Garden and Stuff

I finally remembered to take pictures of my garden. I'm only a week or so late posting them so what you are seeing has now almost doubled in size. The corn husk are beginning to form and I have a couple of cucumbers that have tripled in size and the tomatoes have finally gone from blooms to the real things.








The strawberries are sour, but hopefully they will sweeten up soon and get bigger then the dime size that they are now. I think I need to move them out of the full sun and let them have a little shade during the day. So I had seen these topsy tomato thingies and thought I would give them a try. I didn't get the shepard hooks until a little later in the season that I had planned, but I finally did and wanted to document their growth. It was about 2 weeks in the watering of them that the weight of them proved to be a little too much for the skinny little shepard hooks that I got on sale.


I did get herbs planted in early spring and this is what they look like. I found a web site that shows how to dehydrate them, so the plan this week is to try and do that with the parsley, since I have a train load of it. Next will be the chives and the pineapple sage.




I have harvest 2 zucchini's already and made 4 loaves of bread - since thats the only thing good that comes out of zuccnhini's. Michael asked me why I even planted them if I wasn't going to eat them. He doesn't get how good the bread is and I figure I'm getting my veggies in with the bread!!!



On a side note here is a picture of Summer and Desmond. I finally got a decent picture of them together. He takes such good care of her.

Happy 4th of July

Ok so I blew it once again. I didn't take any pictures of the family or the best "BAB's" burgers and hot dogs that Michael grilled, or Mom's yummy potato salad. I did take a couple of pictures of the house. I did remember first thing in the morning to hang the flag out.

Now that I look at the picture, I wonder if I hung the flag wrong, but that's how Grandpa fixed the flag to hang, I always thought the tag was suppose to go in the back. I realized that I should get the rest of the outside 4th of July stuff on the door pictured so that maybe next year I'd remember what I did, not that it was very much, but ya all know I'm getting older and the brain doesn't hold that much useless information anymore.


I took the flag down just before leaving to take Grams home. Well Grandpa had put fishing weights on the bottom of the flag to keep the wind from blowing the flag all over the place. I've known this and messed with them for a very long time. But for some reason when I was folding the flag I forgot about those weights and well it hit me right in the shin bone, hurt like a mother and left a purple bruise. So I figured I sorta was in the red white and blue colors for the evening.

End of June

Wow I can't believe June has flown by. The year is half over and I don't know what happened to it all. When I was little the school year dragged on so long and now that I'm older time just flies by.

I've been lucky not to have killed off a few of the plants that Grandma left when she moved out of the house. I remember always seeing this plant / cactus growing up in Grandpa and Grandma's backyard and thinking that it just seemed an odd plant. To me, a cactus has thorns that poke you and this was just always green and didn't seem to do very much. Well guess what???


It's a night blooming Cereus and because it's night blooming I never knew that it would have such pretty blossoms.


On the night that I took the pictures, there were two flowers blooming. All in all there have been about 6 blossoms this year so far and it looks like at least one more to go.


This in Junior the cat. I caught him not realizing that someone was home. I love it when they think nobody is watching them.


And this is Desmond - aka Lil' man. He lays by my feet while I'm at the computer and bites my ankle if I accidentally kick him. You got love the orange eyes!!!

I DID IT...and Michael Did it too!!!

I'm a week late posting about this but on Saturday May 30, 2009, Michael and I went and took our Ham radio test and both of us passed. I thought I would do much better then I did, but hey I still passed and that is all that counts. Last Friday afternoon, the 5th of June, our call signs finally came through.

I'm KI6ZXL and Michael is KI6ZXK. Yeah for us! I called Mom when we were through and told her since she was babysitting Summer for us. We then headed over to see Dad and surprised him with out paperwork. I think he even did a little jump for joy!! It only took almost 30 years for Dad to get another one of his children to get a HAM radio license. Now that I have it - I don't know why it took me so long to do it, it was pretty easy. I only grew up with it all my life. Guess it goes to show I did pay some attention in the car while Dad tried to teach us this stuff.

Pictures from May

Meet my little friend!!!

Somebody asked me if I liked having squirrels in my yard a couple of weeks ago. My answer is I prefer them over people. I don't think they cared for my answer.

