Spring...

Spring is here and things are starting to bloom. This is the first year in a while that I haven't had a camera to share springtime blooms and colors with you all. I'm too shaky and my android phone doesn't have all that good a camera on it so that method of photography is out. I'll get another camera down the road but for now I'll just share pictures I've taken in times past... just because I'm in a spring mood.

One of my favorite blooming shrubs, this weigelia (sp?) is one that we had when we lived in Bartlesville. We planted one last spring but the summer was so hot it didn't make it's first year. I hope to plant another one this year.







This was our Joseph's Coat rose. I hate plants with thorns and stickers but this Joseph's Coat helped me learn to ignore the thorns and love the flowers... Kind of a life lesson, I guess.








Wisteria... I love the smell of these gnarly beauties. I've seen a lot of them in bloom here in Norman over the last couple of weeks. When we lived in Bartlesville there was a 4 inch pipe sticking up in our back yard where some previous owner had installed one of the big, mamu satellite dishes when they first came out. Rather than try to bust out the concrete pad and pull out the pipe we planted this wisteria and grew it up along and around the pipe. The plant had the support and covered the pipe, a win-win for all.



Lilacs... I love them. We got these starts from the place we first rented in Bartlesville before we bought and took them with us. Took about six years for them to start blooming but they were beautiful and smelled heavenly when they did get growing.










Clematis. I miss this plant so much. I planted it when we lived out in the country before we moved to Norman and it was a beautiful clematis. I'm going to start with some more of them this year. I'm hoping it is giving others as much joy as it gave me when I grew it.


So that's the spring stroll for now. Carol showed me how to make a folder and sort my pictures and that's what I'm in the process of doing now. That means more to come...

On the health front... the liver stuff seems to be settling down. The doc is s-l-o-w-l-y letting me get off the steroids. I have been having a lot of problems with my knee and the orthopede had me get an MRI last week and sure enough, I have a torn meniscus. He will repair it in an out patient surgery May 17th and then I will have to do therapy for a while but he told me he can get me walking without pain again. The girls will love getting to have their longer walks.

I donated blood today... my thoughts are with Hallie and her family in their blood drive for CJ and fund raising for organ donors. I figure I can't do too much as far as volunteering or donating money but I sure can donate blood and say prayers.

More to come as I sort out more flower pictures to share.

My Bro May Be Older Than Me…

But, dang, he has great eyes!  I think all three of my brothers are far sighted.  I’m so nearsighted I put my glasses on as soon as I get up and don’t take them off, except to wipe the sweat off my face, until I go to bed at night.

I tried to crop the photo in closer, but it is one off my old laptop and the windows photo program won’t do it for me.  And I haven’t installed anything else to try…

But back to my story.  My middle brother and I have a lot in common besides our parents.  We both love flowers. Bro spotted a flower yesterday on a vine growing up a dead tree out back.

If I knew how to draw an arrow I’d point to the white flowers in the middle of the photo.  The dead tree that the vine with the flowers was growing up into is behind the back fence and there is poison ivy all around.  He is highly allergic and I told him that I’d put on my old jeans and boots and weedeat my way in to locate the base of the vine and clear out around it to possibly dig it  up and replant it where it would be safer to enjoy  and I was going to do that tomorrow.

Bro thought it my be an egret flower.  These egret flowers look somewhat like their name and Bro had purchased them for me this past spring.  I planted them but as to date we’ve not even seen a sign of them. 

I thought it was a passion flower or passiflora, a passion vine. In searching for information I found out that another common name for passion flowers is Maypops.

There are passifloras in many colors.  They are an absolutely beautiful flower and I’ve tried once before to try to raise one when we lived farther north in Bartlesville, OK, and didn’t have any luck.

My Bro is, if nothing else, not afraid to admit when he’s wrong…at least to me… and I’d be the first to say that about flowers he is rarely wrong.  He went out to smoke late this afternoon and came back in and handed me this flower…  with a big smile, ‘cause he knew I was right and he also knew that as far as plants and flowers I’m not often right.  And that it was more important to him to figure out what the flower was rather than to be right. He spotted another vine that wasn’t so deep into the brushy, poison ivy laden area, broke off a piece of vine with a bloom on it and brought it in to me. 

I love my Bro.