I was hoping you’d see more of the irises. The solo yellow one just opened today and the one next to it is so gorgeous. I’ll show you more photos!
The entire iris/glad/hollyhock garden. Please ignore the mess in the back-we’re still cleaning up the yard.
Ants eating nectar from the peony blossom
Coleus
We did need the rain we got in the late afternoon, especially the pine barrens over in New Jersey that were engulfed in flames. Seems a test pilot dropped a flare in the area-problem is it’s been windy and a bit dry-fuel for fire. I hope the rain helped!
I’m having sleeping issues from overusing my muscles. Now a tooth on the opposite side where I have to get the crown is bothering me-I need to chew somewhere. Looks like a crack is in the filling. I should get it checked out before the 29th. Sean went to the dentist today and has some of his first cavities. They are small, so he can wait a few months to get them filled. Bri goes for his check up tomorrow.
I just had wet eyes from Lost. I don’t know if you watch it, but Charlie knows he is going to die from a premonition Desmond made (who is also stuck on the island where their plane crashed). So Charlie is shown in flashbacks-the first time he jumps in a pool as a child-he writes it down as #5 as his favorite moment. So when they got to the moment he met Claire, one of the other survivors, he writes meeting her as #1! Sniffle. I’m a sap.
Today Sean and I went to my mom’s to wish her a belated Happy Mother’s Day and to plant some flowers for her. I need to go back to the nursery in Delaware as the garden centers around here aren’t that great-even Walmart! We stopped there and I couldn’t believe they wanted $10.88 for one hanging baskets. Guess I’ll be making my own. I did get a couple of waterlilies and a couple of perennials like asters.
So we get to my mom’s and I have never seen the yard around her house look so weedy and terrible. I had to fix her weed wacker and then I went to town with it! Most of her front yard isn’t fit for a mower, so you have to use a weed wacker. The leaves (mostly from Japanese maples) were never cleaned up from the fall so I did some of that. I would say that we made a nice dent in the yard and the flowers that I planted last year (white astible, white bleeding heart, hosta, lilies and barrenwort) were all coming up nicely. It was warm though breezy today. What my brother did to the back yard is really neat. Imagine a thicket of evergreens with the bottoms trimmed up and a new layer of green, green grass growing under them. It never looked like that when we were kids. (I’ll bring my camera next time).
Mom treated us to dinner at Carabbas which was nice. Glad it was dark in there as I had some grass still stuck to my legs! I had chicken, spinach and ricotta stuffed raviolis. We hit Macy’s and I bought some necklaces, a dress and a few tops.
We just found out that Brian lost his Aunt Rosemarie (she looked like Lucille Ball) on Sunday. She is also Brian’s godmother. She has two sons around my age and 3 grandchildren a bit younger than Sean. This is the auntie who was in a nursing home in Delaware, very close, yet Bri’s dad or Bri never went to see her. That is the last of my father-in-law’s six siblings. I am either going to the viewing on Thursday or the funeral on Friday as we have a 70 mile round trip from here.
Snowball bush beginning to bloom
My windowbox 2007
I spent a large part of the afternoon outside. It was around 70 or so and a little breezy, so nice. First I cleaned the chaise that a lady from Freecycle gave us (another freebie). It was really dirty and only spray on bleach and a wire brush would take the mildew and green off. I let it dry and started to spray paint it green but ran out. What a difference though. I also trash picked a perfectly good outdoor side table with a glass top. They were tossing it because it was green (on the underneath mostly) which came off in 10 minutes! Now it’s like new again!
Here are some photos of the fruit of my labor. Sean also edged and planted ‘his’ garden that he’s had for over 1o yrs.
This is one half irises. I just replanted gladiolus I save from last year. My hollyhock was split in 3 and moved to here.
Red azalea with my fairy birdbath in the background
Where I have most of my lilies and grasses. The grass is taking over and it’s getting thinned out. I have about half of this weeded. We are slowly getting rid of an old grape arbor in the background that is covered with sticky vines-it’s hard work.
An iris that bloomed today-honeycomb(?)
Guess what happened to us about 6:45 tonight? We got locked out of the house! I went to go in to put the camera away and the suction from the screen door pulled shut the big door! Luckily, a window was left open in the back of the house and Sean was able to take out the screen and ‘slither’ into the house (he had to hand me about 5 African violets before he had room to get in). He did get a brush burn from the handle that opens the window and hurt his stomach a little-I don’t think Bri or I could have done what he did. Lesson we learned-hide a set of keys somewhere outside!
I didn’t get to spend the day with my own mom, but I promised her Sean and I would come down on Tuesday to plant a few annuals in the garden I fixed up for her last year.
I have terrible dry (and a bit itchy) allergy eyes. I thought it was from handling dusty Space Bags of my summer clothes, but I’m now thinking something is pollening that is bothering me. I am using both tears and allergy formula and it helps a bit, but looking at this screen is not easy. I’ll call the eye doctor if they aren’t better in a few days. I just have some circles under my eyes (what else is new).
