Flowers in my yard

The new gerbera daisy I planted this spring.  It lives out by the mailbox so I see it every time I come home.

I really like these day lilies.  I don't even remember where I got them from.

This patch of daylilies is very interesting.  I would have sworn that last year it was all one color, the darker yellow in the front (that M says should be gold lilies).  But when they started blooming this year at first it was the gold lilies and the lemon lilies, then all of a sudden the orange ones started blooming too.  I guess the orange ones migrated around the corner (I have a patch of them 10-15 feet away, on the other side of a large azalea).  I thought I might not like a mix of colors, but these look really pretty together to me.  It convinced me to go ahead and transplant a bunch of day lilies to near the mailbox, without worrying about whether they are all the same color.

Spring

We've been having a brief week of Spring, very pleasant but a little odd after our recent snow. The various daffodils around the yard have been blooming for several weeks now and looking lovely.

I've got some more daffodils that I planted last fall that haven't bloomed yet, so I still have more to enjoy.

We also took advantage of the beautiful warm weather to do some planting in the garden on Sunday. It will be at least this weekend, if not the middle of next week (or later, especially for the parsley) before we know how much actually germinated.

Of course, now that we've been enjoying warm spring weather with highs near 80 for several days, we're headed back into colder temps tomorrow. It's supposed to be a high in the 50's tomorrow and back down near 40 the next few nights. The ups and downs of Spring!

Happy Mother's Day, I think

Well, it is Mother's Day and it has been a fine day overall, but not quite what I or anyone expected.

We were awakened early this morning (before 5:30 am) by howling winds and driving rain (coming in our windows). We ran around shutting windows and in the noise of shutting windows in the kids rooms, thunder, long, light-up-the-sky lightening, the kids woke up and were up for the day. D and I tried to go back to sleep. He finally gave up and got up - and then I think I finally did manage to get a little more sleep.

While I was catching a few extra zzz's, he wandered the nearby streets checking on how much damage had been done by the storm. No real damage to our house. Our patio umbrella did take an unauthorized trip to the end of the yard, but it is back in place now in about the same state as before. Initially D couldn't find it and we thought we'd have to traipse through various backyards looking for it, but it was hiding in the brush at the edge of our yard.

One of the neighbors down the street wasn't so lucky - they got a tree resting on their roof:


Other neighbors had large trees or sections of trees come down, but without hitting houses. Virtually everyone had debris all over the yard. After church, we spent over an hour picking up branches and trying to clear the yard and driveway. Of course, its been very windy all day, so there are still branches and pinecones being blown out of the trees (and debris that is already down being blown around more).

After all the yard work, the kids wanted to go swimming. The pool isn't officially open yet, but we've been told it is ready to go. So, since we have a key off we went.

The pool was a little worse off from the storm also, but the kids went in and I spent some time skimming the surface. We had lots of leaves in the pool and M plucked a pine branch off the bottom of the deep end.



M in the water. He decided that maybe he did need a haircut (or at least a bang trim) here soon. He complained he couldn't see for all the hair in his eyes.


A in the pool.

Wishing for Hail?!

Yep, that's my mom - she's currently wishing for HAIL!

Why, you might ask? Well, because she's buying a new house* and is hoping for the roof to get hail damaged. Making sense yet? No? Well, the house is 19 years old, with the original roof (probably with 20 year shingles), so likely needing replacing soon. If there was hail damage, she could get the current owners to replace the roof for little to no out of pocket expense (for them, none for her).

There is actually a chance of hail tonight along with the thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. Looks like a lovely day to start Spring break tomorrow. 100% chance of rain. lovely. (Though I wouldn't mind a good gullywasher overnight to wash the pine pollen out of the trees!)

But do you think I could convince kids to go ahead and get their homework done and over with? Fat chance! If I'm lucky and nag them a lot, I might get 15 or 20 minutes work out of each of them. A has 15 questions about a book they're reading for Challenge (it was supposed to be classwork, but he was still finishing up last weeks classwork). M has a project due the day he gets back from break, but he's known about it for over a week already and has done next to nothing on it.

*My mom saw a house for sale on the next street over from us that has everything she wanted in a house.
A separate dining room
Master BR, garage and main living area all on one level
Space for an office and still space for both kids to sleep over
the kids can walk to her house without crossing major roads (almost forgot that one)

It also has a sunny part of the backyard where she could have a small garden. And comes complete with a swingset and playhouse that A finds quite intriguing.

