Theme: Things I Think are Pretty (like flowers)

Not a lot is getting done around our casa. Bill continues to chip away on our backdoor stairs. He is planning to finish it up within the next week or two. I look forward to posting picts (because that would mean the stairs would be complete!!!!).

I have not been up to much house wise. I hope to plant some veggie starts and seeds in our community garden tomorrow, but we’ll see. I’ve been meaning to get this done for well over a month now, but here’s hoping tomorrow is the day!

Unfortunately, the next month or two will probably not yield a lot of home projects. You see, even though school with the kiddos is almost out (15 school day and counting!). I only have like 4 days off before I go to grown up school, that is my second summer of  training for my Montessori credentials.  It is super time consuming and a freaking hour plus commute each way. So, yeah, house projects will be on hold during that time. Hopefully I will still be cognizant enough to water my garden so I can occasionally post photos of my glorious flowers (fingers crossed!).

Anywho, here are some pretty pictures that shall inspire future projects. After all, I will have almost a whole month post- Montessori training and pre- kiddos. My head is already reeling with all the possible projects for August.

I would love to create flower boxes, maybe for the second the floor front windows. That would mean I would need to remove the screens from those windows in order to keep them watered, so I’m not sure if that is really the best idea. What about you all… do any of you have window boxes? I love florals! I know, this must be shocking since I have already repeatedly professed my love of  flowers… but, yes, it is true, I also love floral prints.    Okay, that is probably enough floral prints for today. Of course, I have many many more tucked away on my hard drive, but those will have to wait.

Have a great weekend! Hope you all are more productive than I am.

I can’t hear anything and other news

I am now strep throat free! Wah-hoo! The antibiotics did their thang and as of Thursday my throat was no longer planning my slow painful death. However, my each ache is still alive and kicking. I went to the doctor on Friday to see what could be done, and the verdict is not a whole heck of a lot. The antibiotics for the strep will wipe out the infection for my ear as well, but it will take over a month for all the fluid to drain and my hearing to go back to normal. Sigh. At least it is just in one ear and not both…

Anyway, on Saturday Bill and I hung out with some friends of ours who had been stationed in Alabama for the last 2 years, but have now been transferred to Fort Lewis. Yay! We also got to meet their adorable baby girl, who I believe is 7 months old today. She is super cute… but, I didn’t bring my camera so no towhead baby photos for you.

Today we worked out in the yard for a bit. We started by planting two new (free!) rhododendrons in the back yard. My classroom assistant’s daughter just bought a house  these had recently been put in her front yard (I’m thinking the previous owners were trying to boost curb appeal.). Anyway, she was not a fan of these two rhododendrons, so they made their way to our house. If I was buying them myself I probably would have gone with another color, but free is free and I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. You see, they are a deep red, which I think is very pretty, but I have been sorta-kinda planning on making my garden colors be purples, pinks, and yellows. That being said, I already have a bunch of red in the front garden with the anemones, tulips, and what not. Who knows if I will be able to stick to a color scheme in the garden or not. I’m assuming that they won’t really bloom a ton this year since they were transplanted in the middle of flowering. We planted them underneath a bunch of low hanging crisscrossing power lines. Ah, the joys of having a transformer behind your house. We want to eventually landscape the back yard and add some trees and more perennial flowering bushes, but we will have to plan according to the wires. We figured the rhododendrons would work well under the lower lines since with time they can get pretty large, but never tall enough that they would cause issues with the power lines.

I also planted the rest of the seed packs I had laying around the house. Some of them were expired by a year (or more!), so it is even more of a crap shoot than usual as to if anything will actually grow. I put some petunia seeds (not expired) along with some lobelia seeds (expired) into containers to give some color to the back yard this year. Of course at the moment they are just look like pots filled with dirt, but keep your fingers crossed that they will be bursting with pink and purple petunias before too long!

We also put in 2 ferns and 2 hosta bulbs in the back yard. Both are shade loving plants, and we really don’t have much shade (what with the lack of trees and all), but we put them underneath our already established (possibly original to the house?)rhododendrons, so hopefully it will be shady enough for them to thrive. I also sprinkled some seeds around them so who knows what will happen.

The rest of my (expired) seed packs were strewn about the front yard, in the new-ish planting strip and in the old flower patch. The planting strips are a thing of mystery. One side is has a gazillion starts in it and I am very perplexed as to what they all are. Some are obviously the seeds and bulbs I put there, but the majority of them are all the same mystery plant and I am dumbfounded as to what that might be...  We decided to let them be and see what happens. I might be that in the not so distant future I will have a ton of weeding to do, but hopefully not and they turn out to be some gorgeous flower.

The other side looks more like what we were expecting. Some things are making their way up, but mostly it still just looks like a dirt strip. I’m fairly confident that it will look pretty and colorful this summer. I added a few more packs of seeds though, just for good measure.I was happy to see that our Spanish lavender which we planted last year has come back. It is looking full and healthy and the bees are buzzing with delight. Our (formerly) mysterious irises are also in bloom. Last year there was a few leaves, but no flowers. For some reason the majority of the irises were covered with a big old rock when we moved in. Of course, we moved that bad boy out of there last year, but of course by then it was too late for the irises to shoot up any buds. So, I have been waiting and waiting to see that color our irises would turn out to be. I was really hoping they wouldn’t turn out to be a hideous brown color (that my mom had in our yard when I was growing up. Seriously, mom, what was up with that?). Well, as luck would have it they are not hideous at all! In fact they are a very pretty light blue-violet. And they smell delightful.

The last of the planting of the day was some cute pink petunias I picked up while grocery shopping. I know the containers are not very exciting. And, I know, you can see dirt smudges on them. But, my plan  is the petunias will get so big that you won’t even be able to see the pots at all! Good plan, huh?

Last Weekend…

So, you want to know what I did last weekend at home? I assume you do, or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Well, here it is:

I slept.

I drank tea.

I sucked on cough drops.

I dropped fistfuls of ibuprofen (or the recommended dosage, whatever).

I slept some more.

The end.

FYI, strep throat, an ear ache, and a fever all at the same time licks major balls.

Here are some pretty pictures to make you forget about what a horrible blogger I have been.

And, because I am becoming (slightly) more organized all the photos link back from where I stole borrowed them.

Hope you all are healthier than I am!

Epic Fail

So, as you probably noticed I did not create a post comparing our house a year ago and our house today. Yeah, well, whatcha gonna do? Nothing. That is what I say.

Maybe I will get to it eventually. Maybe not. Time will tell.

Sorry.

As a consolation prize here is a photo of Ralph when we got him (which was a year ago yesterday). And here is our pretty boy now. He is guarding us from all the scary things in the world… like, our neighbors’ whippets, or a terrier that lives a block over. He is fierce, I tell you, fierce.