Here's a real quick tour of my backyard today.

Tiny little daffodils                                           Homestead Verbena

Home Run Rose Bush                                     Columbine

          Another Home Run Rose bush         Sweet Autumn Clamatis on a trellis

Grape Hyacinth in amongst String Sedum                       Gaillardia

Gaillardia                                                            My back yard

Thrift                                                    Yellow Rose & Purple Homestead Verbena

Dianthus                                                   Tiny Ruby Dianthus

I bet my husband is looking down from Heaven just shaking his head in disbelief. You see I did no yard work before he died. We had an agreement: I took care of the inside of the house and he took care of the yard and everything outside the house. He liked lots of colorful flowers and I think he'd approve of this yard. 

We got rain again today. I'm so glad, because God's watering is so much better than water from the sprinkler system. I've been patiently waiting for my yellow rose bushes to finally bloom. They were only about 5 days behind the Home Run rose bushes. This morning there was only the one yellow rose, but later in the day another 3 opened up. And I have 32 more buds waiting in the wings to make their appearance.  When I bought these three little rose bushes last spring, they were called miniture roses. I was really expecting the roses to be miniture, but that's not the case. The bushes are smaller than most rose bushes, but the roses themselves are full size. I love them.

Last year when our garden club had it's spring plant sale, I purchased several little Columbine starts. They bloomed last year for about a week and then basically disappeared. I thought they were dead and gone, but low and behold . . . they came back this year with vigor. The blossoms are much larger and prettier this year. I hope they all come back like this one did. I had pink, yellow and white last year and the pink is the first to bloom. Now I'm wondering if they'll have enough room and if I should provide something for them to climb on.

This is the unenhanced photo of the cute pink blossom.

You know, I should be used to the wind by now . . . after all, I've lived in OKC for almost 2 years now, but it has been so very VERY windy for 3 days now. It was even windy over night, when it typically dies down. I looked out my window several times in the night last night and my wind sock was still wildly blowing.  I wonder if the folks who named Chicago as "The Windy City" had ever been to Oklahoma City.

Another picture from the Digital Nuts Challenge. This reminded me so much of the Pike's Place Market in Seattle. They had so many different types of food and also lots of different kinds of fish for sale. My husband and I always liked to visit the market, especially when we had friends in from out of town. You could find all kinds of things there, from food to furniture, trinkets to trash. . . something for everyone.

I'm off in a few minutes for Bunko. I'm subbing tonight for someone else, which means I don't have to pay. YEAH!!

Like a lot of people, I really like spring. I love it that winter is finally coming to an end, but even more, I love all the new growth and color that spring brings. The picture above is of one of the two pots I have out front of my house. It may get down to freezing tonight, so I may have to replace the sweet potato plants. They do NOT like really cold weather.

Below are other other pictures from around my yard. First row: Daffodils I added to the back yard this year, potted flowers, and miniture yellow rose bushes surrounded by purple homestead verbena  Second row: Grape Hyacinth and those pinkish little clumps of flowers are called Thrift. The second picture on that row is of more Grape Hyacints (I added a bunch of those this year) and string sedum. I'm trying to get all my flower beds started with this "green mulch" rather than regular mulch, because it keeps "moving" every time we have a big rain . . . and that's happened often enough that it's a big hassle to have to keep redistributing after each rain. Then that last little pink flwer on the second row is one of only three pink tulips that came back this year. I planted 24 of them . . . before I realized that they would probably not come back.

 Third row: My very first rose for 2008. I like roses a lot . . . I have 7 rose bushes. . . 4 red and 3 yellow ones. The next picture is of the daffodils that are out front of my house, and finally more grape hyacinths. And that's not even counting any of the lilies, peonies, gallardias, coreopsis or cosmos that haven't started blooming yet.

You can see a larger version of any of these thumbnails by clicking on them.

Would you believe I made it in Excel?  I know there are software packages designed especially to do that very thing, but I like using Excel. I guess that's because I used Excel for years before I retired and I just "feel" more at home using Excel. So when my sister wanted me to share my "templates" for her to make some of her own cards on card stock I thought I'd better make them a little bit more user friendly . . . you see, she isn't all that comfortable using Excel. So I completely revamped my templates so that she wouldn't have to rotate any of the pictures she wanted to drop in them. They're so much better that I believe I'll start using the new templates myself.

Above is one of the cards I created today. It's from a photo that I "manipulated" for the Digital Nuts group. I kind of liked it so I turned it into a card.