and here I thought the Kentucky Derby was a stuffy event where everyone dressed in really expensive designer clothes!
Your Neck of the Woods 2015 Part 3
Infield is a whole nother thing. Preakness has a wild infield too.
(((Hugs))) Jill, I know just how you feel, Took me awhile to get use to the development next to me instead of a nice old farm.
We are home and very happy to be back. We had a great time in Fl. visited lovely gardens, explored Wilderness areas, Ric did a little fishing, I hung out on the beach and we put a good size dent in the Nurseries in Fl. The car came home loaded with new plants. The thread with our trip pics is here if you have the time to visit.
http://allthingsplants.com/thread/view/34890/Mid-Atlantic-Heads-South/?offset=0
My gardens are putting on a great show right now and I am so happy to be home to see it. There are only a few of the earliest daffs that have finished and a couple of the tulips. I will be posting pics as soon as I can.
Great pics of a great vacation! Thanks for sharing
We watched a very sweet, cute funny and a bit sad movie last night. 4 1/2 stars from me
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2194499/
'About Time"
I have seen that and really loved it.
Same here! What a well-made movie.
My husband, who gives a review of "meh" to 90% of the movies we see, gave this one a 5/5.
Same here! I actually saw that one in the movie theater.
Thanks for the recommendation, Sally.
I sure hope all the rain we're having right now means that Saturday will be nice and dry!
Wish we had gotten some rain. Getting dry here
Ric and I were on a Bus Tour all day, just got home. It was the Hobby GH yearly tour. We did Oatlands in Va and Surreybrooke Farm in Md. With a stop at Abernethy & Spencer Nursery in Va. What a great time we had Oatlands has 4 acres of terraced gardens and a lovely and interesting Mansion. Highly recommend you visit if you can.
Then a visit to Abernety & Spencer in Va where I picked up a box of plants.
Holly, Oatlands is really close by and I've been there on numerous occasions. It is a beautiful place. I was there for a wedding once - the ceremony was in the gardens and there was a string quartet. Really nice. They also decorate for Christmas and hold all kinds of events. I've been to a border collie sheep herding exhibition, draft horse exhibition, antique shows, point to point horse races, and tea in the carriage house.
Then we stopped at Surreybrooke Farms for a tour of the gardens and to do a little more plant shopping. Another box of plants followed me home, I just don't know why they keep doing that.
I particularly loved the last pic of the red tulips in front of the Ostrich Ferns.
That looks lovely, Holly! I've never even heard of Oatlands before.
Yes Terri, we practically drove right past you house.
Traveling between Surreybrooke and Oatlands you had to go through Lucketts, VA so you piratically drove right past our house too. and Aspenhill's as well.
Yes, GT we were just a mile if that from either of your places. Of course there was a whole bus of people and I just couldn't seem to get them to stop and visit. You know a couple of us wanted them to stop at a few Wineries and see if we could do a tasting and they wouldn't stop for that either. Something about a timetable and if we stopped we wouldn't get to the gardens. Well they might have been right we stopped for fast food and it took forever can't imagine how much time I could have spent sampling wine.
Hehehehe..
I know why boxes of plants follow you home.....wait for it.....because they KNOW they will be love and well-tended!!!!!
I've been helping out with Joyanna's kindergarten class the last couple of weeks... 2 weeks ago, I just had to be there for "plant a seed day," and you know it was a blast! I avoided the bean seeds that never make it to mature size; we planted zinnias, dill, garlic chives, and Italian white sunflowers -- the kids have visions of butterflies descending en masse!
Last week, they were studying animal habitats, diets, etc. I did a presentation on camouflage... found a lot of fun pics for a powerpoint show, and enjoyed a lot of "sidebar" discussion LOL.
I taught Joyanna's kindergarten class about "How Seeds Get Around" yesterday. I went with alliteration for the 3 ways we discussed - Wind Wanderers, Happy Hitchhikers, and Tummy Travelers. I brought a few seed packs, some spring weeds, and a pomegranate... We ate some of the pomegranate and then planted the seeds. I had a great time!
Jill, that sounds like a really fun class, love the "Tummy Travelers", how cute! Sure wish I could have been there; used to have fun eating pomegranates on the way to school when I was young, then spitting the seeds out at my sister. ;P
Tulips and Ostrich Ferns isn't a combination I would have come up with, in part because I think of them as liking different growing conditions, but they look great together. Why on earth did they leave that butchered tree there, though?!
I would agree, my understanding is tulips don't like summer moisture. Of course, gardens often ignore that and will plant bulbs just for one bloom.
