Twice-Blooming Iris – these usually bloom in April and then again in October. To have these throwing open their arms on Christmas Eve is such a delightful surprise!
And this is a pot of wave petunias, One of the most beautiful flowers, I think. Such happy flowers.
I think you can guess what my favorite color is…. :0)
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening
Last night we went to bed about 12:30 am and the wind was gusty and there was lightning. I didn’t hear it rain, but severe weather was possible overnight into this morning.
We awoke to 60 degrees F. and bright sunshine.
I took a walk around the yard to see if there was damage. We lost a couple of leaves on my elephant ear plants and there were leaves all over the civilized part of the yard around the house and our driveway, but I didn’t find any damage yet.
I did find several things that brought my spirits up –
There’s a bird’s nest in the tulip tree!
Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature
It is a wonderful day here so far. It’s overcast, but not raining. I have two main things to do:
THING ONE – get a haircut this afternoon
THING TWO – finish planting flowers.
Yesterday we went to the local nursery to get two flowers that my husband likes – impatiens and wave petunias. We’ve cut back on what we’re planting this year as kind of a leftover from the pandemic. We had already checked several places for flowers. This year I would have been content with planting any number of flowers we saw. Finally, it came down to the fact that my husband wanted wave petunias and impatiens, and was willing to drive to Ft. Smith to get them. Happily, we were able to find a bright orangy impatiens for the front porch and other shady areas in front of the house, plus wave petunias in a gloriously deep purple.
This is the color of the impatiens I planted yesterday. It should spread nicely, filling a couple of shallow round faux terra cotta planters on the porch, plus I dotted them in the brick planters that line the front of the house.
This is the color of the wave petunias we found. I’m cleaning out 4 large terra cotta pots that live up high on the railing of the deck, plus some other planters on the floor of the deck.
I’ll take pictures when the flowers start to look nice.
Tonight the rains are supposed to start. (My mouth dropped open when I saw this. I may still look like a gaping fish. )
Partly cloudy early with increasing clouds overnight. A stray thunderstorm is possible. Low 63F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph.
79°/64°PM Thunderstorms50%SSE 11 mph
76°/65°Scattered Thunderstorms51%SSE 9 mph
77°/66°Scattered Thunderstorms51%SE 9 mph
74°/66°Scattered Thunderstorms57%SE 11 mph
79°/67°Scattered Thunderstorms45%SE 10 mph
78°/68°Scattered Thunderstorms44%SE 10 mph
83°/67°Scattered Thunderstorms37%SE 9 mph
82°/65°Scattered Thunderstorms38%SSE 8 mph
82°/65°Scattered Thunderstorms41%SSE 8 mph
82°/65°Scattered Thunderstorms36%S 9 mph
82°/64°Isolated Thunderstorms33%W 8 mph
83°/65°Isolated Thunderstorms31%SSW 7 mph
Looks like we’ll be dodging a lot of raindrops until further notice…
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening, Mother Nature, Thoughts on a ________
Marabou Stork-photo credit unknown- via Penny Yaffe Krakow
If you have a candidate for the “ugliest/most beautiful bird in the world,” please let me know. So far, I love the Shoebill Stork, the Tawny Frogmouth, and the Marabou Stork. I love them because they are unusual, and they have character.
We are at the end of our gorgeous weather streak and are back to normal August weather for Arkansas today. We will keep the doors open for a bit longer, and then close up and turn on the air conditioning.
Yesterday I started what will be a long project – dismantling the greenhouse that was killed by the storm.
I gathered a wheelbarrow load of things I can salvage. It is in the garage now. I will reorganize my counter area in there and store what makes sense there. The rest will go out to the shop. I also gathered a leaf bag full of trash. I will do this steadily, a bit at a time, until it is empty and then we can dismantle the shell. I was amazed that the plastic tubs I was discarding wouldn’t hold together long enough for me to pick them up by the edges without shattering. I then used things that acted like a spatula to scoop them up and put them into the leaf bag.
The thermometer I keep out there showed 120 degrees yesterday – and this is on a COOL day here for August, showing one of the reasons the greenhouse didn’t work well for us. We couldn’t afford to add heating and cooling, and the cost to run it would have been astronomical. I will try to set up a seed-starting area in the future with a grow light in the garage, along with starting things on the window sill in the dining area, plus pots on the deck.
