Mona Lisa

While we were poking around Menards one day, looking at all the gardening accessories, I saw a display of boxed lily bulbs. They looked so forlorn and pathetic! Most of them had already sprouted in the box and were marked down for quick sale. I had always heard you should plant bulbs in the fall, but the back of the box said March-December, so I decided to give them a try. My philosophy on plants is, either they will live or they will die.

More time passed before I got them into the ground, so I had little hope that much would happen this year. But the ones that were growing in the package, kept right on growing once they were in the ground. This particular one is a Mona Lisa oriental lily. They are supposed to get 40" tall, but since these bulbs got started so late, the plants are barely a foot tall. Each one has one or two flowers that almost hang on the ground since the stalk is so short.

Hopefully they will be even bigger and more beautiful next year. Grow little plants, GROW!

Old Glory

Happy Independence Day!

I Heard it Through the Grapevine

Our grapevine has a mind of its own. It's always reaching, always grabbing, always trying to take over everything in its path. I have to wrestle it into submission every summer or it would engulf the whole neighborhood. Creatures live in it too. The rustling leaves and animal noises make it seem even more alive.

Someday maybe I'll be brave enough to eat some of the grapes. Or not.

Death of a Gummi Bear

We had a birthday BBQ on Saturday and someone brought a bag of Gummi Bears. Today I went out to do some yard work in the 90 degree heat and noticed that one of the bears met a very cruel fate. Poor, poor bear!

By the time I finished, I was starting to feel like the bear. I figured I'd better get inside before I met the same fate!

Lowry Avenue Bridge

I just learned last week that they are going to start taking down the Lowry Avenue Bridge this week. I didn't even know it had closed a year ago! I guess when they were repainting the bridge in 2004, engineers noticed that Pier 3 had rotated 11 inches out of vertical alignment. By 2008, they'd noticed it had rotated even more, and were afraid that normal temperature expansion could put too much stress on the superstructure.

So I wanted to get out and get a few documentary photos before they take it down. This bridge was a significant memory in my early childhood. When mom and dad only had one car, we used to drive dad to work a lot. And this bridge was always part of the drive. To me, this was the "Woo Woo" bridge because of the sound the tires made as you drove over it. It could be the dead of winter, and I would still roll down my window and stick my head out to look through the grates as we drove over. The see-through aspect of the bridge fascinated me as a little kid.

Who am I kidding? I'm still fascinated by see-through bridges.

So long, Woo Woo bridge. I hope the bridge that replaces you is just as interesting.