Spendthrifts

Some of the garden flowers have faded, but the Amistad sage is still blooming away. That plant is always a crowd-pleaser. Too bad it's not hardy -- I'd like to plant it but it needs protection in the winter so we keep it in a pot and shuffle it into the shed (or the living room) during frosts.

Then again, that's the advantage to potted plants -- they can be moved around, as we've been reminded the last few days. We cleared the patio for the upstairs neighbors' roof work (which actually begins today, not yesterday, as I wrote earlier). I also tied back a big buddleia that overhangs the patio and did some other things to minimize plant damage. I had to unlock the side gate first thing this morning, which entailed blundering into a giant spider web between the house and the fence before I'd even had my coffee.

The workmen will soon arrive to begin setting up their scaffold. I wonder if hunky scaffold man will be back?

As you can see, there's moisture on these flowers. Yes, we've had more rain! A fair amount of it, actually. As far as I know our hosepipe ban is still in effect, but we haven't had to use the hose (or water at all, really) because nature is doing it for us. In fact I have to mow the lawn again. That's another sunflower above -- we have three blooming now.

The daturas have produced lots of spiny seed pods -- "thorn apple" is one of the plant's common names. When the pods open I may harvest some seeds, though I'm not sure I'm going to grow them again. They're mildly interesting but the flowers don't last long and I certainly don't need as many as I accidentally grew this summer.

I think we've ironed out Olga's care over the holidays. It's going to cost us an arm and a leg, but we found a dog-sitting service with an opening. (I'm sure there was an opening because it costs an arm and a leg.) Basically someone will come and live in the house with Olga for the two weeks that we're gone. It seems kind of extreme but it's nice to know that her routines will stay the same and I like having a single person for the entire time we're away -- rather than trying to shuttle keys between multiple people. None of our friends could do it the whole time because, of course, they're going to be traveling just like we are.

The cost is stressing me out, but sometimes you just have to pay to get things done. As I've said before, between this, Olga's dental surgery, my October plane fare to Florida and both of our Christmas trips, and our tree maintenance (which the landlord is partly paying) it's an expensive fall. I hope my step-sister's car will be available for us to borrow in Florida, because renting a car on top of all that would pretty much break the bank. Fortunately the school will reimburse most of our Christmas airfare through its "home leave" program for employees -- but that won't happen until afterwards.

Oh well. It's only money.