Simply Norma

I think I ruined my view of life in Minnesota by taking a quick one week vacation to Seattle. While I was gone, the Minnesota Twin Cities had multiple 90+ (and one time 102) degree days of record heat. I was thankful that I was missing all the heat waves while I sat in overcast 60 degree weather in Seattle. My last 2 days there were sunny and in the 70’s. Perfect weather for a vacation.

When I arrived home around 1 a.m. this morning, the temperature gauge in the house showed a balmy 87 degrees. It took over an hour and a half for the air conditioner to start cooling the house.

We have 1 more day of 90+ degree heat before we cool into the high 80’s. I hope our plants will continue to survive. The two large new guinea impatiens outdoors were starving for water but are re-invigorated and have come back to normal life minus the flowers on one of them.

As I’ve said many times before, summer is not my favorite time of year in Minnesota. Autumn is right around the order … yeah!

I finally found a shade plant that likes, well, shade. Imagine that! Haven’t had too much luck with a lot of the plants I’ve put in the ground but the impatiens seem to be doing really well.

Ahh — but here’s the rest of the story.  Back in March our doorbell rang and since we rarely get visitors, my husband and I both jumped (okay, that might be too strong a word — perhaps we eagerly walked) to the door to see who was there. Looking through the side window, we saw a young man with a piece of paper in his hand. We instinctively knew he was selling something.

But something about our neighborhood makes you want to open the front door. The people are friendly. Even our mailman has knocked on our door and given us his life story. But I digress.

I opened the front door and the young man was smiling. He introduced himself and told us he attended a Catholic military school and was selling plants for their fundraiser. I recently bought some plant seeds from a niece that didn’t grow so I was skeptical but we purchased some anyway as we would be purchasing plants not seeds.

I asked the young man to come in and he was very polite and answered all the questions we had about the fundraiser and included information about himself also. So it was that we bought two (2) large new guinea plants from this young man. We also bought 24 smaller ones to plant in our yard.

In May the plants were delivered and boy were they healthy and large!

They have survived through three (3) major rainstorms and love the shade. Because of the deer in the area, I have sprayed them with deer repellant to make sure they last the summer.

So — besides hostas and ferns, I can safely say that the new guinea impatiens will also grow in total shade. Although the label sometimes says plants will grow in sun/part shade, I have found it to not always be the case.

Slowly but surely I’m getting some color in my yard.

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Yes, I did it again. I found a unique animal on my property although this time it was not a bug. While moving some cement pavers from one location to another, I heard a rustling that quickly stopped. I looked and there he was.

He looked black in the sunlight and stood motionless. I eyed him suspiciously expecting him to jump at me. After a minute or so I figured he must be as surprised as I was. So — I did what I usually do.

“Okay so, you’re going to have to move in order for me to continue working in this area. Both of us can’t be here. So — get a move on.”

Nothing. His (her?) expression didn’t change and the pavers I needed to reach were behind him. Undaunted, I continued my coaxing.

“You heard me, right?” I said. “We both can’t be in this area so get a move on.'”

(In spite of what it may sound or look like, I believe I am still a rational being, well, er, no men in white have picked me up yet. haha)

I’d been working in the front yard for awhile and decided that perhaps, since the toad/frog was not cooperating, I would work elsewhere. So I left but kept looking at my new “companion” out of the corner of my eye.

After about an hour, the toad/frog turned its back to me and just stood there. When I finally finished my work, I looked and he was gone.

Since I am not familiar with toads/frogs I decided to read up on how to tell the difference. Not much luck in that. “They” (that would be the internet) say that its hard to distinguish between the two. I did find out that frogs can contain mild toxins and toads have large poison glands (called the parotoid) located behind the eyes, on the top of the head.

Well, thankfully I didn’t have the desire to pick one up and pet it.  Eeewwwww!!!

I was telling my husband the other day that perhaps I should, in my effort to overcome my fear of bugs, hold them in my hand. It sounds quite creepy to me though to have something crawl on me. Another eeewwwww!!!

I do have to say that in spite of my aversion to creeping, crawling and flying “things” I have an aunt who lives in Puerto Rico and will not leave her house to work in her yard because of her aversion to the same things. So — I guess there’s always someone worse off than we are, eh?

I thought I had picked a nice dark red for my newly built bridge but I am having some difficulties with how the color is actually coming out. The woman at Lowes (a hardware-type store) told me that the color would darken. Here’s the chip that I picked out.

It looks dark enough, doesn’t it? When I opened the paint can, the color looked pink. After stirring the paint, the wooden stick I stirred it with looked almost the same color.

Once I finished priming my wood, I put the first coat on it and the color was definitely pink. A second coat went on — still pink. A third coat went on … well, we’re getting closer.

I think part of the problem might also be that I’m painting under fluorescent lights in the garage so that may skew what the color looks like.

