:: Signs of Spring and participating in Sweet Shot Tuesday::

I  am participating in Sweet Shot Tuesday.  Let me know what you think of the roses in my garden.  If you have time, hop over to Darcy's and check out all the other Sweet Shots.  Just click the link below .


Our many rose bushes have been blooming lately.  We bought our house about a year and a half ago and I have no idea what any of the rose bushes are called.  What I can tell you is that they are incredibly vibrant in color and so very full.  Here are a couple of them from around the yard.

On the right side of our backyard the fig tree has started to show show some blooms.    Looks like there will be a bumper crop.....I hope.  Uforutnately we haven't been able to ever harvest enough to make some preseves.  We'll eat them raw or in a salad and that's about it.

I wish the blog had a smell feature.  The orange trees are blossoming as well and they smell delicious.  When the wind blows I love to take a big whiff of the orange blossoms.  It almost smells like honeysuckles, but sweeter if you can imagine that .

I also prettified the counter top in the laundry.  I needed a place to place the lint that we clean out from the dryer; a place for my tide pen; and all the "loot" I find in pockets and on the floor.  You wouldn't believe the small fortune I have been able to gather in just the laundry room alone.  I made the woolen bag out of canvas  that I had in my fabric stash and then used some stamps to put the saying on.  The silver cake holder is a yard sale find I found a couple of years ago.  The little terra cotta dish was a gift from many years ago and the mini mason jar had some kind of preserves in it at one time.  So, everything was all stuff I had already to prettify this little spot.  I also placed my Country Living Simple Wisdom book here too.  Great ideas on homekeeping, etc. in this little book.

On the sewing front I am still busy at the machine.  Life, laundry and family come first and sewing takes a backseat.  So, it is slow going.

A big thank you to everyone that commented and gave me suggestions and links about gluten free stuff.  You all are the best.

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::THE BACKYARD FARM::

We decided to plant a garden... again.  The first one we ever planted was when we lived in Illinois.  I can't tell you how excited I was to see and eat all the tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers we grew that year. 

Today I want to share with you our garden here in Louisiana.  We are learning about gardening in here.  For one thing, it's very HOT here in LA and there is lots of  watering that needs to be done.  We also learned that we need to plant the garden a little earlier than we did.  We started planting late May early June.  When really, we should of started probably in March or April.

 We decided to grow cucumbers, squash, zucchini , watermelon and cantalopes.  We have yielded some nice yellow crook neck squash and cucumbers.  We just started seeing a couple of tomatoes and we have a couple of big cantalopes out there.  By the way, cantalopes and watermelon take a lot of space to grow. I know we read that on the back of the seed packet, but seriously, I didn't think it would be like wildfire.   They are all over the place.  Haven't seen any zucchini yet.

Okay, enough of my blabbering on.  Here are some shots of the backyard farm.

see how big the tomato plant got?  We saw blooms, but no totmatoes.  This pic was taken a couple of weeks ago.

Here is a pic of the zuccinin (far right), then the squash (middle) and on the left of the pic is the cantalope.  To the right of this raised bed is a fig tree and a satsuma orange tree.

                          Doesn't that fig look delicious?  We still aren't sure what kind of fig tree it is.

Can you see them?  They are grapes.  Muscadine grapes to be exact.  They grow over the swing wooden porch swing area that the previous owner built.

Here are some Satsuma oranges.  We also have meyer lemons too, but I can't differentiate them in the pics.  They are both green now.  They won't harvest until fall sometime.  I will be sure to share more pics then.

Satsuma oranges.

Well, there is a gracious plenty to take care of out there.  I need to get off this computer and go pull some of those weeds you saw in the picture and water, water, water. 

I will leave you with the picture below.  The only good light in our kitchen area was on the window ledge.

Enjoy!

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Things that make me smile..

Daylilies

We are moving soon and I was upset that I might not get to see my hydrangea bushes bloom. Well, guess what? They both have bloomed and they are beautiful. I am so happy. They are the blueish ones. My absolute fave. I plan to take some cuttings tomorrow and put some in a vase for my window above my kitchen sink.

Did you know the ph level of the soil is what determines if they are blueish or pinkish? If the soil is acidic they are blue and if the soil is alkaline they are pink. I thought that was so fascinating. We didn't do a soil test when we planted these. We just planted them and I hoped for the best.

We have lived in this house for five years and this particular hydrangea below finally bloomed. It's and oak leaf hydrangea. When we first moved here we thought it was on it's way out, but we would prune it and water it when necessary and now look at it. It has such pretty white cone shaped flowers.

What is making you smile this week?

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