Front yard garden pics

Trumpet lilies, from the front gardens. Last year,
when I planted them, there was only one flower stalk on each plant. Now, each has at least two, and in some cases three.

Dwarf cannas, from the front garden. The gladiola in the back is the only one out of a hundred bulbs planted that is giving any indication of producing flowers this year.

In between the dwarf cannas, (there are 6 total) I have a couple of variety of hosta and some gladiolas. The glads are a big dissapointment, to be honest with you. As I said, I've only got the potential for a bloom off one plant so far out of a hundred bulbs. I'll be experimenting with other plants next spring, I assure you.

The full size canna I planted in the front are still establishing, so there's nothing to show off there. I did want to show off the beginnings of the blooms from the dwarf canna though.

Side yard garden June 2008

These are calla lilies - I planted 4 stands of them last year, however only this one came back this year. I believe this variety is called "Picasso" but I'm not sure. The only thing I know for sure is that it's a calla lily. The plant in back of it is my hibiscus, however it hasn't started blooming yet.
I planted 4 of those last year too, one on each side of the side yard garden, and two in the back, but only the one in back of the calla came back this year.

The orange day lily is the common or wild variety.

The lovely pink specimen with the yellow throat is from my side yard garden.

This is a picture of the side yard from the front, June 2008.

This is the side yard garden, in a long shot.

Garden June 2008

Here you have a picture of the potting I did today. I put down about 30 moonflower sprouts, and about 15 sunflower seeds. I'll be transplanting the sunflower to the sideyard as soon as they're big enough to survive out of their pots. The moonflowers will be both planted and gifted to neighbors as soon as they're big enough. I'm getting some climbing roses from one neighbor in exchange for some of the moonflowers, and I'll be giving another neighbor some since she gave me the canna lilies that are now on the side yard.

Moon flower seeds I got from your Aunt Sheba. I sprouted them using a ziploc bag and a damp paper towel after nipping the ends off the seeds and soaking them for 24 hours.

This is what the plants look like when they start growing - believe it or not, this is just 3 days after I put the seeds into dirt.

This is the mint bed and the thyme bed. It's kind of blurry, but the mint is on the left and the thyme on the right.

I'm so happy to see this little guy coming up - it's the first sign that the black elephant ear I planted last year will be coming back. Below you can more easily see the size difference between the normal elephant ear and the black elephant ear.

This is what the bed looked like back in March of this year. I really had my doubts at that point that anything was going to come back.

This picture is my lily bed. I have 3 varieties of lilies growing here; Stargazer, Oriental, and the one I call "trumpet" lilies since I can't remember the exact name of their species.

And of course, my newest installation, the trellises. I'll be putting the moonflowers down along the fence so they can grow onto the trellises, and as I said, trading a few moonflowers for some climbing roses, who will also be using the trellises.

As you might guess, Andrea, I do love my plants. It's a vice but it's one of my healthier ones.

Vices (if you can call reading a vice)

One of the things you'll notice about me Andrea, is that I read. A lot.

It's a habit that Sam and Faye encouraged while I was growing up, taking us to the local library for their reading programs during the summer (back then, libraries gave out certificates for reading a set number of books over summer vacation, and both Jolene and I managed to astound more than a few librarians when we'd get 2 and 3 certificates over the summer) and it's a habit that I've never outgrown, or quite frankly, ever seen the need to outgrow. Of course, looking back, it also worked as a way to keep us quiet and out of their hair most of the time.

My taste in literature goes pretty much all over the map (as you'll see when you look over my library), however while there's a decided trend towards SciFi/Fantasy/Horror, I do have other genres I collect as well - but those tend to be author driven rather than content driven.

To cite an example, I don't usually like Mystery/Crime novels, however there are definitely exceptions to that - for example, I happen to enjoy the "Prey" series by John Sandford and have made an effort to collect all of them, as well as a series of novels involving a character named Alex Cross, by James Patterson, and I also enjoy the occasional Ann Rule "true crime" novel.
However, I must confess that of all the books in my collection, there is one author I've been collecting the longest, and that's Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
I was introduced to her work in 1979, and have been an avid fan ever since.

I hope that you'll be interested in reading as well (I honestly look forward to telling you bedtime stories when you visit) and as you grow older, I'm hoping you learn to look at reading as the joy that it is, not as a chore to be endured. I know your Grandpa Don will agree with that statement.