wacky, weird, and wonderful

Today's post is going to be kind of a hodge-podge. Once again I have a little blog housekeeping to do, so I'm going to just throw all the miscellania together in one post. (Is miscellania a word - and if not, why not? I kind of like it! And if it were a word, is this how you think you would spell it?)

First, look what I got in the mail this week - more blogger seeds!! Jean at "Ms Green Thumb Jean" sent me some foxglove seeds - and a seed pod from her trumpet vine! Thanks, Jean - I am totally excited to see how these do next year.

Next, Lynne at "Lynne's Little Corner of the World" said awhile ago that she'd like to see our 'Vette. Mark and I were born the same year, and in honor of our turning 40, we bought a Corvette. Our first one was a '79 Stingray - black with red interior - a gorgeous little classic. We had it, I think, two years before we totalled it. No one was hurt - but the car did not come back home with us. The good news was we about doubled our money in that two years - cars as investments: what a hoot! With that little windfall, we moved up to an '84. We have totally loved this car, but we're finding that we drive it less and less each year, and we're thinking it may be time to let someone else have fun with it. I'll keep you posted. Today it was washed and sent to the storage garage for the winter. The best part of having summer toys is bringing them out in the spring - it's like having a brand new toy each year. But it is incredibly sad to put them away each fall.

These are from my scarlet runner beans. I have a question - will these reseed on their own this winter? I've never done scarlet runner beans before. I'm going to save some of the pods so I can start new ones next year, but I'm wondering if there's a chance they'll come back next spring. I have grapevine growing on the fence along our neighbor's cement wall, and I planted two runner bean plants there. They grew up into the grapevine - it was really cool because the grapevine is nice and thick, and the runner beans added wonderful little red-orange flowers everywhere. I got a lot of comments on these over the summer.

Today I emptied out my window box planters on the fence by the patio. I had some sweet potato vine in the planters - and I found this HUGE potato growing in one planter!!! This is a normal-size shovel. I have never had this happen before. It has both Mark and me laughing.

NOTE: Peter Hoh just left a comment about another sweet potato posted at http://martagon.blogspot.com/2007/10/avert-your-eyes.html

Check it out - it is too funny!

I cut down my dahlias today and dug out the tubers. They look really good, so hopefully they'll grow again next year. This is the biggest stalk I had - that's a quarter beside it. Are dahlias related to the bamboo family? This stalk looks like bamboo to me.

And finally, I just had to show you the high score I got playing Bejeweled 2 last week. It took me about a month to finally break 600,000 after getting into the 500's. I play one or two games maybe 3 or 4 times a week - major time waster, but also totally addicting!

The last couple days have been pretty productive. Mark stained the shed yesterday - and I just realized I didn't pull a photo of that - so something to look for tomorrow!! It came out really nice. I planted all of my tulips - dug up dahlias - and cleaned up the last of the containers. I shredded the last of the leaves and drained most of the hoses after Mark pulled the lake pump out. I still have compost to move, and I need to cover some things like the fountain and wood pile with tarps. But we are getting very close. I feel like I need a vacation!