Look at The Pretty Berries!

Look at the pretty berries I found in the garden this afternoon!  How beautiful they are!  I cannot believe the brilliant magenta stalk on which the berries grow.  You will be pleased to know that this plant is American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana).  It always helps to know the Latin name!  So I looked it up.  IT IS POISONOUS!  EVERY PART OF THE PLANT, EVEN THE ROOTS!  Yikes!  What?  I used Google Images and uploaded a photo of it to get its identification.  I found it growing in Kathy's garden.  Given her knee replacement surgery and the recovery, she has not been working in her garden at all, and it is pretty much overgrown.  I had never noticed this plant before so it must be fast growing.  There are bunches of berries everywhere on this plant.  I thought this close up was pretty dramatic so I posted this photograph first.

Here is a better view of more of the plant.  I think the poisonous quality of the plant is worth reading about, so I am posting a lot of text. Wait until you read about how the leaves have been eaten!  The entire plant is genuinely poisonous to humans, but its toxicity varies considerably depending on which part is eaten and how much.  The entire plant is considered poisonous, including the berries, leaves, stems, and especially the root. Eating one or two berries generally does not cause serious poisoning, particularly in children, but larger amounts can cause significant gastrointestinal poisoning—abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The roots are considerably more concerning. People have mistaken pokeweed roots for edible roots such as ginseng and developed severe vomiting and diarrhea, sometimes with blood, low blood pressure, and other serious effects requiring hospitalization. Get this: young leaves have traditionally been eaten as "poke salad," but only after repeated boiling and draining. Raw or improperly prepared leaves can cause poisoning, so I would not regard them as safe to experiment with.  Yikes!  Boy the things you can learn on my blog!  You are welcome!  :-)

 

A Jungle?

Anyone want to guess what this is a photograph of?

I bought Kathy some flowers for our anniversary and then I put them in a clear glass vase on the dining room table.  One evening I was looking not at the flowers, but at the stems in the water.  So I got out my close-up lens and spent a few minutes trying to make something of these stems underwater.  Not one of my greatest efforts, certainly, but I am a bit desperate because I have nothing else for the evening.  That's what happens when I am painting - I neglect everything else!

 

I Am Just Too Old!

I wanted to buy a box of chocolates for us for our anniversary. So I went to our local CVS where I have always bought Russell Stover, or Whiteman's Sampler boxes of chocolates.  I looked all over the place and couldn't find any!  So I asked one of the young employees if they had any boxes of chocolates, and they had no idea what "a box of chocolates" was!  So I went to the larger, newer CVS about a mile or two away, and asked an employee the same question.  I used my hands and fingers to describe the size of the box and that it was not very thick.  He showed me all kinds of things but he didn't seem to know what I was talking about.  Of course the new thing is they they have small and large bags of chocolate candies of all kinds, but he just didn't know what I was describing!  So on a chance, I CAREFULLY looked at each and every shelf from top to bottom, and finally saw maybe three of these boxes on a bottom shelf!  I was in luck.  So in the end I figured that it is only old people who even know these things exist, a more formal gift than a giant bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups!  In Wikipedia, it did say that apparently "Boxed Chocolates" are a big favorite at Christmastime.  We'll see if that is true.  I will let you know.

 

A Different Sky Tonight

Our usual walk around sunset tonight.  A different kind of sky - high stratus clouds rather then the usual cumulus.  I first noticed the glowing clouds in the center of the photo and thought that was interesting but then I saw the three small figures, and new I had a photograph!  I grabbed my iPhone, rather than my Sony Rx 100 because it was quicker, and it had a wider angle lens on it.  Two shots was all it took and I knew I had it!  A lucky evening for me!

 

Hung Out to Dry

I have explained how I used a garden sprayer to spray a mixture under the eaves to kill any mildew, and then washing it all off with water, before painting.  So my gloves were always soaking wet after this process was over.  So I hung them up to dry!  After going to the garage for something I came back out and saw them, and thought it was funny looking so then went and got my camera to recored this.  I just thought this looked interesting, so here you are!

 

How's The Painting Going?

 So I have shown you a photo of me up on the ladder working on scraping and cleaning in preparation for painting.  I have already shown you the setup and me on the ladder.  And I showed you how badly the wood trim - the eaves - on this side of the house needed painting.  This is a reminder.  And this is the result of my days of hard work, below.

This is an extra large image of the finished eaves!  Be sure and click on this.  I still have to paint the siding but that's only one coat of the finished paint.  It doesn't need priming. It took me two days to scrape all this.  It took two days for spraying with Clorox and TSP and hot water from a garden sprayer to kill all the mildew.  Then three days of painting all of this with a primer.  And then two days to do the final coat.  Tomorrow I will start painting the siding and this side of the house will look brand new.  The other sides have already been painted already over the last couple of years.  It is really deeply satisfying to make everything beautiful again!

Farewell My Faithful Companions

These are a pair of Timberland work boots which I have had for years and they are well used.  I think I have had them for at least 30 years, and probably longer.  There is no way to tell, but they are clearly well used.  The bottom soles of both boots became detached in the front and I used some contact cement to fasten them back on, and they were fine for a while.  But recently, as you can see in the photograph below, the entire sole became detached and that is really unsafe if I am up on the ladder and climbing up and down while painting.  So, sadly, they needed to be replaced.  They certainly have served me well but now that I bought a new pair from a different manufacturer, I no longer need these.  I have no idea how much they cost when I originally bought them, but the replacement cost of the Timberlands was about $200!  Yikes!  My new work boots only cost half that.

I do like studying this photograph, to see the wear and tear on these boots after all these years.  This view of one boot really shows the history of them, more than the photograph looking down at the two of them together.