Berries and "How I spent my day off"!

First, here is a picture of a ripe strawberry! I picked a bunch today, some from my garden, and some from my neighbors, who is out of town while her berries are getting ripe!

Next, is a picture of my mailbox. The flowers are finally starting to grow and are looking good.

Then a shot of the flower bed after I planted the impatiens to replace the iris' I dug up Sunday. The flowers are still pretty small, so not showing up real well, but I think it already looks 100 times better. I'll take another picture after they grow a bit. If you click on the picture, it will show it bigger so you can see it a bit better.

And last, but not least, here is my newest project. Last night, Mark ran the cultivator along the outside of the dog's pen, which is just outside the back door. This is what it looked like this morning.

I planted SOME of the iris in there, and decided it needed something more for when the iris' die back, so back to the greenhouse I went and bought another flat of impatiens and here is the result so far.

Wow! I didn't realize it had been 2 months since I last posted. I've been baaad.......but busy!!

This morning, my 12' flower bed looked like this. I was sick of the iris' since they bloom, then immediately fall over, leaving only the spiky leaves for the rest of the summer. They hide any small flowers I've ever tried planting in there, so decided they had to go.(although, the tubers were so huge, I'm sure I missed pieces and will be fighting Iris for years to come!)

After a while, it looked like this and I needed a break!

But eventually, it looked like this!! I didn't see the bird in the birdbath til after I took the picture! She wasn't sure she liked being photographed during her bath, lol. I ran out to the greenhouse and bought 2 columbines and a flat of impatiens with the intention of planting them in here. However, I ran out of steam once I added some dirt to fill in the low spots. I got the columbines planted, but not the impatiens. Hopefully, I'll get those planted Wednesday evening or Thursday morning, since I have Thur. off.

While I had the camera out, I decided to take a shot of the bud on my new "blue moon" rose bush! This is one of the 6 new ones I planted this year. One in the back has a bud, too, but I didn't have the camera with me when I noticed that one.

My latest Project

On our trip to the Grand Canyon, I picked up some "vintage postcards". What they really are, are postcards from 1910-1930 that were transferred to fabric. I bought 2 sets of 4 and when we got home, I found some neat fabric online to put with them. While we were there, we also learned about Kokopelli. Kokopelli is a Hopi fertility god. Kokopelli is usually depicted as a humpbacked flute player. We were told that he plays his flute to call in the seeds for successful crops. When I saw the fabric(the last picture) I thought it would go GREAT with my fabric pictures. However, when I got it, I realized the print was way to large for my little postcards. So, I'm using it as a back. I found an Indian like print border fabric that I cut into strips and used around some of the postcards(notice I even used the snakes, lol), and I loved the feet, so put them going around the quilt as the outer border. After I had put fabric around the postcards, I went to the LQS and bought a dark brown to set them together with. Now I'm going to go find some drawings of Kokopelli to use as a quilting design.

Just a few shots of Today.

We'll be home and back to reality tomorrow, but wanted to post a couple of shots from today.

The mountains were beautiful.

Mark and I road the arial tram at the Royal Gorge.

See the shadow in the pic below? That's the skytram we're in. Notice in the next shot, the shadow is TINY.....Shows how far up we were! It was fantastic! It was also very windy, which added to the excitement of the whole day. I'll post more of the pictures when we are home.

Driving down the highway, Mark had to slam on the brakes because there was a deer standing in our lane. I didn't have time to get the camera out, but less than 1/2 mile later, he said, "LOOK" so I grabbed the camera and he pulled over and we shot these pictures of the deer and elk. There were probably a total of 15 or more deer and several elk. About 10 miles up the road, I saw another 6-8 elk eating and sunning on the mountain side. Didn't have time to get the camera out there, and it wasn't in a place that we could stop.

Then we hit a spot in the road that gives a whole new meaning to hairpin curves. The speed limit went down to 35 mph, so we were going really slow when I spotted this guy. Mark actually found a spot to turn around and we went back so we could take a couple of pictures of him and of this water(ice)fall.

I didn't think to take a shot of the garmin when we first started into this, but wanted to show it, so got a picture when we were at the top.

More Vacation Photos

Have been too tired the last couple of mornings to get anything posted, but thought I'd add a few tonight. These are just some random shots from the last couple of days.

The first one here is a shot of the Desert Watch Tower from one of the points we visited first, below is a shot of the tower as we approached it on foot.

This next shot is just one of many we shot from the top floor of the tower.(which was open, even though it was undergoing some renovations)

The next few were taken inside the tower.

Now just a couple of shots of us with the canyon at our backs.

One of the highlights of our jeep tour was seeing this elk thrashing around. Notice all the limbs on the ground. He snapped those off the tree with his rack. It was awesome to watch.

Road Trip Day 3

On our third morning, we went down to the motel's "free breakfast" and the choices were slim, so we headed to a place we'd spotted the night before, called "Bonnies Breakfast Club". We decided to try something completely different from the norm, so Mark ordered Huevos Rancheros Deluxe and I ordered something called a Hamburger Stacker. His was a slice of ham, topped with eggs, cheese and sauce. When asked "Red or Green or Both", he said both. He had hashbrowns and pinto beans on the side and it was topped with shredded lettuce. Mine was a layered thing too, starting with hasbrowns, a hamburger patty, eggs, cheese and sauce(I also chose "both"). Oh, his was served with tortillas, while mine obviously came with toast. They were both delicious and we were kind of glad the motels' breakfast was so slim and forced us to go have something different!

After Breakfast, we headed back to our room where we packed up our stuff and headed to the sky tram. It was an awesome trip up the mountain, and even though it was cloudy and the views were a little limited, it was beautiful.

This picture of the 2 of us was taken at the top by a lady who was there to ski. It was very nice of her to offer to take one of the 2 of us. I have a small tripod, but was afraid to set it on the ledge of the deck for fear a wind gust would blow it off. It was in the 40's down below, but only 16 and very windy up on top.

The above picture was taken on the far deck you see in the picture below.

Heading down into the clouds.....

It was odd....we'd come out of a cloud and it would be beautifully clear like in this pic, then we'd hit another cloud.

And now we are back on the road, just enjoying the scenery.(Well, I did take a bit of a nap)

And here we are finally getting into AZ.

Entering the Petrified Forest National Park. Words cannot describe the beauty we found there.

Today........GRAND CANYON!!!!!!