Cousins

 
My mom and all of her grandchildren except one grandson (my son) that lives in China. They left
a space for him to be photo shopped into....I just can't find the right photo to do that! This one is by height. Out of 3 daughters my mom got 1 granddaughter and 7 grandsons

Dead Trees

 
Here are two of our trees that need to be chopped down. The redbud is suffering from a fungus and the Austrian pine is suffering from some kind of bug infestation. Once the Austrian pine is gone, we have been told to plant a fungus resistant tree.....like that is going to be easy.....sigh.

A cool summer

 
We have had a very cool summer this year. This is a shot of one of our Austrian pines after a rain. Turns out Austrian pines aren't supposed to do so well here in the north.....we have 10 on our property and they have done ok for 23 years. However, we seem to be losing 4 trees to a fungus this year. Our tomatoes have succumbed to a fungus as well so all those lovely tomatoes are rotting on our vine. We are an organic outfit here.... no bad chemicals on the lawn and we don't use them on the veges or trees either. The tree guy that came to look at our trees suggested we might want to "rethink" organic. With 4 dogs, a daughter that is an environmentalist and us with a well for our water....probably we won't be using chemicals still. So bye bye to 4 trees ( I will post them tomorrow).Hopefully, we won't lose anymore.

Sunrise

 
The weather has been very cool in the mornings. This is what our back yard looked like yesterday morning. We still need some warmer weather to get our tomatoes to ripen. I fear the plants will die before that happens! The plants are starting to fade back....let's hope we get some soon!

Dawn on the Deck

 
I was out with the dogs this morning around 5:30 and as I looked off our deck ay my neighbor's driveway, this view struck me. It has been so "fall-like" here. Our average temperature the month of July was 69.6*F which is the lowest since they started recording tempratures. The dogs are enjoying the cooler temperatures but we have an entire garden of tomatoes that still think it is June. Lots of greenery but no red tomatoes. I hope it warms up long enough to riped them but it won't be the first time we have lost a whole crop of tomatoes!

Dolphins

 
I love how these look....so real...but how do they keep them watered?