Oh but we needed it!!

Rain! Well we got it last night. My sister Sharon was home this week so all the sister's went on a garden tour. Starting at Starla's, next we went to Gayle's (who lives 1 mile from Starla). We stopped to see brother Terry and Shannon's house and baby boy Ian. The rain started during the Shannon E's house tour. It poured on the drive to my house. DiAnn and I are wondering why we are even driving to the other side of the tracks....

The rain stopped just as we get to my house, we tour mine and DiAnn's (who by the way lives 2 miles from me) and when we are on the end of DiAnn's tour the rain clouds open up again and dumped. Someone must have helped us finish our tour, the rain came all night long and all day today.

Here is a picture of a raindrop in the water barrel.

My froggy sitting in his dish with lots of fresh rainwater to enjoy. Look at that shadow, how cool!

During the tour I asked my sisters what the garden club was going to look at on Tuesday when they come to write a short article about my gardens for the Star News and take a picture for the paper. What were they going to see since it's a month before the real tour??? Sharon stood at the beginning of the path and said "What do you mean what will they see, it's beautiful from here". So I took a picture from where she was standing. No color except for many shades of green. Maybe the rain will bring out some color before they get here.

The rain started my False Indigo blooming, I love the color of these and the shape of their leaves. Here is a shot with the water droplets still on the leaves.

Am I ready for this?

Trash to Treasure

Someones trash to our treasure... Jeannie and I are always looking at junk and trying to be creative, it drives John and Ed crazy. They always say.... "IT'S JUNK", we say "HUMOR US", they do it but grumble the entire time. When we have the finished product, they hate to admit they like it too.

This is a spring from an old mattress that was burned on the brush pile in January. It's now a vase, candle holder... many possibilities. The old insulator has a new use. How fun!

Ed thought we could sand blast the springs and paint them since they are all rusty, what was he thinking!!!

We love the rusty look.

Now there are more springs than we have insulators, what else can we do with them???

We can't just throw them away, they're free, rusty and fun!!

Garden Issues

So the weather here was great on the weekend and Monday was fabulous. John and I worked very hard getting the 2nd truckload of mulch down, only 2 more to go. Tuesday it turned cold outside and I was busy at work so I didn't spend much time in the garden watching things. Well these next pictures will show you what happens when your not watching...

WORMS ate all my columbines leaves, they stripped them into skeletons.

I have millions of these plants and now they are disgusting. So here I am Thursday night walking around in my gardens, WORM POISON in one hand spraying the nasty almost invisible leaf eating little buggers, and in the other hand a Kleenex wiping the tears that are falling from my eyes as I see the remaining plants with heavy blue flowers on top.

Okay now problem number 2.... Here is the garden shed we moved here last fall. Yes, it's a horseshoe shed from the bar right down the road. Isn't it pretty?

So tonight Elly and I decided we would try to paint it in Photoshop to see how it's going to look. Elly was so excited because she calls this Tia and Jesse's house and she can't believe how beautiful it looks painted. She wants to go paint it right now! She thinks Tia is going to love her new house. She plays in there once in awhile and even talks to Tia and Jesse when she plays.

Of course there will be flowers planted around it , stepping stones in a path to the door, and maybe even window boxes. It should be cute or at least better than what it is now.

Was I crazy?????

Okay now tell me... was I crazy to say back in February that I would be a part of the Medford Garden Tour? I'm thinking I was, do you know how much I have to do and how many unfinished projects there are in my yard. More importantly I don't even know if my yard is something anyone else is going to awwww over, most everyone tells me it is but, it's a project that is never done so therefore it feels not worthy of public visitors.

We'll see.... the tour is June 30th and so far I think I'm going to showcase my photography of the garden since I can fool everyone of it being something beautiful in a photo.

Here's the first 1st of the projects for spring.... new mulch. Geeeze my plants are little, I hope they grow.

See I told you I could make something simple into something beautiful. This is a Lily of the Valley not quite opened.

Even though the weather has been nice it's been kinda stinky at the South Pole of Taylor County. It makes it difficult to go outside unless you want to stink like cows!! I should have taken a picture of the poop spreader in the field, it would have been a challenge to make that look good.... I'll keep you posted on the progress of my garden tour preparations, hopefully it won't be too stressful on me.

Trip to Oregon

To start our blog Lynn thought it would be a good idea to begin with my trip to see her and Jesse. So here's a picture of Lynn at the bottom of Multnomah Falls.

Starla and I went to Oregon and had a fabulous time. Our goal was to relax and enjoy not being at work and within 1 hour of landing in Portland Jesse had a margarita in our hand at Nacho Mamma's. We hiked to the top of Multnomah Falls, ohhh that's a long steep hike for a couple of out of shape Wisconsin girls who have a challenge walking up Bootzins Hill!

The sun was shining so bright and it was a wonderful day for hiking. I was trying to accomplish a sun flare picture. The way it shined between the trees was breathtaking.







Here we are at the top. Lynn on the left, Me in the center and Starla on the right.

We also went to the Tulip Festival. It was raining all day but the colors were so bright, good day
for pictures!

And of course while we are so close we had to take a trip to the coast. It was so beautiful as always, the clouds coming in and the mountains in the background.

We had a wonderful trip, Lynn and Jesse were perfect hosts for the both of us. We had plenty of relaxing and fun during our 4 day visit.