Saturday, September 13, 2008

rain!

.

You'll recall me saying we were very short on rain, all August. September seems to have brought back the rain. We got some last weekend, and today we are getting exactly the slow soaking rain we needed so badly.

Patio parsley, as precipitation pelts. Nearly every pic in this post has been through the watercolor filter.

Parsley is a biennial -- leaves the first year, seeds the second. Someone at the farmers' market sold us a second year plant last year, which went right to seed and made us nothing usable in the way of leafage. No seeds sprouted in the planter which held the original plant, but this year we have several plants growing between the patio bricks.





Ficus, enjoying the rain.





You remember my volunteer jewelweed from last year. It has many children this year.





Jewelweed flower. The flowers not large, and are rather sparse, as you can tell from the pic above, but they are attractive and exotic.





New asphalt, wet, makes a nicely reflective surface.





We had a bunch of errands to run.

We went to the farmers' market, but didn't tarry, or carry the camera, because it was pouring right down. I nabbed some tomatoes, peaches, raspberries, and garlic, and then we headed to the library.

First we pulled into the staff lot in the back, so we could donate some books. The Friends of the Library sell donated books (and books withdrawn from the library's collection).





Then we parked on the street and went in and shopped the sale. At least we brought home fewer than we donated........ We also dropped off some magazines for the freebie rack, so the library was definitely a net loss for us on the "stuff in the house" front. A Good Thing.

On our way home now. Looking west on William.





Same location, looking north out the side window. Downtown's newest parking lot, with bus depot and then the federal building (with post office) behind.





I think it is very cool to see the top of the federal building upside down in the drips. (As always, click on an image to see a bigger version.)





Leetle parking lot at the corner of Main and William.





Home now, wandering around with an umbrella. New driveway.





Random leaves in front yard.





Sidewalk puddle, tulip tree reflection.





Tulip tree leaf on driveway. Tulip tree leaves have an excellent shape.





You can see where people got the idea to make magnifying lenses.............





Me and the camera, under the umbrella, reflected in the driveway.



.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jewelweed!
If I hadn't used it myself, i may not have believed it...
I got into some serious poison ivy doing some brush clearing in WVa.
The local lady friend of mine said, go rub jewelweed on it.

I did. I squeezed out the juice from the stems onto my skin, and rubbed it on.
I didn't get poison ivy. Really.
And I should have been covered.

I need orange said...

Pretty amazing!

Wonder if it works on nettles.....

Another mystery in my back yard -- I saw some nettles on someone else's blog, and....................

Here I thought they grew by water.

Better to find out on someone's blog than by having an unfortunate encounter. !!!

I got into nettles once as a kid (at least that was the supposition -- I had no idea anything of the kind existed, but I came up with uncomfortable welts and the person whose house we were visiting said it was probably nettles).

Anyway, not good. I need to go whack them and fling them over the fence. (The space between our garage and the neighbor's fence is
fenced off from our back yard. So it's over our fence onto our own property that I fling the poke weed, etc, that I whack.)

Poison ivy I don't whack and fling. I carefully insert rubber-gloved hands down into the bottom of one of the plastic bags in which our newspaper is delivered, grab the poison ivy, turn the bag inside out with the ivy inside, and put that inside a garbage bag.

Birds love poison ivy berries, and the seeds emerge unscathed. We live close to a "park" that is all overgrown ravine, so every once in a while we get poison ivy growing in the yard.