Day Lilies

The Day Lilies have been blooming the past couple of weeks, and are nearing the end of their flowering season all too fast.  They're so bright and colourful, they're really a highlight at this time of year.  And they were the undisputed star of our former garden.

One of my favourites, with prolific two-tone blooms.

The Day Lilies are mostly down the side of our house, interspersed with Hostas.  These houses were built with swales, a little dip between each house for water runoff during heavy storms, but over time some of the swales are sinking, creating more of a V-shaped ditch than a gentle dip.  So I can't safely drive down past the Day Lilies to enjoy them.  We're trying to figure out how to fix this.

Day Lilies come in a range of colours, but I like the bright ones.  Since she's always trying to do things for me, Mrs. F.G. mostly purchased bright ones.

We plan to relocate most of these to the new back yard where I'll be able to see them easily in any case.

Just in case you don't grow Day Lilies yourself, their blooms really do last just one day.  You have to go out and deadhead to keep the plants looking good.  Some dedicated Day Lily growers deadhead in the evening even though the blossoms still look good, knowing they will have wilted by morning.

If not for that swale beside the house you'd probably have seen a lot more Day Lily pictures the past two weeks!

I complement these pictures with memories of the large patches in our former garden where the Day Lilies (and the False Sunflowers here) grew in profusion!  Have a great weekend!

Achy Back Acres

We stopped in at Achy Back Acres on our way home from physio in Owen Sound a few minutes ago, and while we two guys chatted Mrs. F.G. hopped out and chose a few fresh veggies.  Their garden has become our favourite farm stand.  

They are at the height of the harvest for the crops they choose to grow, and we took advantage of it.

Their's is a small garden, though an enormous amount of work for two people!  They do it for the fun though, not for the money.

Sadly I have to watch my consumption of tomatoes now, but I love all the varieties they grow.

I believe this is the first year they've grown potatoes, and we love new potatoes.

We also love beans, fresh from the garden if possible.  And tonight I get my first fresh tomato sandwich for supper, along with a fresh cob of corn!  Yummy!

Blogger was playing tricks on me today.  Those blue fonts and underlining is their doing, not mine, and I can't undo it for love nor money.  Mysteriously changed to black print partway through.  Spacing is off too, so this new blogger format may cause me more trouble than I thought.  

Down to the Bay

In other recent news, we did get down to the bay one day last week to check out the blue sky, blue water and the waves.  It was a windy day and at least a couple of sailboats were out.  In news here at home, we've started work on the gardens surrounding the new patio.

Both the bay and the sky were beautifully blue!

The buoy marking one side of the channel in and out of the harbour, and a distant sailboat.

Another not-quite-so-distant sailboat wallowing in the waves a bit.  It's windy enough that you'd need to know how to sail well to be out on a day like this, not a day for novices!

As you look further to the left or north you catch the corner of Cape Rich, an area of early settlement, then the Meaford Tank Range, now the Land Force Central Area Training Centre or Camp Meaford.

This is the site of a very controversial energy project development by TCE, the new corporate name for Trans Canada Pipelines.  They propose to create a pumped storage hydro plant, pumping water up the escarpment overnight when electricity rates are cheap and demand is low, and letting it run back downhill when demand is high.

A strong local group, Save Georgian Bay, has formed.  You can read more about it on their website.  Citizen opposition in the community seems very strong to me.  I will write more about it.

Meanwhile the two guoys we've hired are hard at work this morning, getting the area ready for extra topsoil, pea stone and mulch.  Making progress.

Bloggers new format finally reached my account today, so this is my first post with it.  I didn't really notice much difference with it, perhaps because I mostly use default settings for pictures and just centre everything.  Let me know if you notice any problems.

A New-to-us Country Road

We drove down an interesting country road west from Clarksburg the other day, and got some sweet corn, the first of the season.  We had been over to Zwart's landscape supplies to look at rocks, gravel and mulch that we need to finish off around the patio, but instead of just coming back the highway we drove straight through Clarksburg over the new bridge and onward.

The old bowstring bridge was replaced 2 or 3 years ago, but they retained the same style which was nice.

Looking through the railing we could see the Beaver River headed downstream to the harbour in Thornbury.

Immediately out of the village we came upon enormous orchards of Red Prince apples on both sides of the road.  This is apple growing on an unprecedented scale around here!

These are entirely the new high density orchards with both trees and rows very closwe together, but these trees are old enough to be producing lots of apples.

In this picture you can see both the bulges in the trunks where the original grafting of the trees onto dwarf rootstock was done, and the drip irrigation down each row.

It looked like it would be a good crop.

