It's Here!!

Yesterday was the first day of the Garden Tour and it went great! The morning started off with storms and small hail but nothing was damaged and the rest of the day went well. We had a LOT of people. Everyone loved everything that Brad and I have done. For whatever reason, I never got my camera out yesterday when we had so many people wandering around the yard. If........ anyone comes back today I will try to do get a few pictures. Right now there are some pretty major storms coming through and it looks like they are set in for awhile. We are not sure what will happen with all this. The Garden Tour doesn't start until 1:00 p.m. today.

This is the wonderful waterfall that Brad finished in about 3 weeks. I sat outside on Saturday night after everyone left and just enjoyed it!

This is what the front of the house looks like but no pictures can really do it justice. You just had to be here!

This is the back yard and the same goes for it. Photos just don't do the trick. We had somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 people show up for the Garden Tour. The club members said this is the biggest turnout ever! It was really big fun. For some reason I never got my camera out on Sunday either. Not sure what happened, other than the fact that we were always showing people around the house.

I am now in Albuquerque with Brandy hoping for a rest. We went to the Botanical Garden (of course I would want to go there) and the Aquarium the first day I arrived. This morning we went to Madrid where the movie 'Wild Hogs' was filmed. Madrid is a very interesting and quaint little town. On the way back we drove up to the top of the Sandia Crest. That is the mountain range to the east of Albuquerque. It was quite chilly at the top.

The temp had probably dropped to around 60 when we got to the top of the mountain. It was great!

When I left B'ville on Thursday morning it was 81 at 7:00 a.m. and when I arrived in Albuquerque it was in the 50's. Wow! I had to hunt a jacket. This nice dry desert air is really great.

Enough for now...bedtime. I will post more with lots of pics later......

Not sure why I have two of these pics and don't know how to get rid of this one so..... here it is.

Long Days! Short Nights!

There is a lot happening around the White House right now! The clock is ticking. I have two more days to work out in the yard before the Garden Tour. Luckily Brad is off this week.Things are really looking good around here. I went out of town this weekend to a family reunion in Kansas and Brad stayed home and WORKED HARD! He also went on the pre-Garden Tour. All of the home owners got together with the Garden Club members and toured the homes and then had a bar-b-que at one of the members homes. Of course I made it back in town in time for food! Ha!

I got home last night and he had painted the garage doors. They had been a blinding white color and now they are a wonderful light taupe color to match the window trim.

He had spread two dump truck loads of gravel in the back around the new waterfall he built LAST WEEK.

Here is a close up of the waterfall. Nice, huh? I bet all of our birds will really like it. Speaking of birds we have Bluebirds, Mockingbirds and Chickadees all nesting in the backyard. Those are just the ones we know about.

If you remember this new flowerbed in a previous post now you can see it newly planted. It even looks like it has been here awhile! Thanks Tom and Pat for the wood! I had to go outside this afternoon and work so now I am returning because it is too dark to do anything else today. Of course, even though we have been working really hard that doesn't mean that I don't stop and take time to...

smell the roses....

and the Bullfrogs....

and the Nanny Goats.....

and the baby goats.....

and the baby goats nursing the Nanny goats!!!!!!!!!

I am having lots of fun taking pictures during this 'getting ready for the Garden Tour'. I am also having a blast sharing them with you people out there who are reading my blog. Thanks! Think I am headed to bed shortly but before too long I will share a few pictures of my brothers recent 'Little Kids Fishing Derby'. I am sure you will love those. Until then...........

Whew! What A Day!!!!

Thanks a bunch, Lloyd and Jerry! You all are awesome. The Lays came to our house today to help us get the top put on the windmill.The windmill is finally up.... and what a nice bucket truck!

The BOSS says "up we go".

This was kinda scary. When Lloyd called me it wasn't too windy but five minutes later... guess what? WIND! This is me holding the rope. Recognize me???? We got the top on the windmill and guess where I ended up?

And guess who's shoes these are inside the bucket? MINE. Guess where I'm going? UP.

Guess where I'm going now??? Up more.

And more. What a wonderful view... I could take aerial photos for people from this bucket truck.

I took aerial photos for this bunch of yahoos. Hello down there, little people! Hi Gizmo. This is way too cool! Sure glad no one tried to moon me.

But.... I am having way too much fun and it is time to go DOWN now! Okay, I'm done playing and now the Lay's are headed home in their really nice bucket truck. You'all come back now, ya hear.
Thanks again for the help and also for letting me play with the truck. Yeah! What fun.

Not only did we get the windmill blades up, we also worked on a waterfall. Not sure if it will be up and running for the Garden Tour, but we will make a stab at it.

We were going to use the neighbors' tractor to dig the big hole but the tractor was 'broke'. So Brad had to dig it by hand. Yuk! But he got it done.

This is going to be a pondless waterfall. Hopefully... I'm sure it wil be. I think it will be. I'm almost positive it will be.

Of course it will be. This guy is the brains and the brawn behind another great project.

Enough of this work stuff. Now for a little bit of Flora and Fauna. Ha.

As you can probably tell, I surely do enjoy my hummingbirds. And my flowers. And the other birds. And your flowers. Anyones birds and flowers...

