Grecian Windflowers

These little flowers growing in a pot by our television room door are anemones or Grecian Windflower. I was sitting in a chair in the shade on the porch next to the pot when I  snapped this shot. They look like a meadow full of wildflowers and manage to look cool and cheerful despite the  heat. 

A further advantage to this plant is that rodents don't like it. We have come to the conclusion that we probably can't get rid of the ground squirrels, so we'll plant things they don't like and hope they move on. I'm not sure that is likely to happen, but it seems a more palatable approach to killing them or, in the case of attempts to smoke them out of their tunnels, starting an underground fire as OilMan has done on two occasions.

On the first occasion we hadn't been living here for very long, and we got a call from Jim, who lives across the street. "There was a fire in the bed at the bottom of your driveway. I hope you don't mind, but we put it out." 

The second time the following year we were sitting at the dinner table and agreeing with other neighbors that we all smelled smoke. Concluding that it was coming from a fire in a county north of us, Paul went home to close their windows while we followed suit.The next morning while we were enjoying our coffee under the arbor, OilMan saw smoke coming out of the ground and realized that the roots of our lavender plants were burning.

He doesn't use that method of rodent control any more....

I washed the living room windows which had become almost opaque after OilMan hosed off the porch roof and the dirt, ash, leaves and spiderwebs cascaded down over the windows. He sprayed off the dirt and I wiped the water off with a towel, but our well water has to be dried off or it leaves a distinct residue.

I also cleaned the ashes from the latest fire north of us near Ukiah from the porch along with festooning spider webs, being perfectly well aware that they will all be back within a very few days. It is, after all, an outdoor porch even though it has a roof. 

Living here, one must realize that nature is going to win....In wild land areas there are going to be deer, rodents, fires and floods and we risk the consequences if we build our houses here, beautiful as it is.