A Trip Back in Time

I was looking back at pictures from Minnesota today and saw all these flowers. I had all kinds of flowers planted and loved the bright pops of color in the yard.

I haven't planted any flowers since moving to Georgia. Part of me doesn't want the extra work because I'm stretched too thin as it is and am struggling to find enough hours in my day. But then I see these pictures and I miss them. I'll have to mull.

Picture to left is at my mom and dad's house in 2009.

This picture to the right is a tree lily that I had in my backyard. this is also 2009.

This picture was taken in 2007. It's my Minnesota house with flowers on the front porch. This is the only year I did annuals because they're more work than perennials.

Garden View

Here are the latest shots of my garden. When I sit out on my deck, I can enjoy the riot of color and I love this.



Tree lilies full view



A closer view of a couple of tree lilies. The amount of blooms is amazing!



Close up of two flowers from two different tree lily plants.



The tiger lilies are in bloom, too. Some of the plants are taller than I am.



Close up of the tiger lilies.

Sharing My Pretties

I can't believe how beautiful my peonies are this year, especially since these plants just went in the ground last spring. I'm like a kid on Christmas morning and I get so excited whenever I go out and look at my flowers. I want to share some of the awesomeness with y'all.




This is what the coral peonies looked like on Friday afternoon.



And here's what they look like today.



Group shot and yes, that is a creamy yellow peony in with the coral.


Coral flower



Close up on the coral



Double coral



Coral with the creamy yellow



Close up on the creamy yellow



Coral and dark coral



Close up on the dark coral



And finally, this small white peony flower is on the plant next to the coral

Pretty darn awesome, isn't it? And I hope no one is still on dial up. There were a lot of pictures here, but I couldn't help myself.

Mother Nature's Surprise

Last year, I planted peonies. I'd had a tree peony before this, but no regular herbaceous peonies. They're beautiful flowers and my mom has gorgeous plants which have left me spoiled. We tried to split hers, but my dad and I both chickened out because we didn't know what we were doing. Instead, I went to a garden center and bought some. This year, I'm going to have some flowers.

This is the first one to bloom. It's a bit redder than it appears in the picture, but the flowers are absolutely gorgeous.



The whole plant



Fully open



Close up of that flower



A side shot of a different flower on the plant



Still opening


The flowers turned out even more beautiful than I was expecting. And you know what else is cool? How quickly they opened. I spent time in the yard yesterday, and while the blooms were big, they seemed days away from opening. Then I looked today and I was going OMG!

And this wasn't the only surprise I had. My tree peony had a bloom open, too, and again, I thought it wouldn't open for days more.



Tree peony

I can't wait until the other peonies bloom, although they seem a bit farther off. There are also a few peonies that won't have flowers at all this year. Maybe next, though. I can hope, right?

Spring Fever

After an awful November - January, February turned out to be a good weather month for Minnesota. And almost all the snow had melted by last Friday. I looked out at my tree ring and my garden and I got spring fever. I imagined my yard full of green grass and bright flowers.

I also thought, hmm, I could use one of those garden grabber rakes where you can lift stuff out of the garden without actually having to touch it. You see, my tree ring was filled with dead leaves from the tree and they have to come out.

Friday night, I happened to stay up late enough to get the QVC Today's Special Value (TSV) email and the Woot.com notice for Saturday. Woot had a no-crank hose storage unit and since I was so tired last year of seeing that hose lying alongside my house on the mulch, I thought this would be perfect. So I ordered one. But I absolutely was not, I repeat not going to buy the QVC TSV even if it was three tree peonies.

And then I woke up on Saturday morning and we'd had almost 3 inches of snow. ::cry:: If that wasn't enough, QVC sent me a reminder email about the garden show that was starting in minutes. I flipped over. I was only going to watch. I wasn't going to buy anything--even if I was so ready for spring that I could hardly stand it.

The first thing I saw was the TSV. Three beautiful tree peonies. The price was good--I could get three for just slightly over what I'd normally pay for one--and peonies are one of my favorite flowers. I totally covet my mom's herbaceous peonies, and if they hadn't been so impossibly huge, my dad and I would have divided them last fall. But I digress. So the price for the tree peonies was good, they're one of my favorite flowers, but I was still holding strong because I hate that they send you a little stick and it takes forever for it to grow.

They got me when they held up the three-year-old peonies they were sending. Four branches instead of one stick. I caved and ordered them. I don't know where I'm going to put them, but I now have white, pink, and purple peonies scheduled to be delivered in May. Sigh.

If I'd been smart, I would have turned the channel then. I knew I was in a garden-ready mood. Somehow, though, I made it through the rest of the flower show without buying any more plants. And then the equipment portion started. I was still doing good--until the garden grabber rake appeared. And here I'd just been thinking how much I could use one of those. I ordered that, too.

