New Smoke Bush

July 17th - Sunday 92 degrees - Beautiful Blue Sky - Low humidity

We have had beautiful days and cool evenings; however, we are in need of some rain. The farmers are delighted with the weather, and much hay has gone into the barns this week. One of the farmers told us at church today, that he planned on finishing up his haying this afternoon after he had his dinner, as we are supposed to have thundershowers tomorrow afternoon.

We have been watering our garden each evening with the soaker hose and our garden is doing great. Considering we were very late getting it planted. We had beet greens yesterday and they tasted so good and were so tender. Our green beans are bloomed and usually we have beans on Krista's birthday and that will be on the 24th of July and it will probably be the same this year. We have little cucumbers, green peppers and the radishes have been delightful. Lou has a way with growing radishes that I don't understand.

One evening when Casey was here we were walking around the yard and I showed him my Ninebark bush that my landscapers had pruned at the wrong time of the season and I mentioned to him that I would like to purchase a Smoke Bush, so to our surprise, last week when Brion and Janet came up they brought us a Golden Spirit Smoke Bush. Lou and I had kept it watered and in the shade, hoping we would get a shower and then get it planted, but decided that wasn't going to happen. We decided on Thursday evening after dinner we would get the hole dug and get it planted. Well digging the hole was a task in of itself. You can see from the picture we encountered a huge rock that went down and down, finally Lou decided to use the crowbar on it and we got it out and filled up the hole with some choice dirt and planted the new Smoke Bush. Now to keep it watered so we can watch for the beautiful crimson colors this fall.

We miss Casey this week, as he is away at school for two weeks in Alabama, seems like we just got used to him popping in and out and his evening phone calls and he was on a plane and off again.

Now we have a much smaller grandson that pops in to visit, Matthew is now a month old and we have all found that he loves to be outside which is great as the rest of the family also love to be outside. Kris and Steve got a jogging stroller and I could not believe how easily that pushes across the grass. Lou and I both commented how great it would have been if we could have had a wheel chair that pushed that easily on grass.

Tomorrow we are off to friends at Mountain Lake for the day and this week shouldn't be as busy with appointments as last week. Lou got the repairs made to the little barn that have been waiting for two years, so now will need to get some painting done.

Ande and Sandra picked some blueberries on the weekend, so we will need to get back to the patch by mid week and get them picked, and if we don't get some rain, that is going to slow down also.

We are still waiting on Camping World to get the repairs done on the motor home as we have a camping trip coming up and need to have the RV for that. We had to cancel out on a square dancing camp out due to not having the RV to take. Seems like consumers have to stay on top of the situations to make sure all followup work is completed as requested.... Enough said. I guess everyone has the same problem.