The Flower Garden Grows

The Blushing Bride took these photos for the Power Point portion of her college course. These are pictures of her April Flowers. They are either in her flower beds or came from her flower beds.

Roses from her rose bushes.

The Bluebird house stands empty at the moment. Mom, Dad and family have suddenly left the area. According to those in the know Bluebirds take their fledglings elsewhere to teach them to fly. We hope all is well with them and await the next nesting go around.


Jasmine

A Rose

Cactus Flowers

Pansies

Another Rose

And still another Rose

Geraniums

Turk's Cap

Gazania

Petunias

Plumbago

Clematis

Verbena

Zinnias

More Verbena

Gazanias

A picture of the "guard cat" who makes all things possible on the property. While he may seem laid back, he is keeping a wary eye on the property while laid out on the backyard swing in the shade.

April Flowers

Here are some of the Blushing Brides Spring flowers. I missed the Azaleas but the bushes are quite small and did not grow a lot over their first year. Some of them were replanted last month to an area with more water and a little less direct sun. The direct sun on the South side of the house lasts all day long and the heat is blazing during the middle of the summer.

A Geranium


A Zinnia


A Pink Verbena and a Petunia on the right side of the picture.


A Red Verbena


A Clematis coming back from the root. This winters freezes were hard on this rascal.

Nana's harvest from the wonders of Craig's List. A wicker headboard which she has freshly painted a very light yellow.

The headboard however is a little small for the bed Nana wants to use it with. No problem, cutout a slightly larger shape that follows the form of the wicker headboard.

The next step would be to fill in any gaps or gouges. Then slap on a coating of primer.

Here is the freshly painted wicker headboard ready for the backing form to be added.

And here is the temporarily finished product installed at the head of the bed. I say temporarily because who knows what it will look like next week.

Nana's Screen Porch

The full on view from the backyard.

The right side view showing the door and Nana's new rain barrel to catch water for her orchids.

The left side view with cat who now has free access on and off the porch through his special cat door.

An inside the porch view looking in.

An inside view looking towards the screen room door.

Another inside view looking towards the left side of the porch.

A view of the some of backyard from the screen porch.

Nesting Bluebird In Nana's Handmade Birdhouse

AAAHHHH Retirement

The Old Salt says there is not much you can add to that sentiment.

Spring Is Officially Here

Spring is now officially here. The Blushing Bride has broke out The Yellow Wagon. The gardener is at it again. See that gallon milk jug she's holding? What an evil brew that contains, today it's most likely fish emulsion but sometimes its home-made Cow-poo tea. Smelly stuff it is.


A cursory check of The Yellow Wagon would reveal almost every gardening implement known to man, including an umbrella to ward off the sun.


Here is the gardener at work. She loves just throwing that Florida dirt around.


This is really a shot of Crash, our cat in the large wicker chair on the porch. All day he has been prowling in the garden area with the gardener. But now it's starting to get warm so he needs his nap.


Here is a close-up. He is just out of the sun, but it really starting to get hot so I don't think he will be there long. Check out the pumpkin, it has been sitting on the front porch since about a week before Halloween. We also had a smaller one on the back porch which we got rid of a few weeks ago. Don't believe I ever had one last so long, not even when I lived up North.

An Interesting Stop On The Beach

We were traveling across Florida on US 98 from Panama City towards home. Pit stops in this part of the country are few and far between, when what to our surprise should appear but this little beach. We pulled in and found to our surprise, a historical sign proclaiming this beach was a WWII D-Day Training Site; plus they had a relatively clean restroom


Now my Florida grown blushing bride never misses a chance to trod a Florida beach. Here she is with a mild breeze blowing through her hair. Don't ask, I'm keeping her.


Some of the beach off to the East from the centrally located bathroom/changing area.


I am guessing that what you see out there is part of Dog Island which according to the sign was also involved in the WWII D-Day training. Looking at a picture on Google maps, Dog Island would appear to be a large sandbar with trees and some parts of it underwater. It looks like there are buildings on it for the comfortably wealthy.


A view to the West from the centrally located bathroom/changing area.


Here is the Blushing Bride strolling along the waters edge. There is always time for a quick check of sea shells and other flotsam. I liked this beach better than the Panama City Beach beach we visited earlier. They drag a beach rake over the beach to remove trash. It made the sand loose and hard to walk on. I also like to play with my metal detector and it seemed somewhat useless to be scouring a beach raked about 8-10 inches down.


A shot East on the beach.


A shot West on the beach.


This little RV park was right across the street from the beach. I did not check it out but shot the picture so I could learn more about their cabins at a later date. It seemed like a nice park though.

The Three Boy Birthday Party

The February birthday boys. Ise and Sky Bean are each wearing their Birthday Hats by Marcy. The Birthday Hats indicate their wearers age, except for the Old Salt's, his has a question mark instead of an age. That way the hat can be used again. Besides, dry as it gets around here, no one wanted to be responsible for a conflagration from candles on a cake.

This is a dual purpose cake, half yellow cake and half chocolate cake. The surprise was the bottom layer was chocolate and the top layer was yellow so you got some of each. The cake for two, since Isaac and I were born on the same date...60 years apart, was presented with his candles and the Happy Birthday song and then presto change-o, it came back with my candles and another Birthday Song. Then we ate it.

The little dude, aka Sky Bean, got a custom made carrot cake the size of a giant cupcake which he did his best to devour. His mom also brought carrot cake cupcakes for all to share. Chocolate cake and carrot cake on the same day. It doesn't get much better than that.

We destroyed a Transformer Pinata so everyone had plenty of candy to take with them when they left. Each of them got about three tries with a bat, then they pulled all of the strings to get the candy. When it became obvious progress was stalled, I as the big birthday boy whacked the candy right out of that pinata.

Sky Bean enjoying the outdoor play kitchen Nana put together for the grandchildren to play with. There is plenty of sand to play in along with old pots and pans plus utensils.