Gardens and Spiders and Fishies, Oh My!

After months of non-stop rain, to the point that we were considering building an ark, to weeks of non-stop sunshine (well, except at night, but you get the idea), the stars and planets finally aligned so that my dear husband agreed to help me plant in the garden today.

These poor plants had been sitting in pots on my front porch since the end of June. Poor, poor homeless plants.

Well, at least now they have a home. Let's just hope they survived the ordeal, shall we?

Oh, did I say that my husband would be planting them?

Silly me. It turns out that his idea of helping me was to dig the holes and then to step back while I did all the rest of the work.

And did I mention that it was a tad bit muddy today?

Or that I am sick?

Well, at least he 'helped'.

Two dogwood seedlings are in the cinder block in the foreground. If they survive, they will be planted out in the back of the yard.

If you click on the photo you will see an old push reel mower under the stairs. That mower, which is missing the roller, sadly does not work. However, it once belonged to my grandfather, from whom I inherited my can-do spirit. In addition, it was free, as no one bought it at the estate auction.

It doesn't look like much now, but hopefully these plants will take off and flourish.

In this bed are obedient plants, artemisia, blackberry lilies, peony, echinacea, mallow, yellow yarrow, pink yarrow and garden phlox.

Surprise lilies, peonies, virgin's bower and New York Iron weed grace the narrow bed to the south of the new deck.




And what is this I spy?

It is an argiope trifasciata or banded orb weaver spider that I spy.

This beauty* is quite large, with the body being an inch long (and yes, I measured it with a ruler - carefully).

*Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
I prefer to behold spiders from a safe distance.
Let's just say that you, my dear readers, owe me.





I will admit that the webs of orb weavers are a work of art. The zig-zag pattern in the center of the web is quite distinct.





And now let's move inside to something a little bit less 'icky' if we may.


I have taken over the care and maintenance of the fish tank.
Of course, Minx loves to help me feed the fish and change their water.
The fish aren't as thrilled about that, though.

At the current time we have eight platyfish, though one is injured and not doing well, and one Chinese algae eater in the tank.
As this is a 20 gallon tank, we could safely have one more fish in the tank (figure one inch of fish per one gallon of water).







The fish tank at night.
We have a blue light illuminating the tank and several glow-in-the-dark 'plants'.

The platyfish swim up to meet me, expecting me to feed them.

Sorry, dears, but I'm just filming you now.

The fish swim at night.