O Christmas tree...

My daughter is part of her school choir and they were part of the Singing Christmas Tree that happens every year. I've never been before. The kids did awesome and the whole afternoon was really nice. :) Sorry for the horrible picture, I got all the way there and realized I didn't have the camera..
We have lots of snow now and it's been warm today and rainy so the slush is a big mess..

Snow snow everywhere.... winter is really here..

that kitten!

Norma, Norma,Norma, ... what are we going to do with you?!
you climb everything. you hang off the top of the door and jump down on the bird cage, ruffling the poor finches feathers.. How he is still not dead of a heart attack is beyond me!
you race through the house making it sound like we have a herd of elephants, plants dropping from high places as you go.. I have replaced so many pots since Josh took you in.. seriously, you need to get a job to pay for them, k?
you are the prettiest gray kitteh, big yellow eyes.. that's what I call you, you know "the yellow eyed monster"

The days are still kind of nice. Sunny... 15 degrees C

postcard

I collect postcards and I really enjoy www.postcrossing.com I put all my cards in a photobox, sorted by country, but I wanted to find something I could put them in that was visible for a while. I also love the secondhand store. :) I came across this somewhat older gum display and thought "hmm.. I wonder if that is the right size for postcards??" It's great for regular sized cards! and it reminds me of all the Juicy Fruit and Spearmint gum I bought when I was younger. I didn't like Big Red or Winterfresh but Doublemint was good in a pinch.

Off to Alberta

We went on a little road trip, my love and I. We happened to be around Okotoks/Black Diamond and I'd never been to the Big Rock.
I learned about big chunks of quartzite being brought by glacier thousands of years from Jasper. Cool!

our dogs

Trying to catch up

my new back flower bed went a little nuts. this picture was taken before it got crazy. The sweet peas grew everywhere and the borage climbed all over everything.  Then the shrub I cut down that I thought might not grow back turned out beautiful but hung over half of what I planted.

 The kids and I only made it to the beach 3 times this summer. Made me very sad... this day ended early as those clouds got darker and it started to thunder.

 

apple trees..

I loved the borage flowers

the barn at the end of our driveway..

my friend who is a potter made plant markers this year. these are the ones I got..

Wow! now that's a moth!

I wish we had put something up against it so you could see how big it is. Think at least hockey puck sized... This isn't the first I've seen of these jumbo moths here. Just the first picture I've had of one.
It's been a pretty good summer. The garden is doing well. I started a new job so I haven't had much time to do much, take pictures..

Doggie prints

We went on a day trip and took our little dog for the ride. She was sitting on my lap when we were having a picnic.  She wanted down and I noticed she had put enough pressure on my leg to leave a paw print, lol

July 18

  

Love lies bleeding..
I'd love to know who named it. :)

Silver mound

This is how my silver mound is doing so far this year.






I dug out the side flower bed this afternoon. It's needed a lot of work for a long long time. Someone planted a very what looks like oregano and it's spread into huge clumps all over the place.  There was a lot of grass and other weeds in there as well.
before

 

after

what is with this weather?

I know we've got it better than some places. Our basement isn't filling with water like friends in Medicine Hat. But the rain.. our garden is half drowned. 3 lettuce plants came up in a whole row, the odd carrot, the bean plants are turning yellow.. We had 2 quite nice days, around 20 degrees with lots of nice sun and then everything changed this evening and we got thunder, lightning and pouring rain again.  Tomorrow is rain again. We are waiting to replant for a few days, see how things go.

I wanted to try and see Comet McNaught  C/2009 R1  but the cloud cover is making it really hard.  The mountains don't really help either..  :)

back flower bed

This is the before picture..  I dug and dug to get the lemon balm out of this flower bed. the whole thing was nearly full of it.

after/today

this isn't the best picture as I had to use my cell phone. My love has the camera as they are working on an old bridge and I want to see what they are doing. I keep moving the ceramics around as I can't decide where I want them to stay. Some of the plants are just sprouts still so it will look different again once everything is full size.  The notorious lemon balm is growing along side in the left corner.

