Mr. Lizard is back!

Here he is.

Mr. Lizard is back. Evidently, the front yard is much nicer than the back yard now. Usually the lizards would stay in my backyard where the trees are (I've heard he's a tree lizard), but I guess they like the new layout of the front yard because here he was today. He was lounging on one of my rocks. I guess he thought it wasn't as hot today since we had sort 0f some rain today and clouds.

I hope I see him around more. I tried to get closer to take more pictures, but he didn't like that one bit and ran away.

(Click on the photo to get a better look at Mr. Lizard looking back - I saved the image as a pretty large one so you can get a better view of him.)

Here's the dirt.

So, in the last two days I've put 960 pounds of dirt in my back yard. This is per the structural engineer who checked out my house a couple of times (before and after the foundation was fixed).

There's something about working with dirt that is just great. I don't know what it is, but I really enjoy it.

I also have put down mulch. A lot of mulch. I think I like working with the mulch even more. There's something about the warm mulch in my bare hands that is just earthy and lovely.

Hurray for dirt and mulch!

Oh yeah, it's helping my foundation too!

April Showers bring April Flowers - Peony

Well, even though I lost almost half of my buds off my only flowering peony bush/plant, the ones that survived are blooming!

Because of the placement of my other two peonies, they won't be blooming anytime soon because they need to be moved ... at least one of them needs to be moved anyway. I have some work ahead of me.

I have lots of plants to move because my swail is going to be redone and there are still lots of plants in there. Also, there are plants in other places when the dirt out of the swail was moved.

Maybe I'll have some time this weekend to work on my yard!

Finally - climbing roses

Well, I've had this climbing rose bush for two or three years now. It grows very long, but I have not had roses and I'm not sure why. It's grown well, but that's it.

In February I decided that I was just going to prune it like crazy and made that would make a difference. Well, evidently it did. I have one full rose (that smells great!) and a bunch of buds. These pictures are not very good, but you get the idea.

These are Lady Banks roses, if you're wondering. I just so excited about my first roses on this bush! Hurray!!!

The Front Porch

Since the red tip fotinas are gone from the front porch area, I decided to do something to hide the fact that the area where the fotinas were looks terrible.

I do like how it turned out, although I think that I'll probably change stuff ... rearrange stuff a bit. But, here it is for now.

I think I need something to distract the look of that gas gage thing coming out of the side of my house. Who knows what, though. Maybe if I planted a crepe myrtle there or some such.

As I promised myself that I wouldn't buy any plants this year (unless I was given a gift card or some such), but the greatness of Weston Gardens I got a free plant today because they had a deal that you could take a four inch plant if you gave them a decorated egg. The choices were petunias, lantana, dianthus, or impatients. I almost took a petunia, but the dianthus were looking good and blooming already and since I wanted color, that's what I went with. I hope it lasts as long as the last dianthus I had (lasted 2 years!).

Here are more shots of the porch area. Notice Mr. Bunny has a new place to live for now.














So, on top of the rocks and pots and planting seeds and everything, I needed a way to remember what I planted where. I planted seeds last year and thought I had a way to remember what was what, but that didn't go very well. So, this year, since I'm trying not to buy new stuff for the garden, I decided to try to come up with some way of marking my pots so I know what seeds are what. I thought about chopsticks, but I don't think I have any and didn't want to go to Pei Wei to steal some. Then I remembered that I had bamboo skewers in my pantry.

Well, that half was solved, but then what do I do for the paper part to write on? I thought about post-it notes, but they would fade when they got watered. I looked around to see what I had and there it was! I had paint chips from the local Home Depot that I got when I was thinking about painting my kitchen. I knew they would hold up much better than just plain old paper and I really like how they turned out. I also liked that I reused and recycled some items for this and that I didn't have to buy anything and I have cool colors and tags for my planted seeds!

Pomegranates

My photos are blurry for this (it kept focusing on the leaves instead of on the flowers and fruit), but here are the hopeful pomegranate flowers and fruit in my backyard. The bush/tree is a pygmy, but it's getting pretty tall. It flowered earlier this year and all the blossoms fell off when it rained. This time they are here to stay and I can't wait to taste the fruit - YUM!

Rain Lily and other Blooms

Here's my rain lily - finally! This thing does not bloom often, but it has bloomed three times, that I know of, in my yard! This is one of my favorite blooms, although I didn't think it bloomed in the summer time. Also, it doesn't usually bloom when we haven't had rain - I've been watering, but in the past that hasn't done the trick. Anyway, if you click on the picture to make it super big you can see the little insects staring at it in amazement! ;)

Also, this other one is my Autumn Joy Sedum which is starting to bloom already. I'll try to take pictures of it when it turns to this gorgeous dark magenta color.

Spider Babies!

Okay, you can't see them, but they are in there. This is the sack of babies that appeared after Taxi the Spider Guard Mom went back to her normal size. I don't know where she is now, but I'm pretty sure this is hers.

It's hanging between the overhang of the sunroom and the west side window of Mom's bedroom. When I told her that a spider lived between her windows, she was not happy. I told her that she should be since they eat so many insects!

Here's a link to the kind of spider this is: http://urbanentomology.tamu.edu/spiders_scorpion/garden.cfm.

Argiope aurantia also known as the yellow spider or the writing spider.

More stuff from the yard

These first three are my lantanas in the front yard. I have three different varieties. The lavender one is always the first to come back, but the last to flower. The orange and red were the first to flower and then the pink finally came in. The lavender one actually has lived through the winter in the past. All are returning from last year (or longer - lavender). They are fuller than ever this year - I love them!








This is one of my daisies. They never die down, but only flower in the summer. The banana trees are left from last year also. I started with one and have four now. It's hard to see, but if you look in the middle of the big one it's about to have bananas. Now, these are not bananas that you can eat (they are pink fuzzy ones), but they are pretty! I need to get busy and dig one of these up for Tiffany! If you look behind the banana plants you can see this year's addition of purple fountain grass. I bought it for height and texture - not thinking my banana plants would be just as big as the grass! The bananas die after a freeze and come back when it warms up. I love 'em!






This is a picture of a couple of my jalepenos. They seem to be doing fine. I thought they were so cute that I took a picture of them. :)

This is my backyard protector - spiderguard. This is my attempt to get a better picture of him than a few days ago. I had one just like him/her last year down by my huge tomato plant (the tomato plant that grew huge and gave me no tomatoes :( ... what's up with that?). This year - son of the spiderguard has moved up by the house. He lives above the daisies and in the forsythia plant. I leave him be because he was so good to me last year - even fed him a hornworm that was trying to eat my gigantic tomato plant. Anyway, I like him and should name him. Any suggestions anyone?

Yesterday's Backyard Finds

Here are just a few things that I photographed in my backyard yesterday.

A bit late, but still pretty

This a picture of my first peony of the season (which was back in April or May?). Also, some roses from garden as well. The colors are a little messed up on them - not sure what went wrong, but here they are none the less.