Sunday, Jul. 07, 2002 – 11:17 p.m.
2002-07-07 11:17
Catching Up
I have not posted for a while but that doesn’t mean I have not been writing! I have been writing pages in my PDA but I hadn’t found the time to upload them… until now.
Catch up entries:
Fourth of July
For my 4th of July holiday, I drove up to my parent’s cabin at Caesar’s Head in the mountains of SC. It is a nice place cabin in the middle of a community at the top of the first real ridge of mountains in SC. At about 3200 ft., the houses on the cliff edge (ours is not on the cliff edge) have an commanding view south and west. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Greenville!
The weather was significantly cooler there than in the low lands. On Thursday morning, it was cool enough that I had to wear a long sleeve shirt (not that it stayed that way… but it was in the low 80s rather than the 90’s).
There are about 30 houses in the Caesar’s Head community which is surrounded by the Caesars Head State Park. As it is, this weekend is probably the busiest of the summer (and therefore the year). In addition to holding the annual meetings of the community organization and the water company (yes, we run our own water company. When you are at the TOP of a mountain, there are not many other options.), there was a cocktail party on Friday evening and a holiday parade and barbeque picnick on Saturday. It has been a number of years since I had been up there for the 4th and there were a LOT of people who I did not recognize. There were significantly more folk my age (or younger) than in the past.
While I was up there, I took a look at the rose bush that my parents have in the yard. They say they never are up early enough to see it bloom and it does get in the way of their work in that part of the yard. I don’t know what type it is (yet…. it appears that it might be a “wild” rose) but they said that I can have it if I want it. Not that I currently have any room at this point… There is not a hurry so I can see what I want to do.
In looking around the community, I did find other rose plant apparentluy growing “wild”. One still had blooms so hopefully I can get a better idea of the type(s) of roses.
On my way home, I took a short detour to check out the Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. They look interesting but looking at their explansion plans, it appears that they won’t have their rose garden built for a couple of years. What I didn’t notice at the time was that the Cottage Garden lists roses. Oh well, it is another road trip….
They’re Back!
My hope that the Japanese Beetle season was coming to an end was dashed this week. Early last week, I picked more than 50 beetles off my plants two days in a row. It was to the point that I could not crush them in my hand so I got a container of soapy water and knocked them off into the water. The soap reduces the surface tension of the water allowing the water into the breathing holes of the bugs so they drown. They decimated the Peace and Voodoo as well as a number of other plants; Even the reds are getting hit.
This radical increase in numbers make me think that one of my neighbors might have set up a beetle trap. While these devices are generally effective in capturing the beetles, they also attact the beetles so you don’t want to put one near where you DON’T want the beetiles (like a rose garden).
Given my absence for the past 5 days, I bought several bails of pinestraw to mulch the new beds. I successfully put the stuff down so we should see less dry-out and fewer weeds. We will see.
Ok… Bed time!