Hail

Saturday we had storm warnings all day.  If I had a nickel for every time I got up to listen to a weather alert from the weather alert radio, I would be rich - or at least I could have a nice lunch out.  It seems that there were several fast moving storms and each time one would threaten a new county, we would get another alert (even if said county was an hour north of us and the storm was moving northeast).  It seemed to work out to a new alert about every 5 minutes, for much of the day.

Finally we got tired of getting up to listen to the alerts (actually M got tired of getting up, I had given up and gone down to the basement for a while), and turned the radio off.  We'd been getting alerts all along but nothing more than clouds and an occasional raindrop.  Well... about an hour later, we got our storm, complete with hail.  

The hail was lumpy and bumpy and only lasted for a few minutes.  Then about 15 minutes later, we got round 2 - lots more hail and lots of rain too.  And pretty smooth round hail:

15 minutes of hail and 3/4 inch of rain later, here's what our deck looked like:


and the front yard

Luckily we didn't get any tornado action here, but we did get bits and pieces of limbs and such down.  I'm really glad we got those dead pine trees taken down in the fall.  Our front yard smelled really piney - "like a Christmas tree" according to the kids.

Almost as soon as the hail passed, the weather started to clear up.  The clouds were clearing and we saw blue sky (at least in patches).  However, the internet was still out all yesterday evening....  Today it was back and we had a beautiful spring-like day.

Snow in March?!

Yes, the weather has been really crazy here lately. Yesterday it was in the 60's, this morning it snowed. Of course, because it was in the 60's yesterday, absolutely nothing stuck. But still - it snowed in March. Amazing. And that makes, I think, 3 times it has snowed this year. After no snow at all for about the last 3 years. While I don't really want to live somewhere with a lot of snow, I do enjoy an occasional snow day.

Years ago, I might have said I wouldn't mind living somewhere snowy. Snow was fun and exciting. But then, one time when D and I were visiting his family, it snowed. Oh boy, we had fun. Walks in the snow, snowball fights, maybe even a sled ride. And we shoveled the driveway - not so much fun, but manageable. Until the day that it snowed off and on all day. We shoveled the driveway in the morning, before guests arrived. We shoveled again in the afternoon. And again in the evening. Thoughts of getting up at 0:dark 30 and shoveling snow in the cold dark wintry morning before work quickly killed the fun aspects of living in snow country.

The rest of today - snow flurries for an hour or two. Then it was on to just cold and windy. Decidedly wintery feeling, not like the glimpses of spring we'd been having. It's supposed to freeze tonight. Correction - its already freezing now and is supposed to get down to something like 26 tonight. Right on schedule to freeze the buds on lots of flowering trees. One of our Japanese magnolias is blooming at the top and not quite budding at the bottom of the tree (vast differential in amounts of sunlight received). The top is toast, and probably some of the middle top of the tree, but hopefully the lower part of the tree will bloom successfully in a few weeks.

February Flowers

Yesterday was a pretty day, so I took advantage of at least a bit of it to do some yardwork. M and I gave the monkey grass a crew cut - all ready for spring...

Then once I was out there, I needed to show off some of the blooms in the yard. Of course, some of them have gotten almost buried...

The ivy is taking over this area. And the rosemary has grown a LOT since we planted it, probably 8 years ago.

Then this little dwarf iris is having to poke its way up through the leaves in the front island.

These daffodils aren't far from the iris, but, being bigger, don't seem to mind the leaves at all!

I saw the hyacinths and day lilies putting up greenery too. And the Easter lilies - but they'll be way off on Easter this year!

We're finally getting some rain today. It has rained off and on all day long. We're at a little over an inch now (and needing more). It's supposed to rain again tomorrow. I know we need it, but its a little bit dreary all day long.

Snow pics

Here, finally, are the snow pictures I promised.

Shadow doesn't look too thrilled about all this "stuff".

Here Shadow has finally ventured out into the yard and is getting some snowflakes on him.

I had to try 3 or 4 times to get a decent photo of Shadow and the snowflakes - he kept moving, so I have one picture that is all blurry, one with the head cut off and one with only his head.

