Stream-of-Consciousness-Blogging…

It is raining here today…cold for May 25th…”the rain, rain, rain, came down, down, down, in rushing rising rivlets, til the water crept out of its bed and crept right into Piglet’s!”…I should write a blog post to pass the time on this rainy day…really wish I was outside planting the veggie garden…what could I write a blog post about?

Mmmmm, chocolate…that chocolate fountain I borrowed for Meghan’s graduation party looks very interesting…

maybe I should experiment with it before Meghan’s party!

Blog, blog, blog…I need some inspiration…stuff I want to talk about but I can’t go outside and take pictures…hey the rhododendron is blooming and I can see that through my dining room windows…

I can see the perennial bed too…

Not a great picture, but more complete looking than the last one I posted…I wonder why Flickr changed their layout…have to learn how to navigate it all over again while I post photos to this blog post…finally found the link to the archives that I complained to Kate about in my comment to this lovely post of hers…I wonder if blogspot users get notifications from wordpress users…Boy I really wish I could have been outside planting today…I hope my poor little plants aren’t getting drowned with all this rain…

At least I got the whiskey barrel planter done earlier this week, but still so much more to do…so much to do coming up soon…prom, graduation, recital, graduation party…at least I got the party invitations sent out…Inkgarden.com did such a nice job…

Ooh, hey, the bearded irises are budding…not as many buds out there as I’d like to see, darn it…

Wait a second, I thought I bought a pink foxglove for the perennial bed…that looks white…hmmm….

Not going to get any new pictures of the baby robins in all this rain…oh but hey! I do have a lovely picture of my baby girl to share this week…she’d probably hate it if she knew I just referred to her as “baby” girl…”Moooommmmmmm I am going to be 16 in 2 months”…oh don’t remind me…another with a driver’s license soon…so proud of her for receiving that computer award!…sophomore with highest grade point average in computer class…wahoo!…

Blogging, blogging, blogging…where will I find some inspiration? 😉

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!

Bereft of Daffs

The daffodils have been busting out all over due to the crazy warm weather we had for the previous few weeks, except for here in my yard.  My daffodils are planted on the north side of my house, in the shadow of the house for most of the day, therefore they are the last daffodils in all of agricultural zone 5 to bloom I believe!

These are not my  daffodils.  In a “normal” spring, most folks’ daffies in this region begin to bloom in the beginning of April.  Mine are literal “late bloomers” generally popping out mid-to-late April.  I’ve been longing to photograph and share them – although at this point, they will seem  rather boring, I’m sure, since you’ve all been seeing them for a while now.  I couldn’t help myself, however, when I was at the Cape last weekend visiting my mother.

After we had lunch at Captain Parker’s Pub ,(I had some of their famous, award-winning clam chowder -mmmm!) I couldn’t help but take pictures of the flowers surrounding the restaurant.  My mom, daughters and sister waited patiently in the car while I grabbed a few shots.  There was even hyacinth:

Back at home, I’m still waiting for my daffies.  I had hyacinths too, but some underground critter helped itself to a meal of the bulbs a few years ago.

The forsythias in the neighborhood are blooming like crazy and I’ve really been wanting to photograph some, but I don’t have any on my property.  Same goes for dogwood and magnolia trees.  I’ve been trying to decide if there’s a place that I could take pictures of someone else’s and not look too creepy doing it, LOL.

My hybrid rhododendron azaleas have traditionally been early bloomers as far as rhododendrons go, but to have them budding in March I think is a record for them.  The buds on it are in various stages right now.

Some of the buds that were a little further ahead aren’t faring so well in the return to more normal March temps.  We had some nights this past week that went down to the 20’s.  I’m sure that was a bit of a shock to flowers that had experienced 70’s and 80’s just a short time ago.

I looked back in my archives, and found this photo from April 30th last year:

That makes these blooms almost a month ahead this year.

Hubby and I are headed to a wedding later today.  I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the bride.  After almost two weeks of above normal temperatures and sunny skies, today’s forecast is for a high of 48° and on and off drizzling rain and wet snow.  I guess that’s the chance one takes planning a March 31st wedding.

I’m hoping to get April’s photo hunt list posted tomorrow.  I’m still trying to come up with ideas for the list.  If you  have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

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.

What a Week for the Garden

Remember what my garden space looked like a couple weeks ago after I cleaned it out?

