Peony – Seasons First Bloom

The Peony is one of my most favorite flowers.  I always pray for sunshine when I see the first blooms start to open.  This is one of the first blooms I cut on Sunday.  My house smells incredible.  I snapped a few pictures.  Please enjoy!

What’s your favorite flower?  Are they in bloom yet?

-renee

Flowers Everywhere

I mentioned yesterday that last week was my birthday.  My son is still in Florida attending college so he wasn’t able to be here.  That said, it was a wonderful surprise to find a dozen roses on our doorstep when we returned from our Portland shopping trip.  I love all the colors and there just so darn pretty.

 

Having these in the house got be excited about the flowers that will soon be blooming in my yard.  I went back in the archives to look at some pictures and thought I would share them with you.

 

 

 

These are some of my favorites. Peonies, dahlias, and gladiolas are 3 of my favorites.  I can’t wait for them to start showing there color.

What are you planting in your garden this year?

Desktop Backgrounds – Homemade

I am constantly changing my desktop background.  Today I wanted to share some of my favorites from pictures I’ve take and pictures that my cousin Laura has taken.  Feel free to make them your desktop background as well.

Bohemian Waxwings

Sunrise

Peonies

Peony in bloom

Swallowtail Butterfly

Lillies

Sage

 

Enjoy!

Lattenene

Peonies, My Favorite Flower Pots + A Little Yard

What a nice sunny weekend we had.  It was so nice to just be able to say “I’m too warm, need to put some shorts on”….YES!  We (hubby and me) spent a bunch of hours in the yard and honestly a lot of the time was just for the basics; weeding, edging, mowing, planting flowers in pots and barking the yard.  It’s been so wet we’ve just not had enough time to get it all done.  I love flowers but I’ve learned to pull back because I normally go gang busters, then we are gone and then the plants die.   So this year, moderation. Sharing with you my favorite pots…

Front yard under the maple tree.  Hooray for the red, white and blue.  I don’t plant any flowers in the ground here because the ground is hard and the base roots of the tree have taken over and in some areas surfaced.

This pot of herbs is directly outside my back door.  We love on the golf course, thus the welcome sign.

The sage is absolutely beautiful.  I’m a bad picture taker but hopefully you can pick out the blurry bumble bees.  They love the sage!

 

 

I think the Peonies are just about ready to pop and I’m getting excited.  In fact, I have two Peony plants on the west side of my house and they are bloooooomin!

 

 

The bushes on the east side of the house are almost there and when they bloom it will be a spectacular site.

 

This is my fav pic.    I even made this my desktop screen!

The hosta plants are getting big too.  See what I mean? And I love how the lilies and hostas are becoming such good friends. 🙂

We live next to a gully and when we moved in the alders were almost next to our house.  Over the past couple years my hubby has slowly cut them back and started mowing the side hill.  I just really like the open look and so does Divot.

Happy Tuesday!

Lattenene

Making A Birdbath

As you may have seen on some of my previous posts I’m cuckoo crazy for spray paint lately.  As I walk around my house I can’t help but look at objects in a different light.  Ooh, that’s old, I could spray paint that.  Ahhh, I was going to get rid of that, but what if I spray paint it?  Are you getting the picture?  The two males in my house just roll their eyes.  I’m one of these persons that speed ahead sometimes before reading all the directions.  I call it OTJST, on the job spray training.  I guarantee I don’t always know if I should or shouldn’t use primer but I’m learning. Part of that learning is checking out other blogs.  Today I was looking at one in particular and and I want to give a props shout out to Kate at Centsational Girl.  Kate is, in my opinion, the best of the best, the spray paint queen, the subject matter expert when it come to the “art of spray”.  Check out her FAQs here and also take some time to check out her Project Gallery.  You will be amazed!

Now, on with the birdbath.  Several posts ago I asked if anyone could guess what this was going to be?

It turned into this…

Here’s how I made it.  First, let it be known, I am the keeper of pots and this old dirty one was sitting on the side of my house.  I used Simple Green to clean, primed it, then painted it a very bright yellow (Rust Oleum Primer and Sun Yellow). I also took a base and a bowl and primed and painted them as well.

I had to sleep on that yellow for a couple of days and decided it was too bright for my yard.  I went to my favorite Rust Oleum color, Apple Green.  I sprayed a very light, almost a mist of the apple green over the yellow.  I also used my glove to make some swirly designs on the bottom pot.  That was initially by accident and then I liked the look. I finished it off with some Rust Oleum Gloss spray to protect it.

Easy to assemble.  Large pot is upside down with the bowl placed on top.  I put some rocks in the bowl to weight it down.   Then I placed the base on top of the bowl.  Add a rock for the birds to perch on and water.  Voila!

 

I love how it just nestles in with the Peony bushes.

 

I’ve linked this post to….

 

Happy splashing birdies! Lattenene

Peony Pics + A Few of the Pooch + Guess What It Will Be

Early summer in the Northwest is always a guessing game when it comes to blooming flowers.  The buds on my Peony bushes are ready to pop.  All it took was a few days of weekend sun.  On Monday night I knew the wind and some raindrops were coming and decided to stake them up.  Now if the peonies could talk they would probably tell me I am holding them hostage, that they’re not free to bend with the wind.  What they need to understand is they are responsible for holding up and supporting some soon-to-be beautiful flowers!

 

 

Puppy Divot loves to be out in the nice weather.  He runs and watches and plays and then he comes into the house, plops on his pillow and goes to sleep.

 

Also, I thought I would share that I’m working on a new project which started this evening.  It involves Rust Oleum spray paint and pots, but it does not involve flowers.  Can you guess what I’m making? Hopefully by Sunday or Monday I’ll be able to share.

Here’s one piece of the project;  primed, painted and almost ready to go.

Have fun guessing.  We’ll talk soon.

Lattenene