Here’s another one of the beautiful flowers we saw at the Myriad Gardens Friday. I’ve “played with it” in Photo Shop to make it look like a painting. 

We went to the Myriad Gardens and the Crystal Bridge today . . . that’s Alice, Gill and me. We had a great time taking literally hundreds of pictures.  I “played” with this picture in Photo Shop and this is what I came up with. I’m not sure what kind of flower this is . . . maybe an orchid, but I’m not sure.  I took a total of 232 pictures myself today and I’d say about 80% of them turned out pretty good.  I’m going to make a concerted effort to wean myself off of Paint Shop Pro and learn Photo Shop better. Alice will be just down to street to help me out if I run into any huge snags.  I can see that she is correct about how difficult it would be for me to constantly be flitting back and forth between PSP and PS. I need to learn ONE software and use it all the time, and Alice assures me that PS is much MUCH more robust than PSP, and therefore THE one to use, if I’m only going to use one. 

Well, I have a confession to make.  I just today learned the difference between ”messages” and “comments” in Xanga.  Pretty dumb, right.  Alice was over here and wondered outloud why I had 47 unread messages in Xanga.  I think I said something like, “HUH?”  She showed me where to see how many I had and how to read them.  Soooooooo, if any of you have sent me a “message” and I haven’t answered, it’s because I’m a ditz and didn’t even know they were there.   I’ll try to do better now.

I know I said I wouldn’t plant another thing, but we saw some bulbs at Home Depot at rediculously low prices . . . and I just couldn’t resist. I’ve had them for well over a month but just haven’t had the time, and then when I had the time the weather was too harsh. But finally we’ve had some pretty balmy days and in the past three days I’ve managed to get the new bulbs in the ground.    I planted all 278 of them either in the back yard and/or in the side yard. Here’s what they are:

Miniature Daffodils                   Grape Hyacinth

 Crocus                                     King Alfred Daffodils

If I even THINK of buying any more bulbs . . . would someone just put me out of my misery.

I don’t know what kind of bird this is, but I thought the yellow breast was quite impressive. I had a bunch of these birds in my yard a few minutes ago. I had to take the pictures through the window and the blinds, because they would surely have flown away if I had opened the back door. I feel badly that I haven’t gotten on the stick and gotten a bird feeder so I could feed the poor birdies this winter.  I’m ordering one today and using a gift card to gardeners.com that I got for Christmas.  Below is what it looks like.

This is one of the evergreen trees in front of my house.

Still a little snow and ice clinging to these berries . . . also in my front yard.

I have two clumps of ornamental grass in my front yard and this one was still sporting a a little snow in it’s “hair”.

And, alas, the roses in my back yard have been frozen, thawed, and refrozen several times over. They are looking pretty sad.

This is what it looked like at my house the day after Christmas. It was snowing big fat fluffy snowflakes, but they were melting as soon as they hit the sidewalks or streets, but some of them piled up on the grass and plants. I love the snow. It makes everything seem clean . . at least at first it does.

Notice that the workers on the new construction across the gulley from us are working . . . even when it’s snowing . . . such dedication.  

As a wind sock this poor thing is definately over the hill.  It’s been flapping in the wind in my back yard for just about a year now. I know it’s been a year, because I got it last year at our Garden Club Christmas party. Once I hung it, I was surprised at just how often I looked out my window to check the direction and strength of the wind.  Several times I even had to hunt it down when it flew the coop. Usually it was within 3 or 4 houses somewhere along the gulley behind my house and yard.

I’ve been looking in all the gardening departments and stores for a new one, but had resigned myself to having to wait until spring to find one, but Alice found one on eBay and gave it to me as an early Christmas present. I LOVE it.  

So, LAST week was SanAntonio Candy Days and YESTERDAY was the Oklahoma City Candy Day. From 8:30 AM till 3:30 PM we made candy, candy CANDY.  Alice had the really good idea of inviting our friend Gil to join us because the three of us usually get together for a monthly outing and we had been unable to have one yet in this busy busy month of December. She was a big help too. We only hope she had as much fun as we did.

Alice is dipping coconut balls in the first picture and she and Gil are doing the same in the second picture. Mom is making White Chocolate Cashew Clusters in the last one. I know the pictures look very similar to Alice’s shots, but . . . what can I say? We WERE all there together.

The weather men really goofed up this week end. They were predicting that we’d get 2 inches of snow over night and even more as the morning progressed. We were supposed to get an accumulation of around 6 inches of the fluffy white stuff, but we got only about a half inch. I’m really glad too, because today Alice and I had tickets to the Lyric at the Plaza where “Plaid Tidings” is playing. Thank goodness we didn’t miss this delightful, creative, and imaginative Christmas adaptation of “Forever Plaid”.  If you live anywhere near Oklahoma City, I’d encourage you to find out if they still have tickets available. I think it runs through December 23rd.

There is a layer of ice over everything. It started late Saturday night and it’s just gotten thicker and thicker until around 2PM today. The temp got above freezing and a steady light rain fell and melted a lot of the ice. But we’re supposed to get another coating tonight.

I was worried that my young tender tree in the back yard would break from all the ice, but thankfully it did not. I hope it fares as well tonight.

I did have a precious few flowers that were still blooming, but I suspect that they’ll be toast once the thaw is complete.

I drove down to San Antonio to have a mini Candy Days with my daughter-in-law.  It was a lot less complicated for me to drive down there rather than have her drive up to OKC for the regular Candy Days. And I’m sure my son would rather not have his wife leave him alone with the two kids (8 months and 20 month old) they’re trying to adopt. He’d be crawling up the wall by the 2nd day.  Anyway, we made enough candy for both of them to take to their offices.

I got back Saturday evening and I’m soooooo glad I did. Sometime in the night it snowed and sleeted and I would have hated to be driving in that. Our church services were even canceled today because of the bad roads.