DonnieBrook's Subtropical Adventures: The Finale

Hee hee! Way to go, Celeste! I'd do the same.

That was my middle girl....what a handful she was!! I let out a big sigh of relief when she & Michael said "I do" last Sept. ......She's his problem now.^_^

Great stories about kids pranks! I didn't have any, so don't have any to add.

Still raining like mad here and more flooding out back.

Karen

Louise, that would be awful before word-processors - he'd have to re-type the whole page, one letter at a time, if he was the kind of typist I was. You're a meanie - but a good mom!

Kids never seem to believe that their parents were once little and like them.

Not too mean, Carrie....just mean enough to make a point! There were only a couple sentences on the page, fortunately for him, but even if it had been a full page, I still would have done it! LOL There are prices to pay.......

Good one, Celeste! I see we went to the same MOM school! LOL

Karen - thanks for the nice comments on our place!! You are uniquely positioned to know how it looked before!!

Yeah, currently we are PREPARING to have work done on our house (which seems harder, so far, than the actual work,) and I am leaving little notes all over the house on stickies:
"your suit is in this bag" (to DH)
"you're old enough to deal with your own junk mail" (to DD#2)
"when you use up the product, please recycle the bottle yourself" (for everyone in the bathroom)

Sounds like my house, Carrie!

Karen

Hah!

Thanks for posting all those photos, Louise...I wanted to hug the girls! The house looks wonderful. And that lemon tree! I have 2 small lemons on my eensy tree right now...hoping they don't fall off...I've been transporting it outside every day this week because of the high temps.

Thank you, Marilyn! I do hope your lemons make it to fruition. I have one lemon left on my original Meyer and it is now filled with flowers as well. All of our citrus except the tangerine is in full bloom and Hank says the smell is wonderful out back. Here's a recent collage of the girls - taken when they had the butcher job by the mobile groomer - but still so much like them. Their new groomer was terrific and hopefully after the next haircut they'll look like they should look. They are now getting their curly Bichon fur instead of their fine. straight puppy fur. Can you tell how much I adore them? LOL They really are such good little girls.

and this one was taken right after their latest haircuts.....I couldn't fix the eyes unfortunately.

aawww.. cute babies.. my girls just went to the groomer today too... Louise did you ever try the eye wipes... they take the stains off Jily.. but she is dark so I don't know if it would work as well with her being so white

adore who?

So cute, Louise! Nice collage!

Karen

Very huggable!

Hi Allison. I have tried the wipes, but they just don't do it. The vet here has me massaging Carli's tear ducts twice a day, and it may be helping a little bit, but not that much!

Bill - LOL! My girls, of course! :)

Thanks, Karen and Marilyn. They're really fun.

And now for a few close-up shots of my shade garden plants. This is a bromeliad I bought at the Pine Island plant sale.

Firecracker

Pleomele with impatiens

fat impatiens

bougainvillea

love the firecracker & bougy

very nice louise!

Firecracker is my fav.

Beautiful Louise!

Hi Guys! Thank you! Glad you liked my pretties! It's so nice to look out my kitchen window and see all that color at the back of the yard. Before I made this garden, all I could see beyond the citrus was that ugly green-stained, falling down wood fence behind us. Their cute little dogs keep getting out through the openings and I worry about them getting hit by a car.

We had a really heavy rain yesterday late in the afternoon and now it is so fresh and cool and breezy outside. We finally got around to cleaning the windows in our sunroom this morning. I knew we'd have to wait until all the construction for the new door was finished, and boy were the windows ucky! Now when I head for the kitchen, I can see the pretties sharp as a tack! We went to a really fun dinner party last night in the 'hood, and because the house was right on the River, the wind was really whipping up as we were going and coming. Right now I can hear my wind chimes and they sound so nice! I broke my sugar fast last night and had the dessert - a mango cake - and it was well, well worth the carbs! I will get the recipe and share it if anyone wants it. I'd have to say it was the best cake I've ever had - incredibly light and moist.

Have a great NE day today, everyone!!!

Mmmmm yucky NE day! Isn't nice how wonderfully good desserts taste when you haven't had sugar for a while, though?

Would love the recipe, Louise...mango is delicious!

That was, quite honestly, the best of the best! Today I feel horrible from too many gatherings with too many diversions from my eating program. Headache from the sugar. That'll teach me!!! I just can't eat sugar. Period! :( But that mango cake was almost worth how I'm feeling right now! LOL

On the Weather thread, I mentioned our neat trip to Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, FL. It is a wonderfully serene place with a beautiful pink marble and coquina shell carillon tower rising high above beautiful gardens and swan ponds filled with enormous koi fish. The bell tower plays concerts as you walk around the grounds, and there is a nice little lunch cafe, gift shop and plant shop on the grounds as well. Here are some shots from our visit to the gardens this year.

Red sculpture that reminded me of a bottlebrush bloom...this is visible from the outdoor tables outside the cafe.

There was an amazing "screen" of hanging air plants in bloom with red/purple flowers. It was breathtaking in person.

swans in the reflecting pool

These would make a nice note card, wouldn't they?

Koi pond

beautiful contrasts everywhere....

one of the air plants from the "screen" up close....

If anyone comes down to central Florida, don't miss this beautiful spot on the highest point of Florida. And if you have dogs in the car, there is plenty of parking in the shade. This trip the weather was very humid, so Hank and I took turns going out and walking the puppies in the shade and making sure they had water and that their battery-operated fans were still going.

What a nice place, Louise, glad you had the opportunity to get there. That living screen is amazing!