Amaryllis

This Amaryllis plant is from Aunt Annie who got it from Larry's mother. It's warm enough in Grand Bay so they can stay out all year. Larry has to put this in the basement during the winter.

Pork BBQ

Larry saw a television ad showing a pork roast, barbecue sauce and a can of root beer cooked in the slow cooker. He decided we should try it. So we did. It wasn't great. The sauce was too thin. So we drained the sauce off, cut up the pork, doused it with barbecue sauce and enjoyed it. I toasted the sesame seed bun in the toaster over, nuked the sauce and pork, added a dill pickle slice...and happily anticipated the future meals before we run out of the pork roast:)

Peonies

I have seven peonies now. They are several years old and covered with blooms. These are the first ones to open. Peonies have a nice scent and lush, full blooms. This is the only white one I have. All the rest are shades of pink.

Orange Irises

I'm not really wild about orange flowers, but these are nice!

Great Iris!

This is a striking bloom. It is one of my favorites. 

Rose Strip

The knock out roses and irises on this strip are blooming now. I also have crepe myrtle and day lilies, but they will bloom later.
I can't get the whole strip to show up in one picture.

Good Stuff

The knockout roses are blooming, the irises are opening, my hybrid tea roses have some blooms...and we've had fresh asparagus and fresh strawberries from our garden:)
We've changed to our warm-weather sheets and packed away the fuzzy sheets and housecoats. Last night we ran the air conditioner a little while.
It's spring and it's beautiful!

Staghorn Fern

I asked Larry to get this one out of the greenhouse yesterday. He did, but it wouldn't stand up so he put the shepherd's crook up right by the porch so it wouldn't get too much sun and would be easy to water. He wants this one to go to the fair this year. I've seen better ones, bigger ones, but not in private possession. Some of the plants are mine and some are Larry's. This one is his.

Woods

Today we rode through the woods on the gator. It's the first time we've gone out this season. It's great with the newly leafed-out trees. When the leaves are still new, the light shines through them giving everything a bright look, even in the shade.

Profusion of Blooms

I call this my carport garden. My plan was to have a cottage garden here. An azalea is in the background. Columbines, a clematis, and irises are currently blooming in this segment of it. I have other perennials that will bloom later. The monkey grass around the borders is coming back from being severely cut off.

Roadside Plants

Rhododendrons don't do well for us. We've planted several and they slowly, branch by branch, die. We saw this one beside the road today. We also saw daffodil greenery and day lilies. There was no sign of a house or yard. I guess the plants outlived the home that must have once been there.

Azalea

We've planted several azaleas here. This one is wonderful. We have one more that is doing well, but mostly the deer eat them.

Flowers or Birds?

A lot of times vehicles slow down as they go up the hill in front of our house. It isn't a steep hill so I didn't see why they didn't maintain speed. Larry said they slow down to look at the yard. Well, maybe. But today the vehicle stopped and they took a picture. I couldn't tell if they were trying to get a shot of flowers or the bird feeder with cardinals.

Another Day

I thought we might finish painting the porch today, but it's going to take at least one more day. It isn't reasonable to paint when it's spitting rain. But the plants I'm bringing out of the greenhouse are better off without sun and wind.  I have six more flower boxes to plant and place, but I need to finish painting those two sections of the porch railing. I transplanted some tomato seedlings into larger pots so maybe they'll grow as they harden off from the greenhouse. I brought two baskets out for the porch. I still have two more to wrestle down from their greenhouse spots.

Maybe

Maybe we'll finish painting the porch rails tomorrow. There is a 20% chance of rain, so we may be able to paint. I've moved several flats of angelwing begonias outside so they can start hardening off. I still need to bring the baskets out, too. There is a lot to do in the spring.

Painting

We decided that the porch was dry enough to start painting today. We are only painting the rails, not the floor. We did about a third of the front porch rails today and I was able to plant the flower boxes for that portion. I didn't realize it looked as bad as it did until some of it was painted.

This and That

I've started transplanting seedlings that have secondary leaves from seedling trays into larger pots which will go to protected areas on the carport. All I've done so far are cucumbers, but I think I'll do tomatoes next. The neighbor bought larger plants and put them out yesterday. Some of them have small tomatoes already on them. My tomato seedlings are about as tall as a finger.

Hummingbirds Are Back

Finally! The sky was clear, the wind was somewhere else, the temperature was pleasant, and the hummingbirds were looking for the feeders. I think it is finally spring.

Meredith?

Today one of the new volunteers told me about somebody she'd talked to about volunteering. She said the person was interested in volunteering but she didn't know her name. She gave me directions to find the person. I found the place and talked to the person. Her name is Lisa and she is interested in volunteering. She said the volunteer told her she needed to talk to Meredith. We don't have anybody named Meredith, but she decided the person must have meant me. I think she is probably going to follow through.

Busy Volunteer Week

Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are my usual days to volunteer. This week I also the quarterly meeting, a new volunteer to work with, and the volunteer appreciation tea. This will be a long week for me. Nothing is difficult about it, but driving in and actually being there makes it long. I'm glad to have a new volunteer.

Lazy Day

It's cold and rainy...again. I couldn't do anything outside so my activities were pretty restricted. Larry bought iron-on patches for a shirt. I tried ironing them on a couple of days ago. I don't know if other people do better with them, but I didn't do very well. So today I stitched around them to make sure they stay put. It wasn't easy to get the sewing machine inside the sleeves, but it worked finally.

Coloring Books

I bought an adult coloring book in spite of the advertisement saying it would make an heirloom treasure. Good grief. I guess I like it. The first one was abstract crystals. I colored a few of the pictures and decided I'd rather have flowers. But I had to buy what I could find and got fantasy animals. I like it better than the abstract crystals. I went to get a pencil sharpener for the colored pencils I was using and found twistable colored pencils by crayola. They are kind of like mechanical pencils so they don't need a sharpener.

Marina

It was too cold today for the fish to mill about trying to eat the bread we tossed them. It was a fun visit anyway.

Dogwood Trees and Wisteria

Dogwood trees are blooming now. The isolated trees in yards are covered with white blooms...well, unless they are pink dogwoods. The dogwood trees in the woods form drifts of white. Both are great. As we were driving to Pebble Isle Marina today, we saw wisteria blooms covering large areas of woods. They take over like kudzu, but are prettier and smell nicer.

Lots More Wednesdays

A friend invited another friend to join us for lunch after we volunteer today. She didn't know if she could because her car was in the shop and she had a loaner. They called and told her to come pick up her car so she called and said she couldn't join us today. Well, there are a lot more Wednesdays out there. Look forward to each one:)

Exercise Weather

The weather is pleasant enough that I can do some stuff outside. I guess it would be better exercise if I didn't use the gator, but I wouldn't get very much done. Putting my stuff in the gator and hauling it around instead of dragging it around lets me get more done. I don't know if it actually qualifies as exercise, but I'm not sitting at McDonald's eating French fries.

Beginning of the Month

There are things I do that are specific to the month. April will have me putting out flower boxes and baskets. I won't put them out until after the last frost date. But I want everything ready for that time. But the beginning of the month is when I plan to do certain household chores. I'm likely to do them at other times, too, but the early part of the month keeps me on some type of schedule so things don't get too bad. So today wasn't much fun, but I did get a lot done.

Song in my Head

A song in my heart is a good thing, but a song stuck in my head is really annoying...especially if I don't know all the words.