And a little later it was gardening gloves. I really didn't need them. I have a pair. But these fit tighter so that dirt doesn't fall down the wrists and I thought, wow, that really is annoying in my current pair. Wouldn't it be nice to have a set where that didn't happen? And they came in pink, my favorite color. I dithered and then finally I ordered those, too.

And then I did flip away because I clearly could not be trusted around garden tools or plants in my current mood and I'd already done enough damage. Spring, please hurry!

Flowers! Flowers! Flowers!

I managed to create a beautiful slide show on my iMac--complete with music--however, I couldn't figure out how to upload it to the blog. I wasn't even certain what format it was in, so I went with the tried and the true. Embedding from Webshots. :-) No music, but I know everyone who would like to will be able to watch. Now, without further ado, are the flowers currently in my garden.



Flowers Aug 2008

And yes, the lilies are still imprisoned, and yes, a couple of them look as if they want to escape. What can I say? It's for their own good. The flowers that weren't protected were eaten.

Super Sloth Saturday

I used to belong to a meditation group and one of the women who was in it used to do something she called Sloth Day every now and then. She said her kids hated it because she wouldn't cook or do anything else. All she'd do was sit and read. She wouldn't even take a shower. This woman didn't do it often, maybe a couple of times a year, but I always thought it sounded like a fabulous idea. This weekend, I adopted it myself--Saturday was Super Sloth Saturday.

I slept late, messed around on email and the computer, and at noon, I went back to bed for a three hour nap. It was totally fabulous! I did shower, however. (I can't stand not having a shower.) And I also did laundry and finished loading all my rock CDs onto the computer so that I can download them on the iPod, but that was the extent of my productivity. The rest of the day was spent playing games (I love hidden object computer games) and playing online.

What I should have done, of course, was answer the dozens of emails that I owe people. I'm feeling hugely overwhelmed by all of them, maybe that's why it's easier to do none of them. If you're one of the people I owe an email to, hang in there. I'll get to it. Some day. Sorry.

Today wasn't meant to be a second sloth day, but it kind of ended up that way. I had credits at one of those online royalty-free photo sites that expire tomorrow and I couldn't just let them disappear. The problem was that I don't need any pictures right now and I ended up spending most of the day going through the site, looking for pictures that I might be able to use at some point in the future. I never realized how much time that was going to suck away. Right up until 5pm, I thought it would only take a little while, not six hours. Now I'm feeling totally guilty for wasting the entire weekend. Saturday was a planned sloth day, Sunday most definitely wasn't.

To close out the post, I did go outside and check on my flowers yesterday. A new lily is in bloom. This is supposed to be yellow, but the pictures in the catalog were much darker than what actually grew in my garden. Neither shot is great because of the position of the flower relative to the chicken wire fencing it in, but I have another yellow lily coming in, and when that blooms, I should have some better shots.

Daffodil Picture

Here's the picture of my daffodil that I meant to post yesterday.



The elodie and white lilies are beginning to wane, but I'm hoping that the other lilies will move along and I'll have more flowers before this wave ends.

Two Dozen FREE eBooks!

Free eBooks!

Tor.com is giving away about two dozen free ebooks! There are two paranormal romances and the rest are SF/F, but it's a good opportunity to try new authors or to get copies of books you've already read in another format. I'm trying to figure out how to load them on my iPod because I don't want to carry my laptop with me to read them. :-) They're only available for a limited time, so if you're interested, I wouldn't wait too long to click over.

The Rest of the Blog

Now on to my usual stuff. I looked out of the window this afternoon and thought I saw flowers around my daffodils. I couldn't be sure, though, from the distance I was at and I decided to take my camera down just in case. And wonder of all wonders, my new daffodils, the ones I planted back in like April or May, have little, tiny flowers on them! Pictures another day. I ran out of time to download them off the camera and crop one up.

I spent this afternoon trying to get all my snail mail items ready to go in the mail. I think I succeeded, too! That means I can cross one item off my lengthy To Do List. It took forever to get it all together and I think I have like half a dozen separate things that need to go, but it's a huge relief to accomplish something. I haven't done much of that since I turned my book in. :-) I was so excited, I even started to tackle my email backup, but I only answered one note before my laziness kicked in again and decided to do my blog instead.

My next goal for the day after I finish here is to get to bed early. You'd think that would be an easy one, but the Cubs are playing in Arizona and the games don't start until 8:30 my time. Even staying up for just a few innings is too long when the alarm goes off at 4am for the Evil Day Job.

Groan!

I can't believe the weekend is over already! In a way, though, it'll almost be good to get back to the Evil Day Job (EDJ) because I worked like crazy this weekend. After sleeping so late that I couldn't make it to my RWA chapter meeting on time, I cleaned the entire house from top to bottom. I also began the process of putting my music onto iTunes for my iPod. I have way too many CDs and it's taking forever! I nearly have my country music collection uploaded, but the rock is the bigger of the two.

