October in my backyard

Between our few "cold" spells, we get summer temperatures, so...

                                                    Summer flowers keep blooming.

Flowering shrubs don't know when to quit.

Our lemons and oranges will be ripening soon and showing their true fall colors of yellow and orange.

In the meantime, my fall garden is struggling not to wilt during the hot weather this week ("cold" front coming the end of this week). I've solved the problem of our pesky resident squirrel digging holes in the garden to hide all the pecans he strips from our tree.  Hanging inside the panty hose in my garden is a bar of Irish Spring deodorant soap. Squirrels don't like the smell.

                                       Meanwhile, Grandpa has fun painting the house.

But not as much fun as he had 20 years ago, when he painted our first home. (He is in front of the 2nd story window that Mark fell out of when he was 4 years old, and miraculously survived with just a tiny compression fracture of one of his verebrae in his back. He was supposed to be taking a nap. Instead he unlocked the window, opened it, and sat on the ledge to watch a swimming pool being built next door. He leaned against the screen, and out he flew.)

February in my backyard

The big freeze in January left its mark in my yard.  My "taller than an avatar" avocado tree (15 ft.) that I grew from a seed is looking bad. My beautiful blue flowered plumbago bushes look dead too. Hope they both come back to life in the spring.

But all isn't doom and gloom. Many plants here in south Texas thrive in the cold and were unaffected the unusually hard freeze we had. My holly bushes produced their biggest crop of berries. My fall veggie garden, which was totally unprotected during the freeze, is still producing. That's south Texas for you.

Ordinary Miracles

Whenever I look at these flowers in my garden, I am reminded of life's ordinary, everyday miracles. A quote one of my high school English teachers constantly drilled into us (from a famous author) also comes to mind, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever". It lifts my spirit and I feel God's love when I look for these miracles every day. As the song you are now hearing (if you have audio on your computer) says, "life is like a gift wrapped up for you, everyday".

Here is why I love playing in the dirt!

The results! 7 weeks after planting the garden, besides the lettuce we've been eating for a few weeks, we now have lots of green beans -- here are some Jessica cooked up for mother's day dinner -- they were sooo good. In the past, I've had to use Miracle Grow to get good results -- got these best ever results through only using a combo of rose dirt, Black Cow composted manure (at Lowe's) and bone meal. ....and (drum roll) the very first tomatoes ripening on the vine! I recently picked up this little trick -- to place cheese cloth over tomatoes soon as they turn orange to prevent birds from pecking at them. So far it's working

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I love playing in the dirt

Look what's happened in the 3 weeks since I planted my veggie garden! I don't think I've ever had results like this so quickly (there are already baby tomotoes, and we've eaten two salads with the lettuce I've thinned out). I give credit to the rose soil we tilled in, bone meal, and Black Kow Composted Cow Manure.

two new surprises!

Two new baby doves! Mama was away finding food for them. Notice the unhatched egg in the nest.

Mama is back. The babies sure needed her last night when the temperatures plunged down into the 40's, very unusual for mid April in Texas. Just went outside to check on the babies -- they are huddled close to each other while Mama is away finding breakfast. The babies need names, so I'm asking the grandkids to think of names for these little ones, and we will have a contest, with Uncle TaTa picking the winners. I'll post the winning names later in the week.

the bird family is back!

This is the 3rd or 4th year that one of my hanging flower pots has been a nesting spot for a dove family. This is the 2nd brood for mama bird this spring. I'll post a photo of the little ones when they arrive.