Evening on the Porch

Below are a few pictures of the view from my porch this evening. One of the things we love most about where we live is the view, and as you can see from the last picture, Major loves it too!

Before and after

These pics aren't all that great, but I wanted to show some before and after shots around my deck. It's amazing what you can accomplish in just a few hours. I actually did this a couple of weekends back. I was so glad I took the before shots, because by the time I was all done I had completely forgotten how messy it looked before. The difference amazed me.

BEFORE

AFTER


Another set of pics - the after picture shifts to the right some from the original picture, but you should still be able to see the improvement. The small flowers you can't quite see in the pictures are begonias.

BEFORE

AFTER

Not where it's supposed to be...

When I looked out my kitchen window yesterday morning, I was suprised to see the following:


We had a pretty quick storm the previous evening with some definite winds, but when I looked around the rest of the yard hardly any other branches had been broken off. It was actually kind of cool to see it sticking there. But then we got to thinking that we'd have to repair the hole to keep the water and all from leaking into the shed and it wasn't as cool. So Mark went out to survey the damage before work and here's what he found:

As you can see, thankfully it didn't even enter the shed! So now our little garden shed just has some extra character. It will be interesting to see how long we decide to leave the limb stuck there, or if the next strong storm will rip it out. I joked with Mark that I could hang some flowers from the limb, but he wasn't too keen on that idea!

Purslane

This one is called Purslane and it's a new favorite. It's in the same family as the moss roses that I posted yesterday. This pot is on my front steps and I like it so much that I bought a plant for the back deck and potted it yesterday. The new flowers are an orange color instead of red, so I'm looking forward to when they bloom out thick like these. The flowers actually close up once the sun is in the western sky, and open back up to the sun in the morning.

Old Garden Gloves

I read in a book that you could use old garden gloves to put plants in. I thought I'd try it this year since I had a few pairs with holes at the ends of the fingers. The pretty feminine ones don't fit me very well because of my long fingers, so I easily break through them each year. Anyway, I'm pretty pleased so far with how it turned out. And the flowers that I planted in them are called moss roses, or Portulaca, and grow well in dry, arid conditions, which is why I chose them. I still try to water them every day but so far the plants seem to have adapted very well to the old garden gloves. We'll see how they progress through the summer with lack of room for the roots.

Ice Flowers