Bits and pieces

No particular reason for the new header photo, except that I took that picture in early July at the Ossipee Valley Fair and have been meaning to use it as a header photo. I'm still a farm girl at heart.

I decided a week ago to give Molly a major tune-up. It was long over due. So I took her outside, secured her leash over one of the pickets of our little white picket fence, and began the procedure: ear cleaning, Frontline treatment, etc. Molly knows this routine well, and the picket fence has long been our location for the procedure.

Ken helped with the ears and the Frontline, then I told him I'd give Molly a major brushing and didn't need his help. He went inside.

Just as I began brushing Molly, she began thrashing. Usually she likes to be brushed. I was confused...until I noticed the hornets trying to attack her. She thrashed, I tried to keep ahold of her leash, she darted (yanking me out of one of my sandals), and we both made for the kitchen door. We got inside the house, me with one bare foot, and Molly continued her frenzy. I couldn't blame her: she'd been stung by one of the hornets, just below her right eye. It took her quite awhile to calm down.

I told Ken there was a hornet's nest in the little flower garden in front of the picket fence. He waited awhile for things to calm down outdoors, then he did an inspection. Sure enough: a HUGE hornet's nest on the picket fence, tucked neatly under the clematis vine. Can you see it just below and to the right of the ceramic bird house in the second photo?

On a happier front, in June one morning as Ken and I watched the news, drank our coffee, and I checked my e-mail on my iPad, I opened a message from a garden center.

What especially caught my eye was the lovely trellis, selling for $150. I handed the iPad to Ken to show him the photo, and I said, "Here's something I'd like to have some day," as I pointed out the trellis to him.

Later that morning I wandered out to Ken's workshop to see what he was up to. He was busily working with strips of wood.

"What are you making?" I asked.

"That trellis you like," he replied.

"How do you know how to make it"

"Oh, I did a couple of sketches of the trellis in the photo you showed me, did a little calculating,...."

So now I have a first-class trellis, which I've wanted for a long time. I hurried to a garden center and bought a thunbergia to grow inside it and climb up it. These photos were taken long before the thunbergia had done much climbing, but it's happy in its new climbing corral and has almost reached the very top of the structure.