This shows you one of the many reasons I have hope for the future. The pandemic kept us from planting our usual flowers all around the house. I thought we would be completely bare on the deck. Instead, seeds from the wave petunias we planted last year sprouted and have given us a lovely display. (If you look carefully, you can see our yellow lab, Amber, keeping me company while I took this picture. :0)
I am continuing my efforts to become a seller via Amazon Handmade, though I’m not making much progress yet. I’m trying to find out if I can simply put things up for sale via my regular Amazon account where I sell used books, or if I need to apply for separate accounts for each of the categories my products fit in. So far, everyone I manage to finally connect with gives me links back to Seller Central. Seller Central sends me to Handmade, and so the cycle from Hell continues…
All the good people in the path of storms Marco and Laura are in my thoughts and prayers.
Have a good day today and stay safe.
These are wave petunias. They give me particular hope this year because I didn’t plant anything on the deck this year due to the pandemic. These have come up from what was left behind after we cleaned out the planters last fall. They lived through the winter and are blooming on their own, despite everything that is going on in the world.
Because of the pandemic, I didn’t plant any annual flowers. Last year I planted wave petunias in four of our planters on the deck. I love the way they spill over the side of the pots in a riot of color and bloom. I just left the empty planters this year. I didn’t even prep them for planting.
Apparently there were seeds left in the pots from the plants I pulled out last fall. Aren’t they wonderful? What a nice surprise and message of hope.
Filed under Delightful Surprises, Favorite Things, Gardening
LifeBuzz
I am really bushed.
After Lunch Bunch today, my husband and I went to a local nursery and bought 1 flat of impatiens, 1 flat of portulaca, 2 flats of periwinkles, and 1 flat of wave petunias.
When I checked the weather website, it said 100% chance of heavy rain all day Saturday, so I got busy, doing three sessions of planting. I just came in a minute ago and I can happily report I’m finished – both planting all the flowers and depleting my energy. :0)
Impatiens – Burpee.com
I planted impatiens on our front porch, and to the side of the porch, since this area is on the north side of the house and receives little sunshine.
Periwinkles – commons.wikimedia.org
These went in several places – on the back deck, in the ’emu’ planters to the side of the driveway, and dotted around for color otherwise.
portulaca – purslane – yubi
We have four concrete planters that live in places hard to include in our irrigation system, so these flowers will handle getting dry much better than others. We take a sprinkling can around to these. We have two outside our garage, one beside the driveway, and one beside the door to the shop.
Wave Petunias – Burpee.com
I planted these in four large matching planters on the deck, hoping they’ll spill over the edges and grow down the sides of the planters.
When the plants have hopefully survived the ‘heavy rain’ tomorrow and possibly Sunday, I’ll try to get around and take some pictures.
I hope you had a great day, too.
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening
Planet Natural
The past couple of days I’ve spent a lot of time outside.
The radishes are finally sprouting. I have several squares of them, in this and other planter boxes.
The broccoli seems to be doing well so far.
I’ll probably start harvesting (and EATING!) some lettuce leaves next week.
The sweet red onions are looking good.
No spinach sprouts yet, but I’m still hopeful…
Today I’m trying to get some flower planters ready to plant. It used to be that I was the one who loved the flowers, but now we both enjoy them. We’re going to start with wave petunias, periwinkles, purslane, and impatiens. If we can get them planted, we’ll see if we need more.
My husband says that deep purple iris have become his favorite flower. They’re blooming in several places in the yard right now.
I really love this time of year!
Yesterday I told you I spent the afternoon and early evening planting new plants, mostly on the deck.
We have two of these pretty burgundy wave petunias.
We have these impatiens planted on both sides of the front door.
These are electric orange wave petunias. I planted two of these in the planter to the left of the front porch.
I brought these blue iris in yesterday, since we’re supposed to have lots of rain and possibly severe weather today, tomorrow, and into Saturday.
This is the new ground cover I planted in the trio of brick planters between the driveway and the front yard.
A pretty purple wave petunia. We have two of these on the deck.
This rose is called “Sedona.” We liked the color of the roses a lot, and thought it would be a nice addition to the Rio Samba rose bushes.
We have two white wave petunia plants on the deck. We’re hoping all of these will spill over the sides of the planters.
And, finally, this is the official hummer welcome area. We have two feeders out right now, plus the bird bath. My friend, Carla, told me the hummers are due around the 12th. I’m hoping for sooner…
Filed under Arkansas, Favorite Things, Gardening, Greenwood
creativeartworksblog 