Perfect Weather

Hasn't the weather been perfect the last few days? I could have weather like this every day! I just want to stay on my outdoor swings forever and zone out.

I want to take the time to publically thank the two individuals who donated a $10 and a $20 donation to me the last few days! Wow! I am truly in awe of the generosity. For me, that is a lot of money. I am not sure I would ever donate that much myself, probably more likely to do $5. (except that paypal took a whopping 45 cents out of the $5 donation! --but I should not expect a service for free) I am getting excited about getting PSE5 with this money. Surely I will blog about the difference between the two versions, as well as start updating the tutorials with side notes.

I am working on a new paper tutorial today. I spent 2 hours before work today creating the screen caps. Often, that is the most time consuming part of these tutorials. This tutorial only has 9 screen caps, so it is much less of a burden on me to write as compared to those tutorials that have 16 to 22 screen caps. It should take me half of the total time to complete as my last tutorial. If time works with me today, maybe I can get it up tonight.

Thank you, LVMommy22, for suggesting that my flower in the last post is a Agapanthus. I did an internet search and found several pages with several different spellings of this plant and I do not think it is this plant. Although I do believe I may have an Agapanthus in my yard, or did at one time. The foilage and the flower petals are not the same. Maybe I can get more photos to share and you can try again to help me?

I am still fighting these helicopters! I have 8 flower beds, some of which are quite large, and I have decided to try to tackle one bed each day as a goal. I could finish in a week or so if I can keep up. I did one bed on Sunday night.

Last night after work I threw in the oven a pre-made lasanga which took an hour too cook and I ran outside and worked on another bed (while I got two sons to work on a third). I have 5 beds left! However, I believe the perfect weather will be turning into rain soon and my daily goal will be messed up.

This bed in my front yard is one of the smaller beds that I completed last night. As I am getting the helicopters out, I am planting flowers. I did give up on getting all the helicopters out of the far back between all the Iris as I cannot sit and reach that far. I will have to go back another day and go down the back side of the beds (or set my sons to them).

This bed is my impatients bed. My favorite color is the coral and I put that in this bed every year. This bed gets a lot of shade and impatients have grown better than any thing else here.




I have tried several methods of fertilizer over the years on my flowers. One year I used the granuals that are mixed into the dirt and it killed all my flowers for two years! Nothing would grow. I will never use those again. I did not even feel I put that much in the soil.

I have found that this Miracle Grow soil works well to get the flowers a good start. I take my trowel and break up the soil. Thereafter, I hand scoop a bunch of new soil into the area and use my hand to mesh it all together, breaking up the clumps. I do this for each place where I place a flower plant. It takes a long time, but seems to be worth it.










I have quite a few flats of flowers setting around waiting to be planted, so I will need to keep pace so that they can be in a happy home where they can grow, rather than die in the flats.


















I have decided that this year I will make one of the beds in the full sun an all marigold bed.

I wish, though, that I could remember which flowers the rabbits like to eat. They look forward to my flower smorgasbord every year! They sweep through and eat only certain types of flowers and leave the others. Hopefully, I am ahead of them this year as I've already sprayed "Deer Off" on the flowers.

I saw the other day as I was looking up in the trees a squirrel eating leaves on a tree. Now, I feel kind of stupid as I do not really know what squirrels eat (other than my bird seed and acorns) and was kind of surprised to watch the squirrel stretch up and grab a leaf and eat it, again and again. It made me wonder if it isn't the stupid squirrels eating my flowers, and not the rabbits. I used to like the cute squirrels in my yard, but I am finding them more of a nuisance as time goes on.



My hubbie and sons planted our banana trees over the weekend too. I told them to try to put them in the side bed, instead of the grass. I did not know there were 12 or more of them! I go out later to find two masses of them surrounding two of my hanging planter rods.

Why? Do they really think the flowers in the hanging baskets will be visible after the trees begin to grow? MEN! Life with 4 Men! Okay, there, I said it. I feel a bit better. This is one of the battles I am choosing not to fight and I am just keeping my mouth quiet. Who knows, maybe I will like the way they look once they get going and be surprised. God always has blessings in disguise, right?

Have a bright and sunny day!