Time seems to be going faster and faster these days.  I try to regroup on Sunday and take inventory of what I have accomplished.  It's usually not a lot, but my days are happy and full of family, friends and life.  
As I was working out in the yard this afternoon, putting away the lawn furniture,  pulling out dead flowers and getting a few starts of geraniums to keep over the winter, I was thinking about what a wonderful summer it's been.  The flowers and garden have been so amazing this year...when we got home from Mexico, I picked the rest of the peppers and tomatos.  There were ALOT!  So I made one last batch of that sweet salsa and a huge batch of candied peppers.  This is our favorite thing right now.  Katie eats them on everything.  They are that good.

We had two huge sunflowers that grew on the other side of the fence.  They each had such a big head of seeds, it weighted the plant right over.  They are just so cool! While we were in Mexico, someone made off with the bigger one. I was afraid that might happen. So KC and Candice picked the other one and brought it in to dry out.

 When we went out and looked under the leaves and vines we found four more banana squash than we thought we had.  I can't believe the yield we've gotten this year!  We got at least 12 spaghetti squash and three good size pumpkins this year too.

 The zinnias were still blooming like crazy too.  They have sure been pretty this year.  

The hostas all froze so I cut them back, but the flowers in the backyard where the sun shines were still going strong.  I hated pulling out the petunias and merigolds when they were still blooming so good, but I don't think I'll feel like it next week when it's  freezing outside.

Some of the geraniums had frozen, but I found several that hadn't and picked off starts from them to keep over the winter.  I sure remember pulling up the geraniums at mums...several times in emergency mode cause a frost was coming that night.  We would pull them up and throw them in garbage bags, then take them in the green house to deal with later.  I loved working in the greenhouse alongside mum.  We would break a couple new starts off each plant, then poke them in the dirt she had prepared.  Then we would water them and just leave them in the greenhouse for the winter.  Under her watchful eye, they would start making new roots and growing a new plant. After a while, we would transplant each plant into it's own pot so they had room to grow.  By springtime, she had a greenhouse full of beautiful geraniums.  Then the cycle would begin again and we would help her put them back into the flower beds.

All of us girls would help mum every year till one year we didn't get to the geraniums in time and they all froze. Mum was paying quite a hefty gas bill to keep the heater going in the greenhouse all winter, so we decided since there were no geraniums (or very few, that mum could keep in her windowsill in the house) we would just turn the furnace off.  It was a sad thing. So the next spring, we took mum up to Rudy's and bought geraniums.  It seemed like robbery to pay so much for those scrawny little plants, but that was about the only show in town, so we did it.  After mum had a chance to nurse them along for a month or so (you can't plant up there till the middle of May) then the geraniums started to look like something.  She did have a magic touch and could make anything thrive.

Anyway, when I smell geraniums that's what I think of...some people think they stink...I think they smell like home.

 The chrysanthemums are at their peak!

Kelley and Dan went up to Strawberry to bring the boat home today.  Dan took it off the lake at the end of October while we were in Mexico...I think they say the latest it can be on the water is Oct. 30th.  They always push it right to the limit..so anyway, Dan goes up there with a friend of his and they fish for a while, then go to get the trailer to load the boat and Dan can't find it.  Ha!  They wander around the trailer storage lot for a while, then Dan thinks he's found it.  He takes it back to the lake and they try to pull the boat up on it.  It was quite a bit too small, but they didn't realize it till they got out and looked at it.  Dan's friend took a picture of it and sent it to Kelley.  We all got a good laugh over that.  So they had to unload the boat, and go back and look for the right trailer.  Ha!  They finally found our trailer and got it loaded, but added another good story to the books.

They left the boat up in the storage at strawberry, hoping they might get a another warm day before they had to bring it home.  Well today was that one last warm day.  The weather forecast is for cold and snow next week.  boooooo

I'm glad they could have a fun day today though.  They both caught a bunch of fish and enjoyed a beautiful day on the lake.