I Never Promised You a Rose Garden...

Things are blooming around here again!

 

I've said before that one of the things I enjoy about living here is that the changing of the seasons is so apparent. When I grew up in the Bay Area of California, there wasn't so much of a difference between seasons. Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter kind of all blended into one. But here.....

 

 

It's pretty obvious!!

 

And I am a sucker for flowers.

That white one is an azalea ... it has kind of a trailing habit, as it grows underneath a rhododendron. This year, it put on its best springtime show ever. I'm loving it!

 

I had not even finished planting the annual flowers I'd bought, when Grandpa showed up in our driveway with his pickup bed full of petunias:

 

Talk about a "flower bed"!!

 

Did I mention the truck was FULL??

 

Some of these, we sent back home with Grandpa. But the majority of them -- we've planted.

Yes.

That is a lot of flowers.

 

A couple of pots wasn't going to do it....

 

 

I love the purple-and-gold combination that we put in the backyard pots this year. I suppose I'm gearing up a little early for an upcoming graduation open house -- school colors, you know. ;-)

 

Emma likes them because we put snapdragons in them. It's not a flower I usually put in pots, but I knew that she's familiar with them, and would enjoy them. Grandma taught her how to open the "dragon's" mouth and let it snap shut --- so Emma's hooked!!

 

 

But all those flowers meant I would need help. I planted some myself (about 60 or so), but I enlisted some younger flower-planters to assist with the majority of them.

 

It was sometime in the last year --- the date escapes me now -- that Todd had a tree service come in and remove the big walnut tree that grew outside our kitchen deck. (I think he was tired of waging an un-ending war against walnuts on the ground, and baby walnut trees volunteering themselves extensively.) So, the big tree is gone, and the stump was ground up and also removed.

 

Now we have a fair-sized area where it had been, that needs a landscape plan. Still working on the permanent version of that. But for now, a whole bunch of little annual flowers will fill it up rather nicely!

 

I never promised you a rose garden..... but petunias work wonders!!

 

This is the view from the kitchen deck. The bench is our own trash-to-treasure addition from a couple years back. The stumps came from another tree we had removed, and the slab is an old fireplace hearth that came from one of the store's fireplace-replacement jobs. Voila! Garden bench!

 

So, along with the flowers, we also added in some patio pavers for the walk-up, and the round stepping stones are ones that we've had for several years, just waiting for the right home. Emma thinks it's great fun to go leaping through the planting bed, from stone to stone.

 

Since taking this picture, the girls have added a few more flowers, including some yellow marigolds that really set off the pinks and purples that are there. And I think we'll put out some mulch (we've got some ready to go), as well.  And ... to set my mind at ease about losing a fantastic shade tree, Todd has replaced it with a new one: a red oak, which is just to the left of the camera frame. He's just a little guy now, but in time, he'll grow up and be better situated than the walnut tree was, for sitting under it on hot afternoons. (And maybe we're trading walnuts for acorns?? Ha!!)

 

Sure loving the way the yard at the Haven is shaping up these days. It's looking better than it ever has since we've been here!! Now, if we can get past these on-and-off rainy days, and settle into some gorgeous summer weather, we'll be set!!



 



P.S. Maybe gardening isn't really your thing. It's kind of a big deal to me, because I don't remember my childhood home as ever having flowers blooming outdoors. Sure, some of the shrubs and trees in our tiny suburban yard would get little blooms on them, but there were never beds of pretty flowers around. In fact, that yard would've had to be classified as more of an untouched, "naturalized zone." Which made it ideal for forts and treehouses and tiny plastic farm animals & army guys in the dirt -- but not so much of a restful, tended garden spot ... something I kind of wished for as I got old enough to outgrow the tree-fort stage.