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.

It's Hotter Than H.E. Double Hockey Sticks...

It seems like only yesterday we, as in me, myself and I, were fretting because we had another wet, cool spring that stayed that way longer than usual. This week the predictions are for 100 degree + weather all week long. I have said many times that I am not an early riser. I don't enjoy getting up at God-thirty in the morning and sipping my Diet Pepsi in quiet solitude and watching the sun rise. The only times that I have willingly watched the sun rise was back in the olden days when I stayed up all night. Doing whatever I did all night... The good thing about losing your memory is X-ing out the wild child days.

As I told you in my post on Father's Day the two times I heard my father swear was at me and because of me and those incidents were both related to not getting up and being ready to go to school. My sweet little mom would ask me if she needed to get the washcloth when she would wake me for the second, third or umpteenth time. She was a very smart woman. She wouldn't pour a glass of water on me but she would, and did, wet down a washcloth, pull back the covers and slap that puppy on my tummy... once. That was all it took. After the first time she would ask me if she needed to get it and I would be on my feet... "No, ma'am! I'm up."

The first semester that I went away to college I was assigned a roommate. I didn't think anything about it because I can get along pretty well with most anybody. That changed the first time she woke me up at 6 freakin' 30 in the morning to ask me if I wanted to pray with her. Bless her Southern Baptist heart... I kind of... sort of maybe implied if she woke me up again at that time in the morning she just might be looking at talking to Jesus in person. Don't get me wrong I don't have anything against prayer, in fact I pray often. Just not at 6:30 in the morning except maybe to ask the good Lord to help me, to keep me from killing somebody.

But I digress... what I wanted to tell you was that it has been so hot that when either my bladder, thank you menopause, or the dogs wake me up to go out I just pull on my shorts and go out to work in the garden or the flower beds. Yep... even if it's 6 freakin'30. I work for an hour or two or until my eyelids start to sweat. After that first burst I'll go out for 20 or 30 minutes at a time, doing a little bit of planting or weeding or moving sprinklers and/or soaker hoses around. After 3 weeks of rain every day I'm now having to water pretty much every day in some portion of the flower beds or the veggie garden.

Because is it hotter than h-e-double hockey sticks. Just thought I'd pass that little tidbit on to all of you that are having 90 degree and under weather. You lucky stiffs...