Rewind...

At the end of summer, one of my favorite flowers blooms. Hardy Hibiscus. I have one down in the backyard its huge. It's about 5 feet tall and gorgeous. I didn't water it for about 2 days and all the flowers fell off. I was absolutely devastated.
But, I have one planted in the front yard that is much smaller and has never bloomed, until now.
It was incredible. It looked like a fake in my front yard because the bloom was so huge, it didn't look like it went with the small plant. I mean, this bloom was the size of a dinner plate.
I take too many pictures of my plants than I would like to admit, but it does remind me of my Grandma Parmele so that's ok. But these were just to pretty to not share!

Home Grown Pickles...

Ok...there is no way I should be blogging right now.
I am busy getting ready for the weekend, but once again...I'm distracted.

So, we have a weird hillside in the back (front) of our house and I decided to grow my own pickles this year and see how it went. I also threw in some watermelon and corn too.
Well, I went out yesterday and low and behold, there were quite a few cukes already.
I made pickles 2 years ago, and ended up coming home with a 25 pound bag of cukes.
Oh my goodness...our house smelled of vinegar for the next month.
That was a job.
Well, I only had enough for 2 quarts. So I halved this recipe and went to making my pickles.
It takes a couple months to cure...so I don't know how they actually are...but they turned out pretty.
I can't do the water bath, but I'm very careful to sterilize, sterilize, sterilize...boil boil boil.
We are still eating the pickles from 2 years ago...check...I'm still hoarding them in my pantry.
I guess, I need to start sharing.

Ah....Oregon!

So I woke up this morning in anticipation of the beautiful weather that they have been talking about all week. I should have known better after last weekend, when they ("they" refers to the weather forecaster extraordinares of the world) kept showing images of sunshine and promises of 70 degree weather.
Well it's been the same all week again.
So...back to when I woke up...
I got up before "the boys" and looked out the window...it was 7am. It looked a little overcast but still ok, not out of the ordinary for 7am anyway.
I had been planning on having a planting day today, I'd been preparing for it and looking forward to it.
So I went outside and begun the work of planting my tomatoes and jalapenos. Before the first tomato was planted, I was pelted with rain. I managed to get everything planted except for my summer bulbs, but I was looking like a drowned rat from the process.
As I was cleaning off all my tools, Ryan came out with my camera and snapped some pictures of me. What he didn't realize is that I had moved the focal point from the middle to the side, and all of the pictures turned out blurry. Oops...oh well.