It’s a girl!!!

Well, it was pink, anyway. The silly thing was so big and the stem so long that it spent most of it’s life on the ground. Gotta love my poppy field.

Closeup (does this not seriously remind you of a 5 oclock shadow??):

And Thing 2 with a tiny visitor:

And our lemon tree survived the cold winter. Some blooms to show for it! Come by in November and hopefully we’ll have some fresh squeezed, homegrown lemonade for you!!

It’s been fun gardening this year, especially since it seems to be going better than last year. I gave them some plant food and then we had a good rain and they really greened up quickly.

If you ever make a raised garden, don’t do it quite like we did. This would be better if it were 3 separate beds tha you can walk between. That way you can just reach in to work on it. The tiny bed in the far left is our new asparagus garden. The little shoots sprouted and grew so quickly that you could almost watch them. Several inches in a day. I believe we are supposed to wait a year or two before we’ll harvest anything from them.

The yard has been weeded and feeded or is it wed and fed? English is a strange language. And the lawn has a few stripes, thanks to yours truly. I simply cannot seem to get it spreaded as evenly as I should. I’m not sure if I’m overlapping too much or not enough. It’s not very bad just enough to see what’s going on!

And the kohl is rabi-ing.

Love how water beads on the leaves.

And we have plenty of kale if you want some for garnishing or eating.

  

And now I’m really trying to decide if I want to plant a certain vegetable. One word that describe it is

mucilaginous

 

Know what it is?

 

So, if any of you Pennsylvania (or other) folk go to the Gospel Express auction tomorrow, you can see 2 of my canvasses up close and personal. And you may even bid on them if you want.  I’m generous that way.

A 24×36 of this:

 

and a 16×20 of this:

And they are much more brilliant in print than they show here (or at least on my screen). So if you decorate in pastels these may not be for you.

You know, seeing my art on display gives me a funny feeling. Kind of like you parents when your child performs. What if people don’t like what they see? What if “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in this case means my vision is off?

Okay, I’m not that paranoid about it, really! And I have a 24×36 of that first one to put somewhere in my house. And as you know, we did not decorate in pastels.

I really want a big field with a hill full of red poppies cascading down. Not that poppies typically cascade or anything. The only place I know of anywhere close to here is along the interstate near the overpasses.

And I’m not going there. I could just see a big car pileup happening.

Why couldn’t this field have poppies in it

instead of this flame weed stuff. 

Yeah, I know, then they couldn’t make hay in it like they do when this stuff dies off.

There is some story from my childhood that niggles in the back of my mind. I don’t remember the story or the moral. It seems like it had something to do with someone (probably a child) planting lots of poppies somewhere where they supposed to and this big crop of poppies took over the place. They couldn’t get rid of them no matter how much they wanted to. I think it was sort of a Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out stories.

Anyway, poppies always seemed a little Evil and something you definitely didn’t want to plant on purpose for fear of them being forever a pestilence.

I was at Lowes the other day and I saw a potted poppies and thought “what doth hinder me?” Apparantly nothing did.

It said Mixed Colors but I was kind of hoping for mostly red.

Yesterday morning I watered them and there was 1 red bloom and 2 “pods”. By the time I got home, a white one had started blooming.

I wonder what color the next one will be.

And here’s my poppy field.

Really big, isn’t it! I might GPS just to find my way back home!

So if you know of any big poppy field near you, give me a holler. I need an excuse for a road trip. Not really but in case there’s one close to my travels that would be splenderific.

While I was at Lowes I spotted a few more Gerber daisies and since I only have 4 plants I was sure I needed more. Then I thought, “how many Gerbers does a person need?” and I knew that would be exactly 0. So I settled for getting only 2 more.

These tinged ones are my favorite out of all that I have so far. The colored tips are so pretty!

painted:

And its a shame because all the plants I got 3 weeks ago still have not been transplanted. Yeah, I know! I really do have it on my list of things to do in 2010! I’m working on a tipsy pot thing (idea from my friend Velma) and if doesn’t tipsy over I might share with you some pictures later.

These Gerbers crack me up. They look like Dr. Suess characters. I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2.

And there’s a pre-adolescent Thing 3 peeking out at the bottom. Hope I don’t run out of numbers.

 

And now I must make my corn casserole and go to bed. It’s kind of a marathon weekend with activities this weekend. Pre-communion services Thursday, school fundraiser (pancake breakfast, yard sale, bake sale, auction) this morning, 50th anniversary celebration for long-time friends, Taste of Home cooking school tonight, communion tomorrow AM and potluck dinner tomorrow.

Adios and good night!

 

One of the things I kept thinking this past winter when everything was so blah looking outside was that I was sure to find things to photograph again when spring came. Sure enough! Color came bursting forth and my camera became my sidekick again.

Now my flowers for the tipsy pot thing are desperately waiting to be planted and I need to get some welding done before I can do that.

Anyway, I raided Raymond and Edna’s yard again like I like to do every spring. Here are a few flowers from their vast supply.

Azaleas:

Dogwood:

I’m so thrilled to have 2 pink dogwoods to plant in our yard. I was in SC with Ginny this past weekend and they have so many pink dogwoods there and I didn’t stop to take any pics. I did find trees at the Jockey Lot (2 for $25).

Wysteria:

In my planters:

 

Waiting for planters:

Gerbers:

Balloon Flowers:

Recently my SIL got some 8mm tapes converted to DVD for us and it has been fun seeing some footage from my last year in Northern Ontario. Anything from seeing the last ice of the winter melting, to watching my then first-graders Jonathan and Janelle doing school things to summer camp and PWTC training week to jug-a-lug games to Ruth and Leon’s wedding rehearsal in Ohio to single staff campout at Williams Bay.

And then there was the day us singles from camp took one last day off to go fishing at Cook Lake before summer activities and I kid you not, we caught nothing but a few branches. Fortunately we had hamburger along so all was not lost.

I was again reminded how watching the Cessna 206 land on water it was possible to know whether it was Clair or Dennis flying by how it taxied.

We had a most memorable trip to Ruth and Leon’s wedding in Ohio traveling in a 15-passenger van with 8 adults and 4 children under 6. Oh, and we were pulling a trailer that had a heavy load of steel on the way back north. Did I mention that we drove straight through (21+ hours) on the way down? Yeah, we all felt pretty woolly by the time we got there!! Great memories!

Then there was lovely shot of us ladies aound the campfire singing Friends with Karen playing guitar and in the background was a loon just singing his heart out.

And there is no croquet quite as challenging as the version played on a very bumpy sandy beach and 1 of the wickets in the water. It ended in a water fight, with Phil and Hanes duking it out.

Listening to the various groups who sang at Family Camp.

So many campers came through camp that summer and there were a few names that came back in a flash. Funny how that works. It’s been 12 years since I left the north.

Any of this sounding familiar? Come over and watch it with me. I’ll even supply the popcorn!

 

 

Some quotes:

Hans B was washing dishes at the very wet, overcast campout.

Me: So what do you think of that?
Hans: I don’t think, I just feel.

———————————————————-

Hanes cleaning the walleye that I’m very certain I caught. After we had been arguing about it for a while and he was cleaning it:

Hanes: This is the fish that I caught.
Me: BALONEY!!!
Karen: No, it’s fish!!

———————————————————-

Acting out Bible stories for singles campout church service:

Me: I can see, I can see!!
The “village people”: How?
Me: “Jesus” put sand on my eyes and told me to go wash them in Williams Bay.