All that's missing are the gnomes.

With all the wet weather, the mushrooms are taking over my yard. I can't get over how many different kinds grow just in my side yard alone.

This one looks like mushroom condominiums.



I love this blue ornamental grass.

Ordinary leaf lettuce, but what a pretty shade of green.

I'm not sure what this is called, but it's in my perennial bed. The tiny yellow flowers are ready to pop at any minute.

The combination of colors on this one is just stunning. I just wish the flowers lasted longer.

A pretty white mushroom...

Can you see the tiny fairy who lives under this one?

Yummy color!

These remind me of creme brulee.

Looks like a pin cushion.


This concludes the fungii tour. I hope you enjoyed it!

How's that for gratitude?

I should have known by the look on her face. I mean, could she be any more underwhelmed with her new bed? The only thing keeping her there is the promise of a treat if she'll just sit still....Sit, Lizzy.....SIT, Lizzy....SIT LIZZY!! GOOD GIRL!! GOOD GIRL!!!!
And I think that's what did it. Something in her little brain equated "Good Girl!" with squat-and-pee. Maybe it's the potty training. All those little happy dances I do in the yard with her every time she's goes pee outside, accompanied by a chorus of "Good Girl, Lizzy"'s.
Whatever the reason, as soon as we got the shot of her sitting on her bed we all shouted "Good Girl, Lizzy!" and she promptly squatted and wizzed all over it. Nice. I don't see dog training in my future.


I think it's pretty clear what she thinks of the bed.

If you'd like to make a bed for your ungrateful little monster, I found the tutorial here. It's a fun little blog to visit. The whole project took less than an hour. I made a few modifications-I made it oval so I could use a down pillow for stuffing, instead of fiberfill. And for the bumpers on the sides, I cut a pillow in half lengthwise, making two long "tubes", and stuffed those in.

When I wasn't wasting my time sewing for the devil-in-a-puppy suit yesterday, I was outside planting rose bushes. This is my first stab at growing roses, and have really no idea what I'm doing, but I have a space to fill and wanted something that'd be substantial. I took out some raspberry bushes that we getting really scraggly and not producing very well, from along our deck.

I also put in a bed of four varieties of Iris, Paul's favorite flower. I hope they do well!

And now I sit here this morning with ice on my back, paying for all the digging I did yesterday. Holy man, I must be getting old.

Science Geeks, Springtime and Me at 40 :)

I'm so proud of my girls! They both love science so much, but especially Maggie. They entered projects in the science fair at their school last week, which means giving an oral presentation to a panel of judges. Maggie told me afterward she wasn't even nervous. This is HUGE for her. I'm SO proud. :) Her experiment was to compare two different homemade bubble recipes and find out which one produced longer lasting bubbles. Her hypothesis was the recipe that used more glycerin would make better bubbles, and she was right.

Sage's experiment compared two different brands of antibiotic ointment, and their germ-killing power. She used Neosporin, Equate brand and a "control" that had no ointment. Surprisingly, the control and the Equate looked like they had the same amount of germs, and the Neosporin had a lot fewer germs. So, spend the extra buck and buy the name brand!

Sage took the Grand Champion award in her age class for the school. Way to go, Sage!!
This week I cleaned up our shed and made a potting area for myself. I have always wanted one of those super-cool potting sheds like the "real" gardeners have. :) But this'll have to do. The whole thing started when I tried to fight my way through all the crap out there to find my potting soil from last year. One thing lead to another and before I knew it, I'd reorganized the whole mess and uncovered the old cabinets that we salvaged from my mom's house.
We're storing them there until we get our cabin built, where they'll be perfect in the kitchen. Until then, I'll be using them as a potting bench. After I took the picture, I scrounged around the garage and found the perfect sized scrap of plywood for a counter top.
The shelves are an upper cabinet turned so the doors are facing the back. It's perfect for my pots. Of course, since I took these pictures, I've used up all those pots planting some flower, herb and veggie seeds. 135 plants, to be exact. Fingers crossed they'll all sprout!

I thought I'd share a pic that Maggie took of me last month, around my 40th bday. I did it! I grew my hair out in time to turn 40. :) I sure wish I had photoshop so I could whiten my teeth and smooth out those forehead lines. lol Oh, well. Just keepin' it real.

I have some thrifty goodness to share tomorrow. :)

Whoa

Three new posts in less than 24 hours? Yikes. OK, after this, I promise I'll shut up for awhile.




I just came across this picture from May of one of my perennial beds that I had to share. You know how when you plant things, then wait and wait for them to grow, wondering the whole time if they're really growing, forgetting how tiny they started out? Kinda like your kids.




Then one day you turn around and they're big. Really big. And you're happy that they've grown, but kinda miss that intense care that they required to get to this point. Now, they don't need you so much. An occasional drink of water. Pull a weed here and there. But now they're so big and strong that there is hardly even room for the weeds.


Now I mostly just sit and enjoy them from a distance, knowing the cycle will start all over again next Spring.

Jr. Photographer

Maggie snuck Paul's camera outside yesterday and snapped up a bunch of cool pictures. She's such a natural at this. I know, I know. I've said that before. lol But I'm just so insanely jealous of her "eye". I mean, she doesn't even think about it, or stop to compose the shot. She just pushes the shutter and out pops these gorgeous photos. This windmill is in my yard, and I've photographed it a hundred times, trying to capture it in a cool way. She takes ONE picture, and look! Maybe I need to be 4 feet tall again to see things from her perspective? I love the way it's diffusing the sun.
I wish this one were a tiny bit closer, but look at the action she captured here. The ball is suspended in mid-air and Ginger is about to gobble it. If you click on the pictures, you can see them full-sized. (Pay no attention to the overgrown lawn. We mowed it last night!)

And this is my favorite tree in our yard. I love how perfectly symmetrical the crown is. I've never told her it's my favorite. She just was drawn to it in the same way I am.

She's 10, people! 10. I didn't crop any of these pictures. These are straight off the camera. Think what she could do with a really good camera and some different lenses. Whoa. And Photoshop? The possibilities are endless.

I'm really excited about my class Thursday! There are a couple spots left, if you're interested. Scroll down for a sneak peek and call The Scrap Shack to sign up. 376-4430

Have a great week!

My vegetables are growing! OK, I cheated a little and started some from plants from the nursery, but for the most part, these were all started from seed inside last month. I'm so excited to see them this far along in MAY! We might actually be able to harvest some in Aug.! The growing season is SO short here that things rarely mature before Sept. I planted celery, broccoli, peas, beans, shallots, white onions, peppers, yellow and green zucchini (my favorite!) and cauliflower. If I can keep the moose away, we should have some yummy veggies this summer. :)
:( I'm BUMMED about the lawn, though. I got too anxious earlier this spring, and raked it way too soon. I killed a bunch of the tender new growth from last fall. :( Remember how I raked it into neat rows? Well, now those rows left stripes across the yard. (By the way, that's not garbage in the background. It's an archery target that I'm hoping Paul will move to the back yard). So I've overseeded it and have been watering every day, trying to repair the damage. The areas that are green, though, are doing really well.

I found this picture on my camera from the llama farm, and just had to share. How stinkin' cute are these guys? No wonder Sage loves working there so much. Jubilee, Junebug and Princess. Just chillin', wondering who the chick with the camera is. heehee
Look at mama chickadee! I'm thinking I'd like a moosehair bed...it looks pretty cozy! Can you believe there are ten eggs under that tiny bird? She doesn't mind having her picture taken at all, either. Pretty cool. They only sit on the eggs 10-12 days before they hatch, so we should have babies any day now!
I planted a pot of pansies and viola yesterday. What I wanted to share, though, was the round rock in the picture. Isn't that crazy? My brother-in-law worked at a gravel pit for awhile and found this one day. He brought it home and gave it to my mom. Think how many mountains that thing must have had to roll down to end up that perfectly round.
I am adding another perennial bed along the edge of the yard. Yesterday I lined it with rocks from around our property and today I'm going to add some topsoil and llama manure to it so it's ready to plant. I want to do all native plants and wildflowers in it...iris, goats beard, fern, forget-me-not, arctic poppy. My plan is to collect them over the summer from camping trips and hikes.

OK, just wanted to share a few pictures. :) We're not doing much this weekend. The girls went camping with friends, Paul's working on a new project with a buddy, then taking up a load of materials for the cabin tomorrow. I'll be playing in the dirt. :) Have a great holiday weekend.

A busy Saturday...

We started to clear some trees from behind our house in preparation for a new patio, and I found this very cool chickadee nest. Here's Papa Chickadee feathering his nest. It's now full of moose hair, down and ultra-soft debris of all kinds. So for now, this stand of birches will have to stay put.
My husband put together this swing that was my mom's, and we decided that the oasis is the perfect spot for it. That's the bleeding heart in the center, and the poppies are to the right in the picture. There are also a few hostas, a bergenia and some goat's beard. This swing is pretty special to me because all my kids swung on it with Grandma while she sang them their favorite songs.
And FINALLY my front steps are being replaced. Halleluja! The steps were literally rotting under our feet, and have been for the past 4 or 5 years. It's just one of those items that got pushed to the bottom of the to-do list. I need to paint them up to match the rest of the porch now.

We had a productive day! Now I'm off for a bikeride with Sage. Let's hope I can keep up with her. :) Have a wonderful Mother's Day.

I love the light in this picture of Maggie. It was about 8pm, I think. I wish I could say I planned it this way, but of all the pictures I took, only one had this great lighting. On my long list of wishes, being a better photographer is up near the top.

My coaster book class at Scrap Shack is tomorrow night. If you're local, I think there's still room left and you can give Heather a call to sign up.

Sam's class is going on a field trip to a greenhouse and the park today...dangerous territory, the greenhouse. I'll have to leave my Visa at home. :) I bought a few Himalayan blue poppies and a bleeding heart yesterday to add to the oasis perennial bed. The soil there is so full of clay it is literally sticky. I'd appreciate any advice on how to lighten it up a little, without compromising the plants. Since I had to sell my first born to pay for the plants, I'd sure hate to lose them. ;)

One year later...

Looking back at this time last year, not only is my yard a lot nicer but my butt is a lot bigger, too. lol I can't even squeeze into those jeans anymore. :( That's my handsome husband, by the way, with a dumptruck he brought home after work one day. He brought 6 loads of topsoil, then spread it by hand. When I think of all the hours we've put into this yard....wow. I only wish I was as enthusiastic about my interior decorating. I have all kinds of ideas (for inside) but no motivation to follow through. ;)

Well, school's out today and it's rainy and dreary, so I'd better go find something to keep the kids busy. Have a great Monday. :)

Hamming it up for the camera...

Buster needs to work on his landing a little, but I think overall the act is coming along nicely.
The feathers make Ginger sneeze sometimes, though.
Photo credits to Maggie and Sage for the silly pet tricks. :)

I don't know about where you live, but here in Alaska, this is what Spring looks like. (Ignore the blur in the picture. I think the lens fogged up when I went outside.) This is about 1/4 of our lot. I now think we were crazy to plant all this grass! It doesn't look like much now, but over the next few weeks it should green up and look like a lawn. :) I have blisters on my blisters from raking so much over the past week. Ouch. Not sure exactly what we'll do with all these *&$! leaves. I don't mind the raking, it's dealing with them afterwards that stinks.

The perennial bed in the middle under the two trees has some hostas, berengia (sp?) and fern. Fingers crossed they'll come back up this year. I learned that just because a plant says perennial, that doesn't necessarily apply to Alaskan climate, and they are only good for one season. I'm going to put a hammock between the trees this summer.

The box in the corner is our veggie bed. I've got cucumber, zucchini and herb starts to transplant next month. I want to do tomatoes, too, but I'll start those from plants (I've never had good luck starting them from seed). I'll do sugar snap peas, carrots and radish from seeds, too, but I'll sow those directly in the bed, since they're faster growing.

The kids like to do annuals in pots, and it's always fun to see what they choose at the greenhouse. I'll post pictures next month of those. :)