9/29/2023 – Around Colehaus

It’s fall here at Colehaus, as it probably is at your place too. Our parade of flowers are wrapping up and the bees, bumble bees, and occasional butterfly are partying into the wee hours of autumn. Our black-eyed Susan is a favorite but is beginning to overrun it’s space. Anyone local need a clump? Let us know!

Mom’s a list maker. She says it’s the only way she gets things done (Dad is NOT a list maker, btw). She had close to three hundred items on those pages and pages of lists, most filled on both sides and she’s pleased as punch to announce all but five items were accomplished over the spring and summer months.

And yes, she’s already started her 2024 yard and garden to-do list.

The Russian sage is positively humming every day. Seriously. You can hear the hum of bees and bumble bees when approaching the bush. We used to cut down the stalks after first frost and the flowers are gone, but last year, we saw groups of gold finches, bushtits, and pine siskins clinging to the long stalks, nibbling on whatever they nibbled on – old flowers, seeds, visiting bugs? Who know? We’ll keep the stalks for a few more months.

We saw this clump of something on the Crocosmia that Mom was preparing to dig out and permanently remove and then saw it was a leaf moth. It looks like a dried up leaf but had pretty yellow patterns on its underside. Mom waited a week before digging up those plants/bulbs which was good timing because word on the street was those Crocosmia had plotted to take over the world.

Love these flowers. HATE how invasive they became. Hmm, kind of like those Black-eyed Susan are getting!

One of what Mom calls, “Bird Poop Plants.” It’s a wild daisy of sorts. We never planted it. The birds did! We have them in a few spots around Colehaus and they’re easy enough to keep in check.

Apparently, there are good wild phlox to have around. This isn’t one of them, though the bees would disagree. This is the kind that spreads via runners. Ugh. We thinned this last year. Only made it more determined.

Part of a vine maple is seen in the background . . .

. . . and that vine maple is gone. A few years ago, when temperatures hit 118 (f) here, it was badly scorched and never recovered. This is the most leaves it had this year. We knew its days were numbered last year but hoped it would recover a bit better than then. It didn’t and so, one day, before the ninety-degree weather hit again a week ago, Mom donned her Urban Lumberjack persona and broke out her trusty Saws-All. We miss this maple already but not enough to dig up and out the huge, boulder-sized root ball, and massive roots it grew just to plant another of the same.

Not too far away and much better protected from the sun, our hostas have nearly finished blooming. Here’s something else Mom wish she could find a home for. Our hostas need dividing and she despises throwing perfectly good plants away.

Ditto with this peach daylily. It has beautiful, fleshy flowers but is messy and spreading. This is a big plant as far as daylilies go and oh, so gorgeous in bloom! If only they stayed small forever.

Lloyd thinks he might help with any digging that needs done. We think not, sweet boy. We were asked if we thought Lloyd might not be neutered; he does have the big, round, un-neutered male head, and honestly, we don’t know. We assume he isn’t which pains us. But 1) he’s a very infrequent visitor with his own time schedule, 2) we were unable to find his home, 3) we have no way of capturing him to bring him inside 4) with nowhere to keep him inside, and 5) our vet isn’t scheduling neuter/spay appointments until early next year. Oh, had past times gone differently, Lloyd would have become a Colehaus Cat two years ago because who could resist those beautiful blue eyes.

While Mom took great pains to not disturb her Nile lilies this year when she was digging and creating that flower bed where the huge arborvitae once stood, it was, again, the sun that took a toll on the flowers. Luckily, we did get a couple of days of bloom but that was it.

These are the last of Dad’s favorite Stargazer lilies. We used to have an entire huge pot of them and talk about messy! They were old and started to crowd each other out and then we were told they were poisonous to cats and some wildlife and that was that. This last bulb clump, planted under a small tree, is probably the end of those; definitely so if the raccoons have any say in it. Early in the summer, they wiped out the only other clump we had. So, that’s that.

What used to be our last blooming plant was the “dwarf” crepe myrtle, that seems to bloom earlier and earlier each summer. This used to be an October blooming bush for us and we used to cut it back around Halloween. Hello Climate Change, and you, crepe myrtle, will now bloom from August to mid-to-late September!

We had very few problems with our fountain this year; thankfully so. We cleaned out the pump filter in April, and Dad replaced the non-functional Hudson refill valve just a couple of weeks ago. Murray/Mr. G loves sitting on the dry rocks in the center (on cloudy days), slurping from the nearby water-filled rock bowl, and raccoons still slosh around in it each night.

All in all, we had a quiet summer. We both worked a lot, Mom worked all the overtime she could, and Dad took vacation time because his job allows it to accrue fast, unlike Mom’s whose doesn’t. And if Dad doesn’t take it, he loses it, unlike Mom who may enjoy up to 120 hours of earned vacation time (after five years of employment AND only if the plant doesn’t shut down for Christmas break before she loses any, [Work/Life Planning Tip: the plant ALWAYS closes for Christmas break so don’t plan any vacation time]). We’re not sad to see September go.

Remembering how our heater went out last winter during one of our area’s coldest snaps ever, and fearful of the same happening this winter, we had our 23 year old heater replaced. Probably should have bit the bullet last winter during peak cost season when it was only $6300 because OUCH! Inflation strikes again and the same heater replacement was over four thousand more! Mom says she could have bought a car for the cost now, but then remembers that with inflation, it would only be half a car; the back half, with a munched bumper.

Other than that, we’re still hanging in there and everyone else is, too. Many, many THANK YOUs to angels and Friends of Colehaus who write to us, who tell us about your cats and ask about ours and our visitors and who have kept us going all along. THANK YOU!

That’s all there is going on here at Colehaus. Thanks for visiting us and sticking to the end!

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A Colehaus Cats flashback:

2022 – No post
2021 – No post
2020 – No post
2019 – No post
2018 – No post
2017 – Zuzu and Our Hearts
2016 – No post
2015 – Ruby Tuesday
2014 – Pillow Dreams
2013 – No post
2012 – No post