Hearts ‘n’ Flowers

I was working outside this past weekend, trying to get caught up on some of my outdoor “spring cleaning” chores that have been neglected this year.  You might remember a little adventure I mentioned a time or two that caused me not to be at home during our spring break from school – the time that I normally take care of these things.

I worked on cleaning the flower bed in my front yard, and felt satisfied with that work for the day.  There was much bending, pulling, pushing and such, and rather than have my back go out from trying to do too much, I decided one flower bed spruce-up was enough for one day.  The sun was out and at a lovely angle for taking photos, so I decided to grab my camera and spend some well deserved time behind the lens instead of the wheelbarrow.

Problem was when I tried to take a picture of those white bleeding hearts.  I noticed all sorts of leftover winter debris invading my pictures.  “I’ll just move a twig or two out of the way,” I said to myself.  It wasn’t working.  But I was determined for pictures of the cute little hearts.

Rip, prune, yank, rake, pile, push.  Those were my next actions.  You see, my butterfly bushes surround this particular bleeding heart plant.  Once I started, I couldn’t stop until it was done.  That ever happen to you?  You make the decision to do one thing, and then find yourself completely involved in a task you hadn’t planned on?  I suppose it is a bit similar to my HCDD, that I’ve mentioned before.

Now the butterfly bushes lean up against my deck and they unfortunately littered their leavings all over, so not only did I find I need to clean up that whole bed, I then found it necessary to sweep up the deck too.  **SIGH**

I did, however, eventually get around to taking pictures of what I found in bloom in the yard.

Many of my blooms seem less bountiful this year.  I’m thinking it has to do with that crazy streak of crazy-warm weather we had in March that started everything growing and budding ahead of time.  That was followed by cooler, more “normal” temps and everything seemed to stall out a bit.

These azaleas are an exception to that observation, however:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular shrub looking so full and lush.

The “true” rhododendrons (as opposed to my early-blooming “rhodo-azaleas”) are starting to bloom now.  I found this one nestled away in the shadows:

Now that I’ve confessed my YWDD (yard work distraction disorder), I have one more comment on this spring that I feel the need to express.  I wish Mama Nature could get us a little more regularly into the 70° range.  We’ve been hovering with highs in the 60′s, but the mornings are still chilly and I’m getting really tired of my current wardrobe!  Anyone else having this problem getting ready for work?  I only have so many “transitional season” outfits, and I’ve worn them to death over the last month or so!

I realize that last paragraph was extremely random.  I apologize if you are still reading at this point.  Welcome to my train-of-thought.  Sometimes it is a bumpy ride!

These are a few of my favorite things…

I’m taking a little break from the story of my cruise vacation to bring you this month’s photo hunt results.  Well, it isn’t a complete break, as you are about to see, but this isn’t an “official” cruise post.  I’ve had lots of submissions for the hunt rolling in today, and I hope to get around to seeing them all this weekend.  As usual, if you had planned to participate in the hunt and just forgot, go ahead and take the rest of the weekend to finish it up!  It isn’t likely that I’ll get the wrap-up posted before Monday night anyway.

In the blurb that I saw in the pingback when Robin posted her photo hunt, she mentioned that people aren’t technically things, when all along I had planned to use a picture of my girls in this post.  She’s right, of course, so how about smiles on my girls?

This is from the day we boarded our ship – I took this picture with my phone when my mom texted me saying that she’d love to see the looks on their faces.

Favorite food!  So hard to choose!  I love many kinds of food.  One of my dinners on board the ship was quite delicious and prompted me to take its photo, therefore it gets to be my favorite food for this post.

Lobster tail and grilled shrimp!  Yummy!

As long as I am still taunting you with vacation photos, here’s another favorite:

The sea.  I always long to be near it.  Whether it is the wild and cold Atlantic Ocean or the warm, turquoise Carribbean Sea, the smell of a salty breeze puts me in heaven.

For my other favorites, I needed to head to my archives.  To go along with that beautiful blue water, how about a lovely blue margarita?

Margaritas are one of my favorite summertime drinks.  They aren’t always blue, depending on the ingredients I choose, but they are always delicious!

This next picture gets you a favorite sport and a favorite hobby all in one shot!

