Everywhere…

You’ve seen a lot of here through my posts of the past and I’ve shown you quite a bit of there through the last few posts. I’m having trouble finding the rest of the photos I wanted to wind up there with so now we are going to everywhere so you can see the blank slate that I am starting with… This is a rental home so I won’t be able to be as comfortable in doing any radical creativity but I can certainly make the place feel more like a home.

Here we go…

The house is on a corner and has this fourteen foot wall in the front yard. I’m already planning on what I’m going to do out here.

There are a few neglected and older shrubs along the about 3 foot wide bed that goes along the walk heading up to the front door.

then the walk is right along the house to the nook where you find the front door. This is looking north to the stockade fence. The shrub on the right is a rose of sharon that was there when we rented. Our rose of sharon that I’ll be bringing is younger and shorter and I will plant it closer to the brick pillar.

This is a crepe myrtle and there is one planted on either side of the drive way and you know that something else is going to be planted in there so it doesn’t look so plain.

This is looking up the side yard from another gate in the stockade fencing. I love the fence, SueSue doesn’t. She can’t see what’s going on in her world except for the occasional squirrel that drops into the yard, the she is on a mission to get that critter. Being the ornery and lazy woman that I am, I’m going to start feeding the birds AND the squirrels. After I need some entertainment to lighten my day occasionally, too. And if she catches one and kills it, I know how to skin them and fry them. I’m not too worried about that happening, because while Suess is fast she is not quite bright. She runs straight at them and you know squirrels can twist and turn on a dime…

This is the back yard. It is pretty large which the girls love, except with the stockade fence they can’t keep track of what all might be going on in their corner of the world.

This is the side of the house that the front is on, just the other side of the fence.

As I do my planting thing, I will take pictures along but I must tell you that Carol’s sister has her ideas about how we should plant the place. She, besides being rapid cycling bi-polar, has got to be ocd as much as she likes and needs order in her life.

She likes things in a row, I like things the flow. When I got to the house I took my babies out and looked around. When I saw a number of plants all along the back fence all in a row and almost exact distance apart. I just got my shovel out of the truck and started working on them… even as boring as she like it. Carol and I have lived together for so long that she know that there is method to my madness and whatever I do usually comes out somewhat unusual. And usually she loves what I do even if I do things somewhat with odd combinations that I enjoy trying odd colors and/or textures. So I know that while I will keep as many plants alive as I can, this will be essentially a plain, basic garden because the riots of color and shapes of a garden that Carol and I both enjoy is like raucous noise to her sister.

So as I get things planted and growing I’ll keep you posted but for right now, besides my life being bland, I’m so exhausted from the moving that I probably won’t be a very interesting blogger. And if I don’t live through this move I just want to say thanks to all of you who have become my friends through this wonderful blogging medium.

Tired To Tears Thursday…

I finally got hooked back up to the internet and it’s cable, not satellite, praise the Lord. But I’m so dog-assed tired I can’t even think so this will be a flowers I left behind in Bartlesville post.

This iris I dug up and brought with me. It blooms spring and fall.

This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken. The red trumpet vine I planted along the back fence grew around a dead tree stump that grew up around the fence so I just left it there. I like the contrast of textures.

Joseph’s Coat Rose. One of the few roses I’ve ever had any luck with so therefore also my favorite.

This is the climbing Joseph’s coat rose, the one I took the individual rose shot from.

This beautiful Jackamani Clematis was growing on the property line with the people that lived in the house just east of us. They were kind enough to let us claim it and care for it.

We had columbine in the shadiest part of the rock garden in the front yard.

This beautiful clematis was white with the most delicate pink stripes going down the petals.

When we move to this house in ‘95 there was a square of cement out toward the N.E. part of the back yard. It took a long time before it dawned on me that whomever had lived there before had a big satellite dish. I decided to plant wisteria there because it was strong enough to support it as it got older.

Wisteria blossoms just starting to bust open.

More wisteria a few days later in full bloom. It had the most beautiful scent.

Lilac… beautiful old fashioned lilac and what a wonderful smell.

lilac blooms in the shade.

And more lilac.

Sand cherry bush. I loved the contrasting colors.

Hosta “Freedom” if I remember correctly.

Ferns just beginning to greet the world. These plants were fascinating to watch unfurl in the spring

This is one of several irises that we brought back from one of our trips to Minnesota. We actually went to the farm where they were grown and picked out the ones we wanted. The gentleman also grew hostas and had some gorgeous varieties that we drooled over. The fellow said it was okay to drool as they were down in there water that year.