Further down the road was a farm selling sweet corn, the first we've seen this year.  Of course we pulled in and bought some, and found they had beets and potatoes for sale too, so we got some of those.  I expect those patches of green in the field behind the rows of sweet corn are pumpkins which will spread out widely over the next two months before Hallowe'en.

These are the 4 rows of sweet corn, a typical way farmers grow it for some local sales.

A friendly rooster and his small flock of hens came scurrying over to see who we were.

The rooster was particularly bold, coming right up under the car window, but his three hens were close behind.  Unfortunately they were out of luck with us.

And we got corn on the cob for dinner, along with some of our own new yellow tomatoes!

Pouring the Cement

The big day arrived on Tuesday with a crew of 7 and the cement truck.  They wanted to bring the truck in across the golf course again, but we said no to that and made them wheelbarrow it in down the side of the house, as their boss had originally promised they would.  So two guys worked pretty hard while the other five got to do a lot of standing around!

The cement work starts, in the far corner of the patio.  You can see they've laid heavy wire mesh down first for reinforcing.  Having poured a concrete floor once myself (not without problems) I was interested to watch the process.

It moved steadily along and they started finishing it off as they went.

Having done this that one time, I know how swiftly you have to get it smoothed out before it starts to set!

Before I knew it they were at the end, pouring the square at the bottom of the ramp,  This is where they feathered the cement up against the bottom board, and I was very pleased with the results.

And that point they all had to wait while it started to dry out.

About an hour later it was ready for the stamping.  We chose a random uneven pattern that comes embedded in big rubber sheets.  They place these down and use heavy stamps to impress the pattern into the cement.  It's light grey in colour rather than stark white.  Late in the afternoon they got to go home while we stayed and 'watched the cement dry'!.

The next day the clean-up crew arrived and removed all the wooden boards and stakes.  I thought some of those stakes would be hard to get out, but not for these guys!  They also cut the pressure lines to reduce the risk of future cracking, a dusty process, so I stayed inside.

The boss came to the door asking for immediate payment of the full amount, but we said no until they finished tidying up the mess.  They reluctantly moved the excess topsoil around a bit to satisfy us.

And they even got out a pressure washer to clean it off.  We paid them and they were done.

I thought the boss was pretty unprofessional, but we got what we wanted, a finished patio true to Mrs. F.G.'s original sketch.  Now our work begins.  We have a couple of young guys coming this week to get it started.

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It's been raining steadily, heavily at times here, and it's a very welcome rain because we need it.  The rain is supposed to continue all day, and parts of tomorrow and Tuesday, so by then we should be nicely saturated!.  I'm sure a lot of farmers will be very pleased, as well as all the creatures big and small who live in our streams, rivers and wetlands.  Hopefully the little now dry stream at the end of the street will have flowing water again, perhaps a lot of it!  A wonderful and welcome break in the weather.

Emancipation Day Festival Online!

I've got more about the patio below, but today is the 158th Emancipation Festival in Owen /Sound.  158 years of picnics, over 120 of them in Harrison Park, and of course this year there is no picnic but an online festival.  So you can go to the Owen Sound Emancipation Festival on You Tube and see a 2 hour video of speakers, history and music including the Town Crier we saw being filmed in the park two weeks ago,  If interested, just watch the first 4 minutes and you'll see what we saw that day.

Back here at home it's hot, but I want to share a bit about the construction of the patio.

It started with an idea in Mrs. F.G.'s mind and progressed to a final sketch and a final agreement on approximate dimensions.  The crew leader plotted it out on the ground, and then she stood down on the grass and directed while he adjusted it a bit until the final markings were agreed upon.

In the meantime two other guys had brought the two machines they would use in the back through the edge of the golf course, with permission of course.  This part is not used as a fairway, though it is kept mowed.

Pretty soon the boss was digging out the sod,

and piling it behind for the skidsteer to pick up.  Then he turned around and made sure the bucket was fully loaded.

They scraped off the thin layer of topsoil and piled it, and then started the framing.

Once that was done they brought it some gravel which they spread around.  For a few minutes they were working hard!

The finished product that day looked like this, ready for the cement.  As you can see they used 2x8s where there was a straight line, but thinner boards of plywood, scored to bend easily, on the curves.  Lots of stakes to pull up later.  That was Friday; we waited until Tuesday for the cement.

This photo showing the bottom of the ramp off the deck and the beginning of the path may answer a couple of questions from yesterday. The path begins at the bottom of the ramp and turns to head the opposite direction toward the patio.  It's extra wide there to allow me to get safely off the ramp and to turn.  In fact they feathered the cement up against the bottom board so well that I can't even feel it when I go across.