I made this quilt square a couple years ago for the quilt of a retiring teacher at my school.  Just so happens she loves my favorite team too.  Quilting and baseball – there’s a combination I bet you never thought you’d see.

For my final favorite, you knew I’d have to include a flower picture didn’t you?  Some of my favorites are not in bloom yet this year, so I chose a picture from last year:

I just love bearded irises.  When they are in bloom, I see them each time I pull into or out of my driveway.  Sometimes, when one of my daughters is in the car with me, I screech “IRISES” in a silly voice, just because I can’t help my silly self.

I guess this time around I can’t participate in my bonus shot, since technically my whole post is my bonus!  I’m really enjoying the favorites I’ve seen so far, and I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of the posts.  Keep ‘em coming!

Poking Around

It happened today!  My first daffy bloomed!

My lastest-blooming-in-the-neighborhood daffodils started to bloom today.  There’s yet more proof of the crazy mild winter we had.

I found myself in the unusual position of having an unrushed period of time to myself this afternoon.  There’s no school tomorrow, the girls were at their respective activities, the temperature was relatively mild, and the sun was shining at a lovely angle in the sky.  I finally poked around my yard and neighborhood, camera in hand.  Here’s some of what I found, in addition to the daffodil:

Lilac buds

The “rhodo-azalea” still waiting to bloom

The neighbor’s forsythia, alight in the sunshine

I’m not sure what type of flowering tree this is (dogwood maybe?) but I loved the way the blooms looked against the blue sky:

To avoid being too photo-heavy in one post, I narrowed down to 7 shots from the 38 that I took this afternoon!  It felt really nice to be outside with some of my favorite subjects again.

We are off on an adventure in Boston on our day off from school tomorrow.  I hope to have some fun pictures to share with you this weekend.  I hope you’ll be enjoying a long weekend too!

Best of, Part 2

You just knew this topic would have to be one of my “best of” posts, didn’t you?  You knew flowers would have to sneak in here, didn’t you?  Because I find flowers to be such an easy, beautiful photo subject, I tried very hard in my narrowing down process to choose shots that I thought were different or unusual in some way, at least for me.  Let me know if you agree.

I remember being really happy with this lilac bud photo – one of the first flower shots of the spring that I took back in April.  The light in the background, as much as I’d like to say I planned it, was a happy accident.

I chose this one because tiny lily of the valley can be a challenge to shoot.  I’ve got a small patch of them that have been growing near the foundation of this house since long before I lived here.  They aren’t showy flowers and they aren’t easy to get at, so I was pleased with how this shot came out.

“Crazy Poppy” made it into my favorites because of the interesting relationship I have with this flower.  Orange is not one of my favorite colors; at the time I bought this perennial, I thought it was red.  Imagine my surprise when it bloomed flaming orange.  I’ve tried to remove it from my garden a couple times – and every time it came back, so I let it be.  Now I look forward to seeing its funny buds (almost perverse looking – really, have a look here!) and cheerful bloom each spring.

The next three photos come from my experience at Big Summer Potluck in Pennsylvania this past July.  While we sat in a rustic barn listening to presentations, I couldn’t take my eyes off the lovely arrangements placed in the windows and the beautiful filtered light coming through.

I also had the chance to photograph perhaps the most unusual flower I’ve ever seen, the lotus:

My daughter Sarah received a bouquet of sunflowers for her birthday this year.  The flowers remind me of her sunny personality.  In the light of a sunny window and reflected in a mirror, this is one of my best flower photos:

This is part 2 of my contribution to Scott’s photo assignment #16.

It’s the Hippy Hippy Sheep!

“Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude!  Like hi, man! I live at this like totally awesome place called Pickity Place?  I totally don’t know why they call it that, but like, do you have any idea how heavy wet wool is dude?  Huh? Oh, like sorry man.  I’m not supposed to be talking to you about that.  Lessee, what was it now?  Oh yeah, flowers!  I’m not usually into those flowery-type thing-a-ma-bobs, but since someone calling herself Karma asked me to, I thought it wouldn’t be too lame!  Besides, man, you know what they say about karma, right?  Hey, just who are these they people anyway?  Oh, sorry, getting off track again….”

