sam's Boat Tours. We took a three-hour tour of the Thousand Islands.




The 1,700 islands that they call the Thousand Islands are mostly privately owned. Boldt Castle is an estate that is open to tourists, and I think that they said that $30 million had been spent on renovations. The next photo is just a utility building at the edge of the island. (We didn't get off the tour boat and pay the $7 to walk around because we were pretty tired by then.)



At the other extreme were islands with one tree:

Vacation Day Four - Erie Canal Village

Vacation Day Three - Rockwell Museum of Western Art

The Corning tour bus picks people up at a "Welcome Center" where there is plenty of free parking. It then stops at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, the downtown market district, and then completes the loop.

Today we started out with the Rockwell Museum. It has three floors of well laid-out exhibits. It holds mostly art about the West, and not so much Native American art. (No flash photography allowed...)






This painting was massive. It was amazing that the artist could visualize what the whole thing would look like, when he was standing a couple of feet away to paint it:



One floor had contemporary art.



Here are some of our favorites:

Vacation Day Two - Corning Museum of Glass

We spent the afternoon on Tuesday at the Corning Museum of Glass.

Most impressive is the Heineman Collection. This couple collected all kinds of contemporary glass art over about 20 years, and the collection has been donated to the museum. The exhibition displays 240 objects by 87 international artists:






The musuem also puts on live shows of how glassblowing is done. In the demostration that we saw, a very nice bowl was made, and then trashed because there wasn't room to cool it down overnight.

Vacation Day One - Letchworth State Park

We started off with a tour of Graycliff, an estate designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Sorry, no photos.

Then we went cross-country to Letchworth State Park.



We stayed the night at the Glen Iris Inn:


It is just across from the Middle Falls:


The park is huge. Driving across it, we saw a lot of different kinds of wildlife. We saw a fox in the bushes at the edge of the road. We saw a doe and her fawn, and almost got a photo. There were turkey vultures cruising over the river:

Butterfly Garden Planted

The tree nursery before the big change:



Photos of the new garden: