Flower Album

This rose just opened this morning. Click on the link below to see more flower pics I took today, both in our yard and at our friend Ellen's in Hillsboro.

http://picasaweb.google.com/homerhorns/SpringFlowers#slideshow/5465360070501828466

More Garden Photos

Another beautiful day. It rained Friday Night and Saturday Morning, so everything is greening up. The bok choy is jumping out of the ground.

The lettuce sat still for a while but the warmer nights now (in the mid 50s) have given it a boost.

This is an ice plant, a succulant that grows in many of the yards here in T or C. There are also beautiful reds and oranges. They spill out onto the sidewalks all around us here in the historic district. We keep meaning to pinch off a cutting to bring home to add variety to our yellow.












We bought these pinks for practically nothing last year. Walmart had a bazillion plants dying for lack of watering. We rescued these and they flowered all last summer. They came back strong this summer.

Lazy Days of SPRING!

It's been a month of Sundays since I've written in this Blog, but I've been meaning to--just haven't gotten to it (that darned Facebook, anyway...) Life here spuds along. David's become a digging and a planting fool, and this season I'm even able to get into the act, and not just as a director! David built me a little wooden stool to sit on to pick arugula and it brings me close enough to the ground so I can reach to plant stuff--but I'm not so low that I can't get back up again! That awful ad on TV "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" is a real nightmare for those of us who, as David says, can still "get down" but then can't get up again! The birds are flocking to our feeder again: red house finches, little yellow-green lesser finches, juncos, Oregon races, tiny ground doves and the bigger white-winged doves, house sparrows, white-capped sparrows, and a couple days ago there were two huge yellow-breasted kingbirds on the wire over the feeder. We've hung the hummingbird feeders back up and have added a platform on the fence with a dish of grape jelly on it for the orioles in case they come by. We also have added an oriole liquid feeder and nailed up some orange slices for good measure. We still have one large bed to plant with peppers, but need to buy some plants. We went to the Animus Creek Nursery last Saturday and bought ten different kinds of tomatoes, from big beefsteak ones to yellow pear to cherry to burgundy something-or-others. They're in the ground and seem to be thriving, along with dill, basil, zucchini, Armenian (white) cucumbers, scarlet runner beans, sweet peas, sugar snap peas--well, take a look at the peas, a grapevine, and some catnip! The fabric you see on the porch and the fence around our property we put up for a windscreen to help cut the 65 mph gusts and the days of 15-25 mph constant winds.

Our hanging baskets of baby carnations and last-year's refurbished geraniums are thriving as is the herb garden. We've picked another batch of arugula and mixed them with other greens to bag up and take down to the natural food store. So far we've sold 15 bags of arugula! We're not getting rich, but it's paid for the seeds! To the left is a grapevine we're hardening off before putting into the ground, and some sugar snap peas, which are up about 4" now. The herb garden is doing really well--the lemon thyme and the parsley, rosemary, and blue sage over-wintered really well and the mizuna and pac choy we planted a month ago is going great guns. I leave you with this new little basket, just planted. Wait 'til you see it in a month!

Our friend Ellen's garden in Hillsboro

Yesterday was our 36th wedding anniversary. We actually forgot about it until the middle of the afternoon, while we were sitting at our friends kitchen table eating chicken salad. Ellen raises iris and fruit trees. The first few pictures are red bud...I'm not sure of the others. The tulips are in bloom and the iris should be coming along later this month. I'll try to post some more photos then.