I spend much of my time hacking things down. Our property is about 8 acres of scrubby ‘woods’ on top of a ridge line outside of town. Unless we keep at it, I think the weeds and trees would grow up over the house, yard, shop, and driveway, swallowing all we’ve done over the more than 35 years we have lived here.
This is a longitudinal view of our trio of brick planters that run between our front yard and the top of our driveway. The huge green plant is the end of the wisteria that my husband has trained to grow all the way across the ‘corner’ formed by this plant and one of our fireplace wood holders. As you can see, the plant is like a weed, taking over all we will allow for it to consume, kind of like mint in an herb garden. At this point, it’s hard to see there is a trio of planters!
Here’s another view of the same huge green wisteria plant, this photo taken on the yard side of the planters. Actually, there is wisteria and then forsythia in combination.
This shows there actually ARE planters there – just completely over-grown now.
You can see that it would be very difficult to ride a mower anywhere close to the edges of the planters. I’ll start my work on these today, hopefully. This will be a multi-day project.
Filed under Gardening
Deep purple is my favorite color. Whenever I see it, my soul reacts, with happiness welling up inside and spilling over. Spring is one time of the year where our yard reflects my love of the color.
They are blooming almost all the way down one side of the driveway now. When they are finished, yellow ones take over.
You can see my heart is really full this time of year. There is much to do in the yard, and little time right now to do it between severe weather. Soon things will tame down (hopefully) and I can get our planters weeded and cleared out, tomato plants in, and buy some purple petunias for the deck. :0)
Stay warm and dry!
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening, Mother Nature, Seasons
The wisteria has done well this year. It is fuller and more lush every day. I don’t know how it will fare in the storm, but we’re lucky to have had this beauty for as long as we have this year.
The twice-blooming iris is really doing its thing now. All up and down one side of the driveway, too, and in several places in the yard. They will bloom again in October.
These are the two tomato planters I’ve been weeding, then adding potting soil to in order to get them ready for tomato plants. I’m hoping to be able to plant Thursday, or into the weekend, assuming the storms have abated.
Finally, this is Amber, who never misses a chance to ‘go’ anywhere, whether it’s on foot or in the car. She was a bit disappointed that it was a walking trip this time, but was quite companionable, nonethelesss.
Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature
These are actually photos I took yesterday, before the freeze, fearing that the overnight freeze would kill our treasured wisteria. I’m happy/relieved to tell you it is alive and well, maybe a bit worse from wear, but hopefully will continue to bloom more and more daily.
This wisteria has lived through freezes, snows, ice, thunderstorms, gusting winds, droughts, etc. Seeing it bloom like this really fills me up with hope for the future.
Our wisteria is starting to bloom!
We have vines stretching all the way to the driveway to the left of this picture. My husband has been trying for years to have BLOOMS all the way across. We’re making progress on it each year.
Yesterday I ate right, stayed under my calorie total for the day, stayed under my carb total for the day, exercised with weights, did my yoga, cooked for an hour, cleaned, etc., and guess what – I GAINED .2 lbs. Bummer. This is a character-building exercise for sure. I’ll simply keep on keepin’ on and hope for the best.
I’ve been making phone calls most of the morning, following up on things, confirming others, asking questions, etc. The thing I’m coming away with is that you MUST be your own advocate. Everyone is in their own personal world, worried about their own problems, understandably. These DON’T include whatever they told you would happen, wouldn’t happen, shouldn’t happen, etc. Unless you make notes and follow up, it simply DOESN’T happen/or DOES – whichever is worse. You can’t depend on other people. You MUST do it yourself, and KEEP after it until whatever it is is done. Sometimes I would definitely trade my ‘adult’ hat for a happy, carefree ‘child’ hat from my past.
I’ll make sure to get outside for part of the afternoon. It’s going to be in the 60s and there is lots of sunshine to play in. Will you get outside, too?
It’s cool here (45 degrees F. and a pretty good breeze), but I needed some spirit-lifting and took my camera outside to walk around and see what I could see.
“Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun.” — Kahlil Gibran
Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature, Seasons
If you’re like me, the pandemic is causing a roller coaster of feelings, a bit of fear, lots of care and caution, and a sincere hope that this new virus strain won’t take many more lives before the experts get a handle on it and we can put this awful scare behind us. I am finding that escaping to my art room, getting paint all over me, helps me cope. I’m trying to get up there for a few minutes each day. I’ve painted an old, stained tee shirt to give it new life. I’ve painted some wooden earrings I look forward to wearing. I have an idea for a painting rattling around now that I hope to start this afternoon.