I'm not sure what kind of Iris this is but it is about medium height and the blooms are not near as large as the normal Iris. Gorgeous is what kind they are!

Amazing birds! I am working on the little guys so they will maybe decide it is okay for us to be this close to them.
The hummers come in really heavy about one hour before dark and fill up before bedtime. That's what I just did and now it's bedtime. Until we meet again...

Mother Nature Rocks!!!!!!!!!

Amazing things are out there just for our enjoyment! I am trying to enjoy them!!!! Check out this lizard. He let me come in real close for a Kodak moment.

And... the hummingbirds are back in full force! We are trying to get them to eat from our hands. We actually had some luck today. It is amazing to feel their little feet resting on your finger.

Here's that lizard again. Same lizard, different rock.

I am struggling a bit with the hummingbird photos. Bear with me and maybe I will get it figured out. As soon as the Garden Tour is over I hope to be able to spend some time with my camera and maybe learn a lot more about it.

This little guy was all over the place today. Still the same lizard. Another different rock. He seems pretty friendly...

This is my Allium now. They look really nice in my garden. I really want to cut some and bring them in the house but I am trying to resist as I don't have very many. More next year... ha!

It just doesn't get much cuter than a little girl. This is Emily and she came to the house today to visit and have her pictures made. She wasn't real interested is smiling but we had fun anyway.

This is Tucker and I went to her house last weekend, and she also got her pictures taken. These young ladies are Mother Natures work @ her finest!

Coming in for a landing. Please keep your seats belts fastened until the Captain turns off the fasten seat belt light.

Time out. Life is busy eating all day and trying to chase the rest of those guys away from all these feeders!

Waving goodbye! Bedtime... until next time. Oh wait, another baby picture.

Now we have our 'blankie' and can go to bed. Wait, one more picture.
This is Ella. She is Hunter and Tanna's sister. Her mother has a camera like mine. So far Ella is a whole lot better about having her picture made than her sister ever was...ha.

Please Don't Freeze!!!

Enough already!!! Please.... no more cold weather! I have planted (we have planted... thanks, Vera) way too many flowers for another cold spell to show it's little blue face. By the way, Vera is my aunt from Tulsa and she came up on Friday (as cold as it was) to help me plant a ton of flowers. My Uncle Wayne (better known as Uncle Weinie) was going to come up also but he got sick at the last minute and couldn't make it. Not sure which golf course he doctors at but one of them was calling his name.... and you guessed it, the golf course won!

This picture was one I had posted on a previous post and I just wanted to be sure everyone had seen it and knew what was going on with the front of this building. My husband had started a new flowerbed with timber we had removed from a friends portico.
Less than two weeks later the flower bed is almost done and a new section of fence has magically appeared to hide the propane tank , the electric meter, and all the stuff that doesn't need to be seen. Pretty handy guy isn't he?
I am enjoying spending some time in my gardens with my camera and this is such an unusual specimen that I thought I should just share it! For all you gardeners, you know this as an Allium bloom. This is my first time at planting it in my beds. When it's leaves first came up in my bed amidst the daffodils I thought the birds had carried in a corn seed. I was ready to get the shovel and dig it up..... and then, lo and behold up came this round pointy thing.
As you can see it is coming along rather nicely! Mother Nature is truly amazing, huh? Oh and just in case you are wondering the Kildeer parents are taking good care of the eggs. We had to build a cover over them during one of the recent storms just in case of hail but it didn't happen. I don't know how in the world all those other little birdies survive without someone to help them out.This is the mother-to-be and she is looking as fit as a fiddle. I have to give credit to her mate as he is spending a lot of time helping out around the nest. It has been a chore keeping the dog from discovering the treasures these to birds are sitting on.

I worked on Saturday at the greenhouse and had a good time but I probably brought home more than I made that day. Ha! Oh well, we are having a Garden Tour and we do need lots of nice Stuff in our Garden.

Today I decided I needed a day off and so I decided to go to the Tulsa Zoo. I had wanted to do this for some time and this seemed a good time as any. Took a bit to find someone who wanted to go but I finally ran across some takers.

Cute bunch of monkeys, huh? We headed out of town, hit McDonalds, and eventually found the zoo. I had to call someone to give me directions as it had been so long since I had been there.
Sorry for the poor picture quality but I haven't master ttg photography. Through the glass, that is. Maybe someday I will get that figured out. This little guy was just to cute to pass up.
I couldn't tell if this polar bear was really digging having his photo taken or not. You can be the judge of that!

I am not sure if he is howling, objecting, gargling, or just what is going on here. Maybe his girlfriend was just around the corner, who knows?

It sure doesn't take much to entertain kids, even though they all seem to have every toy known to man. Just send them outside with an old water pump....
or a nice lion water fountain and they will play forever.
You could even send them out to play in the yard with the turtles....
Or maybe send them to the pond to play with the turtles.....
or maybe on second thought.... not the pond!
I probably had more fun today than the kids did! I am sure glad I decided to just 'take the day off'. I talked to my grandma on the way to the zoo and she wasn't to sure that escorting three kids to the zoo was her idea of a 'day off'. Ha!
Bet this is a little more what grandma had in mind.... a nice little catnap. Speaking of which... bedtime is here, so until next time. Whenever that is?