I went to Buchheit first thing in the morning to get concrete edging and mulch. I went with pine bark “just because”. I also got three light blue scabiosa, and a six-pack of Wave pink ‘toonyas; they were 50% off, and looked pretty good.

I finally got the ex-lily nightmare finished; I officially have nothing left sitting in pots, waiting to be planted. There are two weigela ‘Minuet’, three Pow Wow white coneflower, a Buzz pink dwarf butterfly bush, and three scabiosa. There’s a little room left for asters…assuming I ever actually receive them.

I found a little friend while I was planting the scabiosa.

The vervain in the hanging pot looked like crap because it was so root bound that there was no soil left to hold water. I took it out and put it in a bigger pot; still looks like shit, but hopefully it will recover.

In the hanging pot, I put the pink ‘toonyas. They’re a bit sparse now, but if they’re anything like Wave purple, they’ll look good in no time.

Rank and file flatid hoppers. I put the video of my magic garden gloves up on my Flickr, but not on YT yet. If I think of it, I will…I’m not holding my breath!

I took too long in getting this morning glory out of the fence line, so I had to cut it back rather severely. I thought this was oak leaf, in which case it’ll be fine because it’s a weed anyway, but it actually looks like ordinary morning glory…which didn’t grow on the fence last year and should not have volunteered. I dunno…I’m just the gardener. Anyway, it’s droopy, but hopefully it’ll live.

My assistant, wondering when it’s time to stop working and pet the kitteh.

This was very definitely a working holiday! Friday, I finished the patio.

Saturday, my big project was digging up the lilies out front I don’t think I took a picture because I was hot, sweaty, and hating ditch lilies. I needed compost, though, and couldn’t finish it.

Planted my little fuchsias before starting the lilies. Last try with these.

Grapevine beetle. Huge.

Mexican sunflower blooming this year instead of just making leaves.

Crocosmia

Autumn Colors rudbeckia

Apparently miffed that I planted no sunflowers, and the racuns clean up the spilt seed, the birds planted one for themselves in the Honeysuckle Horseshoe.

Sunday, I swept and weeded the patio while P had HK to go get chairs and compost.

New chairs!

They work!

Larval cicada. Found while digging lilies.

Lilies mostly gone. Still had to sift for roots.

Female stag beetle. Lucanus elaphus, if I spelt it right.

Sunday, I also did a TON of laundry. I was busy that day!

Bloom from Cranberry Crush, I believe.

Larval mud dauber, found amongst the 5000 paper wasp and mud dauber nests under the old outdoor blind I took down when I cleaned the windows. (After I swept and weeded the patio, the windows looked dirty.)

I also washed the patio furniture and the coir mats. Two little American Snout butterflies loved the wet mats.
For the record, wet coir smells like wet dog.

Lots of dragonflies this year. Hardly any last year, but it’s been wet this year. This Widow Skimmer was waiting for prey on the liatris; dragons think that makes a good perch!

I’ll make a new post for yesterday; this is too long.

First, a couple from yesterday. I apologised to Hirts even if they were kind of bitchy in saying, “We do not require a signature. Please check with your USPS.”  I picked up the package and responded with this picture and the words, “Apparently, you do after all.”

Also, yes, it was Plum Crazy.

Now…Patio Reclamation, the final chapter. It’s done!

I had the paver base down, so all I had to do was the sand and final placement. I used scraps of wood and kitteh hoce interior walls to pack down the sand.

It’s not magnificent, but it’s adequate, and better than having to walk around a flowerbed that’s good for basically nothing. In the end, I had to trim only one paver, which was a snap because P got me a masonry blade for my skilsaw.

Now, we just need some nicer chairs.

.

I found a couple of these caterpillars while I was weeding the patio cracks. On oxalis, I think. No ID yet. EDIT: Appears to be Yellow-Striped Armyworm, Spodoptera ornithogalli

This lovely Paraphiddipus aurantius helped me finish the pavers. He’s a beauty!

That’s all for today…more work planned for tomorrow.

EDIT: Not all for today. After I got up from my nap, I went down to the new trumpet creeper and made fresh cuts on the bush honeysuckle, then treated with Bonide. I pulled some branches out of the brush pile to give then something to climb; they’re getting big enough to have the “grippers” on them. Not beautiful, but hopefully adequate.

Near dark, I was checking my new coneflower and found this.White blob is a flatid hopper nymph, and the spiky critter is an aphid lion. Let’s hope he remembers he’s an aphid lion!