Another thing that helps is taking walks around my yard, seeing new buds ready to burst into glorious life. The buds are a reliable promise that things will get back to normal in time, and there is hope for the future for people and our countries.
I’m noticing that several of the yard critters my husband and I have made are needing to be spruced up. This sweet shovel bird will get my attention soon. Then I hope to move around the yard, giving our metal yard critters some love – and paint!
One of my favorite roses is Rio Samba. I love it because the buds you see here will soon start to open up. They start as bright yellow, then develop a coral edge on the petals, then finally turn almost all coral before needing to be pruned. At one time we’ll have all three stages of blossoms on the plant. This is one of three rose bushes we have.
How can you feel down when you see the promise of a blooming wisteria?
My veggie garden plants are smiling, too, with the promise of a continuing nice harvest. I have harvested twice so far in this young season, giving us lots of head lettuce and spinach leaves for our salads. The plants are loving the cooler gray days with lots of rain. The sun is actually shining this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get out there, take some pics, and share them with you later today.
I hope that you can look around and find the promise of better times to come, too. If not, I’m delighted to share the promise I found with you.
Stay safe.
When I was taking Molly out for her first morning outing this morning, this sight greeted us. If you look closely, you can see it is now growing WAY UP in the tree on the far side of the actual plant in the brick planter.
A little closer view now where you can see the glorious color.
There were big, fat bumble bees enjoying it this morning. (I don’t mind them because they need a reason to sting you, unlike the red wasps who hate everyone, but tend to dive bomb me whenever I’m not paying close enough attention. There is a lovely fragrance, too. Not overpowering, just NICE.
This blooms every year regardless of surrounding circumstance, reliably. Sometimes it is not quite so lush and fragrant, but it reminds us that nice weather is on the way, and the hope that things will get better soon!
Filed under anticipation, Arkansas, Attitude, color, Delightful Surprises, Gardening, hope
We have been working to get our wisteria to grow from its base in the planter on the right of the photo to a tree off the edge of this picture on the left.
A closer view. Things are looking more lush each day.
This fills me with hope for the future. It makes my heart sing.
Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature
The purple iris bloom first. As they fade, the yellow ones start.
This is now my husband’s favorite flower, so each time the blooms are spent, I split some and plant them in another place in the yard.
The wisteria has given us a nice display this year. We’re trying to get it to go up into the tree on the opposite end of the wood pile. We actually saw some blooms up there this year! Our rose bushes were looking sad at the end of the season, so I cut them WAAAAAY back, figuring they would either like it or croak. They seem to be happy with lots of buds right now.
We have some yellow blooms since this picture was taken. I’ll see if I can get a pic to share with you later.
I love this time of year!
Filed under Mother Nature, Seasons
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Okay. We were in the middle of a drought and it even caused bad problems with our water supply, making the turnovers in the lakes cause our water to have a bad odor and taste. Wildfire danger was high. Warm, windy days were worrisome. I started doing mental and physical rain dances, trying to get our area over the problem.
Mother Nature listened. I’m not sure if she saw and heard ME, or if a whole lot of people were also doing rain dances, but she delivered. Big Time. We’ve had rain, rain showers, heavy rain, storms, sleet, and more rain. I’ve definitely STOPPED even thinking about rain dances, but now I’m thinking Mother Nature is saying, “You wanted rain. Okay. Here it is!”
Today we’re due for MORE storms, particularly between 11:00 and 3 this afternoon with possible severe weather. We did a group of errands this morning, paring our list down to one appt this afternoon, in an effort to be ONLY blown away, rather than blown away and DROWNED trying to get our stuff done.
The doggies came and demanded that I take them out a couple of minutes ago, insisting they would blow up if I didn’t take them out NOW. I complied, then came back for my camera, to record some of the beauty I found while walking around the yard. The storm today might wreak havoc with our yard, so I wanted to try to catch Mother Nature at her BEST – first.
Every day the wisteria gets more lush and more purple.
It SMELLS wonderful, too!
We have purple iris blooming in planters, in clusters around the yard, even off the edge of the civilized part of our yard, plus down our driveway.
We have buds on the three new Rio Samba rose bushes, and now some of the buds are starting to open up!
A knock out rose bush is starting to have blooms.
This is the north side of our square foot garden.
And the south side.
The winds really picked up while I took pics and walked the dogs. We’ll probably be right in the heart of the thunderstorms this afternoon, since we have to be out at 1:30. It’s a good thing we don’t melt in the rain. We’re thankful for our warm, dry home. Our doggies have already snuggled down for a nap, and even the two cats came in with us.
Have a wonderful day. Stay warm and dry!
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