The vegetables in my back yard are not doing so well. My cucumber plants are drying up. I think they have a fungus or mildew. My tomato plant has bugs all over it. Yuck.
The search software on my phones picture app say that these bugs are leptoglossus zonatus bugs aka leaffooted bugs. The internet says they use their needle-like mouthparts to suck the juice out of plants – in this case my tomatoes. I’ve sprayed them with water, cut they keep coming back. I need to kill them I think …or just let them eat my tomatoes.
Every once in a while, I think about a rose that had a most amazing scent. The variety name is Jardins de Bagatelle. On Friday, I happened to do an internet search, and there happened to be these very roses available near someplace called Fillmore, CA. I searched for it, and it was only an hour and a half away! Yay! I went to get it. In the picture below, the blue dot in the upper left corner shows where I was.
The area around the nursery was agricultural. Lots of orange trees. It was so interesting:
The nursery itself was so cool. SO many roses! Wow! The only trouble was that it was a cool day, so the fragrance of the roses was a little blunted.
They had beautiful display gardens. There was even a pond! I will have a pond again some day. Some day…
There were many beautiful roses. This one was so dark!
There were also some interesting signs in the garden. I haven’t thought about this for many years. There was no such thing on Maui.
I drove home on the Pacific Coast Highway. Even though it was an overcast day, it was beautiful.
When I got home, I set the roses in the planter in front of my house. Yes, roses plural. Once I smelled such wonderful smelling roses, I had to get more. Besides my Jardins de Bagatelle, I also got April in Paris and Pope John Paul II.
The Jardins wasn’t blooming, so I couldn’t smell it. I’m glad I got some backups though, because last night I was looking on Bradaptation and found THIS post, where I say I found the variety a second time and wasn’t impressed. Ack!
I’m one step closer to a functioning pool heater. The gas company came yesterday and upgraded my gas meter. It looks much nicer than the old one, mostly because it’s new.
I think my side yard is done being dug up now, so I can maybe start thinking about what kind of gardening I’ll be doing there…
And this coming Tuesday the pool company will finish installing the pool heater and I will have a warm swimming pool! Woo hoo!
Yesterday in sixth grade religion class we read about the Flood. In our discussion today we will talk about the parallels between the Flood and baptism. I have a slide show where I talk about how the number eight figures in baptism partially because eight people survived the Flood. (It’s also because Jesus rose on the “Eighth Day” of the week, and made all things new.)
When I taught this idea in Baltimore, I took a picture of the baptismal font in my church there. It’s a giant stone font with eight sides.
When I taught in Maui, I took a picture of the font there. The bowl on top is a giant shell, but the stand it’s on is eight-sided.
The font in my current church has three sides. D’oh!
So the eight-sided font is not universal… But at least this gives me a chance to talk about the symbolism of the number “three”.
I’ve been taking cholesterol pills for a while, but lately, my pill has changed shape. It was always a small dose, but there must’ve been filler in it or something, because now the pill is tiny:
The tiny-ness actually makes it hard to swallow. I put the pill in my mouth, then get some water, and then the pill disappears. More than once, it floated between my teeth, and when I tried to swallow, my teeth closed and crushed the pill – the bitter, bitter pill.
Maybe I should just smash it inside a piece of cheese. That works for dogs…
While I am very sorry about your tomatoes, I have to say that you took an amazing close-up shot of them!
If you sprayed them with vodka, would that kill them? The tomatoes would still be fine, right?
…and the bugs would die with smiles on their faces…prob’ly…