Fertilizer Friday, September 24

Ok, so I have the posts about our vacation out of my system; thank you to everyone for tolerating my rambling.  Now it's time to start rambling about what I usually ramble about, stuff here at home.  (Many of you are probably thinking, "Oh, great.")   Now, now, be nice.

But, hey!  It's time for Fertilizer Friday again.  You can click on the logo on the right and be off to visit gorgeous gardens after you trudge through this one!  

I really don't have a lot of new things to post for Fertilizer Friday today, just aging flowers; but the foliage on the trees and grasses are definitely starting to turn.  We had an amazing 3" of rain again last night and today; the creek was up almost to the road out by the Pachyberm and I didn't even bother to snap a picture of it because you've all seen the flood pictures from the last three times it's happened this year anyway.  No damage was done to anything, just high water, again.

Zinnia 'Zahara Rose', 'Victoria' Salvia and an unknown coleus.

 These were taken on Wednesday evening, just before sunset and the western sky looked awful then already, dark and menacing.  There was a beautiful, kinda eerie light though, that lent a pink tint to everything, so of course I had to take a bunch of pictures.

The lowly marigolds, love 'em or hate 'em, keep blooming like champions right up til the hard frost.  These are 'Inca' marigolds, a very dependable bedding plant for me and one I plant somewhere around here every year.

I was really happy these impatiens did so well, since they are planted in such a shallow container.  This time of year all of my planters contain more roots than soil.  I guess the heavy rain we've been getting is good for something. 

The purple aster in the middle of the picture above is blooming even though it flopped all over the rocks, but it looks like it's 'supposed' to be that way, so I won't say anything more about it, er, after this....moving on....

 Once that little mum down in the left hand corner of this picture starts to open, then we'll have some mixed-up color happening in this area.  I was happy to see the mum overwintered, especially since I didn't plant them in the ground last fall til nearly November.  And yes, I agree, I have a strange sense of color choices, don't I?

Below: the Quarry Garden (but it's getting rather dark)

 I took this picture from a perch up on the Escarpment Bed.

 The fish keep muddying the water in the pond, but the waterlilies still look great!

 Sunset behind the Swiss Stone Pine on the Pachyberm.

The view of the corn field in the distance reminds me of my father.

I never know what I'm going to write about until I get started sometimes and the cornfield above got me started down a not-so-dusty memory lane again......

September 24th is a special day for me.  Or, I should say, for my late father; today was the day my Dad got to 'pick' for his birthday.

See, when he was born here on the farm (no hospitals back then) his parents already had a family of five kids, so one more mouth to feed arriving on this earth was hardly a reason to celebrate.   No one bothered to even write it on the calendar.  His mother had a midwife to attend the birth and a doctor did stop at the farm at some point, but I guess the doctor was a bit of a tippler and somehow or other the birth certificate was filled out incorrectly and no date was ever penned in the box marked 'Date of Birth'.

Dad was A Man Without a Birthday.

He used to talk about it a little bit if I asked him, but mostly he said the question of when his birthday really was always started an argument between his folks and his brothers who were old enough to sort of remember the day.  They thought it was before the full moon, but after the first frost, but no, it couldn't have been, because the corn wasn't harvested yet, so it must have been the week before.  Or was it three days after the big rainstorm?  (The next time someone forgets your birthday, you'll know how Dad felt every year!)  Finally, his family narrowed it down to somewhere between September 20 to September 27.

The year they were sure of.

1913.

So, September 20-27 was the week we used to celebrate Dad's birthday.  He usually picked whatever day held the least amount of work to be done, not that there was ever a day on the farm when there wasn't work to be done.   It was kind of nice actually, to be able to schedule your birthday whenever it is most convenient for you, though.

My father was a gruff, difficult man; no surprise there, coming up in a family that can't remember when you were born, exactly........but he did feel a little sentimental about his birthday presents and the special supper my mother would make for him.  Not that it showed all that much, but there were times I saw a lone tear trickle down his weathered face after blowing out his candles on the cake. 

   
When Dad was in his 60's, he needed a birth certificate for something or other, probably Social Security, and he had to apply for a new one to prove he existed.    I can remember his indecision when it came to filling out his replacement birth certificate when it came to the date he was born.

"I don't know what to put down," he grumbled.  "Why does it matter after all of these years?"

But for some reason, known only to him, he finally filled in the blank box marked 'Date of Birth' with 9-24-13.  He shrugged, shook his head and said he guessed the 24th was as good as any other day. 

We have a winner!  September 24th it was!  And every year when this week rolls around, I think of Dad more than ever.  He passed away in October of 2001 at the age of 88.

Happy Birthday, Dad, You would have been 97 today.  (Or sometime this week....I can still see you shaking your head over that.)

I love you.

Karen

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