September Already

While we were in the midst of the heat wave, summer seemed to be lasting forever.  Now here we are in the first week of September and I'm wondering where the summer went.  Time sure flies when you're sweating and grumbling!

On Wednesday we had a lot of local chores.  One of them was to purchase some larger flower pots to replant a few of my houseplants before bringing them in for the winter.  I don't have that many plants, just two citrus trees, a fig and my nightblooming cereus.  This wasn't the best year for the nightbloomer.  Usually they bloom twice in a summer.  This year they only bloomed once with very few buds coming on.  But anyhow....we were off to Lurgan Greenhouse, one of my favorite places.  The season is about over, but there were still ponds and some fall flowers that made a nice display.

I want so badly to someday have a small pond!

Afterward we went to the library in Shippensburg.  In a future post I would like to show you our library which is housed in a historic home.  For a small town, the library is an extremely busy one.  Some days it's hard to find a parking place!

We ate at Knute's, which is a sports bar on the main street.  Sports bars are not usually my thing, especially on weekends and when the university students are in town.  Through the summer on a weekday mostly local business people are lunching there.  I love their homemade corn tortilla chips seasoned with finely ground salt and pepper.  I just had the spinach and crab dip appetizer.

Zip had a brown sugar ham and swiss melt on ciabatta.  Both were tasty!

We visited with Brad and Kami for a while.
They have two small ponds of which I am so envious!  They even have frogs!!!  These little guys came of their own accord from who knows where.

This one is a large leopard frog and they have a bullfrog and two smaller frogs.  Brad said the
 first one just showed up one day and the others followed.  There is no stream nearby.  Who knows how far they travelled to find a pond to live in!!!

The dirt pile at the top of the picture is being built up so that they can put in another shallow pool where the water will then flow down over the two stones.

They have planted hostas and coleus around the back of the pond.

Earlier in the summer they found an antique Gem cistern pump and made another water garden across the path from the pond.  They find some of the coolest stuff at yard sales!  In the background is a huge hops vine that covers one side of their screen porch.

On Friday I traveled down into Maryland to Doris's house to take a sculpting class.  Sculpting as in rughooking, not clay or wood!  It was a delightful drive down through the countryside.  The class was quite educational.  I learned a great new technique and got to meet a few new hookers.  Plus Doris fed us a scrumptious chocolate cake! 

The lovely dyed wool, and #3 size strips that Doris cut for us.  I've never done such skinny strips before.  Yikes, they are like spaghetti! 

The finished strawberry.

The turned leaf.

The overall picture.  The jagged top edges of the leaf don't show up well yet, but will shape up better when I fill in the background.

We were able to finish this much in our four hour class with time for instruction and lunch.  It isn't as time consuming as I thought it would be.

My mom has a fairly formal decorating style in her living room so I bought an extra kit and am planning to make her a pair of pillows.

To end my post, the computer literate Isabell sends her regards.
She loves checking out her best photo sessions!
Do you think this one makes my ears look too big?

Until next time, thanks for stopping by!