Each spring, our flowering trees are filled with activity. If you walk beneath them, you will hear a strong and steady buzz. And if you have a moment to stand and watch, you can slowly see how the trees are coming to life with hundreds and hundreds of pairs of wings.
Some day I hope to have bees of my own. Until then, I'll just enjoy their buzzing in my trees.
There is a bee in each of these pictures - can you find it?
. . . to the next.
One evening last week the kids were making bouquets with the last lingering blooms. The next morning, they were eating snow and making a snowman!
Nebraska weather is funny like that, don'tcha think?
One pretty day, a few weeks ago, I was noticing all the different greens in my yard. The wind wasn't at hurricane gale force and it wasn't 93 hot degrees. The hail had not yet ravaged my tomatoes and my hostas.
It was just pretty.
One day the weather is warm and we begin planting our garden. And the next thing I know it is June, and the richness of spring is so very abundant around us. I wonder how an entire month has slipped away. But in looking through my photos, I realize that there was no slipping away, just so much, right now . . .
:: drinking in the beauty of the flowers and my small people who love to touch, be in among and pick their amazing blossoms for our dinner table . . .
:: enjoying the warm days and cool nights, suitable for minimal wardrobes and dipping toes in the sprinkles of the soaker hoses . . .
:: loving all the bouquets that are brought to our table . . .
:: soaking in all the deliciousness that a dirt pile & a mud puddle can bring . . .
:: marveling at the writing, drawing and coloring sessions that have re-established themselves into a morning routine . . .
:: smiling over the dancing in my living room . . .
:: always taken by surprise when the Indian maiden suddently appears in my kitchen, complete with face paint . . .
:: thankful for the presence of spring.
rose . . .
white . . .
light blue . . .
pink . . .
brown . . .
magenta . . .
robin's egg blue . . .
orange . . .
spring green . . .
lilac . . .
Not your normal ROY G. BIV yet so beautiful just the same.
Every vase & glass jar in our house has been filled with the sweet presence of lilacs. Peonies or lilacs . . . I can't decide for certain which are my favorite.
Maybe both. A girl can have two favorites, right?
We have folks putting new siding on our house today . . . thankfully it's on the side where there are only rock beds, because I get annoyed when people work on our house and smash my beds. When we moved here, eight years ago, the flower beds were, well, not even flower beds. Everything was covered in white rock, pieces of wood and assorted wagon parts. The couple living here was (is) quite elderly and she could no longer keep up with the flowers. Each year I've slowly worked on the beds, pulling out grass, taking out rocks, moving dirt and adding perennials. This year, August and I have been working quite a bit on what we refer to as our fairy garden bed.
I thought maybe for a little fun, I'd take you on a tour of my flower beds. They are nothing fantastic - I don't profess to be a landscaper by any means, but thinking about now versus what they looked like in 2002 . . . they make me smile.
This is our fairy bed. If you look closely, you'll see a little green, singing fairy.
This year, August and I added a rock wall. We needed to move the rocks away from the house to paint the foundation (groan - I feel like I'll never get that project done!) so we used those rocks to make a wall along the bed.
August figured the fairies must live right under the gigantic hosta, so we made a fence with a gate for them.
And we're working on a path that leads right up to their home . . .
Right now, this bed is our favorite, but we have others!
Most of the "ornamentals" in our beds we rescued from basements, dumps and thrift stores. I wait to buy flowers when they go on sale in July for next to nothing. I'm sort of a cheap gardener! Hope you've enjoyed the tour of some of our beds.
Happy dirt-digging.
As I write this, I'm sitting in the living room, peeking into the dining room at my four beautiful bouquets of peonies, ferns and white lilacs. Their perfume is absolutely intoxicating and fills the entire main floor. I picked almost all of the peonies thinking that it may storm again tonight and then they would be ruined - besides, only the people driving by get to see them, not me! Cut flowers are so peaceful and one of my favorite things. No matter where I've lived, I've always had beautiful flowers to gather. I love to make up a vase full to put beside my bed. What's better 'pillow mist' than peonies or lilacs? Yum.
On another note, just because I want to whine about it, the kids and I drove all the way to a favorite fabric store today to visit the fabric store . . . to touch the material, to 'read' the fabric displays, to dream of becoming a real quilt maker and planning all the difference projects I'd make, to find more material for August's birthday jammies and Ruby's vintage bubble dress, and to buy fabric just because I like it . . . but it was closed. (So sad.)
So we went to the park instead and we three rode the carousel and August rode the train. And then he had his very first ice cream cone and had to strip because every square inch of fabric was covered in ice cream. So he was running about the park in nothing but his work boots and his tightie-whities. :-) (Sorry, I have no picture of that to share!)
Happy Saturday!
