Fall color!

Monday, November 2, 2015

Another picture of my fall mums with some of our Halloween decorations!

Garden

Wednesday, October 21, 2015
I tried planting some tomato plants and cucumbers this year. I think it wasn't quite the right place for the tomato plants because we only got a handful of tomatoes and the plants never got very big. The cucumbers struggled a little too but I did get a few cucumbers before the first frost hit.


Here is a picture of my red and yellow mums in full bloom:

Fall color

October 2015

Here are some of the color displays in our yard in the fall:

This is a hibiscus plant that I planted last fall. The flowers are huge!

My mums got huge this year and took over! There are a few smaller mum plants in there that were totally taken over by the bigger ones. Some of the big plants were almost perfectly round in shape. In the background you can see some of our Halloween decorations.

More roses

September 2015

Apparently I did take some pictures of one of the rose buses I planted in the fall. Here it is, plus another picture of the pink/yellow rose bush with 3 different looking flowers blooming all at once.

Roses!!

Early Fall 2015

I love rose bushes! Especially fragrant ones! Our house had no rose buses in the yard when we moved in and it has been something that I have wanted to change! I found some amazing rose bushes at the nursery that I fell in love with. They are super fragrant and have huge blossoms! Here are some pictures of the 2 bushes I planted in the spring - apparently I did not take pictures of the ones I planted in the fall. I will have to remedy that once they start blooming this year. DH has started to not be surprised if I come home with a new rose bush! If it is a color that I like and is fragrant - I just might decide to buy it! Unfortunately I am running out of good spots to plant them so I may have to hold off for a little while! I just love the pop of color that they give to my yard and I love going up to the bushes and smelling them!

One of the most perfect looking roses I have ever seen!

Another perfect looking rose! This bush has the most amazing display of colors! The rose buds start off yellow with bright pink on the edges. Then when they bloom they either stay that brilliant yellow with the pink edges or go to all pink with a hint of white or yellow on the middle of the petals.

You can see some of the buds in this picture.

You can see the pink/yellow rose bush on the right side of the flower bed. The pale pink rose bush is behind the green bush that is behind the pink/yellow rose bush. If you zoom in on the picture you can see some of the roses popping out from behind.

Flowers

We moved this pot to our new house last year and after the winter I didn't plan anything in it - I just left it as it had been at the end of the fall season. These petunias grew on their own! I was quite surprised to see them grow and bloom!

This is a Rose of Sharon hibiscus tree that we planted in the spring. It blooms all throughout the summer and into the fall.

Another picture of the Rose of Sharon - it is just to the right of our front walkway.

Here is an early spring picture of our front flower bed.

A picture of the same flower bed in early August! Pansies, petunias and some mums that are starting to bloom - plus our Japanese Maple Tree. These pansies are the same ones in the previous picture. I didn't plant any new ones.

This is another tree that we planted - a Weeping Cherry Tree. It should bloom in the spring.

Boutonnieres

Friday, March 27, 2015

M&M was asked by a couple of friends from our ward if she could make some boutonnieres for their school prom. Here are the ones that she made:

Pansies

Monday, March 16

I planted these pansies in the fall and they are growing back! I have planted them before in the fall at our old house and had very few if any of them come back in the spring, so I was pleased to see these!

Adding some color

Friday, August 15, 2014

Our van was having some problems shifting gears so I finally took it in to the dealership to have it looked at and they decided that the transmission needed to be replaced.  Thankfully it was still under warranty from when we bought it back in 2011 and we were even given a loaner car for free - a 2014 Toyota Tacoma - which was a lot of fun to drive around!  I decided to take the truck to the nursery to buy some flowers and things to plant in the yard to add a little color to it.  I bought a few mums for some fall color and also a hibiscus plant which has enormous pink flowers on it!  Since Luke wasn't in school yet, he helped me with a lot of the planting.  (M&M was at marching band camp.)

Planting some mums in front of the front porch - there is a nice little Japanese Maple tree that was already there.

Adding some color to our little garden island in the front corner of the yard.

Awesome hibiscus bush - hopefully it will look this nice next year!

The flowers are HUGE - that one is probably almost as big as my hand.

Picture of the front of the house.

Mother's Day flower

For Mother's Day this year, Kitty painted a flower pot in her school class and then they planted some seeds in the pot.  They were apparently just a bunch of random flower seeds so we were curious what would grow from it.  I kept it in the house until it started getting big enough and then I transplanted them outside.  Kitty helped me water them while they were outside and would check on them almost every day.  Two of the seeds ended up being marigold flowers and another one grew into a super tall stalk with a beautiful pink flower on the end of it.  Here are some pictures I took of it in August:

Spring fever!

The weather is starting to turn nice and this morning while I was taking the trash cans out to the curb I noticed this:

and this:poking out amongst all the dead leaves and plants from the winter time! I have bulbs coming up all over the place and I didn't even notice until today!

What a difference a few days can make!

Tuesday afternoon:


This morning:
We have a couple of inches of snow in the yard - a very wet, heavy snow.Our blossom tree out front - it actually looks like it's blooming with all of the snow on it! Hopefully it will get a chance to actually bloom in the next couple of days...

And the verdict is still out on whether my strawberry plants will survive or not...

Spring is here!

We have had some absolutely beautiful weather lately and I finally took some time to get some yard work done. This week I was able to trim some of the bushes out front, including my rose bush that grows HUGE each year. I think it looks very nice now, especially with the crocuses that are blooming and the other bulbs that are coming up.Yesterday I was also able to start getting the garden ready for planting. I was able to turn over about a third of the soil and get some of the nasty weed roots from last year pulled. Hopefully I can get a jump start on the weeds this year and not have the never ending battle that we struggle with each year.

This is one of my favorite spring bulbs. It's called Chionodoxa. I think I planted these the first year we were in this house and I haven't had to do anything with them since then. I have white, pink and purplish blue varieties.
The kids have been having fun getting out and playing in the yard and on their bikes and scooters. Baby K had a lot of fun out in the garden with me. She had fun playing in the dirt and liked holding the ladybugs that I found. Baby K also has a fascination with watching honeybees. We have had a lot already in the front yard flying from flower to flower and Baby K loves watching them and occasionally tries to touch one... Hopefully she won't keep that up! And hopefully she won't have to discover why that is not a good idea!