Talk about crazy weather. It was fairly warm last week and the narcissus decided it was early spring. Not. They get fooled fairly often. Reminds me of a photo from when I was a teen of daffodils in the snow - that's rarer.

The snowman M and I built. Quite small and very slushy, but it does qualify as a snowman!

SNOW!

They were predicting possible wintery mix for this afternoon or evening, but I didn't really believe anything would happen.

But, at about 3:30 this afternoon, I looked out the window and saw it: SNOW! I yelled "Hey A, look out the window". He looked and hollered SNOW. Not much at that point, just a few wispy flakes.

Then a few minutes later, I looked again and it was coming down harder.


Here's A checking out the snow. And catching some in his hair...


By 4:30 or 5, we had a nice little coat of snow on the deck, but not much anywhere else.


But it kept coming down, sometimes pretty hard and fast. By dinnertime the deck looked like this:

M tried to make a snowball - well, he DID make a snowball, but he said it wasn't very good snow for snowballs. It seemed to me more like fluffy ice.

Here as the sun sets is what the back yard looks like. Very pretty!


Unfortunately, it is now raining and washing away most of that pretty snow. The predictions have been at various times for:
wintery mix
snow
rain/sleet
rain/freezing rain

Who knows what it will do overnight and what it will look like in the morning. They are saying the temp will hover at 32, so the bridges and overpasses may be bad in the morning. My guess is about 50:50 for a snow day, but without any snow. It may be an ice day or it may be fine but cold and wet.

Fall Colors

We're getting some nice fall colors at the moment, though they are not so brilliant as usual - probably due to the drought. This is a tree in a neighbor's yard. The photo doesn't really do it justice - but gives at least a feel for the many colors.

 

No more watering

Last week the state declared the northern 1/3 of our state was in severe drought - they called for level 4 watering ban. That means NO outdoor water use - no watering the lawn, no washing cars, etc.

Now there are a few exceptions. You can still water a food garden. You can water if you draw your water from a private well, spring, stream or lake. The people in our neighborhood who live on the lake generally have a pump to use lake water for their lawn - that's ok still. You can also water new landscaping for 30 days - but ONLY if it was professionally installed.

Car wash businesses are still allowed, but not charity car washes (they aren't set up to recycle the water). Outdoor fountains, even those that recirculate the water are not allowed - I'm not quite sure why on this one - maybe they loose too much water to evaporation and then they have to replenish it?

They're saying that unless we get a lot of rain this winter - much more than normal, we may well be in a level 4 watering ban still next summer. That will hit people a lot harder than no watering here in the fall. Plus, no filling of pools. I hope people don't drain their pools this winter.

I haven't seen anyone violating the watering ban yet, but I wouldn't be surprised. All summer people were watering and washing cars on the wrong days/times of day (we were on an odd/even watering system, with water use allowed only between midnight - 10 am). I've seen in the paper that many people still aren't aware of the ban, and that people are being turned in anonomously.

For us, it doesn't mean a whole lot. I don't really believe in watering the lawn - I haven't intentionally watered it in the 8 years we've been here and it's still doing fairly well. (It has gotten byproduct watering from the kids playing in the sprinkler or when I used to water the shrubs and the sprinkler would also get some of the grass.) The plants that need watering are getting it from our "grey water" - we have buckets in the shower and any water collected from while we shower or while the water warms up gets used on the plants. The plants got a bonanza last night - both kids took baths instead of showers. I must have taken out 10 2-gallon buckets full of water.

As you can see, my Gerber daisy is doing quite well, even in this drought.


The snapdragons are even holding on - some of them look a little ragged, but these are ancient snapdragons.
Around here , snapdragons are supposed to be an annual - these have become perennials. I planted these at least 4 years ago, expecting to get one winter and one spring out of them and then they were "supposed" to die in the heat of the summer - sort of like pansies. Only my snapdragons never got that memo...

Today's entertainment

We had lovely backyard entertainment today. Oh, and a little bit in the front yard too. But mostly in the back - with front row seating on the deck. Of what? Why, the tree guy came today. We got to watch guys climbing trees - one of the guys was trying it for the first time - he never made it any higher than in this picture:

He was about 10 feet off the ground.


We got to watch trees being topped. TIMBER!!!

And then thud, thud, thud - as the chunks of tree trunk came down.

It was really cool to watch the guy rapel down the tree once he'd gotten it to a managable height where they could just drop it. No pictures of that, but the kids enjoyed watching.