“Now this one here, it really isn’t too far away from my  pen, and I could like totally chow down on that if they’d let me get near it.”

“As long as you don’t scarf the fuzzy-bee-dude in the middle, I’m sure this could be a tasty snack.  You know, I’ve heard there’s this golden retriever, lives in some town in western Massa-something-or-other, that like eats ‘em on purpose?  Isn’t that like so gnarly?”

“Now this one, I can’t figure out man.  Why are they throwing the snacks in the water bowl?”

“If I was actually clean, I think I might look like this one dude.  That’d be like so far out!”

“Look at that, a way groovy smorg!”

“So, like anyway dudes, it was totally cool talking to you.  I gotta split, but you should totally cruise my pad at Pickity Place.”

I can’t think of a title for this blog post

Remember the 124 pictures I told you I took at dress rehearsal last week?  I finally got around to editing yesterday.  I cropped and brightened and un-red-eyed 23 of my favorites and posted them in an album on Facebook.  Are we friends on Facebook?  If we are, you can see those pictures here if you’d like.  If we are not, maybe we should be!

With recital, also comes flowers, and we received many lovely ones.  On one of the few afternoons that wasn’t rainy this week, I took the flowers outside on my deck and placed them on the table for a little photo session.  I found that late afternoon with my umbrella in place made for lovely picture-taking lighting for these very willing and cooperative subjects.  First I played with my extension tubes.  I was too lazy to get the tripod out, so I sat and used my elbows on the table to gain some steadiness:

 

Next I decided to try the 50mm 1.8.  It turned out to be a nice choice for showing off pretty color with that sharp-but-soft-at-the-same-time focus:

 

I hope that your summer is off to a wonderful start.  Today is the first day that neither the girls nor I have to go to school.  So far it hasn’t been the lazy non-schedule that I usually look forward to at this time of year.  Yesterday was the girls’ last day, but it was Sarah’s “Final Assembly” at middle school – or 8th grade graduation as we used to call it when I was a kid.  Sarah received two certificates for academic achievement – the President’s Education Award for being in the top 10% of her class and an excellence award for achieving all A’s for her final grades of 8th grade.

Forgive me for bragging a wee bit!  I’m very proud of my little girl – who isn’t so little any more!

After Sarah’s ceremony, we all went out to lunch in celebration.  Yesterday afternoon and today too, I will continue to wear my invisible “Mom’s Taxi” cap, which I’m sure will remain in place for the summer. 

 In between, I’m hoping to have plenty of reading time out on my deck.  I’m looking for reading suggestions for the summer too!  Please leave any suggestions you may have in the comments.  The next book I am planning to read is book 3 in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series.  Have you read those?  That is my suggestion to you if you haven’t.

I’ll be back with other rambling blog posts soon.  Don’t forget about the photo hunt!

Mama’s Bounty

A wise woman once said, “All weekends should be three-day weekends; then you’d have a day for running errands and chores, a day for socializing and a day to yourself to do whatever you want or nothing at all.”  I may be paraphrasing a bit, but the wise woman is my sister and I couldn’t agree more!  Thanks to the wonderful servicemen and women of this country who gave their lives for us, we are able to celebrate this three-day holiday weekend.  I got to thinking about all the things I am appreciative for this three-day weekend and thought I’d share my appreciation with you.

I am appreciative that I was able to get my veggie garden planted with a minimum of back pain.  I finished off that garden today by planting my little sentry row of critter-guarding marigolds:

 

I am appreciative of the warm weather that we have been granted after very wet spring.  It allowed me to continue my planting frenzy this weekend.  In addition to the veggies and marigolds, I planted all of my containers of flowers.  A sampling:

 

(I can’t take credit for that top one – that was my mother’s day gift from hubby._

New guinea impatiens in my whiskey barrel

I put the bee balm that I bought for the hummingbirds in the ground near the butterfly bushes and fuchsia, and I found a spot in one of my flower beds for the new columbine:

I am appreciative for my home, my family and my friends.  As I’ve enjoyed my yard, and having my hands in the dirt this weekend, I’ve taken a good look around.  As appreciative as I am that we are past the long, harsh winter that Mama Nature had us endure this year, I couldn’t help but feel she was making up for it with an absolute bounty of beauty this spring.  Remember all those wonderful lilacs I showed you?  Now in bountiful bloom I’m enjoying both my rhododendron and my irises; I don’t remember such huge displays last year:

Looks like I’m also going to have plenty of rosebuds:

and that the chipmunks are going to have plenty of strawberries:

( Lord knows I never get any of them!  Really need to get around to moving these one of these years)

While they are not bountiful yet, the very first of my peonies opened too! 

