Melting Like a Popsicle on the 4th of July

I just looked at the weather forecast for the next 10 days; the good news is that one day it’s only going to be 89°F.  That might be offset by the day that we’re going to see 99°F.  It isn’t very consoling when Weather Underground says this:

Gosh, I feel so much better about it being 95°F when I’m told it only feels like 90°F.  Oh well, we knew this was coming, because summer in Colorado means lots of sunny hot days.  All this hot weather is making my veggie garden grow, but alas, the perennial flowers aren’t looking so happy right now.  That’s why I always put out some pots of annuals so I can have something to look at:

Coleus are happy in any partly sunny to shady place you put them.  Nowadays they also have so many cool colors for the leaves!  This is about the prettiest thing going right now unless you want to look at some dill flowers which are pretty enough in a faded Queen Anne’s lace kind of way.  I’ll let you in on a tip that an old-time gardener told me a long time ago.  Roses like it when you sprinkle a little Epsom salts around their bases; the magnesium will help them bloom again.  This Garden Lovers Club page tells you how and when to do it and how much Epsom salts to use.  I’m giving my rose bushes an application this weekend.

Time to get on with the post.  We even have a few Independence Day related finds!

Not sure where you might put these candles at your picnic:

One thing I will say right off the bat is that these candles NEED to be burned and I seriously doubt that they will fit in any taper holder no matter what the label says.  I’m not sure how to say this, but if they are supposed to look like star-spangled rockets, they sort of missed the boat.  They are just a bit too phallic to be used at a family party where that uncle has one beer too many and comments on the decorations.  Maybe the hostess with the mostest can just light them a couple of hours before anyone arrives and crisis averted.

Awww, Betsy Ross decoupage:

I think that they even burnt the edges to give it a little extra flair, to no avail.  It’s been sitting at our favorite secondhand craft store for some time now.  I’m pretty sure the best use for it would be to throw it on the fire pit and let the kids roast marshmallows!

I’m not sure why one of us didn’t buy this:

It was also at Who Gives a Scrap and they wanted $5 for it.  If you look closely, there are two old 4th of July postcards in there, plus lots of other ephemera.  That store puts together grab bags of related things for crafty people to use in projects.  This bag looks like it has five bucks worth of fun in it.  It was gone this week so I’m happy someone snagged it!

If these monster candles hadn’t faded so much, they, too, could have been holiday decor:

I wish I had measured them, but I think they were about two feet tall and hadn’t ever been burned.  You could light sparklers and Black Cats off those flambeaux all evening!  They might have been worth $5 each during miller moth season here where we are inundated with hundreds and thousands of these boring brown moths that flutter all around you indoors and outdoors.  They are attracted to lights, and if you lit both of these, it’s hard to say how many you might get rid of in a night.

That’s it for Freedom Finds (Sorry, couldn’t help it!) but I still have a couple more fun regular finds:

This is our kind of plant watering system.  If anyone wants it, I can provide ALL of the wine bottles you need, or even a pretty Bombay Sapphire gin bottle for a change of pace.  Hopefully, these bottles get washed out really, really well because plants don’t appreciate alcohol at all, so why waste it on them?

We took this picture before today’s sad news about Hugh Downs:

Who knew that Hugh could sing and play the guitar?  I hope it isn’t like how William Shatner “sings” which is pretty cringeworthy.  I always liked him on 20/20.

What the what is going on here?

I can’t imagine being so chi-chi that even my seashells have to be golden!  It looks like something you would find sitting on a shelf in a bathroom with gold fixtures because why the heck not?  As if golden bathrooms weren’t trashy enough!  I like the basket on the right ever so much better than the gilt batch on the left.

I haven’t seen one of these in quite a while:

An old Westinghouse roaster on its porcelain enamel cabinet.  It was probably a 1950s housewife’s pride and joy.  I saw a perfect one for sale on eBay for $150, so I guess that $40 is a good price if it works.  This one needs some love, but I bet it still cooks up a good roast turkey!

I hope all my fellow Americans stay safe this weekend; masks and social distancing don’t rule out a small gathering outdoors.  We can make this work if everyone would get on the same page and follow a few basic precautions!  It’s the patriotic thing to do.