Thursday, May 07, 2009

It finally stopped raining in Paradise

It rained so hard last night that I thought that we were going to have to start working on that ark, but when I woke up this morning it had already stopped. The weatherman said that we would get a short reprieve from the rain for most of the day, but not to get to used to it.

The two bunches of pretty flowers in the top picture were a gift from my daughter Suzanne. The butterfly just dropped in to see the new flowers in the garden and to visit Cucoo, who was not home at the time.
These pretty little blue flowers were another gift from the cats. Our cats do more planting than we do. They are constantly digging in the yard and spreading flower seeds here & there.

This pretty pink rose bush is not in my yard although I wish it was. As Jimmy & I were walking back to the car after going out to eat at PapaLeno's we passed by these blue iris' and rose bush and I couldn't pass up taking a picture of them.

This is a small fountain in our yard. The cats use it as their drinking fountain and finally after the newness has worn off and it has begun to crack and fall apart, the birds are now stopping by to drink & bathe in it
This reminds me of the week we bought the fountain a few years back, in hopes that the birds would stop by and use it. We watched and we waited but no birds. They wouldn't get near it. They'd get on a nearby roof and just look at it. That's all they did.
One day while visiting Jimmy's sister we told her about buying the new fountain and she said, "Oh, that reminds me...I need to put something out so the birds will have somewhere to drink," and she promptly found a metal lid to a garbage can and flipped it upside down and filled it with water. In a few minutes here the birds came and landed on the edges of the lid and began to drink the water, and in a few more minutes another bird took a bath. Jimmy and I were both thinking of all that money we just wasted on that stupid fountain of ours when we could have just used an old metal trash can lid.

The flowers grow big here. I think it's all the rain we get...what do you think? These are really the best kind of flowers to have and they don't require much care at all. You can double click on the pictures to enlarge them if you'd like to see them better.

This picture was also taken in town and you can see more of those care-free flowers, and a few other metal sculptures.

Scattered around town are also six foot painted hands. They're everywhere and they're really very colorful. You can see more of these hands HERE and also a different set HERE.

Back in my own backyard some of the flowers are just beginning, or getting ready to bloom.

The red rose that Sharon gave me one year for Mother's Day is over-loaded with rose buds and today I noticed that a couple of them are already showing their red insides a little, so it won't be long now before we have a rose bush in full bloom.

We're going to have a good crop of grapes this year...the vines are loaded. They're concord grapes by the way and Jimmy used to make wine for our neighbors, but the wine drinkers have moved....I was going to say, "The wino's have moved," but they might read my blog :)

The cherry trees are both going to have a bumper crop of fruit this year, but unfortunately there are no locusts to fill the birds bellies this year, and they'll be heading straight for the cherries once they ripen. Last year there was an abundance of those 17 year locusts and the birds were busy eating their fill.

I found this little guy in one of the cherry trees, so I helped him down. He looked like he was full already.

I took this closeup of the rhododendron flowers in the morning while it was still wet. See the raindrops all over the flowers? This is my favorite picture.

The rest of the pictures are of the same rhododendron. It's along the walkway to the front door. Actually there are two of those bushes planted side by side.


The little tiny green azealia bush, on the bottom left of this picture was a birthday gift from my blog friend Rachel of Sliding Through Life last year. It didn't bloom this spring so if there are any azealia experts out there, what did we do wrong? When Rachel gave it to me it was covered in pretty pink blooms, but now that it's in the ground it didn't have any flower buds.

Things are greening up by the day around here and it's looking good once again. The sun came out today just long enough to dry the grass so that Jimmy could weed-eat and mow the lawn...I would have helped but I was busy on the phone and he got finished about the time I finished with my phone call...oh well there's always next time. There's always a next time when it comes to mowing, but there's not always a next time when it comes to talking to the people you love.

2 comments:

Rachel said...

Well, I sure did enjoy this walk among the flowers Sandy!! The rhododendron blooms are so beautiful!!

We have had lots of rain and more is moving closer as I type this with maybe storms in them. I did manage to get the lawn mowed yesterday. It was getting high! I just barely got it done when the rains came again!

Don't know why the little azalia plant doesn't bloom.

I got 2 of those knockout roses to put out. They are so pretty!!

Say Hi to Jimmy!!

Sandy Hatcher-Wallace said...

Rachel...I'll be glad when all of this rain is over with. I'm ready for some sunshine. Everything is looking really pretty and green around here and I love that. I'm assuming that it's getting really pretty around the lake.
Come see us.