So thank you Mama Nature, thank you fallen soldiers, and thank you blogging friends; you are all appreciated.

Finally!

Okay so I’ve been whining quite a bit that I seem to be the only blogger of this cool blogging community who didn’t have any daffodils in bloom.  They finally decided to show their beautiful selves today.

I was lucky enough to have a gorgeous, sunny and warm afternoon to shoot these pictures too.

Yep, that was the temperature today and I was loving it!  I got my reclining chair chair out

 and enjoyed a complimentary iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts, courtesy of their Dunkin Perks program.  When I finished my coffee, I stalked the yard for more signs of spring.  I was reminded of Robin’s lovely post with maple tree buds, when I saw these in my yard:

These are all over a red maple that unfortunately partially broke and is bent over in the yard.  We haven’t quite decided what the best thing to do about it is.  As I meandered past the broken tree toward the back of the yard, a robin curiously decided to hang out on the fence rather than fly away as I approached.  It kept peeking back at me, perhaps to see if I’d gone away, but stayed long enough for me to take a few pictures.  I seem to be having better luck with bird pictures so far this year.

Speaking of better luck with bird pictures, wouldn’t it be wonderful if this is the year I finally get my hummingbird shot?  My husband claimed to have seen one a couple days ago, so I went ahead and hung my pretty new hummingbird feeder:

($5 at the Christmas Tree Shops!  Don’t you just love a bargain?)

I’m sure our 80 degree days will be short lived for now – high in the low 70′s expected for tomorrow, but I will take it!  Tomorrow I will also take you on a tour of all the Scavenger Hunt participants in case you haven’t made the rounds just yet.  See you tomorrow!

Awesome Weekend, Part 2

As promised, this is the Cape Cod edition of my Awesome Weekend.  After our delicious luncheon  and an afternoon chatting with our BFF Renae, my girls, my sister, my mother and I made the trip to Mom’s place on Cape Cod.  We arrived late evening Saturday, so my photos that I have to share with you are from Sunday which turned out to be a sunny but windy day.  The seagulls were drifting…

… and the windsurfers were surfing!

As I said, it was a sunny day, but it wasn’t that warm!  Check out my “crew” at the beach at Bass River:

Left to right: Sarah, Jennifer, Mom, Meghan

After our windy beach visit, the sun was still lovely and warm, so I requested a little walk around Mom’s neighborhood to see what might be in bloom on the Cape.  I found some pretty sights.  These were growing in the backyard, and I found out over at Barbara’s blog that they are called chionodoxa.

Daffodils are in bloom just about every where you look down at the Cape (still not in my front yard though, hmmpph!)

These grew in a large carpet at the front of someone’s property.  We wondered if it could be heather.  Any ideas?

A sweet little pair of ducks was swimming in a little swampy pond in the neighborhood and I couldn’t  help taking some snaps of the cuties in the late afternoon sun:

Our weekend, in addition to the beach visit and sight-seeing, of course included shopping and good eats, with a very healthy dose of laughter.  Pretty awesome weekend, wouldn’t you say?

Where did Karma go?

So, where did I go today?

Was it the jungle?

How about the desert?

Or perhaps the tropics?

I didn’t actually go to any of those places of course, but I did go to a place that can make you feel as though you’ve travelled to these diverse locations.  My sister and I went to Northampton, MA, home to Smith College and their amazing annual Spring Bulb Show.  In addition to strolling through two packed-solid greenhouse rooms of forced-bulb flowers, other rooms of the Lyman Conservatory are also available for viewing, representing many different climates and their flora.

I hope you’ll enjoy my slideshow of one of my favorite signs of spring in this area:

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I took 124 photos today, so expect a few more flower posts in the next few days!