Here it is! My outdoor bedroom. Jenica and I laughed a lot every time we looked at it--it's so big. She teases me that it's bigger than my indoor bedroom. Just about, just about.

This is one pot of pansies I planted. I have it on a birdbath pedestal in my shade garden. Right now it needs to dry out: we had incredible thunderstorms yesterday, with pea-sized hail. Some of my still-tender seedlings suffered pretty bad damage because I left them out to fend for themselves. Turned out that wasn't a good idea. The baby asters may not recover and one of the tiny tomatoes got broken off altogether. Even though I think it's time for these plants to grow up, they've just not had enough sunlight to grow much. 16 straight days of rain will do that to a seedling, I guess.

These are the last of the daffodils. I forget what they're called--"Ice" something. They're very delicate.


This is a cute little hummingbird feeder I found somewhere. I think the hummers are eating from it, though I've never witnessed it--the level of the liquid is dropping. I keep the screen door open so the dogs can go in and out, which they really love doing. Unfortunately it means the hummers fly into the house a lot, too. 4 times during the weekend this happened, and twice Tess got to the birds before I could catch them and release them outside. She's not as gentle as I am and she killed them both. The ones she killed were both males, which worried me. I was afraid there were no more males left around the house, but there is at least one more left. The 2 females who flew into the house were chirping mad when I caught them and freed them, but at least they lived to tell the tale.

Back in the saddle
Back at work, after my relaxing but not very productive hiatus. I had a grand time but was really only productive with Jenica. The rest of the time I spent reading, sitting on my deck, napping, fussing with my plants and visiting with my friends. Did not get home projects even started, much less completed. Oh well, Jenica and I accomplished three majorly important things: bought and installed a new screen door (this involved driving to the place, transporting the door in her CRV, sawing 2" off the bottom of the door so it would fit in my doorway, putting hinges, handle and 2 sets of eyes & hooks--but, SUCCESS!), opened boat house (and sat on b.h. porch for extended periods of time), and--really grand, erected my screened gazebo cum outdoor bedroom. This is way cool and I never, ever would have been able to do this without Jenica's amazing brain. I lost/threw away the instructions for putting it up, and it had a bunch of poles that needed to be put together, some plastic corners to join the poles together and the sides & roof. She puzzled over it for a while and voila! it all came together. What a grand structure it is.

I got to spend a lot of time with Linda and Erdvilas, including a nice visit with Linda alone yesterday morning when she came to use my phone. We had a nice, honest and open talk about our weight and general health, and I got to tell her how much she means to all of us. And how fat I am, so I made myself confront that yet again. All that aside we had a nice time. I had dinner with them, along with Bill on Monday night, then just me again last night. Nice times. Last night after dinner I stopped in to see the women from Baltimore and had a very nice late night visit with them. Their cabin is in a really wonderful spot, tucked away at the edge of a field in the woods. Very peaceful and isolated. They are fine and Tess behaved admirably while we were there, 3 adults and 2 dogs in a very small space. She also behaved well at Linda's, not fussing with the 3 pugs at all. She's matured quite a bit in the last year: in previous years she's nattered a lot at those poor little pugs.

Now I'm at work and--get this--my director is asking me to do things, assigning tasks. She's got nerve!