Warm Temperatures & New Plants

Our house looks beautiful in winter, it looks beautiful in spring, and it looks beautiful in summer!

Greg and I stopped by Menard's and got some PLANTS!
We haven't been huge gardeners because everything outside of succulents and cacti dies in the desert without copious watering . . . but here in Minnesota, the dirt seems like it's black gold!  The plants just go crazy.  We were amazed by how the trees are happy, the grass just does its thing, and the hostas and peonies popped up out from under the snow this spring, so we decided to try growing some things specific to us!

I got 2 lavender plants and Greg got a cayenne pepper and a jalepeno pepper plant!

It was kind of later in the season to be planting new things, so many of the plants were already sold, but we found some good ones anyway!

My Dad brought over some bleeding hearts (also known as Dutchman's Breeches - ha!), and iris, and a small oak tree.  We planted them around our property.

My dear friend Cindy was planning to come visit, so we set aside one bleeding heart for her.  She loves plants and doesn't have this one yet!

The peonies were still budding!

The petunias are beautiful.

The bleeding hearts were pretty much done blooming by the time we planted them, but next year we'll get to see them their whole blooming cycle!

We trimmed these crazy bushes in the front yard.  They're called weigela.  They have a lot of pretty pink flowers.  The bushes themselves get very stickiful (that means they grow lots of sticks that don't have leaves or flowers on them) so we had to dead-wood them before trimming.  It was pretty fun.

Then my Dad and Allistair took a smal nap.

After some cuddles.

The grass is filling in (the previous owners had a dog that had left some spots).

Here is one of my baby lavender plants.

Here is a new iris!

We found some "volunteer" raspberry plants (i.e. the birds ate the raspberries from somewhere else and dropped the seeds in our front flower bed, which then grew into raspberry plants!) and moved them to the back planters.  They are settling in just fine, though they started a bit droopy.

Here are Greg's peppers!

And I mowed the lawn for the first time all by myself!  It took two hours for front and back yard and I didn't even run over the cord one time!

Doesn't it look nice?

The first of hopefully three storage cabinets for my office was delivered!

Greg has assembled it and I've stocked it up with toys.

Isn't it beautiful?

It makes me very happy to see all my toy friends again!

The cabinet company was kind enough to offer some special suggestions during the assembly process!

For Father's Day, we met at my parents' house.  I took the flowers (because our peonies were going beautifully crazy!), fruit salad, and chocolate covered cherries.

I found these great drawer organizers at Goodwill and it makes me grin to see all my things have their own little homes!

I was blessed to have lunch with my beloved Kindergarten teacher a couple of weeks ago, and I took her this little vase of peonies.  I was happy with the bud and leaves in there because it looked artistic!

I want to gather little vases from thrift shops that I wouldn't mind giving away so I can continue to take bouquets to friends and family.

I can't believe this grew in OUR YARD!

This one was our very first bloom and we took it to my Mom for Mother's Day.

She didn't get to keep that vase because it's one of my favorite.

My parents watched Cora and Esme for a few afternoons a couple of weeks ago, and one of the afternoons they spent here.  We painted, made chocolate covered cherries (because Esme asked to!), and went to the park!

First, the cherries!

I asked them to make their grumpiest faces.

The cherries turned out great!  They are excellent chefs.

Then it was time for the park!

We got to walk down the secret staircase over the marsh to get there.

When we got home, we didn't have much time left, but we still wanted to paint!  We decided to use the pond as our inspiration.

Esme said, "Oh, isn't it pretty?"

Grandma got a little bit of paint on her fingers! 

This is Cora's painting of the pond:

This is Esme's!  She included the otter, even though we didn't see her that day.

Esme was happy that Allistair let her pet him and she didn't want to leave!

I'm glad we were able to have them over!

BONUS:

Summer seemed to arrive all of a sudden so we put on our spring/summer sheets!