Blessings

We went to Silver Dollar City again with Tanner and Erin.  I was having a bad hair day-oh well.

We had a great time, and I was able to walk around, shop, eat, and watch shows.  We got there at eleven a.m. and left at eight p.m.   That was just wow for me.  I did take some pain pills.  I am amazed that I could handle it with my messed up back and all.  Thank you Lord!

What a blessing!

Here are a couple of my purchases.  I love these place mats.  I also bought the little vase that was crafted from a silver table knife and sugar spoon.  Soooo cute!

Black As A Pirate's Heart

 

Black as a Pirate's heart----that's what Erin said about the water.  We uncovered our pool to find black water. The reflection looks nice, but not the water.  Our work is cut out for us.

 

 

 

Here's hubby setting up the pump and salt-water system.

 

The skimmer is put in place. It's a family project.

 

Where would we be without Erin's help---Thank-you daughter dear.  She is her daddy's right arm.

 

 

Now it's the filters job to clean things up.  As you can see it's doing its job.  Soon I'll be able to jump in and get all the leaves off of the bottom and scrub the walls.  We could use the pool vacuum, but I work much faster.



MEMORY LANE

I was at my sister Alice's house the other day going through some pictures with her, and found these pics she had taken of my family a long time ago.........This is hubby in the drivers seat, and our middle daughter and I fixing a leash on our dog Brownie.  We were at my parents home, and it looks like we were getting ready to leave--(a one and a half hour trip).  I have my handy dandy baby quilt for Erin.  Sometimes we all five made the trip in this pick-up, but not very often.  It was pretty crowded.  Of course, Erin was always in my lap with Jen, and Celeste in the middle.  Squished!

Here's a pic of Erin and Jen down at the place near my parents home where we all went swimming if it was warm enough.  That stump was called the jumpin' tree by our kids and their many cousins. We had lots of fun times there.

These next pics are for future reference of how my yard looks at certain times of the year, so you can skip if you like.

Here's looking out our bedroom window.

My roses are all blooming---love the pink ones.

Chives.

Below are Sweet Rocket with Mock Orange, and Honeysuckle---you can not imagine how good our backyard smells now---we sleep with the window open with a small fan in the window, and wow!!

My Columbine are starting to bloom, although this pic doesn't show the bloom very well.

Look how big my hollyhocks are now.

I hope they bloom soon.

I will not show you a pic of how much weeding I need to do--I'm still waiting for my ankles to improve enough to get down to my knees and back up.



Lady Bugs And A Convertible

In my crippled state I have made a couple of "Lady Bugs"  as our baby granddaughter calls them.

Our daughter, Erin, bought a BMW convertible, and her and hubby are detailing it.  It was already supposed to have been done, but it wasn't done right.  She and hubby are having a lot of fun with it.  She took me for a spin in it when I took her to pick it up today---WITH THE TOP DOWN---and it didn't even mess my hair up.

Nice!

I love how everything is greening up, and I love, love, love, our dogwood tree.

I need to pull some weeds, but being crippled in the ankles makes that difficult.  I'm not healing as fast as I would prefer...I just need some patience.  Aaaaah!

June Garden

June is a beautiful month.  All kinds of flowers are blooming right now.

I made a collage of some of my flowers, but I didn't get anywhere near all of them.

Astillbe is just starting to come into bloom.

Here's where I worked today.  I removed a 15" swath of vines, then I worked under the bush removing lots of different kinds of vines--hard work under there.

Here's the big picture.  We unloaded the last of the compost which I will work into the soil later.

I also have to figure out what to do with these.

 I really enjoy doing all this hard work, and I'm so thankful I'm able to do it.

Progress on the Back Bed

My elephant ears are standing proudly.  Aren't they cute?

Here's yesterday's progress, and................

here's today's progress---clear back to the corner bushes.  It will take a few more days of work to get it all cleared.  I only worked a couple of hours on it this morning, so I wouldn't be so spent the rest of the day.

The straight on view....I don't know if you can see it or not, but I found the old railroad tie that used to be the front edge of the flower bed.  It's under the bushes now, sort of in the upper center of the picture.

Lastly, my roses are still blooming.



Lavender Time And Workday Four

June is the month for my lavender to bloom.  I would like to try to propagate some of lavender with stem cuttings, but I don't know if I will or not.  It might be fun to try.

I have a volunteer privet bush coming up in the middle of one of my lavender plants.  I will have to do something about that.

I have some hollyhocks planted nearby, but I'm not sure if they will bloom this year or not.  I started them kind of early, but I'm not sure if I started them early enough.  They are biennials so we'll see.

We have lots of baby robins in the back yard.

The birds love the bird bath.

Our neighbor's cat is keeping an eye on all the baby birds for us---that's her job.   We used to have a cat just like this one;  we loved that cat.  "Sugar" used to sit on the roof and watch us--she was so cute.  She also rang our doorbell to get us to come to the door.  Actually, I think she wanted in, but with asthmatics in the house that didn't happen very often.  She slept in the garage on cold nights.

Here's what our latest project looked like this morning before I started working on it.

I got the vines and roots dug up clear back to the bushes for about 5 ft. in length then I forked over most of that.

It was hard work that involved resting periods.  You can see where the fork is----that is where I stopped; it was time to get cleaned up and go exercise with my youngest daughter.

 Here's another view; I still have a lot of work to do.

Another days work and I'm pooped.



Empty Nest

With the birds leaving the nest, I have an empty nest to deal with.  So I removed as much as I could with gloves on.

Then I hosed the plant down, and the bench underneath it.  There are a few stains on the bench, but hopefully time will take care of that.

This morning I spent a couple of hours on the back bed. 

Here's what it looked like after yesterday's work.

After today's work it looks like this.

Front view, yesterday,.............

and today's front view.

Here's what I salvaged, rocks---lots of rocks.  This was my dumping ground for the rocks I found when digging the trench beside the house in 2008.  I had too much on my plate at that time to figure out something creative to do with them.  So maybe this time I can do that, maybe.

I also dug up some vinca, and what I call monkey grass that was being overtaken by the  "jungle ground cover".

Here's what it looks like when planted right, and nothing else is impeding it's growth.

Bye, Bye, Birdies, and Yard Work

This was the nest yesterday morning---you can see three little birds.

They were getting pretty brave, one in particular.

Then two of them got brave and let me take their picture without cowering.

One flew the nest mid-morning, then in the evening another one took off.

That left one lonesome little birdie this morning.

So I went to work on my overgrown flower bed--whew--what a job!

The pile on the left in the pic below is what I removed.  This is what happens when you let ground cover take over.  I have a ton of more work to do on it.

I went to check on the nest after this, and it was empty. 

Next I tackled this mess.  I removed a volunteer bush, and trimmed back the mint also.

Now it looks much better.