That's a garden in Baltimore that has an annual bulb dig day to get rid of the done ones for the year. Sherwood Garden?
summer arrived this weekend, phew!
I just wish I knew if the library was going to be cold or hot. Classic situation of must dress in layers there!
Yes, sally-----Sherwood Gardens. They have been there forever....
It is off Greenmount Ave. which is a very so-so neighborhood by now,
Of course--take a road off of it--and you are in the opulent gardens of an Estate
in a whole different class of people. This area is called Guilford.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Gardens
http://guilfordassociation.org/sherwood/photos/
http://guilfordassociation.org/sherwood/tulip-dig/
G.
That sounds like fun, Critter! The kindergarten teacher must have loved having you there.
We are really having a good year for frogs all over, by the sound of it. Happy to hear them! We even had one up on the deck last week. I just don't remember ever hearing so many frogs in the yards here.
They are so loud here that you can hear them inside the house with the doors and windows shut.
Walked DH out the door earlier for work, and there was one little froggie sitting on the railing of the porch. Such a cute little fella! :)
The Grey Tree Frogs are the ones yelling the loudest around here... the little green ones just chirp, but these guys holler!
The last couple of nights you would not have been able to go outdoors while talking on a phone. The calliope was deafening. Who'd of thought texting may have its uses. LOL
I don't hear any frogs here yet, but I've seen a few in my yard and garage.
My 'neck' is shivering. 59 degrees?!? Oh well, good for most of the newly planted things. And I have soup to finish assembling this morning before work. Armenian Lentil Soup.
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/armenian-lentil-soup-51173600
I haven't yet bothered to find dried apricots but it is still good.
I think I copied it from the book Eating on the Wild Side, which talks about vegetable and fruit hybrids, many of which (she says, and cites studies) have had nutrient value bred out of them. Aside from that, she also talks about how much freshness matters in most of them and the relative value (green beans don't have a whole lot) and the special nutrients in various ones. Sounds dry but not a bad read despite the sciencey parts. It gives some recommendations of specific cultivars that have been studied and found with higher levels of antioxidants etc.
Yeah, I can't wait until it gets into the 90s next week. Today is just too cold...burr~!!
90s bad, 75 good
I was outside for a couple hours today..trying to get a few things done.
After all--I can work under my high patio roof. Of course--I still was going
in and out of my shed--and wandering around the yard....After a couple hours--
it just was not too much fun. I am back inside--with dry socks on. Bummer!
Thought I could at least fill up some pots with soil so I can just plant
in there later....trying so hard to get my pots and containers planted. No luck!
Not even mentioning all the plants sitting around waiting to go into beds!
many of my seed-grown plants are just getting too big!
....
If it stops raining--I could, at least, cut all the bulb foliage back by half so I CAN plant
something in the beds. It is so heavy and wet and lying all over the beds...
I have been doing that. it looks so much better...
Might be A GOOD DAY to go shopping??? I do need to go to a grocery.
Have to put together a Pasta Seafood Salad for out Cook Out at HD on Monday.
Well--maybe I can get some gardening in tomorrow? Or Saturday?
I don't work again until Sunday............:-}
See? Like this......
Ric and I got all kinds of work done today, Surprising how much we got done. One little job after another. Glad we got so much done today as tomorrow I will be running all day long. Morning at Lucas's school for an Art Tour, afternoon at Julies filling her built in planting box with flowers as part of her BD gift, late afternoon hosting dinner for a friend and then we are all going to watch Jamie's family in a play. Sat morning Courtney is coming over to make planters and Julie's house for her BD party in the afternoon. Next two days are really going to be busssy.
That soup sounds good, Sally; I think I'll try it! Raisins would be a good substitute for the apricots.
Looks good, GIta!
That's a jam-packed weekend, Holly, but at least it sounds like a good kind of busy.
Spent all day yesterday out in the rain, getting ready for 3 deliveries of plants, one of which arrived late yesterday afternoon. MAN, it wasn't very nice, but I'm sure glad I wore jeans and not shorts! :)
Definitely sounds busy Holly!
I get to start my landscape project for a 'customer' tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that and hoping everything goes well. I'll take progress pics during the process.
Looks like the weather will cooperate!
The weather is so wacko right now....they are calling for low 40's tonight!
Such huge swings in temperature....I still have plants all over tables and the floor outside.
At least there is no rain today...will see what I can accomplish....
Lesson learned--DO NOT purchase plants weeks before you will, actually,
have time to plant them! All the Swap plants are still sitting around as well.
As are all my deep blue petunias I grew from seed. First time I did it.
They all came up and I planted them into cell packs. Now--they just wait.....so many!
AAARRGGHHHH....