When I got home yesterday, I had 8 nice purple coneflower plants, and a stupid little orange card that says I have to sign for my plants from Hirts. Yay. I blistered the seller for it, but it wasn’t them; USPS fucked up (surprise). Anyway, I planted 5 of the coneflowers in the Honeysuckle Horseshoe where the sweet william grows thick; when it’s cut back after blooming, it leaves low spots with no flowers. The last 3 I put in Sarah-Flah’s garden. They look a bit droopy, but the root systems are healthy, and they’ll perk up. I’d look droopy after 3 days in the mail, too.

Otherwise, I accomplished little yesterday, but flowers did, and I found a couple of friends.

Butterfly weed grown from seed this spring.

I think this is Plum Crazy, but I can’t swear to it until it opens.

My poor, put-upon, bug-eaten, deer-munched, under-sunlit hollyhock.

I was losing daylight, but these zinnias are truly dwarf. Planted late, maybe 4″ tall, with tiny flowers. Heh.

Again, poor light, but I found this lady Common Whitetail when she was getting ready for bed. I think she was reading, and I interrupted.

Bad light, tiny subject. A baby spined assassin bug. Cute!

I found a bunch of these caterpillars on Tuesday evening; they’re on coneflower, and I think they’re Silvery Checkerspot.

I lost them last night, but found one on my brand new coneflower, so the rest may be in there somewhere.

It’s like the Soup Nazi, but with Lexan shields. I forgot that we use 1/8″ Lexan for the shields on the machines. B left before I thought of it, but K had been saving small scraps because he was going to make picture frames or something, and there were lots. I got a couple of extra pieces just in case I bollocksed up the cutting or drilling, but in the end, I only had to make one cut, which went fine with the jigsaw, and drill four holes. The bit on top is a plastic container from some lovely little flaky things that P bought for me; I’d had a 2L bottle top there, but the bastards could get around it. Hopefully, the side pieces won’t deter my little dudes; if they do, I’ll just have to take them off and suck up the loss to trash birds, but if not, then I shouldn’t have much loss to starlings and house sparrows.

“No suet for you!”

I also put a squirrel baffle on the tray feeder. They’re welcome to clean up spilled seeds, but I’m not buying sunflower seeds for fluffy-tailed rats.

“No seeds for you!”

The Kopper King won in a big way; three huge, magnificent blooms, all together in a triangle.

He didn’t let me hold the flower, but he did let me take his picture, and what a fresh, beautiful creature!

EDIT: I was deadheading, and found several little friends on the coneflowers in the Honeysuckle Horseshoe. I think they’re Silvery Checkerspot.

Rudbeckia, not everything else. It’s a good thing my flowers stay busy because I didn’t do shit when I got home from work, except for making a new “dome” for the suet feeder, and buying a little piece of 1/8″ Lexan to cover the sides so that the trash birds currently able to cling to the sides or the top and reach the suet…won’t. Fuck them; they ate two entire cakes in 24h. Starlings and house sparrows. Bite me, Shakespeare and New York.

Anyway, my Autumn Colors rudbeckia is starting to bloom, and I can’t wait to see it next year (assuming it lives through the winter).

That was today’s big accomplishment. Not that I’d decided for sure where the last two (Minuet) are going, but it started raining around 1430h (I was lying down for a nap!) I did get the little Java Red in the ground, though. They ended up going over with the first Java Red, and I hope they’ll get enough sun. Eventually, they’ll all be part of a flowerbed.

Not very big, but hopefully they’ll grow.

Otherwise, I didn’t accomplish much. Only two plants left to go in the ground, though! (Assuming I don’t accidentally buy the rest of the stuff to go with the weigela I want to put out front. I’m thinking white coneflowers, Buzz pink butterfly bush, and maybe something…yellow? Or asters? I dunno.

I like this purple penstemon. Still don’t remember the name.

Last chance, Agastache Tango. I hope you live because you’re very pretty!

Tough to tell these apart, but the intact vine on the right is native Lonicera flava, or there’ll be hell to pay if it’s not! The broken one on the left is the evil Lonicera japonica that needs to die.

Looks like Kopper King will win the 2015 hibiscus blooms race.

Kind of blurry, but it’s not like I don’t know what butterfly weed looks like. These are in Sarah’s garden.

