Alice and I did have a project today, but I don’t have any pictures to show you . . . yet. Around 1:30 we headed out for Home Depot where I got top soil and humus to amend the soil in the North hosta flower bed and the larger new flower beds out behind my back fence. We only got about a third of it opened and spread out and I intend to work on it again tomorrow. Perhaps pictures then.

This is the sunrise this morning as seen from my patio. I’m not usually up and outside this early and when I saw the sunrise I had to run into the house to get my camera.

I’ve finally finished the North sidewalk. I added the brick border to the cinder tile path; I think it dresses it up a bit. I also added round stepping stones coming off that sidewalk and into the main part of the back yard. I was afraid that area would get all muddy with very much traffic. I “sunk” them so that the lawn mower will not have a problem going over them.

Alice pointed out to me today, while we were working on the flower beds out behind my back fence, that my gaura was starting to bloom. I have three gaura plants and I like them. They are supposed to attract butterflies.

Here’s what Alice and I were working on.  We barely got started on them yesterday afternoon but finish today a little after noon.  Now I have to amend the soil and then get stuff planted. Remember that brick pile? It’s dwindling slowly but surely.

And it rained some more . . . actually a lot more. We got 3.5 inches yesterday and most of that was between 4PM and 9PM.  We had tornado warnings and lots and lots of rain.

This is a shot from back in November so you can see how the gulley out behind my house USUALLY looks.  See, not a drop of water.

This is what the gulley looked like around 6PM last night. It actually got a little bit worse than this, but I didn’t want to go out in the heavy rain to take another picture.

And below is what it looked like this morning when I went out to inspect the back yard and the gulley.

I think now I can appreciate that steep embankment and that gulley a lot more. I’d hate to think what that would have done to our houses and back yards had the gulley NOT been there.

Well it DID rain here. It rained over night, it rained all morning, all afternoon and then in the late afternoon hours it started raining really hard and then we had a tornado alert. The tornado sirens were actually blaring; it was kind of scarey. There is more water in the gulley behind my house than I’ve ever seen before . . . but then I’ve only lived in this house since December so that’s not too long of a history. At any rate, my yard is happy Happy HAPPY.  I’m sooooo glad we got that sod laid yesterday, because if we hadn’t all that recently bulldozed dirt would have been eroded away into the gulley.

Changing the subject . . . I almost burned down my house today.  Or at least I could have. I made bread  and when it was time to take the loaves out of the oven, only one tray was sufficiently browned, so I meant to turn the oven off leaving the unbrowned loaves in the oven to finish baking, but OOPS!!  I hit the “Self Clean” button instead of the Clear/Off button. Oh my goodness, what was I going to do? I hit the Clear/Off  button, but it was too late. The door was already locked. With that much heat the bread in the oven would surely catch fire, and THEN what?  I was about to flip the breaker to stop the cleaning process, but my neighbor suggested that I wait for 3 or 4 minutes to give the oven a chance to cool down from the self clean automatic settings. She said that she did that once and although the door wouldn’t open until it cooled down, the Clear button I’d pressed had actually canceled the self cleaning process.  Sure enough, in 4 minutes I was able to open the door and get the bread out.  AND it was pretty good.  I can’t begin to tell you how nervous I was for that 4 minutes.

This was the big happening today around my yard. They applied the sod to the slope behind my back fence. It ought to turn green as soon as it gets rained on tonight. . . . I hope, I hope, I hope it rains tonight. The patch of dirt you see between the fence and the sod will be more flower beds.

Then while they were laying that sod, this is what Alice and I started working on. It’s the north side of the house and we’ve added a sidewalk.  This is the side of the house where the outside door to the garage is located and also the air conditioner.  It’s not visible from the patio and not even visible from most of the back yard. That’s where I’ll keep my Rubbermade tool shed and I’ll plant hostas between the sidewalk and the house, because that side of the house doesn’t get much sun.

This marks a milestone. . . the very first bouquet of flowers I’ve picked from my flower beds at my new house. I really didn’t think it would be this soon, but I’m delighted it was. I had the ladies over today for our monthly game of Hand and Foot and picked these to decorate the snacks table.

No, don’t get excited. This is NOT growing in my yard already. When I was driving over to mom’s to do her grocery shopping for her I passed this fence and just had to stop and get a picture. I just love the way wisteria looks when it’s blooming, but the problem is it’s beautiful only about 2 weeks and then it’s not good looking at all.  But my oh my, what a show it puts on while it is blooming.

Here’s a close up of the clusters.

The daffodils have decided to show themselves in pretty convincing numbers out in front of the house. Yesterday I had about 13 daffs and today I have 70 blooming.  That means only 182 more bulbs to bloom.

And to my amazement I already have Home Run roses and Double Knock Out roses blooming out back. You can click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger version.

Here’s another one of the double daffodils that are blooming in my front yard right now. Yesterday’s was a peach one and this is a bright yellow and white one.

Alice and I went to Home Depot today and I bought a bunch of paver stones for the side walk on the north side of my house. It will only be used when I need to get into the side door of the garage. I’ll plant hostas on that side of the house because it will get very little sun.  We couldn’t do any of the work on that side walk today, because the ground is still too wet from our rains over the past two nights.

Sod will be delivered Monday (if it’s not raining) to be laid over the dirt that has been leveled off behind my back fence.