Zinnia Last Hurrah, Churchill Museum, Graham Cave, Color IQ test (Issue 119)

Here are a few of the vases of zinnias. I always call it their Last Hurrah!

I spent over two hours last night pulling up Zinnia plants in our front size bed, and carefully looking for flowers to cut to save for vases.

We have been watering a lot in the past weeks, but somehow it was not enough for this patch of Zinnias. It sure was a lot of work pulling them!

This is why I am trying to find shorter Zinnias to plant. Except for one, all of the supposedly-short Zinnias got really tall. Short plants are so much easier to deal with at the end of their season or in cutting back.

In previous years my Zinnias have lasted until the first frost months from now. This has been such a very odd weather year all together. A few years ago we had about 400 or more at frost date!

The light last night sure was casting interesting lines from the zinnia stems across the patio.

I still have some Zinnias in the back yard that faired a little bit better.

Visit the new website page for American’s National Churchill Museum. We visited here when we were returning from our Jefferson City vacation trip, which is now almost a month ago! It has taken me a while to get these website pages and videos done. We always seem to see so much on the trips we take.

Here is the YouTube video to watch of the Churchill Museum. At the end, hubby is silly in his impersonation of Churchill. See if you think he looks like the bust statute!

We visited Graham Cave State Park and there is a new website page for it. We have been here several times before, but when I was gathering all of my photos for the website pages, it did not appear. I think they might be before digital photos in 2002. I have driven by the signs for this park many times in recent years, but we finally had time to stop so I could have something for a website page and for that county!

For new readers, I am trying to get something on my website from every county in Missouri. It is proving to be a large task, but we keep at it traveling to visit.

Here is the Graham Cave State Park YouTube video. It is a nice short hike. The walk is uphill to the cave, but it is not long. Then the trail continues in a loop back to the parking lot. It is very do-able.

Do you have a color deficiency? I received my August stats for my website and found that this color IQ website page from many years ago is gaining in popularity. I just took the test and received a zero, which means I got known wrong. Yeah me! I need to get hubby to do the test as I have said that he does not see colors well.

Go ahead and try it! Let me know your results in the comments below.

We did get to travel last weekend, so now I have some more videos to put together to share. I am trying to find time to record some more plant videos. I am waiting for some things to bloom, such as my cosmos. I think it is 4 to 5 feet tall and has not bloomed yet! How disappointing!

The hummingbird activity seems to have picked up at the feeders. In the front picture window the come right up to the window and look in at us just a few feet away. It is fun to watch. I love to hear their little chirping too.

The SEMO District Fair is coming this weekend and we “live next to the fair.” The forecast looks good.

The City did not put our neighbor’s yard back together right (after installing a new waterline) and when it rained a lot on Saturday, the water did not flow right, and went swirling around to gather up mud and take it right into our culvert that goes underneath our driveway, filling it up with mud. This Year of the Dirt Pile just won’t end! Now we have to get the City to come and fix what they messed up. We work hard to keep that culvert unclogged so the rivers of water around our house can have a path to go, and with one full sweep they messed it up royally.

Speaking of rivers of water, when it rained Saturday, we were super excited to see for the first time our two drainage pipes working beautifully! It flowed into the basins at the very back of the yard and all the way to the front yard mid-way, and then out and down to the street and the ditch there. We worked so hard with these old bodies installing those drainage pipes for 7 months, so to see them actually working is a delight for sure! I really do not believe many people would do such work on their own, much less at our age. Most people would pay to have it done, or not have it done at all if they could not afford it. So I think we are a bit proud of ourselves.

Thanks, as always, for reading and giving me a little of your time.

Cheryl