This is kind of interesting. Both of these are scarlet pumpernickel seeds from last year’s flowers. Both in MG potting soil, started about two weeks apart. The green foliage is typical, but the golden-green is not.

Not much, but I accomplished something, and that’s not bad for Saturday. It was a beautiful day, so I didn’t want to work my arse off, and we went to T’s in the evening, so a nap was critical.

I finished the walkway edging in the morning. I’m not overjoyed, but it looks okay, and no hooks to catch the hose.

I switched the old splash block by the gradge for a new one, and used the (smaller) old one on the gravel. Hopefully, the next time we get a deluge, we won’t get a big hole washed away in the gravel.

Tithonia Torch bloom.

Tithonia Goldfinger bloom.

Made a friend, perched on liatris (him, not me). We have a lot of dragonflies this year. This is Little Boy Blue…Dasher.

I cleaned the green edging, and bent it into a circle, then set it in the sun to soften that way. I planted the Sonic Bloom pink-that-is-red right outside the bedroom window.

Just after I woke up from my nap, I went down by the feeder to chase squirrels away from my wood feeder (bought an 18″ baffle this morning). I poked around a bit down there, and noticed some familiar leaves.

I checked with the botanists to make sure, but I was right. It was indeed trumpet creeper, courtesy of the seeds I threw on the ground and covered with debris. They couldn’t do anything last year because they weren’t cold-stratified, but they certainly got that last winter, and they’re doing fine. I moved a few smaller ones I found so that they’d be closer to the big ones that I first saw; hopefully they won’t mind being moved.

Sonic Bloom pink-that-is-red really is a rebloomer. Just this little clump so far, but this is the one in Sarah’s garden; I planted it not too long ago.

Cardinal climber is finally figuring out that it’s supposed to climb. The camera refused to focus on it, but that’s okay; as long as it’s growing.

Sarah-Flah’s tomato is a weird-looking thing. C is actually the one who noticed that these are not your typical round tomatoes.

A beautiful, fresh Red Admiral was on the butterfly bush. It was a little windy, so I held the flower for him. I love it when they let me do that.

I have had gFTP installed for…for practically as long as I’ve used Linux, which is about 10 years. Different distros, different computers, but I’ve always just copied the contents of my /home, or simply put it on a separate partition in the first place. I have passwords saved in gFTP, but I have absolutely no idea what they are. I suppose I could’ve used Wireshark or something like I did at work to get the Earthstink FTP login from whatever had saved it, but there had to be an easier solution. I found a script that claimed to do it, but I could never get it to work; it hadn’t come with any instructions. The dude had written it in C, then someone who preferred to remain anonymous ported it to Python with this message:

please don’t attach my name to it. it’s horrible, awful code. Consider it public domain, do with it as you wish.

LOL. Anyway, I tried a couple of years ago, but could never get it to work. I found some instructions this morning, but they didn’t work, either. Then, I found German dude’s instructions to “descrumble”, and the script works just fine…as long as you know how to us it! He called it “decode” and I called it “descramble”, but I’m putting his instructions here because I don’t want to forget…

if you want to descrumble gftp passwords from the bookmark file you can use the command decode.py

you need to search for the password=$SOMETHING inside of the bookmark file. Than you code use the

decode.py \$SOMETHING

to decode the password. But keep in minde to escape the $ for shell users. You need to add a leading backslash to the password. Otherwise there will be no useful output.

All I had to do was copy the scrambled text from the password saved in the bookmarks file in ~/.gftp, and paste it in with the backslash to comment out the $. Works just fine, and now I can migrate my Parview blog to my buglady domain! Thank you, nameless German dude!

It rained this morning, and after it finally stopped, I weeded the gravel path. Took out two buckets full, and that’s two buckets mashed down as hard as I could. Lots of crabgrass.

Then, I got started on the post holes for the trumpet creeper. The first one wasn’t bad, except that I got rained on, then the second one, I ran into water and two biiiig roots, and the sun came out, so I was sweating Third one, I ran into more water, and my arms were getting tired. P helped with the fourth one, but it wasn’t fair because he had an assistant, and I didn’t!

I covered the holes with scrap plywood and aspenite; I may not like Charlotte eating my trees and flowers, but I still don’t want her to break a leg.

The only flowers on the trumpet creeper that Charlotte didn’t eat (yet).

I took a well-deserved nap, and when I got up, it was too late to do anything much, but I did finally put my long-suffering Strelitzia in pots. Reginae on the left (3 plants), Nicolai on the right (2 plants).