Exotic Love

Siloam Ury Winniford

El Desperado

Strawberry Candy

Startle

 
Sleigh Ride

Blame it on Alice. . . she’s the one that turned me into a lily nut. Above are pictures of just 6 of the 47 lilies that I ordered along with Alice. I believe she held her order down to only 19 lilies. My initial order was over 120 but Alice reminded me that I don’t have that much room in my yard, so I had to look long and hard at all the offerings and take into consideration such factors as: beauty, when they bloom, if they are re-bloomers, their height as well as price per lily. Even at that I’m not sure right now just where I’ll put all of the new 47 lilies, but I’m sure we’ll find a home for them somewhere in the yard.

                    BEFORE                                                 AFTER

WHEW!!!  I finished planting the money wort in the new bed at 8:15 tonight.  I started right after it quit raining this afternoon. I can’t remember for sure what time that was, but no matter . . . I’m pooped. Surely I will sleep well tonight as a by-product of all that physical labor.  And as an added bonus, I worked through supper time so I’m that much ahead on my diet.

The first picture is of the front of my house. I added Creme Brulee Coreopsis and Purple Homestead Verbeena to the original landscaping.  At first it seemed like the purple homestead verbeena was not going to bloom.  All that work and only one or two spots of color.  Then the very hot weather hit and voila . . . little purple blooms all over the place. I’m sure glad, because it was a lot of work planting all that verbeena and I’d hate to think that it wasn’t going to bloom for me.

The second picture is another of the purple hyacinth vine growing on my back fence. I just love how it sends up all those purple blossoms.  The leaves are a very dark green with purpleish veins and undersides. Very pretty.

These two pictures are of my latest project. Now that they are finishing up the house being built next to me and they’ve got the sod laid for that house, I can now work on the problem I’ve had with that part of my yard. It’s on the North side of my house and unfortunately it’s been hard to get my grass to grow because it’s in the shade most of the time. Soooooo, I think another bed of money wart like the one on the South side of my house is in order. I planted it late this spring and as you can see in the picture on the right it’s already filled in nicely.  Yesterday I pulled up all the sod in the area of the new bed and today I set the stones for the border for the bed. I’ve sprayed the bed with Grass-B-Gone to kill any risidual Bermuda roots.  I’ll wait to plant the money wart until the last part of August to give it a better chance of surviving. Ordinarily I would not plant any at this time, but I have a bunch of “August Bucks” to spend at my local TLC (nursery). I earned the August Bucks all spring and summer and can only spend them in August.  So basically the money wart will be free, but only if I get it in August. So I’ll wait as late in the month as I can.

It seems that I have been remiss in posting to Xanga.  You know, you get busy and don’t post and before you know it, it’s been almost a month since you’ve posted. So here is a quick look at the color in my yard today. The first ones are Black Eyed Susans (or Rubekia) and the second are Gillardia (Oklahoma State Flower). The next is of some really beautiful Morning Glories that Alice gave me some seeds for. She received some seeds from a friend and shared them with me, and for some strange reason mine bloomed but Alice’s didn’t. We’re going to make sure we harvest some of the seeds from these. The next two pictures are of my miniture rose bushes. They were really bought on the spur of the moment when Alice and I went to get all my shrubs for my back yard. We were at Home Depot and they had these little pots of tiny yellow roses and they were only $5.19 per pot so I picked up three. Alice didn’t think they’d do very well nor bloom very long, but they have sure been a delightful surprise. They have bloom ALL spring and summer. I love them. And lastly my purple hyacinth vine that’s growing on my back fence. It’s a lovely vine that will put on pretty purple seed pods later on this fall.  About the only thing I don’t like about the vine is that it leaves behind a woody vine that’s hard to get off the fence each season. But such is the price we pay to have beautiful flowers about us.

