Say Goodbye To Summer

Yet another summer has flown by!  Every year I regret how short our summers are in Wisconsin.

I really felt like I had no time at all this summer to do many things; including work on my blog!  Our landscaping project was very consuming because of how bad the heat and drought was....I had to water, water, water, water to keep the new grass and new trees alive.
Because I currently work somewhat long hours, I had to always make sure I went home right after work so I could start the watering process, which often took me four to five hours to complete. With only one outdoor faucet, I had to use a hose splitter to hook up multiple hoses so I could run two sprinklers at once...but I still had to move them around so all areas of new grass got watered, and with how hot and dry it was, we really had to saturate it. To really saturate the straw covering the new seed, I had to water each section 40-45 minutes. Erik helped me move sprinklers, but it was still a very tedious task. If we had been getting regular rainfall, it would have been much easier on us, of course, but we, unluckily, did this project in the middle of a severe drought. Our efforts paid off, however. The grass came in beautifully and our new trees are doing well.

Most people in blogland have already been posting pictures of their fall decor and even Halloween decor! I am way behind....my fall decor is still in the attic. Erik's band had many summer shows, which kept us both busy. I had also decided to change jobs and will be starting a new job in 3 weeks, leaving my current employer after nine years. My new job will have "regular" hours; which means that I will be working a regular five day week instead of four days, so my Friday day off, a day I often did my blog posts, is a thing of the past.

I will adjust to the new schedule, and hope to get back on track again and post more regularly soon! Erik bought me a new photo editing program that I have been learning also. It's  Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 and it's been fun learning how to use it.
Here's a few images I've played around with:

Fuschia on my front porch

Olive

A statue atop a gravestone at Holy Trinity Cemetary in Milwaukee (where I recently visited and took many interesting photos).

I finally hung up my J.Gould bird prints in the front hall (actually, Erik hung them, since I am apparently too indecisive and I told him to pick a spot and hang them before they ended up sitting on the hall table for six months!)

I had mentioned in other posts about how I was trying to find the right sized, and right type, of pictures to make a grouping over the spinet piano in the hall, without success. We ended up buying this reproduction tapestry at a local Renaissance Faire and decided to hang it by itself above the piano.

I want to add some hanging tassels to it also. This is a small reproduction of a Flemish tapestry that was woven around 1500 in Flanders, called "La Licorne Captive" (Unicorn in captivity). It is done very nicely and is of good quality. We thought it would look interesting and very "old world". I might end up moving it to Erik's "Victorian gentleman's study" when we actually start that project later on, but I think it also will look lovely in here permanently.
 On my never-ending list of things are window treatments for the hall windows. We have been in the house now for nearly seven years, and still there are no curtains on the windows in this room!!!

Thanks for stopping by!