Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Large Flowerpot: Pinks and Reds

This is one of two matching pots that are out in front of our garage every summer.
This picture is from last year or the year before fairly early in the season when the flowers still looked nice, before thay got overgrown and spindly. I'm not very good at "pinching back" plants to keep them full and shaped correctly. I either forget or just can't make myself destroy new growth and/or blooms.
I usually wait until about Mother's Day to fill these pots each year. I decided on my color theme this year: brights including pinks, yellows, purples and reds. I have on order two hanging plants with the same color scheme. A few more weeks and I should be able to post pictures of them!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Bottles in the Window + Tree

I guess I have a "thing" about clear glass bottles and vases...always have! The green bottle in the middle I got during my college days somewhere in Wisconsin. That would be back in the early seventies. Yes, almost a lifetime ago! I don't know what it was used for and would be interested in knowing about it but so far haven't taken the time to research it at all. The little vase on the left is just that and only a few years old. The bottle on the right is very old but, again, I'm not sure what it was used for. Probably medicine, I'm thinking or maybe flavoring (like vanilla) for cooking/baking. I wish the screw-on lid was still with it but that rusted and disintegrated long ago.
Interesting note: the scene outside this window changed dramatically yesterday. We had a huge tree (3 1/2 foot diameter) come down in the wind. It looked very healthy, even had lots of new leaves coming but it broke off at ground level and we could see it was rotten on the inside and the root base was almost gone. It landed just a few feet from my son's fishing boat which is the gray thing in the picture above (its covered with a gray tarp). It completely demolished our satelite dish and part of the neighbor's fence. We live in a woods so after we saw this we started looking suspiciously at the trees directly west of our house that are at least 70 to 80 feet tall. Yikes!
After I posted this my husband went out and measured the length (used to be height!) of this tree and it was about 90 feet. Fortunately our nephew has a tree removal business and has saws big enough to handle this huge tree trunk. It will have to be cut into disks and lifted by a Bobcat or loader onto a log-splitter. But my husband, Jerry, is a seasonal worker...works for an agricultural company...and this is their busy time so he won't be cutting this up very soon. I guess it needs to dry anyway if its going to be firewood eventually.