What a treat!  When I went to mother’s today to do her Monday chores she had some green tomatoes waiting for me to fry up for us. A friend of hers who knows how much mom loves fried green tomatoes had given her five nice green tomatoes. They were delicious. Unlike a lot of recipes for fried green tomatoes, my favorite one uses bread crumbs rather than corn meal. But as an added bonus it calls for parsley, parmesan cheese and, of all things, orange rind added to the bread crumb mixture.  Makes a mighty tasty treat. At first we were eating them using a knife and fork, but then mom said the very best way to eat them was with your fingers.  She’s right. You just pick them up and eat them like a candy bar.  

It’s been raining an awful lot here in the past month or so, but not to worry . . . when God gave us the rainbow it was his promise that he’d never wipe out the whole world again with a flood.  Alice called Sunday afternoon and told me to grab my camera and step out back. I was greeted by this beautiful double rainbow, however, you can’t really see the second one . . . it’s much dimmer and doesn’t really show up in the pictures or the movie.  

Click here if you’d like to see the video I took of the entire rainbow.

We (Alice, Alice’s husband and I ) went to the zoo on Tuesday.  We’ve been wanting to go ever since Trini was here and Tuesday the weather finally cooperated.  The zoo hardly resembles the same zoo I visited when I was in college here between 1962 and 1965.  The animals have much larger areas to call home now and that’s a very good thing.

When we got to the gorilla exhibit this one was setting in a large grassy area eating handful after handful of grass. Alice and tried sending “vibes” to the gorilla telling him how thirsty he was . . . you’re sooo thirsty . . . wouldn’t a nice drink of water just be the ticket right about now . . . and low and behold he walked over to the waterfall and began drinking.

First he leaned over and drank directly from the water with his mouth.  Some time ago Alice had gotten a very nice shot of a gorilla drinking, but using his hands instead of sticking his head down to the water, and I was really hoping I’d be able to get a similar shot. So again with the “vibes” . . . use your hands . . . use your hands. And voila, he almost immediately started using his hand to bring water up to his lips. I probably took 12 or so still shots before it dawned on me that it would be much better to get a movie of him drinking with his hands. I switched the camera to movie mode and got a very short video of him before he decided to move on. To see the movie click on this link.

Trinity, my grand daughter, had a blast the other day when we went to my mother’s apartment to do her Monday chores.  Mother let Trini put on the clown hair, nose and lipstick she used to use when she was Scribbles the Clown. Both of them really got a kick out of this.

Then my mother let Trini play with her magnifying sheet (used for reading books and newspapers). I called this picture “Trini gets the big head”.

Then, after all chores were done and we had finished eating lunch, we all went outside so we could watch Trini blow some bubbles. I think mom enjoyed this part of the day most of all.

Alice and I worked all day at the Plant Sale our garden club takes part in each year. We not only sell plants, we have a little cafe as well.  We worked about an hour and a half outside getting the tables ready for the public to purchase our plants and then we spent the rest of our time in the kitchen making and selling sandwiches, cold drinks, cookies and brownies. It was a lot of work, but an awful lot of fun too.  We all go a little crazy when our garden club gets together.

The above pictures are of: Home Run Rose, Native Lily, Purple Cone Flower (it’s in its formative stage…the petals will get longer), Gillardia (I bought today at the plant sale because I’ve planted a bunch of Gilardia seeds and I’m too anxious to wait for them to grow up and bloom), Orange Tiger Lily and a Triumphator Lily.

Just a few more blooms to show from the yard today. The above Lily is called Sparkling Orange.

I have three miniture yellow rose bushes and today they gave me a couple more roses. And I planted several Tiger Lilies along the north fence. The orange lily is a Native Lily.  The Purplish Lily with the yellow eye is my mystery lily, because I either forgot to label it when I planted it, or I didn’t know at the time and was waiting for it to bloom.  Well, it’s bloomed and I still don’t know what it is. Then there’s another one of the yellow tiger lilies and the last is a Black Eyed Stella. All were blooming today.