It’s still lighter than what I had thought it would be but it’s close enough. We’ll see … we’ll see … this project is almost completed. Yippee!

I’m wondering if maybe I should start a website called Bugs of Minnesota as I am enthralled (term used very loosely) with them. At night, they cling to our windows attracted by the light from inside our house. They are numerous in both numbers and species. (hmmm … can you be numerous in numbers?)

The problem with this grand idea is that I would have to capture the bugs and identify them. (Face scrunches up) Then do I release them afterwards?  Ugghh … the thought of this idea …

The first of the two new bugs in my life likes to cling to my window at night. I have yet to see him during the day while working in the yard although I’m not really looking for him/her.

All the bugs in my neck of the woods seem to have, well, buggy eyes. They jut out and look quite spooky to me. Do you know what the above bug is? I’m thinking it’s a type of beetle.

The second bug has an interesting story that goes along with it. On a recent rain drenching Minnesota day, I drove to Menards (hardware-like store) to pick up a part for my contractor who was installing my new toilet but had a defective part. I got lucky and managed to find the part right away.

Upon returning to my car, I noticed a green bug on the hood. He/she was walking back and forth. In the past, I’ve, unsuccessfully, tried to talk the bugs away from me but really, who am I kidding? I think people must think I’m nuts as I mutter things to small insects around me. I quickly entered the car and rolled up all the windows. Staring at this green bug I loudly exclaimed: This bug is not coming home with me. I have plenty of my own.

Driving on the highway, I sped up to the 55 mph speed limit wishing the bug would fly off but it clung tenaciously to the hood. About 1 mile from the house, I pulled into a park thinking that I would shove it off with a piece of paper but the tenacious bug decided to make it’s way in between the hood and the windshield — unreachable.

Not wanting to make the contractor wait much longer, I drove the last mile and pulled into an outside parking space next to the house. There it was — the green bug on the hood withstood the drive home. Great, I thought. Now I have to kill it so it doesn’t breed.

Running inside the garage, I grabbed a large piece of newspaper and rolled it up. Back outside I did something I normally don’t do. I killed it. Smack! It continued to move. Smack! It still continued to move. I raised my arm and with all my might I hit the green bug a third time. Smack! The green bug was now squished on my windshield.

Poor thing. The pity came a little too late. Later I did some research and found out the green bug was … a mere grasshopper. I didn’t feel too bad when my husband told me that he had never seen one like this before.

Remember the TV show called Kung Fu back in the 1970’s? One of the characters was nicknamed “Grasshopper” by his teacher as a term of endearment.

This poor bug received no endearment from me. I’m not sure if grasshoppers are a good thing to have on a property or a bad thing although I’ve read that they like to eat leaves and we certainly have plenty of those.

Perhaps I should have caught it and let it loose in the wild. Hey, wait a minute. I live in the wild. Perhaps not.

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As I lay in bed, I heard the thunder and saw the lighting but rolled over to the other side as it was too early for me to care about what was happening on the outside. Unfortunately, my husband couldn’t sleep and he turned the TV on to learn that we were in the midst of a 60 mph electrical thunderstorm.

As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes at 4 a.m.-ish, I felt like I was at a 70’s disco party. Do you remember the silver ball that rotated casting shadows of light throughout the room? Or maybe you’re too young to remember John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

Oh — but I digress.

This storm was huge and we have more to come. Today the temperatures will reach into the 90’s with high humidity. Yesterday the humidity was at 98. Very tropic-like.

I constantly look out the window at our property expecting some of our tall trees to be on the ground or at least have branches that have come off. So far though we’ve not had any problems. But later today they are expecting more wind and rain.

The ground is saturated with water and all of my outdoor projects have been put on hold for a few days. Even when the sun comes out the ground will be too wet to work in. Landscaping and bridges will have to wait.

These Midwest storms can be pretty but they are causing flooding with many downed trees and power outages. The projection for the next storm is that it could bring over an inch of rain an hour with it. I’m not sure how long our trees will be able to stand tall. Pictures of houses with trees felled on them make me wonder why our house has not had a tree topple on it yet.

Another “wait and see” day …

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It’s a thunderin’ — enough so to wake up the dead if it were possible!

The lightning lights up the almost pitch black sky as the large pieces of hail fall from the sky and gather to make clumps of white as if it were snowing.

I’m quite awed by the Midwest storms that pass our way. Many years ago, we didn’t have weather.com to be able to check how soon the change in weather would take place. This is one piece of technology that I use here as its accurate quite a bit of the time.

A few days ago, a small tornado touched down about an hour away. No harm was done but the possibility of a tornado hitting is high.

There seem to be quite a few of these storms that come our way. Most of the time they pass us without not even a hint of rain. Not so today. The weather will clear soon and another storm will be heading our way this evening.