A Summer Life

Sunday Drive

2008-05-19T16:32:00.001-07:00

We took a drive on Sunday to one of my favorite places on earth. Here are a few shots from the Grove. This is the road leading to the old cemetery there. I love the canopy of trees and the light that comes in is fantastic. This photo does not do it justice.

The Chapel of the Templed Trees is a small, open air chapel where weddings are sometimes held. A century ago, the surrounding farms did use it as a church before the schoolhouse was built in the grove.
My Grams sisters and father are buried in this cemetery. Her family had a farm near there. I took this photo of the one tree with all the white blossoms. Somehow it's so lovely to me.

Saturday Outing

2008-05-18T06:35:00.001-07:00

Took the kiddos to the zoo yesterday, not sure who had more fun, the kids or us. Got some nice shots and PeeWee's first trip to see the critters went pretty well.

She loves the meerkats and they loved here. They kept running up to the glass to see her and she just smiled.

Everyone had fun in the goat enclosure. The oldest found a little white pygmy goat that was super sweet.

PeeWee found one just her size. It was so adorable, hubby wanted to take it home.
The rainforest bird area is so pretty they way they've fixed it. I took a few wonderful pics for my other projects as well, but I love these of the family.

Boneyard

2008-05-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

In the middle of the fields near home, there is an old cemetery that is literally falling into ruin. The gravestones are mostly broken and sinking into the mud. There were dozens of small children's gravemarkers that are no longer visible. I'm assuming they've sunk underground. Most of the graves date from around the 1830's to 1870's but there are a few older and a few more recent. I've always loved this little cemetery. It was originally a small township plot for the farmers and their families on the surrounding farms.

These next two are two sides of the same marker. The husband is on the base that this used to rest on. One side is for the son and one side is for the wife.

You can see this marker is sinking. It's not the worst, but it will be in a few years.
Like these, they're broken bits from the tombstone to the left, but the piece on the right is at least a foot or more underground now.

Many of the flat stones once stood upright, but have fallen and broken and the ground is slowly coming up around them. It's such a shame.

A week with Betsy Ross

2008-05-05T18:02:00.001-07:00

Well, the oldest has a class project this week consisting of a diarama representing Betsy Ross sewing the American Flag and a costume for a "wax museum" thing they are putting on at school later this week. We finished the costume this weekend with loads of help from my mom and did the diarama tonight. It turned out really cute - I'll post pictures later this week. Hubby even made a small wooden table to put the flag on. The oldest was thilled! We're down to the last month of school and not sure any of us are really ready for that yet.

Edited to add this picture:

The wee one is totally off any baby food at all and is loving it so far. I'm glad she's made the switch so easily. Now to get her off the bottle and onto a sippy cup, but that is a battle for another day. I was able to get a cute picture of her for my 365 even though she wasn't wanting to cooperate. We also think she may be getting ready to be potty trained but we're not quite sure she's ready so we're going to wait just a bit yet. Give her time to do it this summer.

The grass seed we put down this weekend hasn't started to sprout yet. I'm really hoping it does. I don't want to keep shelling out for seed every other week. Sometime in the next two weeks we're going to pick up the lumber and put the raised bed in for my herb garden for the summer. I'm really excited about doing this and can't wait for things to start to grow. I'm contemplating digging some of them up and potting them to have over the winter, but we'll have to see about that. So far I'm sure I'm planting chives, dill, english thyme, russian sage, some other type of sage, some garlic or onion chives and some sweet basil. There may be some oregano in a pot nearby but I'm not sold on that. I don't cook with it that often.

Along the other side of the patio we're going to put in another bed, not raised, that will have some lavender. I found a really lovely pink lavender that I've never seen before and want to try. There will be some other plants in there, but I'm not sure what yet. It gets very little sun there and I'm not even sure how well the lavender will do. I'd like to make sure one of the lavender plants is edible because I'd like to make some lavender sugar and also some lavender butter.

I've started sketching out the garden a bit and will try to post those tomorrow.

Lilacs and a day at the park

2008-05-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

For my 365, I took some pictures of our neighbor's lilac bush. I would love to have one in our garden, but by the time it grew enough to flower properly, we'd have moved. Mom has some in her garden and we went today and picked enough for a couple of bouquets in our living room. The scent is heavenly. I love lilacs!

This afternoon, we took the kids up to the park and I got some great shots. It was a beautiful afternoon. Pee Wee really loves going to the park. The rocks still scare her a bit when she can't get her footing.

Daydreaming at the greenhouse

2008-05-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

I'm planning out an herb garden to go off our patio, so a trip to the greenhouse was in order today. I could have spent a fortune there, alas, today was just a browsing venture. I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with the pictures instead for now.