Weeds Be Gone

Good morning, my friends. I'm happy to say I've made my way around the whole house and eradicated the weeds...the ones I didn't miss anyway. Mike has finished the mowing too, and so he'll spray whatever is left of the weeds. This could not have been accomplished without the steadfast help of the resident attack cat. With him standing guard, I felt purrfectly safe from all who might invade.

As I was picking the last of the weeds, I noticed the aptly named Bumble Rumble dahlia has bloomed.

That makes three of the four dahlias that have bloomed. 

The fourth...the Firefighter dahlia...still doesn't even have any buds. I'm hopeful we'll see something from it soon.

It's a good time to be a bee in our garden. Their favorite things are blooming. This next one is mint.

If you've ever grown mint, then you know it's terribly invasive. I've kept ours confined to one of our whiskey barrels. This year, more grew in places it isn't wanted than grew in the whiskey barrel. We'll let it stay for the time being, but its days are numbered in some of those areas. 

I worried we'd completely miss the lavender this year, but one plant is still blooming. This too is crawling with bees.

We used it to make Bees Knees cocktails yesterday evening.

The echinacea continues to bloom away. It's a little splayed out this season. Ordinarily, I keep it contained in a tomato cage. Since I wasn't around to monitor it, it's decided to grow wild and free. I can hardly blame it. This is covered in bees.

Since we left early in the season, I didn't plant any annuals this year. Nevertheless, some volunteer catnip moved into one pot. I caught Smitty nibbling at that yesterday afternoon. He loves his catnip.

There are also some volunteer pansies and snapdragons.

Here we have two flat cats. It's been hot here, and they like to cool their tummies on our shady deck.

Back inside, Sadie was my helper cat in the sewing room. She pays close attention to what I'm doing.

It was time to make the eighth of nine blocks for the Merry, Merry Snowmen project. These start with a background.

And then, I did all the fusing.

When that was finished, I decided I'd done enough for the day. It still needs top-stitching, and I'll get that done today. Then, it'll need a couple of little buttons sewn on and some hand-embroidery for the faces. This project is nearing a finish.

So I'm writing fast this morning. One of our truck's tire pressure monitoring gizmos stopped working on while we were traveling. We didn't really need it, but it still needs fixing. We're still figuring out the air-conditioner on the truck, but I don't know its status. These are things I leave to the man of the house. And all of that to say we're taking the truck in for some work this morning, and we'll do our grocery shopping while they're installing the new tire pressure monitor. 

With the weeding done, I'm happy to get back to sewing full time. Housekeeping chores will have to start up again eventually, but for now, we rest and revel in the return to our usual routines.