This little guy has gotten to the point of not being too afraid of us. He has his own squirrel feeder on the opposite side of the house from the bird feeder, but I guess he prefers bird food. I have caught them using the bird bath once, but I haven't put water in it since.

Last year Mom and I went to a nursery looking for some vegetables and stuff to plant. Mom found these flowers and was happy because her Grandmother always planted them in Etna in her window. I had never heard of Columbines before and didn't have anyplace for them at the time. This year I was at Osh's getting some dirt to plant my herbs and they had Columbine's. So I bought one and planted it and it seems to like living on the porch. We have had great blossoms all spring. I don't know how it will survive in the summer but at least I know what I want each spring.

I forgot I had these on the camera since it died during out trip to the tulip festival. There was this big hill that kids could roll down. It would be perfect to go ice blocking on by the way. Mason was really wanting to roll down the hill.









He was so happy that he got to roll like the big kids. Next time we are going to have to get me (the cool Aunt) to roll with him.

I just really like this picture. I want to have a little creek running through my yard one day. It almost makes me want to go outside and do some yard work right now.

My Brother the Snake Charmer

Here is Carl's little friend that they found on Tuesday morning. Actually Bailey the dog spotted it and started barking. There was a hole that goes under the house that the snake had found and slithered back into, so they had to wait for the snake to come back out.

Mr. Snake came back out and wasn't to thrilled about Carl blocking his way back to safety. So not able to get a clear shot of the head, Carl managed to get a shovel shot to the body.

I don't think they were planning on having any snake soup or anything like that, but he says that sharpened shovels are now placed around the yard in case of any other little friends that want to visit.

Side note: the news today had a story about a guy that got bit by a snake on the hand as he was trying to shoo a rattle snake away from his family while they were visiting a grave site at Rose Hills, which happens to be on the other side of the mountain were Carl and Francine live. I don't think I'll be hiking or wandering around there till next winter when they are all sleeping.

LOTS OF WICKEDLY TULIPS

So after a wickedly fun Sunday and a fairly busy Monday morning/afternoon spent shopping, we all met up back at Thalea's house to go to the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving Point. I like tulips - they definitely mean springtime. But in California you just don't see them growing anywhere other then the grocery stores and those ones are the expensive kind. Evidently they need COLD weather to grow in and it's just not cold enough for them to grow in LB unless they live in your refrigerator. Well I have enough problems with things growing in my refrigerator that I don't know about let alone trying to remember that I might have tulips in there, so I just don't see tulips growing in my flower beds in the all too near future. It was amazing to see 250,000 tulips. Here I am trying to pose like the statue. Thalea was afraid I was going to fall in the water. They have a really fun children's area. Here I am with Mason and Sam posing with the bear. The bear was a little shaky about the boys being on him, so I was holding both of them tight. They have this really cool water fall area. I blogged stalked Deb's or Sandie's and they said it was the world's largest man-made falls. Who knew??? Here is Mason with me in the tulips - he tells me I'm his favorite auntie! I believe him too! Poor Sam was riding in the stroller the whole time and he wanted out to touch the flowers. So again I'm the cool aunt who stole him from his stroller and let him touch!!! I saw this fountain /waterfall thing . . . ummm - not sure what to call it, but it's definitely cool. We hurried and took pictures. There was a bride and groom that weren't getting married till June but wanted to get wedding pictures with the tulips. Here's a nice picture of Thalea and I, or to be grammatically correct, me and Thalea. Man you could never tell that in a couple of months we will both be in our 40's. Yes - I'll still always be younger and prettier, but I'll give her smarter!!! Love ya Sis!!! They have this really big pond with a TON of Koi fish in it. I was busy taking pictures before my battery died so I was the last of our group on the pier thingy. Being the COOL Auntie . . . I happened to have one quarter in my pocket - not sure how or why it was there. But it was enough to buy a handful of fish food so Mason could feed the fish!!! I'm laughing or smiling here because my life is being threatened if I dropped Mason into the pond. I personally think he would have had a blast swimming with all the fish, but I don't think his parents would have been happy about that . . . and it was a little chilly, so I held him tight. One last shot of me with Thalea and the boys. So Sam's 1st birthday was going to be a week after I left so I got to do a little early celebrating with him. He kinda liked me or at least thought I was pretty cool. Mason will have to do a little talking me up to him, but he can't help liking his cool but silly Auntie.