I got two lovely cards today and one from my friend Terri in Alabama the other day-hers was a total surprise and so sweet. Sean’s was oversized and pink and flowery with sweet reflections of motherhood. Bri gave me a musical card that played ‘How Sweet it is’ by Marvin Gaye. (James Taylor also recorded it later on).
I asked Sean to drive to a garden center at a store in Delaware, but they didn’t have one this year. We ended up at Loew’s and their stuff was just ok. I got some tomatoes and a few flowers and bags of red mulch.
We grabbed a burger at Friendly’s and headed home.
I just watched the 3-hour long ‘Survivor’ finale and reunion while trying to finish up a redwork cross stitched piece. I was cheering for a 54-yr old man to win named Yau-man, but he got back stabbed as the remaining players knew he’d win if he was left in the ‘final three’. I miss talking about ‘Survivor’ with my estranged brother who enjoys it too.
So to end this nice weekend, here are some things I admire about my mom-her beautiful, trained soprano voice, her ability to pick up a pen, pencil or marker and sketch a portrait that resembles the person she is trying to capture (and from memory sometimes) and her love of giving, though that gets her in trouble sometimes. I told her once that Penelope Cruz could be her daughter more than me as she looks like mom a little. The next thing you know someone asks if we are mother and daughter and they say ‘I can tell’. What a nice compliment.
Mom on her 75th birthday-9-23-05
and-Mom as a young mom with my grandmom and older brother Dave. (See how she looks like Penelope Cruz here? It’s clickable)
I tried the edger tool that Brian just gave me (so long electric edger) and it works pretty good, but I can see me only using it after a rainstorm like we had last night.
Five of my favorite young people on this earth…
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My son, nephews and solo niece!
I am sorting winter and summer clothes. Not fun when it’s so gorgeous outside. I may stop once I get the clothes off the bed-I still have to swap out my footwear. I try to get rid of at least a kitchen trash can size bag of clothes every time I do the switch over.
Hey, I’m wondering what my readers do with their seasonal clothes? Are you lucky enough to have a huge walk-in closet? Aren’t you a person that saves that many clothes each year? I know I don’t wear them all, but some years I’m more of a sweater person than the next year.
I’d rather be gardening…
So I actually edited the last eleven people on Wikipedia-yeah! (I added a few more)
I just got to be on Jamie Kennedy’s friend list on MySpace (along with like 2 million other people) and saw on Wikipedia that he was from Upper Darby along with who I already knew, Tina Fey and Cheri O’Teri. My mom saw Monica Horan perform at UDHS a few years back. She was in Everybody Loves Raymond as Amy the sister-in-law.
Thomas Wilson is from Radnor-remember Biff from Back to the Future?
(Media-smack in the middle there, that piece of pie).
You could make a poster using Jamie Kennedy’s movie poster on MySpace…this was my silly shot that night we were taking photos of me in my new apron.
Here is my garden out front in a semi-circle under our big evergreen tree. This is where I added the Victoria blue salvia and the peach colored salvia. There isn’t too much room for much more with the Columbine (pink/purple), Barrenwort, bulbs such as tulips, narcissus and hyacinths and Bleeding heart. I know I am missing a few, but all these perennials were divided from other areas of the yard. I love the plant in the foreground, it’s really spread. It has the interesting polka dot leaves and blooms that range from pink to blue. The Barrenwort is pretty cool too. It has heart-shaped leaves rimmed with red (almost like the red was stenciled) and it gets little star-like reddish flowers.
And Sean’s gift-the planter with the fern, begonia and a few other plants.
And some planters from Longwood Gardens, sure to inspire us!
I have to go round up 5 items for the photo hunt contest tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, I’ll be switching out (finally) my winter to summer clothes. What a pain, but I am so sick of wearing the same clothes for the past few weeks.
Today I may plant a few more flowers and I did find my gladiolus from last year, so I can plant them in the rock hard dirt. We had rain near here last night in Harrisburg, but it was ‘close and no cigar’.
Although I took over 50 photos at Longwood Gardens yesterday, I still wanted to take photos of my own flowers before they faded away. We haven’t had rain for a while and it’s dry as punk outside. So here are my Kiwi Slices irises and a very fast and busy bee heading for the bleeding heart.
I tried to do a little edging with the hoe and I was dripping in perspiration. My house inside desperately needs attention, so I better tackle tidying up some areas.
Sean is taking his 3rd final. So far he has a ‘C’ in Chemistry and an ‘A’ in Social Psychology. He is taking a music final today and a Geology one tomorrow.
Sean and I went today-the most humid day so far. We were really sticky. I did manage to get some excellent shots. I have to start going there every week and writing down the names of plants. I also need not to have my photo taken when my hair needs attention (I went to the hairdresser right afterwards). You won’t be seeing that one-ugh!
These are called Painted Tongue or Salpiglossis
I like the contrast of the deep purple and the light green
In the conservatory-it’s tropical and not in my flower book.
And the main reason for my visit was to see the orchids. This is a wall of them in the main conservatory:
Collages & Creative Goodness 