I Told Them To Be Nicer To Their Little Brother!

When my sons were younger, I kept telling the older ones to be nicer to baby brother Ben as I figured he'd be bigger than they were when all was said and done.  Haven't had a chance to measure him for two years so we took care of that when he returned. 

Those rascals should have listened to me.  lol.  Lucky for them, baby brother is a nice guy.

Solar Eclipse

I was really excited about this solar eclipse as Utah was supposed to be the target zone for totality.  All would have been well except for this wacky Utah spring weather.  First the sky looked like this...

Not too promising for eclipse watching.  Then the clouds started to break up a bit, but still, never a clear peek.

Finally, after getting a bit tired of the whole process, Mike and I sat down on the lawn swing with our backs to the sun.  Lo, and behold, look at the cool shadows that the eclipse made on the back door a few minutes later.  lol.

One of these days, I'm going to see a total eclipse!  Just wasn't today.

He's Home!

Elder Benjamin Coffey has returned from his mission to the South Pacific.

He is taller, thinner, and tanner than when he left. At the moment, he's also more tired and more soft spoken. Tired as he was traveling for over 30 hours total including layovers. Soft spoken as he is translating every thing he says from French or Kanak before he says it in English. I'm so glad he's home!

Oh Yeah!

Sometimes, I go a little crazy when I make Mexican food.  Case in point...

tonight's dinner.  Four enchiladas would have been enough for Mike and I, but NO!  I had to go and make many, many more.  We'll be eating good for days.  Luckily, enchiladas only get better in the freezer.

In The Garden - May 6

Flower update:

The irises are amazing this year.  The stalks are long and the blooms...well, as you can see, the blooms are lovely.

Viburnum plicatum plicatum.  My favorite shrub to hate.  This year, definitely a favorite year.  The thing looked like we'd had a heavy snow fall.  Some years, there're about three blooms total.  Epic fail.  lol.  Years like this make me want to plant another one.

Up close view of the funky flowers on the viburnum.  Cool, huh?

My baby lilac.  My goal is to have this plant grow tall enough that I can smell lilac blooms through the kitchen window.  At the moment, though, it's only about three feet tall.  And the flowers are so heavy that they droop.  Poor little guy!

Up close view of the droopy flowers.  This cultivar is double-flowered which is why they're so heavy, I guess.  They're also very fragrant.  I wasn't sure they would be as fragrance seems to be the first characteristic to disappear when breeders start messing with flower structure.

South gate to the backyard lined with soapwort.  Kinda cool, I think.  Especially since I only planted 5 small soapwort plants originally.  They are the epitome of the word 'self-seeding'.  At the moment, it works for me.  If they start coming up everywhere, I might not be so sangfroid about it.

Close up of the soapwort blossoms.  Each one is less than a half inch across, but what they lack in size, they make up for in number!

New Carpet!!!!

I can hardly believe that I can actually say that we have new carpet.  But we do!  First, a look at the lovely, cushy, new stuff.

in the living room

in the family room

close up of the texture

In truth, none of the pictures is terribly close to the true color.  The carpet is actually more golden brown than these photos would lead you to believe.  And there is no way that photos can begin to show how cushy and comfy that this carpet is.  Such a huge change from the old ratty original.

And that brings me to my second point.  Twenty six years is just too long to wait to replace carpet, especially builder's grade carpet.    Mike and I have had MAJOR differences of opinion about making this change.  Now that it is finally done, he has been making comments like "well, maybe we should go ahead and replace the upstairs carpet, too" (upstairs carpet is also 26 years old.)  Methinks that spending some time on the new cushy loveliness has helped him realize just how awful the old stuff was.  At last.

In The Garden - April 23

We've had a beautiful, albeit unusually dry spring. Most years, spring is my favorite season as the yard looks wonderful without much effort. This year is no exception!

A shot of the new clematis (montana rubens) growing on the new pergola.  This is only one year's growth!  I'm kicking myself for not thinking of this variety years ago for the other side of the pergola.

Close up of the Clematis montana rubens flowers.  They are quite lovely, I think.  And, they're also lightly scented.  Very nice!

Another close-up of the clematis.

Full view of the lilac near the garden fence.  So far, I am really happy with this shrub.  I knew when I planted it that I would need to keep up on the pruning as we have no need of a 12 foot tall behemoth in this spot.  An annual renewal pruning has thus far kept the plant in bounds and kept the flowers within sniffing distance of my nose.  And Peri's nose, too...notice the blooms near the ground.  I've found Peri standing there sniffing flowers several times.  lol.

Close up of the big lilac spikes.  And the fragrance - c'est magnifique!

A 'Dukat' daffodil in a pot on the patio.  I'm really pleased with these.  Bought on sale at Lowes last fall.

My renegade species tulips by the steps from deck to patio.  They are everywhere this year!  No one would know that I dug up about a hundred of them last year to give to Nathan and Carin.  And the flowers are much bigger than most years.  I think I started out with five tiny bulbs of each color (I also have yellow ones that bloomed a few weeks ago.)  I'm still looking for some bulbs of the lavender color of species tulips.  Would love to have some of those, too.