Five on Friday

The weeks are just whizzing by lately!! It seems every time I turn around, here we are at Friday ... again!!! But that's OK because I can join in with Amy at Love Made My Home for Five on Friday!!! Yay!!! It's important to use a lot of exclamation marks!!! when you link up with Amy's "Five"!!!!!!! ;)

Here are five random things that have made me happy this week!!!

One!

My pale yellow hollyhock is continuing to bloom even now!! These flowers are just amazing, and I'm continuously drawn outside to see them close up when I find I'm admiring them from my kitchen window. The pale yellow is maybe not my favourite colour for these flowers, but the flowers have such a transparent quality that makes them so interesting, and the sunlight shining on them makes them sort of glow!! My mom always had the deep burgundy coloured hollyhocks, and I don't remember them having this transparent look to them.

The flower is not in the greatest spot squeezed up against the compost box and the daylillies (long finished now). I'm considering just removing the compost box altogether since I don't use it much and we do have weekly compost pick-up with our town's garbage collection. This box has attracted ants!! I'm just not sure of how to dispose of it when it's full of ants!!

Two!

Only a few flowers are blooming in the garden now. Although our days have been quite warm this week (up to 20C), the nights are still too cold for some of the plants and they're starting to die back. I do love these hot pink blooms of the portulacas!!

Still a few buds trying hard to open on my miniature yellow rose.

Three!

Speaking of flowers dying back outside. Last weekend I started to thoroughly clean and organize my kitchen. That got me looking out on the patio and ... hmmmm ... "maybe I should bring in a few plants before it gets much colder". So I brought in all my potted plants and set them up in the kitchen, my living room and my daughter's empty room. My kitchen went from super organized and tidy to then having this corner full of garden plants!!

There is still one pink geranium out there, but it's in the ground. Since I've run out of places to put the pots, I might exchange a red geranium for the pinke one.  I like the pink blooms better!!

Four!

And with the plants coming in, we also had to bring in my son's fish from the pond!! So much work!! I left the cleaning of the indoor fish tank to my son and husband. It's a 50-gallon tank, and all the rocks had to be scooped out, bleached and cleaned, as well as all the plastic plants!! All of the fish in the tank died from some disease in the early spring, so we needed to disinfect everything in it before the new fish were brought inside. It's now all cleaned up, with fresh water and the one remaining adult shebunkin and three!!! little babies were brought in on Tuesday. The three babies were a surprise bonus. We had bought about three sets of fish throughout the summer, and all of them died except this last silvery orange. Then I realized I could see two little baby fish in the pond!! A couple of weeks ago, I saw another baby in there!! Rather exciting for us after all the fish deaths happening here.

Can you see the tiny baby that has koi-like markings in the next photo?! So cute!!

We still have to give these guys names. We're thinking Orange Sherbert for the adult fish. The other two babies are not very exciting colour-wise. They're a sort of greenish brown, but in some lighting their fins look orange. Hopefully, they'll be nice looking fish as they grow.

Five!

This is my favourite store just outside of Algonquin Park in Whitney, Ontario. "Menwahtay Gift Shop". The lady who owns the store is really nice and grew up in the area. I believe she has an apartment above the store, and to the one side is a really nice, rather overgrown garden complete with a pond and lots of pieces of driftwood, rocks, rustic gazebo and fun bits of garden art. We always visit this store when we go camping. It's outside the east gate of the park, so it's a bit of a trek along the highway, but well worth it. My favourite part of the store is the garden portion in the back. No plants, but all kinds of gardening ornaments all very whimsical. I've picked up several small garden statues here in the past. The rest of the store is full of beautiful pottery, carvings, jewelry, etc. And all of it is well made. I've picked up several pieces of pottery here that remind me of the water and rocks of the area. Also some metal artwork made from oil drums. There's usually something new and interesting to keep us coming in each year. And the reason I bring my own geraniums indoors for winter?? This lady has two giant geraniums outside her front door. You can sort of see one of them in the photo, and it's almost as tall as the door!!

And that's my five for this week!!

Thanks for stopping by, 

and be sure to hop on over to Amy's to see other people's fives!!

Wendy