Flowers, bumble bees and the moon.

Pretty flowers on a Sunday afternoon........... 

Lantana - just love the pinks and oranges!

Daisies and gladiolus.

Our apricot colored gladiolus are just starting to bloom! Love this color!

Crocosmia - hummingbirds love them.

Marigolds and coleus... didn't think the coleus would grow outside here in the heat, but it's doing great!

The bumble bees LOVE the daisies.

Got my little old weathered bench painted..... so bright and cheerful....

The moon the other night was a HUGE harvest moon. I tried taking a picture of it with my little 20 pixel digital SLR camera and this is what I got... doesn't show how orange it was, but I like seeing all the "faces" of the moon.

It's 100 degrees here today and I went out for awhile to water my flowers and garden, but am safely ensconced in the house now where it's a cool 73 degrees!

Hope you had a nice Sunday afternoon.....



 

The Simple Things.....

“After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”

 ~ L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea ~

I found blackberries in central Oregon! Unheard of!

Handmade quilts (by me!)

Kittens and fabric.

Fresh baked gluten free bread.

 Take pleasure in the simple things............. I do.

 

Yard update....

I've gotten so behind in my blog posting! There is so much I want to share and I keep procrastinating, wanting to get the photos "just right" and in the right order, etc.

 And then a week goes by and I see that a photo I took a week ago of part of my yard has already changed! Then I decide to go take more photos... and... what a vicious cycle. I finally decided to just "do it" and post what I have, or more time will go by and it will all have changed again.

I did manage to make a few "before" and "after" collages, so you can see how things have changed. I'll just dive right in.

Below is the new flower bed we dug along our back fence. There's a nice raised rock bed there that was full of weeds. We planted a few vine maple from Washougal (my former home) and some glads and a few other perennials we found growing by our mailbox in the front yard.

Now (above) there are daisies coming up, our glads are sending up the flowers and I've planted some annuals in the lower bed... although you can't see them very well here. They are slow to grow as not raised.

Above...our north fence line that was nothing but "nothing"! Hubby had his weights there. Now my two raspberries that I salvaged from our Washougal house (4 years ago) are doing great in the ground! The daisies from a neighbor's yard are doing great too and starting to bloom.

Below... we scrounged some flat rocks from another neighbor across the street. There are more to get too. Want to use them for a path in our backyard (hopefully), if we can get more. My hubby used them to build a "temporary" barbeque for our Memorial Day picnic! He built up a fire pit using the rocks and some plastic shelving that hasn't found its way to the garage yet, then added gravel inside the firepit to build it up. Used briquettes for our barbeque and it worked very well. We might just keep it. Heck with buying a barbeque!

Above, my brother-in-law with another little BBQ.  I wanted to show this because of the nice lawn... well it's even greener now! We've reseeded it since this photo on Mem. Day. Things have grown ALOT since the end of May!  Our redwood chairs got some new (used) cushions from my other sister and now I really need to get those chairs painted.

Below.. our "patio" area in early May. All weeds and empty tubs full of dirt. Yuk. Since then and before Mem. Day, I sprayed, weed eated and cleaned it all up. Our "patio" area is still only on gravel but hopefully we can make it nicer with time and lots of elbow grease.

I know our "patio" area doesn't look like much yet. But... .it looks a heck of alot better than it did last Fall after we first moved in! ( was trying to kill the weeds with the blue tarp). I think the green grass on top of the gravel looks better than the dead weeds on top of the gravel! Oh well.

Since I last posted in mid-May, there is so much growth on everything. And of course, the grass grows where I don't want it to, and doesn't grow where I want it to! We don't have alot of flowers blossoming yet... just some daisies and some chrysanthemums that have decided to bloom early, and some pansies and our Spider Wort that I brought from Washougal (below). It has gorgeous purple flowers but I'm finding that it doesn't like the heat so much and the buds stay closed most of the time!

My front yard "rock garden" area and flower beds are looking great. The pansies are coming in thick now and no slugs to eat them up! This dry climate doesn't have slugs, but I guess there are other predators, like ear-wigs. Ick. Do NOT like ear-wigs. They are already eating my daisies.

In our front raised rock flower bed, I have NEVER seen such big chrysanthemums! They are HUGE....around 3 feet tall and big round bushes. Some have hundreds of little buds (now flowers) on them but they are really small. I think I need to prune them all off so they will bloom normally this Fall! 

I'm used to mums being like this:

My front rock garden and pansies.. doing very well.... also see the flower bed with my glads coming up? They are looking great and I'll have to stake them pretty soon. Am thinking of putting a little white picket fence there along that wall to hold them up.

Hubby reseeded the front lawn (above). You can see all the new lighter greens and it does look so much better! That entire area by the glads was all dead and weedy. 

He got a little plastic tub thingy to put in the ground for a little "bird bath" and he got it all in and we put some rocks around it, but darn, it had a leak! So have to pull it out, get my handy dandy glue gun to glue the crack, and put it back. I think the birdies will like it.

That stick above is the dead part of the vine maple I planted last Fall from my son's place in Washougal... but... wait.... there are new little plants coming up at the bottom, so we WILL have a vine maple there! I love vine maple in the Fall.

Our tomatoes are doing awesomely (is that a word?). Hubby got them from our local discount store and they looked awfully sad... I was afraid they might not make it. But with some TLC and tomato fertilizer and lots of watering and staking, they are flourishing and we've already gotten our first tomatoes for eating. 

I'm loving this little back corner of our "patio". I will just keep adding plants and adding more. My marigolds are loving all the sunshine, and no slugs to eat them up!

I planted more seeds in this little teal blue plastic tub (below) from the Dollar Tree, and they are coming up already. Those seeds LOVE those plastic tubs (now if I can just keep our kitten (now cat) out of them). She loves digging in the tubs. See that empty green one in the back in the above photo? I finally gave up on plants in that one as she has chosen that one as her "outdoor potty". 

I've labeled all of my seeds and perennial plants that I've put in the back flower beds, so I'll know what they are. The seeds I do know, but some of the perennials have died for this year, but I hope they come back next spring, and I want to know what I put where! Little plant label stakes were expensive, so I bought two plastic file folders and cut them up, cut points on the ends and stuck them into the ground. You can see one in the teal blue bucket above. Very cheap and very handy.

And one more thing........ remember all those rhoddy and blueberry cuttings I got from my son's place? Well, I checked on one the other day and it has tiny baby roots on it, so it's time to plant them I think! That's next on my (never ending) to do list.

These (below) are the cuttings stuck in wet sand. I've kept it wet for almost two months.. not much work as the plastic over it keeps the condensation inside. I think I'll plant them first in some little pots or some of my bigger tubs.

Phew... I've made myself tired just reading this blog post! I think the yard progress is up-to-date for now. It's only July 6th, so am hoping for more blossoms to come and a few more plants to be planted yet. I never know when to stop. Oh.. and I planted some potatoes in one of my tubs... and they are coming up. It's an experiment to see how they do planted shallowly in the tubs, and then I'll cover them with straw.

Sorry this was so long..... that's what happens when I procrastinate.

Until next time.........  oh.. and we've been on a couple of driving excursions... so I hope to post a few(?) photos of those little sight seeing trips! You know me, I can't do "just a few".