And we now have a BIG pile of mulch in our depression. Once raked out, it might even fill up the depression temporarily.


And, why, you might wonder, are we cutting down all these trees? Because they are dead and/or dying. Here's one, where you can see the mess the grubs and beetles have made under the bark.

I even got to see one of the grubs from the "munching tree". You could actually hear the bugs eating on the tree early in the morning.

Roasting

We're roasting here currently. June and July weren't too bad, but August is being blisteringly hot. It's 85 degrees by 9:30 in the morning. And its still 85 at 10pm. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay 85 in between - oh no, its been up in the mid to upper 90's. Each day the radio tells us that "we'll be close to 100 today". Arrrggghh. I don't like this kind of heat. I feel trapped indoors. The lawn needed some work, so I was out mowing (yesterday) and edging (today) starting at 8am, so I could get finished before it was scorching.

I'm ready for some rain to cool things down a bit (and because we're still in a drought and could really use the rain). Not much in sight, though.

Muddy Deluge

Last night I looked out the front door after dinner and was greeted with this sight:

If you look closely at the top of the picture, the entire cul-de-sac is covered with muddy GA red clay water. Yuck.

The people at the head of the cul-de-sac are redoing their front yard. They've got all the proper retention fences and bales of hay, but there was just WAY too much water coming down - and through their yard - to contain all the dirt. It rained somewhere between 1-1.5 inches in about an hour - with most of that rain coming in about 30 minutes. Yikes.

This was the view at the end of the driveway:

We had our own little eddy current at the curb.

The volume of water and the mud were rather "awesome" to see, but not really a problem for us. For some of the neighbors, however, it was. Our next door neighbor's driveway slopes down to his house and he had several inches of muddy, mucky water sitting on the end of his driveway and into his backyard. He and the owners of the mud shoveled and hosed the driveway this morning.

Further down the street is where the real problem lay. The storm drain isn't draining properly. This is how it looked after the rain stopped:

One of the other neigbors had pictures showing it was up to mid-calf. We're not sure what is stopping the drain from draining. Several thoughts are:

1 - people are blowing too much yard waste into the drains and that is stopping them up

2 - there's a bunch of yard waste at the outlet to the storm drain (between some backyards farther down the street)

3- the pipe has collapsed somewhere down the line from there

Various people were calling anyone that they could think of to deal with the problem last night and today. A sheriff's deputy came out to see the problem last night and I think I saw a city truck today. I hope they figure out the problem and get it solved. It made a huge mess - not just the water in the street, but it backed up into 2 different yards - in one it was onto the front porch and on the other it was about a foot away from getting into their basement.

I'm SOOO glad it wasn't backing up into our house. I did discover that one of our drain lines from the gutter isn't flowing properly, though. I was out there in the downpour positioning a gutter splash thing to divert the water (spurting out from the gutter/drain connection) back away from the house.

It's hammock time

Our weather has been crazy this spring. We had record high of 87 back at the end of March - almost enough to make me turn on the AC (AC in March - no way!). Then we had record cold Easter weekend.

Now, though, we're having beautiful weather and the horrid pine pollen is done, so it was time for the hammock to be reinstalled for the season.

A wouldn't let me take his picture on the hammock, so he took mine.

I could have taken a nap right then and there.

Happy Spring!

Happy first day of Spring! It certainly feels like spring today - high near 80, low only in the 50's. Beautiful weather. The back door is open and I'm enjoying the day.

Here are some views around the yard:

The Japanese Magnolia is actually just about done blooming, but it is too beautiful to skip.


Here is the blueberry bush. Not intrinsically lovely perhaps, but it bodes well for blueberries this summer - that is if we can get them before the birds and squirrels do.

The cherry tree. This photo really doesn't do it justice. It is magnificent. This is the view off the back deck.

My lovely purple tulips. I've discovered the secret to tulips in the south seems to be to grow them in containers - that way they get chilled enough in the winter. The tulips I planted in the ground aren't blooming any more.



Some hyacinths. I really like the purple ones. My dad bought and planted these with us the first fall we moved in. That was quite interesting - my dad and I trying to plant with the "help" of 9 month old A, 3 year old M, and 2 or 3 neighbor girls, ages 4-6. The tulips we planted stopped coming up years ago, but the hyacinths are going strong.