Simple...

....and vibrant Bachelors Buttons are straight from the garden.  They were started from seed and grown in soil rich with organic matter.  Thank you, chickens!

I will be showing small flower arrangements for the next several days, using only the flowers that grow around our place.    Do come back to see more of these captivators as the week goes on! 

Expected Pleasures

The garden is beginning to change over to a late summer state.  The earlier blooming plants are still going strong, but there is another crop of flowers on the crest of bursting open.   I obviously love growing flowers, but I'm not an expert by any means.  It is a stroke of luck that I have a second wave of blooms waiting for the later days of summer. 

Hot Lips Salvia play an important part in the herb garden.  The plant is a perennial but rarely makes it through a cold winter.  The show this plant puts out is worth the extra expense from year to year.

White Echinacea holds its strong head and flower for weeks.  It is a charmer and appears to light up at dusk.

Our brightly colored geraniums are on their second set of flowering stems.  The fertilizer has given them new life, after laying dormant in the garage over winter.  It is thrilling to be successful at keeping these alive for more than a couple of years!

Pincushion is another perennial and it thrives from season to season. It is perfect for cutting and bringing indoors!  

Black Eyed Susan take up a large space in the garden.  This is the very first flower and I found it this evening.  There are hundreds to follow.  This is not the last you'll see of these! 

I like to dry Black Eyed Susan and use them in dried arrangements or wreaths.

Flowers are my expected pleasure of summer!   What are your expected  pleasures of summer?

Safe

For the record....I uploaded all my photos to an external hard drive today.  My computer is going on five years old and we all know what that means! The big crash could happen at any time.  I have heard many people exclaim great frustration when their computer ends its life.  All I really care about are my pictures and now they are safe. 

The pictures on today's post were taken a few minutes ago.  The sun is low on the horizon and the glow is reflected in the photos. 

The shot above shows a Butterfly Bush behind the bird houses.  This is its second year and has become almost tree like.  In the foreground is Chocolate Mint.  It makes wonderful tea and spreads nicely.  We do cut it back drastically without ever fearing it won't return!  :)

Pictured below are Stevia plants.  This is the plant that is used as a sweetener substitute.  It is sweet enough for my tea and that is how I use it.  One plant will multiply with each new growing season.  They are pretty plants and fill in the garden nicely.  They look like a small Butterfly Bush.

Croscosmia is one of my favorite flowers. It belongs to the Iris family.  It grows from a bulb and the bunch grows larger as the years go by.  

Summer isn't complete without a prolific crop of Nasturtiums.  I grow them from seed, in barrels, with the same dirt from year to year.  It's my understanding they are not to be fertilized if they are to bloom well.   

We are expected to have some hotter days by this weekend.  I'll be watering in the early morning and placing a few pots out of the direct sunlight.

 Having a flower garden is much like having children. 

They flouish with attention! 

The Flowers

In the midst of getting ready for the wedding we had here last weekend..I had flowers to put together for the bride.  She chose dahlia's in jewel tones and other interesting combinations of amazing blooms. 

Sweet William's, Stock and Aster......

Kermit mums,  lily, alum.....

Lisianthus, tree fern, bouvardia..... 

The bouquets were full and enchanting.  Color was bursting forth and captured the look our bride wanted.  The striking colors set against all the green made a beautiful combination for a garden wedding. 

The Wedding

The wedding is over.  The guest have gone home and a sweet memory is left to digest.  I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of the woodland wedding ceremony site.  You can imagine the peaceful setting and how the beautiful bride felt to be getting married in the place of her dreams. 

The happy couple leaving the ceremony.

 I looked up at the sky right after the ceremony and said a prayer of thanksgiving. 

 ( The wedding was in the woods...on our farm.  The weather was perfect..not too hot and not too cold.)

A fine day...indeed!

Great Day In The Morning...

We are singing a new song and it has to do with a little baby boy who has entered our lives!  He is our  grandson and he is a precious one! He was born last week!
Thank you for all the good wishes, prayers and encouragement!  We are so happy to have another little one to play with, watch grow and enjoy!  We are very blessed!  Having a baby is nothing less than a miracle and we give thanks to God for this new one!! Mother, daddy and baby are thriving!

Real life drama unfolds.

The baby fawn appeared today with her mother but not for long.  Mama doe has had her fawn tucked away under the cover of the woods for weeks.  The pictures are not very clear but clear enough to see them.  (Hence..the reason I need a camera that zooms a bit further! Right? )

If you look closely you can see the pair gazing up the driveway at me. 

Now for the grandest drama of this year!!  Jim caught the mole that has dug his way clear across out front yard.  There must have been fifty dirt piles over the past several weeks.  We have tried everything known to the farm store and some ideas we made up ourselves.  What got the mole?  A trap!  Snap...gotcha! 

The End for Mole!

Part Two

Chicken Little needs to be moved!

We moved the baby chicks(17) last night from the nursery to the big pen with all the other hens. One of the new hens is small, and when I checked in on her this morning, it was clear that she needed to be taken out.  Her size is slightly smaller and that is all it takes.  During the early morning she was literally pecked on. 

I wasn't sure if I could do this by myself but I needed to get her.  I used my honed chicken cornering skills,  grabbed hold and didn't let go.  She is back in the nursery and can begin healing.  We will pour the greens to her, and she will add a few pounds, before going back into the large pen.  There is often a runt in the chicks but they do catch up in size.  I'm glad that I was home today and could save Chicken Little. 

 (She is to the left of the photo)

Speaking of babies....we are still waiting for our number TWO grand baby to arrive!!  It shouldn't be long...a matter of minutes...I hope!! 

Life on the farm is never dull and life in a family isn't either! 

Doors

Santa Fe, New Mexico could be called the city of doors.  Charm is displayed throughout the city in many ways but the allure (to me) is in the doors.  Blue doors, brown doors, big doors and small doors riddle the cobbled roads in a way that bid me to take a look beyond. 

The use of blue is striking and it is the color that reflects the sky above. 

There is no shortage of church doors...humble to cathedral style.

Doors are plentiful in Santa Fe!