I spent yesterday from about 9 am until about 5pm (with a break for lunch) weeding (yes, they did manage to invade after all the rain we’ve had), raking, digging and planting.  It was probably one of the warmest and most humid days we’ve had so far this spring (86 degrees F), but I finished planting all my veggies:

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It doesn’t look like much right now, but there are 18 tomatoes, 33 peppers (varieties of both bell and hot), 12 zucchini, 6 yellow summer squash and 12 cucumber.  I hope I haven’t overplanted my garden space this year!  I started putting down some landscape fabric too (you can see that along the foundation of the house where the tomatoes are planted) in an attempt to keep weeds down a bit this year.  I got too hot to finish that job; the black fabric just seemed to be throwing extra heat my way.

In addition to the veggie garden, my flower gardens have had some beautiful blooms this week too.  Rhododendrons, woodland hyacinth, bearded iris and just this morning, poppies have all opened up.  Do I have pictures for you? Of course!  I even spent sometime with my extension tubes and tripod.

These are woodland hyacinth.  They are not a large, showy flower.  Those little bells are about 3/4 of an inch.  The plants themselves are only about 6-7 inches tall.  I thought they might make a nice extension tube subject, but my tripod,  of course doesn’t go that low and resting the camera on the ground would be too low.  So, I got down on my belly and parked my elbows on the ground as I held the camera.  Here’s the best shot I got:

The rhododendron is in full blown bloom now:

and so are my beloved bearded irises:

 

Of course I played with the extension tubes on these also:

The bright orange poppy got in on the act this morning:

My crazy poppy!  I must admit the light was just right for this shot this morning, and it has its own beauty, but it does look a little crazy where it is planted – take a look:

Right next to the delicate irises.  Oh well! They are here to stay.

I just love this time of year.  Don’t you?

Baseball & Blooms

I had a busy and enjoyable weekend, and I just thought I’d share a bit.

I went to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game today.  Game time temperature was forcast for 55° and in the shade of the grandstand, it felt much cooler.  Jennifer and I bundled up and enjoyed an exciting 3-2 Red Sox win. By the way, Jennifer’s site is all spiffed up and self-hosted now, so head over and have a peek sometime.  Here’s our view from our homeplate grandstand seats, taken with my iPod:

Yesterday, I managed to get some much needed yardwork done after I finished being distracted by taking photos of the additional blooms that have recently opened.  The rest of my daffies are now blooming:

The earlier of my rhododendrons has also completely opened up:

I hope you made the best of your weekend too!  Happy May!

Odds and Ends

It has been a busy week.  I feel remiss that I haven’t written a post since Sunday.  I have cool post ideas rambling around in my head but they haven’t quite come to fruition yet.  Ever have that feeling?  I still wanted to share a little bit tonight, because tomorrow will be a busy day too.

Did you ever notice that rhododendrons work as thermometers?  Really, it’s true!  I’m pretty sure we can all remember what our rhododendrons look like in the spring when they are gorgeous and bursting with flowers (I was going to show you a picture, of course, but I couldn’t find a decent one in my archives!  Really, Karen? Weird! I know!)

At this time of year, I know it is a morning that we need to bundle up when I look out the front window and see this:

Can you see how tightly those leaves are curled up?  I’ve noticed they seem to do this when the temperature is below freezing.  This morning was one of the coldest we’ve had so far this season at about 10 degrees F and those leaves were sucked in so tight they looked like pine needles.  It was still too dark out for me to get a good picture though.

Speaking of cold, our friend Scott Thomas is buried in about 4 feet of Lake Effect snow these days.  Scott also recently posted a long term photo assignment that I think will be a lot of fun.  If you haven’t gotten over there to check it out, go see!  Scott has promised to send email reminders to those of us who’d like to participate and leave him a comment.

 Mr. Rebel or Andre or EWOT or whatever his name is, is anxious to be introduced to this white phenomena so many bloggers seem to be talking about and taking pictures of.  He sits in his case near-by the computer, complaining to be used as usual, but he will have to wait for snow.  I’ve been mollifying him with Christmas tree pictures.

I have others, with a story to share, coming soon. 

Ms. Sell, over at the Writing Studio and Bait Shop, who always has a great story to share, did a post sharing her ideas for planning those family meals and getting out of the dreaded rut.  She’s got some easy ideas and shares a recipe too!  Thanks, Gerry, for contributing.  I think some of your ideas may make my New Year’s resolution  binder.  You might want to check out today’s post as well where we learn that Miss Sadie and the Cowboy have been immortalized in print!

I hope this busy holiday season finds you well and not too crazy.  Better make sure  you aren’t suffering from FGEEKD!  Time to go relax with a glass of wine (or whatever floats your particular boat).  I promise my next post will be less disjointed.