Garlic vine, rain and freebies

Good evening everyone,

I found out from a fellow FL gardener that the vine I shared in the last post is garlic vine or CYDISTA AEQUINOCTIALIS, you can read about it and see more pictures here.

I took the picture below this afternoon before another bout of rain happened.  You can see the rain ladened skies in the background to the south of us.

Below is a close-up of the blooms.

This is also looking south from near the back of the property.

This morning we rebuilt the back door stoop and it feels good to have that done. Rain was threatening the whole time we worked on the project, and soon after we finished the rain started and lasted a couple of hours.  A good heavy down pour soaking everything once again. 

DH want’s to rebuild the lower deck area, making it rounded and less decking and we need more patio bricks for that.  We found all of these we have here. Someone had a load of discards left from when they made their driveway, dumped for trash pickup in front of their house.  DH went to the door and asked them for sure if they were throwing them out and they were, so we loaded everything we could.

You can see our outdoor shower next to the door, and next to that is the claw foot tub that we got for free from a plumbing supply place as they had it out for trash pick up. (It was is really heavy and we loaded it into the back of our van by ourselves. No one came out to help.) This is all in a screened enclosed area which we call the ‘Cat-trium’ off the back of our cottage. Tork sleeps out here at night.  You can see a ‘hallway’ between the cottage and the workshop and a screen door at the end, which leads into the main garden area up front.  As you can see, we’ve not finished painting the back yet, and we hope to do that soon after we pressure wash the whole cottage. The little wooden deck area off to the lower left of the picture is in front our our jacuzzi tub. The round shower floor is a concrete and tile table top that we found ‘curbside’ a bit cracked up, and we had passed it a couple of times and when I went by it by myself once on the way to work I thought hey that would make a nice shower floor for our outdoor shower.  That’s what we did, and that was another ‘heavy’ piece.  Lately I’ve been saying I don’t want any more heavy concrete pieces, as we are getting older and it is hard lifting all these pieces.

Speaking of curbside shopping, yesterday was our errand day and we found some goodies curbside.  A 5’-6’ Christmas tree already decked with lights in three sections.  (The lights all work.) We also found at the same spot, 21 VHS movies and 1 DVD movie.  Last night we watched Terminator 2 with a nice bowl of Redenbacker’s Popcorn, with extra real butter melted and drizzled over.

We also found in two other curbside locations, an IBM computer, that does work but is slow as molasses and 3 bags of mortar mix.

After we did the stoop project this morning I vacuumed and dusted. This afternoon I made a loaf of banana bread then baked chicken breasts with a curried yogurt topping for supper which was delicious.

That’s it for now, we are thankful for our many blessings big and small.  Each day is new and you never know what a day will bring forth.

FlowerLady

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Reflect on your present blessings

of which every man has many,

not on your past misfortunes,

of which all men have some. 

Charles Dickens