Snoopy

About two weeks ago, I saw some adorable little doxie doggy pillows that were made from vintage sheets and pillowcases online and I had to have one.  I got the one that looked the most like springtime and he arrived Monday.

Larry took one look at him and said, "Snoopy".  His mama had a couple of dachshunds named Snoopy.  So Snoopy he is.

Don't y'all just love how we name all of our "babies"??

Li'l Bit

Our baby bird saga continues...

Yesterday a fledgling fell out of its nest and Tabbie Hoffman made a playmate out of him.  Luckily, I was able to separate the two before Tabbie killed the poor thing but by then, the little birdie had blood on his leg and wasn't flying.  He may not have been flying well to begin with and Tabbie just made things worse. He just hopped around in the grass, flapping his wings.  I freaked out, crying because it was misting rain and we couldn't find the nest and he was going to drown OMG and Larry, being the sane one in our household, gently picked him up and put him in the pretty gourd birdhouse we got at the Cherry Blossom Festival three years ago.  Just as the bottom FELL OUT.

We put a little water in there and some mealworms and hoped for the best.

Today he was still alive!  And kicking!  And not bleeding!  He just wasn't flying very well, just kinda flailing.  So we brought him inside and put him in a box.  Larry took some chicken wire and made a top for the box and he's in our mudroom, with more mealworms and a little water.  And a nice soft table napkin to lay on.  He's not bleeding at all anymore and he's pooped already so I think he just needs a few days' rest and quiet.  He had quite a traumatic encounter with Mr. Hoffman!  We're going to take him out every morning and the first morning he flies out of the box and into the trees, he's a free bird!

But until then, ain't he sweet??

I've had my heart broken already this spring with a nest full of eggs that fell in a rainstorm so I am so happy to have found this little one.  Somehow he grew in a nest in our yard that I knew nothing about. 

We're calling him Li'l Bit.  :)
  
***Update:  MORE heartbreak.  Li'l Bit died that night.  Larry buried him in a flower bed the next morning after I left for work.  I was very, very sad.

Farmers market time!

Even though most of the farmers markets around here are open year-round, we usually only go in the spring and summer.  Larry stopped at the one here in town a few weeks ago and got the most delicious focaccia bread!  I went today to get some more!  OMG, y'all.  Focaccia bread is an Italian flat bread made with oils and herbs and these folks at our farmers market have it down.  They sell other types of bread, too, but this one.  This. One.  I wish I could mail you all a loaf of it.  But if you're local??  The market is open every Thursday from 1:00 until about sundown.  I didn't get their name but their stand is all the way down on the right.  

It looks like a pizza!  They bake it with eggplant, artichokes and tomatoes.  It is so good.  It's completely organic with no preservatives so you have to eat it fast.  Something we have NO problem with. 

I got some red potatoes to roast and go with our crockpot meatballs (like a good little Southern Baptist girl, I'm making them with BBQ sauce and grape jelly!) for supper tonight.  And we having focaccia bread!  Yay!!

We are also having this cream cheese pound cake.  What??  This loaf was $8 and it's also made with no preservatives and all organic ingredients.

The other day, Brian liked a candle company on Facebook and I saw it and wanted to try one.  I ordered the lemongrass and it came today!  I loved the name, Happy Hippbee, and I loved that they use pure beeswax and hemp that have no toxins or burn off any black soot.  I really cannot stand black soot on candles.  It's ugly for one thing, it's messy and black soot mixed with paraffin waxes may even contain carcinogens, i.e., cancer-causing stuff!  Just ugly all the way around.

I love this little candle!  It's super cute, it comes in a BPA-free jar and it smells delicious!  And it helps the bees! 

The windmill

Larry and I painted the old Aermotor windmill today!  Well, he painted most of it but I did help a little.

I've planted sunflower seeds all underneath and around it.  My plan is to have something like this by mid-summer.  :)

A girl can dream, can't she?

Hey there, little love

All that rain we had today made it easy for tiny little sunflowers to break through.  I couldn't be more tickled.

Busy Saturday!

A couple of months ago, I bought myself a new camera, a Canon T5.  And I signed up for some photography classes for this spring.  I love taking classes and learning and going to school.  Where was this girl 40 years ago when I hated school, cried and begged Mama to not make me go??  Anyway, I paid my fees and waited until this morning.  It was so much fun and I learned so much!  I've been a point-and-shoot photographer since I was 13 years old and I got my first 110 (man, I loved that thing!) for my birthday and I wanted to learn more about aperture and shutter speed and how to use what when.  The class I took this morning was a basic intro to DSLR cameras and here are a few pics that I took!

 There were six of us beginners in the class.

 Practicing shutter speed...

 Practicing aperture with an f/stop of f/5.6

Here I was playing with the exposure compensation.

The class was great.  I met some really nice ladies, had tons of fun and I learned so much about my camera and taking pictures.  I can't wait for the next class!

