Fall colors

It's fall, at least according to one branch of this oak tree.

Japanese Stilt Grass (Microstegium vimineum)

The goat lady told me what this was called. It was introduced to the United States around 1919 as packing material for porcelain and escaped and flourished. It's considered very invasive. Fortunately, it's shallow-rooted, so it's easy to pull up. I know because I pulled bags and bags of it out of my garden. Maybe I should just hire the goats to come eat the rest of it. They think it's yummy.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea
13. Stilt grass

Master bath

Here's the master bedroom and bath with the walls framed out.

Bridge building challenge

This week's Think! challenge was to build a bridge using 2 sheets of paper, 6 sticks of spaghetti, 2 spoons, 2 cups for supports, and 15 inches of tape. The bridge was supposed to span 9 inches and hold as many pennies as possible.

Audrey's design used only the cups and tape. It didn't quite span 9 inches, but it held 69 cents.



Mary used the spaghetti inside a folded piece of paper, and used the tape to keep the paper shut and to hold the bridge onto the supports. Stacking pennies on top was like playing "Don't Spill The Beans" so we had to build another contraption to test the bridge. It held 150 pennies before the supports collapsed.

Fall-blooming azalea (rhododendron sp.)

I never knew azaleas bloomed in the fall. I've only seen them bloom in the spring. But lately I've been seeing fall-blooming azaleas for sale in nurseries, and lo and behold, I've got some fall-blooming azaleas in my yard! I already recognized the azaleas when we moved here, but I figured I'd wait until spring to put them in my 100 Species list so I could take pictures of them when they were blooming. But here they are now! I don't know which species they are. There are thousands of species and named varieties.

According to Wikipedia, a traditional alcoholic beverage is made from azaleas in Korea, and azaleas are the most common toxic plant that dogs ingest. Useful to know.

1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary
12. Azalea

My herb garden

The gardening calendar in the newspaper said fall is a good time to plant perennials, so I've planted a few perennial herbs. Scott and I made a pumpkin soup last week and used some of the oregano and rosemary, along with Mary's lemony thyme, and it smelled and tasted wonderful.

Sage (salvia officinalis)
Audrey and I just planted this one today.



Greek oregano (origanum vulgare hirtum)
This is the most flavorful oregano around, according to this website. It really does have a strong, delicious smell.



Rosemary (rosmarinus officinalis)
The garden stores sell lots of varieties of rosemary, including some topiaries. Here's a picture of mine.



I'm up to eleven:
1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage
9. Sage
10. Greek oregano
11. Rosemary

Blue Anise Sage (salvia guaranitica)

I knew this was some kind of salvia, but I couldn't add it to my list until I knew its name. I've seen the red pineapple sage before, so I recognized the spade-shaped leaves and tubular flowers. Butterflies and bumblebees really like it. The orange jewelweed is fading now, but when it sprouted, it was mixed in with the blue anise sage, and I would see a hummingbird visiting nearly every time I went outside.

Here's my list so far:
1. Poison ivy
2. Virginia creeper
3. Wild blackberry
4. Lamb's Ear
5. Great laurel
6. Fireworks Goldenrod
7. Orange Jewelweed
8. Blue Anise Sage

Nature walk

Monday morning the weather was too nice to stay inside, so we took a nature walk through the woods and ended up at the Community Center park. Mary took photos of everything along the way, until the camera battery died. We helped snails cross the street safely, and noticed many kinds of fungus and a couple furry caterpillars. Some of Mary's pictures of the rose garden at the Community Center turned out gorgeous.

Future master suite

Here's the future master suite. The workers knocked out the wall between two bedrooms and taped off where the new bathroom and closet will go.

Family Science Day

Morehead Planetarium hosted a Family Science Day last weekend. It was co-sponsored by the UNC anthropology department, and the theme was "It's Only Human". An archaeologist was demonstrating stone tool-making, and kids could make tools to get (toy) bugs out of a log. Audrey loved that activity, as well as fishing for magnetic termites.



Mary attended a couple of lectures and used forensic evidence (fingerprint matching) to find out which of the grad student volunteers stole artifacts from a dig. Audrey drew animals on cave walls, listened to stories around the campfire and walked like a camel, gibbon and sparrow.

Of course, one of the highlights of the day was stopping for ice cream!

Marshmallow challenge

This week's challenge from Think! had us trying to suspend as many marshmallows as possible at least an inch above the table. We suspended 10, because that's all that were left in the bag after the "experimentation" phase of the project. I hope next week's challenge doesn't involve marshmallows!