weekend with family

Obviously being back to blogging doesn't mean a post every day ;)  but I did want to share a few photos of Brooklyn & Landon as they were our house guests for the weekend.  Our time together was a weekend of beautiful warm weather so we spent most of it outdoors.

Brooklyn arranged the fairy garden this year!  Grandma is still getting used to it but also felt it was great to change it up a little...

Landon enjoyed every minute outside playing with as he says "the pup dogs, Hersh Bar & Maya", riding on the ranger with anyone who will give him a ride, riding the little battery operated scooter & car and of course the "horsey" swing.

Since it was so nice out it was a perfect day for a project.  After falling a few times on my arched bridge when it was wet - I decided I wanted a safe flat bridge as design isn't as important as my bones.

Brooklyn and her parents helped Bapa Jeff build the bridge...

and Landon and her were the first to use it to feed the fish!

First Blossoms...

The first blossoms of spring are starting - today I noticed the first tulips in the front landscape.

I liked how these 3 were all in a straight line.

The forsythia have been blooming all week but looking pretty ragged from the past 3 days being very windy...

and I am hoping the next few days are better since the magnolia is almost ready to bloom.

We didn't go on our annual "finding spring" motorcycle trip this March so the early blossoms are much more exciting for me this year! Instead we took a February trip to the Florida Keys and I will show some of those photos in the coming days. Hope you enjoy.

I'm Back to Blogging!

After almost 20 months of silence on this blog I have decided I missed it! Two years ago I was overwhelmed with the daily "to-do's" and squeezing every spare minute I had into those 4 beautiful grand babies of mine so I let the blog go dormant. I also found I left my camera go dormant as well and that was not something I intended to do. Taking photos of the beauty around me is something I am striving to get back to but then the question was - what do I do with all these photos? The answer came last night as I sat taking way too many photos of the juncos in the late afternoon light...and it was start the blog back up :) I hope there are still a few followers out there...

This post is about the shy little gray bird called a Junco. They are one of my favorite birds because they never fail to remind me of my dad. He didn't know their real name but called them gray snowbirds and he predicted winter and spring's arrival with them. He always said when they arrived in the fall it was going to snow and winter would be here soon and it wasn't going to stay spring-like weather (no matter what the calendar says) until they finally left. Every day I would see them go about their feeding and getting water at the pond but never more than 10 or so at a time...that is until yesterday. It was 70 degrees and calm yesterday with a forecast of a south wind and 80 today and I literally had dozens in the garden at one time. Usually they took flight at the first sight of me but yesterday they were too busy feeding and drinking so I knew they must be leaving soon and went and grabbed my camera for some late afternoon shots (needed the right light to capture the light in their eyes). I'm glad I did because they seemed to have left overnight, not a one to be spotted today. I hope you enjoy these photos and the blog posts to come.

This last photo is of a hairy woodpecker who along with his family and smaller cousins, the downy woodpeckers, are pecking the death out of my serviceberry tree! Nothing seems to be deterring them but I will keep trying.

Cedar Waxwing takes a bath...

Catch up...

I have blogged in weeks, this blog has been overwhelmed with spam comments that somehow get through all the filters and it is so disheartening that other than coming to delete them I have ignored the whole "blog thing". I finally decided to disable comments and if you like what you see - feel free to let me know by checking a reaction box at the bottom of each post.

If you are a reader that doesn't live in MN you may not know about the crazy weather we had the whole month of June. We had rain, rain and more rain and lots of cloudy, but still very humid days. One afternoon we had crazy puff clouds that my husband described as marshmallow clouds.

A little over a week ago our ground finally became saturated to the point it could take no more water and this is what our farmland looked like as well as my niece's driveway.

Since moving to this home in 1981, this is the first time we had standing water on our lawns and flower beds...

and a pail I had forgotten on the patio table was filled to the brim with just a couple days worth of rain.

It is July 1st and I have not had to water the inground gardens at all this summer and my potted plants I've only watered 2-3 times. While the garden is growing and blooming so are the weeds. Due to health issues I have not been able to go out and weed so I am getting overwhelmed with how bad it looks. Once again I will focus on some "tight" shots so you do not see the thistle patch that used to be my backyard, but instead the beauty of the gorgeous blossoms. Today's focus is on some of my clematis.

2014 Garden Party #6...

The garden is still full of weeds since I spent the last week loving on my 4 grandchildren but there is much beauty amongst the dandelions and thistles! Anybody else having a terrible time with thistles? I don't know where they are coming from but I have many and other locals are saying the same thing. Now on to the beauty…my current favorite flower(s) are my coral peonies. They are just stunning…

aren't they gorgeous? I purchased root stock from Hidden Springs Flower Farm and planted them in the fall of 2012 and they finally are at peak. Last year, I purchased and planted a yellow variety but no blossoms this year.

My old fashioned magenta peonies and a pink/yellow variety are also blooming - the medium pinks and whites are only budding.

The irises peaked earlier in the week…

the pastels are my favorites, especially the peach and pink.

There is color from the Miss Kim lilacs and snowball bush as well as some my Bourbon clematis, painted daises, shasta daisies, yarrow and veronica.

Maybe by next Thursday's post I will have the weeding done for some shots of the whole garden sans thistles :) Please click HERE to head over to Fishtail Cottage and view the rest of the garden party participants.