While I'm working, I also had my parents call me--four times! Does anyone else's parents call them like that? I've asked them to refrain unless it's important, but of course, to them it's always important. It was making me crazy.

But anyway, today, I worked even harder. It all started so innocently, too. I took my camera down to the garden to get pictures of my new lilies. I have some white ones--I can't remember their name--and wanted a few shots. On the way down, I grabbed my gardening gloves. Around the stone of the garden, the weeds had set in pretty thickly and I thought I'd rescue my tree lilies.

Here's three of my four elodie lilies:



And here are my unknown name white lilies:



After getting these shots, I pulled on my gloves and started pulling. And cursing. Those weeds were out of control and had developed root systems that were incredible. I pulled with all my strength and couldn't dislodge some of them. I don't own a hoe, so I toughed it out, and pulled the entire side with the tree lilies. It looked much better.

But it needed some mulch and I mentioned that to my dad this morning on the second phone call with my parents. He came over with a pitchfork and other tools and we worked pulling weeds on three sides of the garden before he decided he was tired. (Keep in mind, this man had his kidney removed in April and he's already doing things like this. Gah!) Next came putting in the edging to hold the mulch in, then layers of newspaper, followed by the mulch. Half the area around the outside the garden is mulched, but that leaves half left to go.

I'm sore from all the weed pulling and I managed to get a blister on the bottom of my toe which means walking is ever so much fun. I also managed to do a few loads of laundry and load half a gazillion more CDs onto iTunes.

So all the things I meant to do today--like get caught up on snail mail, email, and blog comments--all fell to the wayside. The damn thing is that I should do something similar around the tree ring and then there's the area around my evergreens that seriously need a weeding and a lot more mulch put down. I also could add some more mulch around the house because a lot of that got beat down over the last two winters. In other words, thank goodness I'm going back to the EDJ so I can rest up!

I think it's easier to be on deadline! I hope everyone else had a relaxing weekend.

And the Thunder Rolls

Today after lunch, the sky went dark as night--even the parking lot lights came on--and everyone at the Evil Day Job was forced to evacuate to the designated storm shelter. In our case, it's in the hallway in front of the hangars, so we're not talking basement or other hugely secure area. It was crowded and loud with hundreds of people, but we weren't down there long.

And when we got back to our floor, the sky looked worse than when we evacuated! So of course, we all stood right in front of the window to watch the storm. :-)

I checked out my damage when I got home. One tree had a couple of large branches down, but luckily it wasn't the tree in the back where my flowers are. Some of the flowers had been pushed sideways by the storm, so I had to do a little straightening, but by and large, everything came through all right. I even have my first elodie lily in bloom. I took pictures, of course. :-)




And here's a closeup.



The lily is so tall that I had to stand on the garden wall to get a shot of it, which is kind of why the shot is looking down.

Now for the big mystery. I've got a lily coming up where I didn't plant a lily. Now if it looked like a tiger lily, I'd just shrug, but it looks like the new lilies I planted. The problem is that it's coming up a quite a distance from where I put it originally. I looked, but there are no signs that it had been dug up and buried by an animal, but I can't figure out what did happen. Weird.

Reviewed by the Chicago Tribune!

Sometimes insomnia pays off.  :-)  I was looking around the web tonight and I found an absolutely great review of In Twilight's Shadow in the Chicago Tribune.  It was published in the June 14th issue, so now I have to hope my relatives who subscribe to the paper didn't throw it out yet.  This is one for the scrapbook.

Here's what the Tribune said:

Non-stop action, magic-laced suspense and some sizzling sexual chemistry fuel "In Twilight's Shadow," Patti O'Shea's latest inventive paranormal romance.

Read the Full Review.

This morning was the first day the sprinkler system ran on its own.  It was pretty slick and I'll confess that I'm a big enough geek, that I was pretty excited by the whole thing.  :-)

I also am coveting my mom's peonies.  They're beautiful right now and we didn't have a chance to split any out for me last year.  We're going to try again this year, but I bought two yellow plantings to put in the ground this fall.  My mom doesn't have yellow and this is a hybrid between the tree and the bush so it's supposed have strong stems.

I then stumbled across this gorgeous amaryllis, and even though I already have two pots filled with six amaryllis, I am coveting this new plant.  I even found it for a reasonable price in the wholesale catalog I received.  You know, that makes me wonder, have I ordered so many flowers that nurseries believe I'm a landscaper?  Yikes!

Flower Time

I have to share pictures of my tree peony--it finally bloomed! It looked awful when I covered it last fall and I didn't expect it to survive, so this single flower is a huge deal!

This is Tuesday:


And this is Wednesday:


It's a good thing I got pictures right away. It poured here this afternoon and evening, and from the window, the peony didn't look too good. :-(