Delicate

Yep, the pictures are backwards, AGAIN.




So here we go, in reverse order, talking a walk through my yard on a lovely day in June. I started out just looking for a nice picture for the day, but there were so many pretty things I couldn't quite choose.


This is the mature peach tree up in the back corner of the yard. I think if we can take out the gazebo (don't ask), and give the tree a long overdue pruning, it might do better. As it is, it is nice to see some nice little fuzzy peaches starting to take form. I hate to wish the summer away, but I do enjoy the canning in the fall. It's a sickness, I know.


When Lane & I got married, I made him a few promises. First, if he would just keep working at Stouffers for one year while I finished up school, once I graduated he could go to school. He agreed to work there for ONE YEAR. I graduated on our first anniversary, less one day, and announced that the whole plan changed. Turns out I wasn't so fond of the teaching idea after all. So Lane is now in his eighteenth year of his one year committment. Second, I promised that we would never own a mini van. We currenly own our 3rd mini van. I think he dies a little inside each time he drives it. Third, I promised that I HATED canning so much as a kid, that we would just buy the dang canned peaches!! I was not about to go through all that canning nonsense. So, not only do I do the canning nonsense, I actually enjoy it, and even worse, I get him involved because I have to do it outside on the camp chef stove because we have one of those awful glass top stoves. So not only does he have to put up with me, he also has to HELP. I have learned that I am a liar, and he has learned to not listen to me when I make promises.

Once again, this is one of the rose bushes that I butchered a few months ago. It is doing so well, too well in fact, and is huge-er and bushier than ever.

I tell everyone not to let their herbs flower, and usually I follow my own advice, but the teeny tiney purple flowers on my creeping thyme are just too cute. I am getting over myself now, and will get out and trim it up tomorrow or Friday.

My dad built this little arbor for the grapes to crawl up. It looks so pretty when the grape leaves get big, and how they not only climb up the lattice on the sides, but also creep across the top. In late summer when the grapes are ready, they hang down from the top and look so pretty. Then the birds come and eat them before I can get them picked and so we have never enjoyed our grapes. Other than looking at the pretty leaves - and that's ok.

Delicate - Pleasing to the senses, especially in a subtle way.

June 3, 2009

Five years we have lived here. Five. This plant has been here long before that, and yet I have never really noticed it. I don't know why, maybe it hasn't bloomed so nicely before, maybe I don't notice things, maybe . . . I don't know. But it has really lovely flowers, tiny little flowers which are beautifully white against the green foliage. Plus it does an excellent job of covering up an extremely ugly chain link fence. This picture makes the flowers look way bigger than they actually are.

So that's a quick trip around the yard, plus a few family secrets and confessions thrown in just for fun. Remember to give Lane a pat on the back next time you see him, and reassure him that mini-vans aren't forever, he prefers the homemade applesauce and peaches over store-bought, and that Stouffers really is a good job. But mostly the mini van thing. It's the one that hurts the most.