Scattered Thoughts . . .

Will and Sue gave us a big bag of tulip bulbs a few months ago.  Sheila and I had been trying to find a home for them in one of our flowerbeds and finally decided to plant them around the playhouse.  This meant I had to find enough rocks to use as a border for two new flowerbeds.  I quickly found the necessary rocks and dug two new flowerbeds, one on each side of the path to the playhouse. Kenzie came over and helped Gee plant all the bulbs about a month ago... After Kenzie and Gee planted the bulbs, I went out there with chicken wire to cover the flowerbeds to keep our local rodents from stealing the bulbs.  I then covered the chicken wire with a mix of more potting soil and top soil.  We've had bulbs stolen by rodents before so hopefully this chicken wire will deter them this time. We'll see how these tulips do in the spring.  They should look very nice flanking each side of the steps to the playhouse.  

Every year we expand and improve our landscaping and gardens and this Spring was no exception. Each year, things are a little bit different in our yard with different plants and slightly different gardens and we seem to add a little more each year as well.   I'm not at all into having little figures and figurines in our gardens and backyard, in general,  but we do have our frog, Dawn, perched on our front step to greet all visitors. This frog is named after Sheila's lifelong friend, Dawn. If you were fortunate enough to know Dawn, you'll understand why our frog is named Dawn... We added cedar planters and window boxes this year and hope to add more to more windows in the future... As always, our stone walls, stone paving, and timbers tend to expand and artistically spread as well. This stone walkway to our backyard and back door , lined by wildflowers and stones,  is one of my favorite features (and required a lot of back-breaking work for someone with extensive

Slowly, and in between health issues and medical appointments, we are making some headway on our summer home renovation plans.   Our latest project is to paint the house. Well... to at least paint the part of the house that is mostly finished!  We plan to finish another part of the exterior this summer but we wanted to get the design and colors right first. I think we are moving in the right direction but this little exercise has pointed out the need for some minor adjustments that weren't in the original plan. This current project is going well and it involves designing, building and installing some new architectural details for the exterior which match our new renovations on the interior. Between a drastic color change and adding these architectural details, the house is beginning to show some character! In this photo, below, we can see the new lighting at our front door... The weather has been rather wet this summer so I had to set up a little workshop outdoors under