The Life of a House: That time of Year

Yes it's that time of year, that time of year for so many things...

Strawberries:

Strawberries from the Amish Farmer. Beautiful sweet, aromatic, small, perfect strawberries.

And this year, he finally gave me a break on the price - and I mean a real break. He only charged me half the price - normally he just gives me 25¢ off a basket. This time... yippee! So I bought two flats. That's a lot of strawberries. I made three double batches of strawberry jam last night. And by the third batch I figured out my new secret. Spices. Yup. Cinnamon and Cardamom. Next year they will all be like that.
But not only are there the edible ones, there are the wild ones. Too bad they are fake ones. They taste like NOTHING. Its a real bummer because they are everywhere in the garden. They are a pretty weed. They shoot out runners like crazy and take over everywhere. I wasn't sure if I liked them at first. But now I find them quite lovely. They have taken over the three feet of barren land next to the neighbors wall.

I'm letting them do their thing. They aren't hard to weed out - unlike other nasty ugly weeds. If I ever decide to get rid of them, it won't be too difficult.

Raspberries!

My first bowlful today! And it seems like I barely made a dent on the bush. I am so hoping to be able to make a more substantial cache of jam from this year. However - this first batch might end up in some homemade ice cream.

And next to the raspberries? - a mystery solved:

Hollyhocks. The things that never did anything last year are blooming! I have this pale pink, a darker pink and yellow - so far. They are beautiful! They seem to me to be hibiscus for non-tropical folks. I can't wait to propagate many many more! I'm going to plant them everywhere. And especially since they are tall - they will cover some of the ugliness of my neighbors idea of landscaping. sigh.

Sunny flowers:

A few other things are blooming as well, for example, these fun sunny happy flowers. They are blooming in clumps in a few places.

Kitties:
What scary thing is making Swee'pea stalk it?

The fan.
The fan had to be set up last weekend because the summer inferno hit us full force. I was a die-hard until I couldn't sleep and there were kitties wilting all over the place. Then I put in the window air conditioners. But still, air needed to move...
The fan. Scary scary stuff to have something whirring at you. We spent a good 10-15 minutes on high alert. Then we lay down in the wind's path and looked content. However... then the InCharge Person went downstairs and left Poor Thing on his own. He disappeared into the bedroom where it was safe and apparently forgot about the fan. Because when I came back upstairs after an hour we came back out of the bedroom only to be confronted by the Scary Scary. So we stood by the kitchen counter trying to decide how we felt about it. Poor Thing turned to look at the InCharge Person and the InCharge Person made the mistake of touching the Poor Thing trying to calm him. Swee'pea lept three feet straight up, all claws extended, did major acrobatics, and one of those extended claws came down straight on the InCharge Person's leg from knee to mid calf. After lots of blood and no hydrogen peroxide, tea tree oil was applied and the Scary Scary was moved to a more descrete location. Good Grief.

The other thing my little Swee'pea is still insisting on is pulling out every single ball of yarn to play with in the middle of the night. Fun for him - not for me who has to unravel all the knots and try to wind everything the following morning. I broke down and went to Ikea and bought paper put-em-together-yourself storage boxes. I hope this will work. We'll find out tonight.
But someone else had to claim those boxes first.
Here's my Jacques-in-the-box: