Pruning Progress

Posted on January 26, 2024 by vanbraman

Today I made a bit of progress on my pruning. It took some time at lunch while the weather was nice.

roses, pruning, front yard, rose garden, yard workEarlier in the week I had pruned back some of my rose bushes and had two left to start.

roses, pruning, front yard, rose garden, yard workWhile filling up the yard waste bin I noticed a lady bug, and had to rescue it from being sent to the dump. I coaxed it onto my glove and took it back to a rose bush.

roses, pruning, front yard, rose garden, yard workYou can see that the yard waste bin was almost full. I did pack it down a bit and have some room left if I work in the yard tomorrow.

roses, pruning, front yard, rose garden, yard workYou can see that I have a lot of work left in cleaning up the rose bushes. I follow a three stage pruning. I cut back the large canes, thin out what is left, and then come back after new growth appears to cut out all the dead wood that I have missed.

Since the yard waste bin is almost full the second stage may wait until next weekend. Plus, I needed to get back to work. The lunch hour goes by fast.

roses, pruning, front yard, rose garden, yard workThe front yard looks a lot different without the big rose bushes, but they will be growing back soon.

Steven

WwRI

Posted in Flowers, Local, Nature, Yard Work | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Overrun Countries Stamp Series

Posted on January 25, 2024 by vanbraman

When working on transferring stamps to my new album, I ran across a series of stamps that brought back memories.

Overrun countries, stamps, collecting stamps, flags, 1930's colorful stampsThe Overrun Countries series is from 1943/44 and shows the flags of the countries that were overrun during WWII. I really like the colorful flags on the stamps and the great details around them.

Overrun countries, stamps, collecting stamps, flags, 1930's colorful stampsThere are a total of thirteen stamps in the series, and I had collected eight of them when I was back in Junior High. The man that I had bought them from did not have the complete series when I first saw them, but later acquired a few more. However, he was not able to find the rest before I stopped working on my collection. It was always one of the first things I would look for when we would meet up. Way back then it was not as easy to find stamps you were looking for, as it is today. Especially if you lived in a remote area.

Overrun countries, stamps, collecting stamps, flags, 1930's colorful stampsAfter I got all my stamps transferred into my new album, I made a list of stamps I wanted to order. The remainder of this series was on my list. Here you can see the four missing stamps. All of the stamps I collected in the series were unused and so were the ones I ordered.

Overrun countries, stamps, collecting stamps, flags, 1930's colorful stampsI need to concentrate more on taking the pictures, I cut off the bottom captions.

However, the pages look really nice with all the spots filled.

Overrun countries, stamps, collecting stamps, flags, 1930's colorful stampsHere is the second page with all the stamps in place.

I will share some of the other stamps that I ordered in a future post, but this series brought back the most memories.

The stamps to complete the series did not cost me much and I had the satisfaction of completing the series.

Imagine how much I learned about History and Geography when I was young from stamps like this.

Steven

Posted in Culture, Education, History, stamps | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment