Friday....

 They now have to come through the new gate opening. They can fit under the gate only as all the other parts of the backyard fence are now finished and their is no way in now.

The pink rose is liking the rains that we have received. The peony bushes are going to be open in full force in a couple of days. 

I worked in the backyard this morning clearing out a flower bed. I usually plant zinnias there and I should have stayed ahead of the water weeds. It is all tilled now with my potato fork. The soil was actually wet. I did have only two layers on today as it wasn't as cold as it was yesterday. We have warmed up to 70 degrees now but our highs the next few days aren't going to be to hot. 

It is hard to believe that school is out now. I guess they seasons kept  us busy and I did notice the track meets were being held and that is the end of the school season. All of sudden  Facebook is showing all of the graduations happening and the parties that are going on for now.

Friday is here and thanks for stopping by today.

Cold Cold.......

 Good morning to the sun. It was clear and then the clouds moved in for the rest of the day. I had to do battle with Google to get to my photos but I finally resolved their glitch. I hate it when something like that turns on you and won't let you sign in when they say you need to sign in.

My wife's new Knock Out rose has good blooms but it is adjusting to being put into the ground. It doesn't act like it liked the transfer. 

The front yard Knock Outs are just now blooming. It is good to see them as they all had a hard winter freeze back on its stems. 

I mowed the backyard this morning in the cold. I stopped for a rest and took this shot of the great blue spruce. You can see where I stopped mowing. Weather and illness has kept me from getting the job done. It was long and left a lot of mess of shredded grass. I may just mow it sooner than seven days to catch up on the mulching of the old grass. The spruce and maple tree have grown so much since we moved here in 2017. It is a gradual change but when I look back at older shots they are much larger. 

I bought it at Hobby Lobby for $2.79 because the bottom of it was gone. It must of come off or gotten broken and they put a clearance price on it. I have lots of scrap wood to create a bottom. I stained it for color and now I have waterproofed it for outside weather. I couldn't imagine how much time it would have taken for me to build it myself. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

Windy, Dry Day....

 The rains finally quit and I got to mow my yard. The temps were cold so I had to have layers on to be comfortable. I hit my neighbors front yard also as she has her house for sale. I want to keep it looking good when people start to come to view the house. I even mowed it in diagonal stripes to  make it look like a golf course trim.

My iris that I put in next to my mailbox post did a good job blooming its first year.  I was given some rhizomes from the neighbor and I was running out of places to plant them. There are people in my neighborhood that have good flower beds around their mailbox so I just stuck it in the ground at the last minute last fall. 

. All of my chive plantings are in bloom now. They will last for a few weeks before they start sheading the lavender petals. 

I have them on all four corners of the raised beds. I don't even know why. I do like some balance in plantings so that seemed to be the natural thing to do with them. I had to stake the sunflowers as the rains made the soil too wimpy to hold them.

The hybrid iris that I bought a few years ago are sure established now. I bought six of them and they are all my show stoppers in the garden.  We are cold today and tomorrow it will warm up just a little. I can finish mowing the back yard tomorrow and it will be dry. No more rain for awhile. Thanks for stopping by today.

A Wet Deck....

 It is such a good thing to have a wet deck. We are receiving record rainfall for the month of May and that is great. I was digging in the ground yesterday, planting marigolds, and there is no moisture in our ground other than the top two inches. It was dry and dusty as I made holes for my new starts. 

The backyard looks like a greener forest as the rains have helped trees too. We had continual rain for up to 18 hours. I mentioned in  yesterday's blog that I got caught in a torrential downpour. The north end of our big city got an inch more rain than we did. 

Under low light I got a poor photo of the hummer. I couldn't correct it with filters. I am glad there are some birds still around as they seem to disappear for a while after they first appeared. 

The heavy rains were hard on the flowers. I picked off some iris to bring in from off the ground. The peonies don't look great but the weight of the water maybe will dry up soon. Even my locust tree has its branches hanging down low with the weight of the moisture.  I did hear a company out there mowing someones yard. The owner must have been insistent to get it done but the grass is soaking wet. They will have a mess.

I guess I can mow tomorrow. I will have to use the grass catcher as I got way behind on my mowing schedule. I had the sinus, cold crud and just couldn't mow anything. I guess theset time to mow is when the grass has finally dried out enough.  I will just wait.  Thanks for stopping by.

Rain is a Good Thing.....

 This is the first of the red peonies to bloom. It won't take long for them to all be in bloom. I am hoping the rain gets done so they won't spoil the peonies.  I always mention that it is from the Grandmother's red peonies from Murray, Iowa. It was at an old property with a hundred plus years  in age house. Grandma Brooks has been gone since 1973 but my mom made sure I got starts from all of her red peonies. I moved this from my old place in Woodward and I am not sure if the house flippers left any peonies left alive. My sons saw the old place a few weeks ago and they said it looked pretty vacant of any plants. 

This old fashion peony I also moved from the old place. I think there are five plants in a row that I planted in this one garden area. I took a sample of them all that I had there. The previous owner here left me five peonies in the front yard that looked like they were commercially purchased and were not the old fashioned peony.

. A new hybrid iris of two years ago. It really is blooming out good this year. I don't think I saw it bloom last year. It is different from all my others as the lights and darks are switched on this one.  The falls also have a little textured colors. 

I went out between the rains this morning and planted my marigolds. My tomato plants looked good having been planted four or five days ago. They are getting good rains today. I did give them water as I watered in my marigolds.

It really is not very fancy but once the plants mature it looks good in front of the tomato plants. I have to clear my other flower bed and plant some glad bulbs. I am still suffering from the crud and I can't be outside for very long or I shut down. I have a yard mess out there that the grass needed to be mowed five or six days ago. The rains will keep me from getting out there for sure.  

I went for groceries this afternoon and got caught in a hard downpour. It was so heavy when I was ready to leave for the car. Many of us just stood inside the store and waited for it to lighten up.  When I ventured out, I covered my head with my spring jacket. I still got soaked to the bone. I threw my coat into the dryer as it had a good rinsing. I had to completely change my clothes. Some of the  boxes of groceries were too wet to put away and had to sit out. Gosh we sure needed the rain.  It rained some more while we were eating supper. 

Thanks for stopping by today.

A Thousand Cranes

 These need to be planted. Tomorrow I can do it between mowing my parts of the yard. The ground is ready even though it is very dry. I can get them in the ground and work on a watering schedule to keep them going.

It is a small iris that I bought. It reminds me of my one that I had in my cemetery collection. The one in my collection has lighter colors of yellow. This one I assume was cross bred to bring it up to brilliance. One company gave it the name of "Bumblebee".

This may be a repeat sharing but I liked the shot of this cemetery iris with another one in the background of different kind.

I had to wait for almost a year before the shop got in a new hood that fits my old aquarium. I had the old fashion fluorescent one and the fixture burned out. The new light of course is one of the new modern under the counter kinds of lighting. You can see I have a great amount of baby guppies in this tank. When I keep up the water in good quality the result is many guppy live births. 

The obsessive paper folder bought some new papers. I liked the new ones that had pictures of cranes on them. My older papers are still my favorites but the newer ones have brighter colors. My wife has teased me that I should fold a thousand of them and write a new story about paper cranes. I don't think I have ever read the one that is about a thousand paper folded cranes. 

Thanks for checking in today.

Saturday Stuff....

 This is the first peony bloom of the season. I like having the old fashion one that I brought from my older place. 

Two of the small cemetery iris stand next to a regular sized iris. The sun was shinning perfectly to highlight the two colored old beauty.

This is another of my cemetery collection. All of my iris like this came from the Murray, Iowa Cemetery. My parents and brother and sister are buried there. I have one set of grandparents there and many aunts and uncles from both sides of my family buried there, as well as a couple of my cousins. 

The new fence is dictating to me that I have to move the one iris. The workmen didn't trample it. It is being squeezed between the rose bush and fence. 

We really need rain badly. I need to water it with the garden hose but I can't get out into the wind. It causes me to start up with a cough from a virus from the past. My tomatoes are tough but I will try to get some water on them tomorrow. 

We ventured out to Hobby Lobby this morning and bought some items. It is fun to find things that enhance the creative spirit.  It is still so windy and we had to wear coats to stay warm. We shouldn't have to worry about wind chills at this time of the year. 

Thanks for checking in today.

Cloudy Scramble

 It is a cloudy morning that comes with very cold temperatures. There seems to be a haze or a light reflection in my view finder. There is not a view of the sun to be had for quite a while. 

Friday with a Strong Breeze

 The "knock out roses" are starting to bloom. Their colors are so great and they seem to have lots of buds.

The fince builders did tromp down a lot of the flowers in this area but the couldn't destroy this rose. It really fits closely to the fence and it looks like it was planned well.  It was nice to have gained four more inches on my property line because the property marker indicated it was so, the fence fit right in there. The neighbor's red rose on the opposite side of the fence looks good against my fence too.

The neighbor gave me this iris with no identity of color. I planted it next to the mailbox and it looks great this spring.

We are having strong winds today, up to 50 mph. It has a lot of my iris blown to the ground. This one had to be staked with a strong wood stake to get it standing again.  This is the third year for this iris and it really has multiplied having all of these blooms.

This yellow iris asso had to be staked. I didn't remember having this iris but I don't think that I saw it bloom last season as I was gone at the time staying at the hospital.

My wife gifted me some tomato cages. I had to read the directions many times to get them together. These still have one more section to add to the top of each but I thought I would wait until the plants got tall enough to need them.

All of my chives plants are blooming. I inherited tie former owner's chives when we moved here. He had dumped a pot of them on the garden area as a last minute effort before he moved tossing the pot. I up righted the batch and put them in the ground. I have seven plants scattered in different places from that start and like to have them as flowers. We also cut the stems and put them on our baked potatoes.

I survived a dental appointment this morning. I have felt beat up all day as it is tense when people are messing in one's mouth. No major procedures in the future and that is good. The heart doctor on Wednesday said  that I was doing so well that he didn't want to see me for two years. That was good news. Thanks for stopping by today.

Thursday....

 We had strong winds all day and various stems of blooms are on the ground. The rain can ruin them but I didn't think about the wind being so hard on them.

 The yellow iris was one that I bought a couple of years ago and this year it really putting out lots of blooms.

 

 I found this on the ground this morning. It is suppose to be a black iris but really it is a deep purple. 

 This is another one of my cemetery iris blooms. It really isn't fancy and great color but I like the history of them.

 Looking out yesterday I noticed that the pink rose had started blooming. It did survive all the fence workmen. I had some plants that didn't fare so well but it is expected as the fence building is serous work and one does noy have time to dodge flowers. 

 My hosta are doing well as we did get some light rains early in spring. I have some young starts that are doing well and I am looking forward to them maturing in to larger plants.  The wind is bad and while out planting tomato plants this morning I had to fight it. I did decided not to mow as by ten o'clock it was 80 degrees already. I bought tomatoes in three sets and it ended up being seven plants, three different varieties. I really didn't want to plant that many but I will share with someone out there. I still have one more bed to clear and prepare. I am off to a dental appointment tomorrow that will cut into my morning work. I have to start mowing my yards again and it is going to stay hot for quite some time. 

Thanks for stopping by today.