Larry had to finish up some stuff over at the condo (that we are still trying to rent out omg what a pain in the butt) so I went garden shopping.  Larry had already gotten me some plants from Houston County High School's greenhouse last week -- tomato, orange bell pepper, jalapeno pepper, coleus, impatien and begonia.  So I went and bought two cherry tomatoes, six green peppers, a banana pepper, a yellow bell pepper, a PURPLE bell pepper, lantana, zinnias, marigolds, dill, thyme and flower seeds, lots of flower seeds.  Sunflowers for the fence, butterfly magnets for my flower bed and marigolds and snapdragons for the vegetable garden.  I got bags and bags of garden soil and loaded 'em all up in my car and got crackin'!

I repotted the coleus that Larry got for me
and put this cute little Airstream trailer in the pot.  :)

 My sweet little garden 

(with NO squash, mind you.  We are not going there again.)

I picked up these adorable little birdy plant markers on my
 Peaches to the Beaches adventure with Debbie and Christie.

Aunt Ruth gave me a bunch of pieces off her succulent plants in November and I just stuck 'em out by the fence.  This is how they look now!  You can see two little pieces on the left that I just stuck back down in the dirt.  They'll grow!

We joke all the time that all I have to do is THINK about wanting something and God gives it to me.  I was thinking about how cool it would be to have a windmill in the backyard and danged if Larry didn't bring this one home.  I'm trying to decide if I want to paint it or not.  I kinda like its "distressed" look.  If we do paint it white again, I want to paint the flap barn red.  I planted sunflowers allllll up under that thing.  I can't wait until they're growing and coming out from all sides.

 New flamingos for the backyard

My boys <3

(It's gonna be) A good year for the roses

There are three rose bushes out by our mailbox.  The yellow knock out rose was already here and blooming when we moved here, the other two, a red and a pink, I planted last spring.  This weekend was really too cool to plant my garden.  The soil temperature is right at 55 degrees so I figured I'd give it another week or two and mulch my roses instead.

Here's a before and after!

This pretty sunny yellow knockout rose blooms a beautiful lemon yellow and then in a day or so, the blooms fade to a lovely ivory cream color.  I just love her!

The red roses will be busting out any day now!

These are a beautiful peppermint pink and white.  

A little rose food and fertilizer and some fresh mulch should be all they need to have a blooming good summer!

Give me butterflies!

Part of my spring planning is to create a butterfly oasis in our backyard!  I hope to get the flowers planted this weekend (along with the tomatoes and peppers!) -- zinnias, coneflowers, cosmos and marigolds mixed in with parsley, dill and fennel.

Today I picked up this adorable little birdbath that will serve as their water source.  I just love it!  I'm going to put small stones in the bottom of the bowl to give them something to light on.

I got this idea from Miss Rosalynn Carter.  She has a Butterfly Trail in Plains and I was just beside myself with the butterflies when we went down to sit in on President Carter's Sunday School class in September.  They were everywhere and they were SO beautiful!!

I'm so excited to see if they come!  If you build it...

Strawberry fields forever

Larry and I went to the local strawberry patch today and had so much fun!  There were strawberries as far as the eye could see.  I wanted to pick all of 'em!!  They were so delicious, sweet and warm from the sun.  Here are a few pics!

Strawberries this pretty have to go in a pie!

Welcome, May!

Our little container veggies are getting big!  The cherry tomatoes and basil are a bust, I think.  They never did sprout.  But the cucumber, spinach, sweet peppers and cilantro are doing fine!  I told Larry we could eat that spinach right now.  If we made a salad in a ramekin!

We have seen a lot of wild bunnies running around lately so Larry put this little fence up around our garden, complete with gate!  We already have baby banana peppers growing!

I cleaned house from top to bottom yesterday while Larry cut the grass. 

And today, I weeded the flower beds and gave all the bushes and shrubs a haircut.  Everything looks so good.  I know I'm biased because I really love our house but I think we have the prettiest house and yard in the neighborhood.  The folks who built our house spared no expense in landscaping and there's so much beautiful stuff growing out there that I have no idea what some of it is.

I know what this is, though.  This is my official before pic of our magnolia.  Next week, that thing is going to be busting out with beautiful blooms!  It is loaded with buds.

This is that beauty right in the middle.

These are a few of my potted flowers that are on the deck, lovin' that sunshine.  

And this I think is a Lamb's Ear.  If I'm wrong, somebody tell me!

Tabbie Hoffman likes to lay in the flower beds.  :)

I really like how this picture turned out!  Hostas a'blooming!

This is one of my favorite parts of the whole yard.  The gate to the side yard surrounded by two gardenia bushes and a little brick walkway.

The moss is a nice bonus!

Larry cleaned the gutters, too.  They obviously needed it!

Banjo and the begonia.  :)

We have a little bird living in this fern on the front porch.  Every time we get near it, she takes off!  Don't know if she's got babies in there...

...but there are FIVE little blue eggs in this nest behind the speaker on the front porch.

Welcome, May!  I'm so glad you're here!