Drake Elm seed pods 

"Marthas Vineyard" Salvaged from the dump! 

....another mans treasure!

Beep Beep Beep goes the Nextel... " Go ahead" I say to John in a why are you bothering me tone. "Look outside on the porch next to your chair" So I walk over to the window to see whats the matter (I asumed the dogs had gotten out and made a mess of my newly mulched patio garden)and there sits on the ground a huge mass of "Marthas Vineyard" roses. (no not a delivery, the kind I like, you know with roots on them)I recognized them right away becouse my husband had brought home 3 of the same rose a few months back with a bunch of garbage on his trailer they were barely recognizable as roses but I saw thorns poking threw the mound of ripped up sod and new he was hiding something in there! So I dig threw the mess on the trailer while my husband shakes his head and Isaac laughs then procedes to help me find the others. To make a long story short I now have 3 "Marthas Vineyard" roses outside my fence along the drive around an also newly planted and salvaged mind you, River birch tree. They are beautiful, they are blooming their little heads off and are really quite pretty bushes as well, nice foliage I mean. I could understand the first time I mean after all you could hardly tell it was a rose and they were way overgrown I just figured someone didnt know how to prune roses and gave up trying to have them right? But these, these were blooming and full of foliage , WHAT WERE THEY THINIKING!? Johnny had gotten them out of our trash pile where another landscaper thats a friend of his had put them, somebody really didnt want them and they were even well kept. I really dont understand but hey that makes 6 for me! They must sell them in threes in a catolog somewhere. All this from someone who would never go to a garage sale or heck, I dont even bother to look threw the sale racks at the store and shopping at Marshalls is to me a waste of time looking threw isles and isles and isles to find one thing or nothing, whatever. Anyway... Ill take a picture and post it so that maybe the other owners of "Marthas Vineyard" will not give up so easily.

How do you search these things anyway

This is ridiculous. I thought for some reason that I would be able to find blogs of people with similar intrests. Instead Im searching threw ridiculous amounts of rubbish that i dont give a crack about. For some reason I expected some sort of data base. How in the world would anyone find something to read in all this disorganized rubble!!!

The Fountain Addition

Yes I added a fountain,it was on sale! I think, or it was really cheap and it was not made of concreate and eight thousand pounds (Im sure thats why Johnny liked it, not becouse of the pineapple like he claims, but becouse it didnt kill his back to move it)and it was the style I had wanted and I didnt have to pay extra to have it sprayed with a color other than gray! Ok is that enough reasons yet, plus I got to totally redo the whole area! I added pavers around the edge of the bed and down the walkway and I got to use my new favorite Gardenias... the "Daisy" which is a dwarf single bloom and the variegated full size ones I recently discovered,and I used the new "Knockout" rose so I can tell people how mine do in my yard right it will help sell them right? ( they are supposed to bloom with only 6 hours of sunlight a day...we will see!) And I even got to add another plant I really like but have never planted (yes there is such a creature) Orange Jasmine, 15 of them for the backdrop and they are in bloom and smell fantastic!!! Oh and I added Agapanthus in the front mixed with variegated society garlic, best of all I got to incorporate my favorite new Hibiscus that a fellow garden fanatic friend of mine picked up in south Florida for me "Red Hot" Hibiscus, they are variegated but alot more red in the leaves than the "Snow Queen" varity. And untill now they have not had the perfect place and now I think they do, just enough light to bloom but still winter protection from the huge sweet gum tree over the patio. I havent mulched it yet but Johnny brought me a pallet of Red pinebark mulch that will blend with the pavers and we would have put that down tonight if it werent for that whole stupid time change thing! It gets dark at 5:30 tell me thats not rediculous! Im going to have to but spotlights just to see the #$@&*^ thing! So now all I want for that spot is some creeping fig to cover up the fence and it will be just perfect.I think. Maybe. (untill next time) The Madness continues...

Hunter

Hunter my first born and future polititian 
Always with something on his mind, NEVER withought something to say,a book permanently in his hand since before I knew he was actually reading them not just looking at pictures,a constant source of unending affection,and an inspiration to me every day of my life. Hunter, unlike his mother who generally could do without most people that cross my path, loves everone, he has never met a stranger and thinks the whole world wants to hear what he has to say. Truth be told most people stop to listen,His grandmother Bonnie sais he is what you call an "old Soul" Im not sure exactly what that means but it seems to fit him. He just can connect with people all sorts of people he has something to say to everyone and all ears to anyone who knows something he hasnt learned yet. He is my little angel. And Hunter , I know your reading this, becouse thats you, you love to read and you love pictures of yourself so I know youll read what I had to say about you today.....I LOVE YOU BIGGER!

