SoilMan and Spike

Our youngest granddaughter turns 15 next month and her mother requested photographs to make a book for her. I sat at my computer looking through my poorly not at all organized photographs from the time I finished my post Pilates zoom coffee meeting until the battery  (and my eyes) gave out! I now have hundreds of pictures of Maya on my desktop and will have to go through them tomorrow to winnow them down to a manageable number. I'm sure grandson Peter would be rolling his eyes at my inefficiency and lack of understanding about what my computer can do had he not gone back to do his remote classes in Santa from a house he rents with nine others instead of from his bedroom....

I am therefore taking liberties with my blip for today.* A pot with an oak leaf hydrangea in it stood in our fire garden before it became a  fire garden. I could see it through the bedroom door and it was really a beautiful specimen, large clusters of delicate flowerets in the spring, beautiful dark green oak shaped leaves as bug as your hand turning to red and burgundy in the fall. The pot survived and will be replanted, but not with a hydrangea because the trees and bamboo that gave it the shade it needed are gone. In fact, for the time being, there really aren't many places left that have any shade.

Designing a metal arbor that will replace the one that burned and will give us some shade will be next.

* Note: My entry for today is now in extras because I couldn't change the date on the hydrangea.  The only other pictures I took today were once again of John and his sidekick, each one intent on their obsession although it appears that they are looking at each other. My entry for today is was a blossom taken in May, four months before the fire. Behind it is a daphne which was also doing very well there and which also burned. It had a lovely old fashioned fragrance  which always reminded me of John's grandmother who had a hedge of daphne next to her house.