June 3, 2013 Pictures

June 3, 2013 Pictures 

 This morning when I woke up and came downstairs, this beautiful new butterfly was already out of it's chrysalis and on the blinds!  What a lovely start to my day!

I've tried for YEARS to grow POPPIES, and for some reason (I think I try too hard) they always die after the first year and don't come back (expect for the small orange ones that I don't really want or like as well as these red "Oriental Poppy" kind).  BUT, last year I tried again and bought 2 Oriental Poppy plants and decided to try again.   Our dog, Sophie dug up one and really tore it up.  I replanted it and placed a "cage" around both plants and hoped for the best.

This spring both plants came back!!!!  The one Sophie had dug up was clearly still damaged, but it limped along.  Well, for the past 2 weeks it has been BLOOMING!!!!  Oh, words simply can NOT express the real joy in my heart from these 2 plants blooming!!!!  Really, Really, Really!  Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Oh boy!  Yes, I am THAT excited!!!!!!  I could go on and on!

Side tidbit--did you know these were the flowers that were the symbol for WWI?

Here is the embroidery piece Dd just finished, she is still thinking what she is going to do to finish it---maybe a pillow?  She designed the flowers by drawing them on the fabric all by herself--she just thought of the whole project.  Mrs. L & Rachel gave her the thread for a birthday gift and that was inspiration enough!!!

 I don't know if I ever showed you all these 2 bird feeders that Dd and Dh made me for Christmas---the birds really love them when they are full of seed.  When it rains, doves like to go for cover under the eaves!

 At the IAHE homeschool convention, we bought this old microscope that was built in 1962  for Dd to use.  She told me she really wants to look at water samples from various water ponds, creeks...from around our area to compare--- I thought that would be a really cool experiment and look forward to seeing the results myself.

A few shots of our garden--we have LOTS of things to plant---waiting for it to stop raining long enough (and the ground to be un-muddy enough) for us to plant them.  But, this is what we have so far.  I expect by Tuesday night we will have another 15-20 plants in....hoping at least!

 Onions are about to bloom

 2 different kinds of peas--Dh was going to make some contraption for them to grow up; but I don't think that is going to happen...

You can't even tell we have just cut out a lot of lettuce and collard greens from this batch growing!

Just look at this juicy, red strawberry!!  We better get it before the rabbits see it!

This is the strawberry patch from last year.  We covered it with straw over the winter, and then when we uncovered it this spring it had really grown and spread out!  You can just make out the new peppers on the left.  I planted 11 new peppers on the left--with about 8 more peppers to go in asap.

I had to be sure to get the new 5 tomato plants up close, they grow so big, so fast--it is fun to compare how tiny they are in the beginning.

The big, brown box is our lovely compost bin!  Our soil has improved so much!  It was on the left side of the garden.  We moved it to the right side last week--boy was that a hard thing to move!!!  We move our bin each year, just like we move where we grow our tomatoes and other veggies each year.  You can see the new 5 tomato plant to the right of the bin.

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