Mmmm, weigelia. This beauty was one of my favorite bushes.Sand cherry that we brought back from Minnesota. Beautiful coloring.

This dark iris was just about read to unfurl and show off it’s beauty but I loved the look of it at this stage.

I have no freaking clue at the moment what this flower is called. I planted it in our front yard water/rock garden but I've slept since then and don't remember it's name... which also happens with people... a lot.

This was another Minnesota iris.

More red trumpet vine.And one final iris.

Be patient with me and I’ll soon be back to stories. I’m so exhausted and still have much to move but don’t give up on me.

I get this move out of the way and my body and brain rested I’ll be back to the same old me…

What’s Not To Love…

Thought I’d take a break from posting about our old home. It gets a little hard on me and I’m going to have to get my old computer up and going to try to retrieve photos that I know I took before we sold the house. We thought we had gotten all the pics, but there are some missing…

So let’s switch gears to my girls. You hear me yakking about them but I haven’t posted anything about them in a while.

My beautiful Chloe… she’s 9, going to be 10 on January 1, 2010.

She’s my watchful laid back girl and she doesn’t like 2 legged rug rats.

SueSue is my blond. She loves everybody, even rug rats. She is as ditsy as her mom some days… or maybe ADHD like me.

She is always watching mom to see if it’s time to play ball. She’s my little (almost) firecracker, born on July 2, 2003… 6 years old and still plays like a pup.

I love it when my girls do what I call ‘frog dogging’… All four feet laid stretched out.

The love to chase each other…

Suess likes to sleep on the back of the couch… when we have a couch with a wide back.

And I don’t understand how they can sleep like this… but they can and the do.

Suess is on the back, Chloe is hanging off the front.

But this is when I’m dead meat…

What a baby girl!

Look at those little pads on her feet…

Got an itch!

My girls. Chloe cuddling the Baby Suess and laying with mom on the recliner.

Whatcha doin’ mom?

Okay, folks. I'm closing this with SueSue frogdogging on the ramp in the sunshine. I gotta get back to packing but I hope you have sunshine in your world today because we are sure enjoying sunshine in ours… despite the packing to move.

Later, my friends.

Outside There…

I’ve shown you a bit of inside There so now let’s take a stroll on some of the outside. 

This picture was taken from the street corner looking back towards the house.  My s.i.l. Diane and I were talking about the small pond that Carol and I had built in the front yard.  It was coming on to fall and the mums planted by the gatehouse were coming on strong.

This one was taken from our drive looking back at the pond.  Again you see the little gatehouse.  There was one on the other side of the street as well since our street was the main street into the neighborhood off one of the main streets into the downtown area of our town.

From the street looking back at the pond and the stream you can see how we stacked the individual rocks.  Carol and I would take off and drive down to Tulsa and go north on Memorial Road until we were in Bixby to a place called Hardscape Materials.  They had stacks and stacks of different rock that were priced for folks to pick from theirselves.   When we would drive into their drive we would go on a big scale that weighed us and whatever vehicle we were in and then we’d go get whatever rock we wanted, load it into our vehicle and then go back to the scale, weigh and go in and pay for whatever we got. 

Ninety percent of the rocks in this rock garden were picked because we could lift them. We did purchase a large rock and several that were almost as big as the “waterfall” rock, as we called it, and had those delivered and put into place by a bubba, but all the rest were picked and placed by Carol and me.

We decided to do a pond and rock garden in the front yard because the grass was crap.  We had planted both of the willows when they were smaller but they had grown enough that it was a fight to try to get the grass looking decent.  We had seen ponds around and decided we wanted to build a pond.  Neither of us had ever done it and so it was kind of a comedy of errors, but we toted rock, had a ball doing it and ended up with a decent little stream and a waterfall rock where the water would fall then into the pond.

This was back before I started taking pictures very much but I wanted to start with the pond.  We bought a half dump truck load of dirt, had it dumped on our driveway and Carol’s son (Jeff), our young man that helped me in the yard (Jon) and me would take a wheelbarrow load at a time and we built up from the ground because there were so many roots from the trees it was a bitch to try to dig a hole for the pond. Then we placed and mortared the rocks that we brought in from Hardscape.  Jeff would just shake his head at his mom and me when we’d take off and head to town to buy rock.

This was the beginning of what we built THERE, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and some more of my story.  The place where I left most of my heart and a lot of sweat and a great deal of fun.

Since we are in the middle of yet another move from the country into town, Norman, the next few posts are going to be sporadic but I will try not to leave you hanging for more that a couple of days.