SEE Aquatic Plants !!!

the oldest fish 7 Years!

Dont be fooled the fish tanks are actually organic gardening fertilizer in production!

My parrot fish plus some

My new found Favorite sport!

Tylers favarite pastime 

Noah  

Boo Sais Puew

Ok, so Im walking around at Lowes talking to my husband John and completely Ignoring Boo (thats Noah my son ,he is 18 months old and adorable by the way) and hes chatering on and on repeating the same thing over and over (which I would have recognized as a word had I been paying him any attention) all the while getting louder and louder as I got louder and louder over him and continued on with my conversation. I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Boo had gotten the attention of an elderly lady with all the racket so I stop in mid sentence as he continues to say Mommom mommom and smack my arm, I look down at him in the front of the bugy and say "What do you want Boo? He crinkles his nose, does a half turn to point to the huge Rosemary tree in the bugy and sais Mommom PEEUW! I couldnt help but laugh, he had to have been saying pew for 10 minutes complaining about my rosemary tree stinking! Funny thing is he thinks he had it bad smelling it in the store... Hes too young to remember but I was replacing the rosemary tree my husband recently sent to an early composting by spraying wasp spray all over it that I had made the kids have as a Christmas tree last year! It smelled like Rosemary in the house from Thanksgiving to Christmas day when John unburied the poor tree from the pile of presents and planted it in my herb garden for me.

Help Me Im Crazy

I cant stop, its an addiction, maybe. But if you gotta have one hey I can think of alot worse. Gardening is in my bones I cant get rid of it (who would want to anyway) its my sanity. When life is hard and your heart starts to harden, just remember theres always the garden (dont know who wrote it but I Like it so I use it) Its detox for my nerves! A brain cleanser! Trust me theres something theraputic about a shovel some dirt and endless possibilities. Why get help when being nuts is this much fun?
What am I talking about? Let me explain...you see I am what you call an impulsive gardener. I currently have in my possession, ready to plant... 3 bright yellow and beautiful by the way California bush daisys, four six packs of purple ruffled coleus that will die with the first frost,8 or so absolutely stunning purple mustards, 2 philadendron monsterra (nice specimens by the way) 3 orange cape hunneysuckle blooming thier heads off, 5 half dead Jacobinia (the dogs trampled becouse I left them on the back porch) a bucket full of variegated curcuma ginger tubers that I have leftover from dividing, 3 variegated angels trumpets that Im extremely fond of becouse I didnt know they existed, one dichonella that I dont know where to put becouse I also had no clue that it existed but it was love at first site, one humongous staghorn fern that is too large for me to lift and I am waiting on my husband to help me strap it to a tree so it will probably find a permanent home proped up against the fence (it was donated to my collection by the way)one confederate rose to replace the one I killed last year, and last but most certainly not least...3 variegated gardenia, not the little stupid ones that never live anywhere no matter how much you baby them and have barely any color to the foliage ("variegata",are you sure I think they've got their latin confused!) and has ting flowers but real live large leaf gardenia with beutiful yellow variegation and large fragrant flowers! I Know my heart had to hae stopped when I saw them or at least skipped a beat, I know I couldnt breath and I had to sit down for a minute, Just kidding ! Could life get any better than this tell me, really?
Now do you see what I mean by crazy. This is why I started this blog, so maybe I could rattle on endlessly about plants without people rolling their eyes and walking away shaking thier heads side to side! I can tell the world my new found loves yet to be discovered, my heartbreaks of slug eaten hostas and wasp infested rosemary trees brought to an untimely death by "Raid" and never have to speak a word, just send it out into nowhere land internet stuff. Maybe I can go to disneyworld and look at the rides not the absolutely fabulous landscape specimens! Maybe I can drive down the highway and not cause my husband to wreck when I smack him across the chest and scream"DID YOU SEE THAT CASSIA BLOOMING IT WAS HUGE &@##*@ WHERES MY CAMERA WHEN I NEED IT ANYWAY ?!!!"Maybe my husband can take me to eat at the Olive Garden wihtout me pinching back the topiaries while we wait or weeding the flower beds as we walk down the sidewalk. Maybe, .....NAh!