Projects

Here's another Joan Tubbs picture -- this is a bogbean, or Menyanthes trifoliata. I'm posting it because I've finally finished Joan's online photo gallery. It's here. I picked up the last batch of scanned slides yesterday and spent an hour or two in the evening editing, uploading and annotating them, and now I am done. 

This turned into a much larger and more challenging (and expensive!) photo preservation effort than I originally intended, but c'est la vie. I hope she'd be pleased with the result.

This was my other evening project -- taming, or at least partially taming, the teasel jungle. I cut down several of the big teasels and mowed the surrounding grass. Apparently August is the time to mow long grass, because insects have mostly done their thing and the grass can then regenerate before winter. Or so Monty Don says on "Gardener's World" on the BBC.

I must say, while doing all that work I found very little evidence of active insect life. I think whatever may have been living in that grass earlier in the season has moved on. I left some teasels for the bees but those will also come down in a few weeks. We'll leave the ones on the right, in the flowerbed, so they can go to seed and feed the birds over winter.

I got quite a surprise this morning when I opened the kitchen cabinet to put away some dishes and the door fell off! Apparently the screw in the top hinge popped out. This happened once before and I was able to fix it, but this time I didn't catch the falling door in time and the weight bent the lower hinge. So I'll have to file a maintenance request with the management company.

Unless we just leave it like that. It doesn't look too bad, does it? But then the landlords will probably charge us for damage when we move out.

It's always something.