Some of our vegetable garden didn't come up. We think it must have drowned so we have to replant the carrots, lettuce, some of the beets. The peas are coming up, some of the beans and my sunflowers. The tomato plants are doing well and I got the cucumbers in the other day. I have a long English cucumber plant in a big pot on the deck as well. At my best friends house we planted a huge row of yellow onions, 1/3 of a row of Spanish and 1/3 of a row of red. I have no idea how long the rows are but I'll work on getting a picture. :)  If my storage works out right, we shouldn't have to buy an onion at the store for a year... LOL  We also have a row of broccoli. We started veggie gardening as just off setting some of the bought groceries, now we are working on growing more of what we actually eat. We are so blessed to have so much land available, between our yard, my father in laws and my best friends. We are going to be sharing around as well.

sun please!

I know I'm not a very good blogger. There are always huge gaps between my entries.. I can blame it on the weather. It was quite nice out and I got the veggie garden planted for the most part. 

The last few days have been really rainy but it worked out great as then we didn't have to water the seeds in, nature did it for us.  I still have to go to my best friends house and plant the onion sets. We were away for a couple days and I was able to finally buy some as our town seems to be completely out of onions to grow. Seed potatoes of all kinds are also very hard to find. Spring came early here and everyone went shopping...

Our peonies are just starting to bloom...

Our lilacs are nearly finished..

new friends are found..

baby peaches are started...

small pine trees are brought home from school...

the sun tried to peek from behind the clouds.. I'm really hoping for some sunny days as I'm now tired of the rain.

the garden is growing

beautiful days!

This is the first butterfly stepping stone I made with the kit. I thought it turned out quite good. :) 

Then I made this one with the leftover glass.. it's ok but if you see them together, you can tell it's leftovers..

Then there is this poor thing.. We bought some concrete coloring, red, and I mixed this up and poured it. When I went to remove it from the mold it broke completely in half.  I carefully placed it in one of the flower beds so the two halves matched up and will not move it again. There is a 'silver mound' growing there so it may become partially covered. 

this is what silver mound looks like..( this picture is an example, not my own plant) 

I'll try to remember to take a picture of it tomorrow :)

I have planted my sunflowers, the borage and a few other flowers in the ground. 3 of my 5 yellow tomato plants are now in an old wooden apple crate on the porch. I gave one plant to Megan and am going to offer the last one to my friend Kate.  My white pumpkin and zucchini plants are waiting for the garden but if it doesn't get rototilled this week, I might put them in the one flower bed by the house. I still haven't made firm plans for it and it's empty except for a very small rose bush so ...

It has been raining and raining and today was our first nice day. I managed to get a bit of a sunburn on my face, sitting out on the deck visiting my friend Megan.  I have needed to mow the lawn for ages and got it half done when something went wrong with the mower. I'll have to call my dad and get him to have a look.  The buds are coming up on the lilacs and the peonies are doing great.
I made a butterfly stepping stone with a mold my friend Lorrie gave me. I'm going to make more once I remember to get some more glass bits and marbles.
 The sweet peas I planted are coming up a bit sparse so I think maybe one of the packets was a dud so I planted a few new ones in the open spaces.
Not all of my seedlings made it so I have a had to buy a few things from the garden center. I was unsuccessful with the basil, parsley and the chives are not doing as well as they were. It could be they are just drowning so with any luck we will have more dry sunny weather now.

some pics to share

it snowed yesterday








but the chives are coming up..

























I bought myself a fabulous red watering can because it was too cute to resist..


the bulbs that were hidden are blooming.. this little mushroom was too cute to resist as well :)

spring please..

I'm trying to not get ahead of myself here. I wake up some mornings and it's 7 degrees and I'm all WooHoo! then the next morning, there is frost. Our garden is looking pretty dry so we are going to dig it up a bit and plant our peas. Sounds like everyone in town has the same idea for this weekend.
The people who take care of the orchard seem to be about done with pruning. I can hardly wait to see the cherries ripening on the trees, the peaches nice and plump!
I was away with my youngest and oldest sons and we were in some farm supply stores and I bought some blue poppy seeds. I sure hope I can get them sprouted and growing. I gather they are a bit harder to get going.
I have lots of flower seeds sprouted now and hope I manage to keep them going until it's time to plant! :)