Flora

Finally, I've got pictures off my phone. However, for some strange reason when I open them on my desktop, they are oriented correctly, yet the blog chooses to display them incorrectly. Hmph! 

First up: I didn't know this color of azalea existed. I saw this in Oregon last weekend when we went to Taste of the Nation, which is like a fancy food show, except you buy a ticket to stuff your face and end child hunger. Yeah. I wonder what the restaurants do with the extra food no one eats? I hope they give it to a shelter or something - although who knows how much hungry people care about artisan salumi or a quintet of wild mushroom soups (which, oh my god, were so tasty).

We have Tang, Tang, Tang, and Tang. Yes, but do you have Tang?

Rotate your head and look at how cute we are. And how Daniel's not looking at the camera. I've got my "eatin' hair" - up and back, so as not to interfere with stuffing my face.

Here's some evidence of my gardening. This last weekend, I shoved 96 gallons of weeds into my yard waste container. How do I know it was 96 gallons? Because that's the size of my container, mm-hmm. I weeded several beds, dug them out, added horse-poop-compost from my friend Helen, and also a generous amount of organic fertilizer I made from the vegetable-Cascade-book guy.

In the picture below, you see some sad looking Calla lilies. I didn't know that's what they were (beyond having my suspicions about their leaf shape), till I found an old brittle plant tag stuffed behind an overgrown bunch of them.  I should take this time to mention that the amount of non-plant material I found in the yard was pretty stupendous. Taking honorable mentions are: the tip of a Sawz-All blade, a Lego, many feet of black plastic sheeting apparently used somehow as a controller or roots-don't-grow-past-here type of thing (this was pretty much everywhere I was digging), nails, bottle caps, and hundreds of rocks. There were so many rocks it was easier for me to start by shoveling off the rocks out of the beds and sacrificing that little bit of soil, before adding the compost back in and turning the beds over. Oh yeah, and Daniel and his friend found a vintage original Star Wars action figure in the ceiling of the rental unit as they drywalled it in. Score!

So, where was I... oh yes, Calla lilies. So there were several overgrown, overcrowded clumps behind the house. I left one clump, but the others I dug out, chopped up, and redistributed. Hopefully their turgor pressure will return!

Here's the side bed off the front of the house on our side. I planted a passionflower vine on the trellis, in the middle is a lilac bush, and on the right is a Nootka rose (a native, fragrant fuschia rose).

Here's a surprise from the former owners - a plum-colored iris that just started blooming against the back of the house. Gorgeous!

If you can tilt your head 90 degrees (ugh), you can see that the top of the Space Needle has been painted orange for it's 50th anniversary celebration of the World's Fair. Fun fact: the last time my dad was in Seattle, it was for the 1962 World's Fair. He was in college at the time.
 

Well, I need to figure out what the heck is wrong with these pictures. But first, I want to get back out in the sunshine and garden before the clouds return!