Alice and I took in an Orchid Show at the garden center yesterday. She had been there earlier to help clean up the "Portland Garden" that our garden club is responsible for, and went to the show afterwards. Totally out of character for Alice, she had left her camera at home, so I retrieved the camera and took it down to her. I'm glad I did, because the orchids were just beautiful. Who would have ever known that there were soooooo many varieties of orchids?  So many colors . . . so many sizes . . . so many shapes.  I sure didn't know that.  We met a fellow there who was trying to convert everyone he met to become orchid growers.  Alice bought one of the "babies" and is going to try her hand at it, but I resisted . . . mostly because the baby I liked was $35.

You can see a larger view of any of the blooms by clicking on it.

I sure would not have believed that I'd still have this many flowers in my yard in mid November . . . but I do. I've been collecting seed pods for weeks now and yesterday I spent a good part of the day extracting seeds from the pods. Some I'll broadcast now and some I'll wait until spring. 

Then yesterday afternoon and evening (and again this morning before church) I wrestled with cutting down the purple hyacinth bean vines. They had already begin to look pretty ratty and the vines grow so thick that it's sometimes very difficult to crunch through them even with my pruners. I sure didn't want to wait until it's much colder or even until spring to hack them down. I can now see my picket fence in that corner of my yard again.

First you have to go out and find some suitable marshmallow roasting sticks.

Then you have to build a roaring fire . . . then wait for it to die down a bit to just hot coals so you can successfully roast the marshmallows without catching them on fire.

Ahhhhh, then you add graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate squares and ENJOY the S'Mores. YUM.

Well, we got a light freeze last night, but I can't detect any damage to my garden yet. I'm sure it's just a matter of days before things get zapped, so I'll enjoy every minute I still have flowers blooming in my yard.

I've suspected for some weeks now that I had a leak in my sprinkler system, and since I had my builder put it in before I took possession of the house, AND since my 1 year anniversary in the house is quickly approaching and I won't be able to have anything fixed on my builder's nickel after November 30th, I had them come out last Friday and search for the leak. The sprinkler guy fixed a leaky connection at one of the sprinkler heads and thought that was the total problem. I purposely didn't use the sprinkler system after that to see if the wet soggy section of my flower bed would dry up . . . it didn't. So yesterday he came out again and this time he dug up a strip along the pipes about 5 foot long.  He said that the scars to my lawn would heal up fairly fast. As soon as he left I gave the whole yard a good long sprinkling because of the freeze possibilities predicted for last night. I think all the flowers were really thirsty.

One of the parks we went to on our recent sister trip was Lake Eufaula. We visited the nature center there and were quite surprised when a dove flew right up to Alice's hand . . . and later to her head. It just sat there while I walked all around Alice taking pictures. I'm surprised that Alice didn't get out her camera and take pictures of her own head. But I guess she was so wrapped up in the moment that she completely forgot about getting a once in a lifetime picture. But never fear . . . I was there to catch the moment.