Happy Birthday USA!!

Don't forget to stop every once in a while and actually thank God for blessing America - he gets a lot of requests, you know.  ~Carrie Latet


Happy 4th of July!! 

We didn't celebrate with all the traditions this year....our plan was at least to have a family cook-out, but 3 weeks of lack of yard work finally caught up with us! So I went out this morning and started trying to make some sense of my overgrown gardens, and Hubby had to go and buy him a new weedeater, and then of course, he needed badly to use it since we haven't had an operating one at all this year!!


I worked most of the day on just the front 2 gardens, the potted plants and the garden down the driveway!! Whew what a mess!!


Here is the before pictures....(I had already done a little, but you see what a mess they were!)

The yard had jumped up into the garden, and taken over!!  I did get to see all kind of neat things inside all this growth!!  Check out this cool spider!!

I have never seen one like this....looks like modern art to me!!  Right next to him was this guy, and he just let me zoom in on him!

If you click the pictures you can see more detail....check out the grasshopper's face, it almost looks like someone drew it on there!! 


I finished one side, and began tying up the glads on the other side...and ran across this.......Can you see it?...look closely........

Here it is zoomed in and leaves moved!!....Duck eggs....Eight of them!!

I'm afraid that Mama duck has left them though as we haven't seen any ducks here since we got home.....I hope she returns and takes care of them! But I'm afraid they will end up like the wren eggs :(


I worked on the potted plants, cut away all the dead that I dared and added some fresh soil, and we had a good soaking rain last night and tonight, so maybe they will come back!!

The patriotic plant....the white is trying to come back!

My Mother's Day plant from Jess!

My Mother's Day plant from my Hubby!

Here are the 'after' pictures!  I think it looks pretty good, the glads still have a few new sprouts coming up, plus I leave them until the leaves fade, because they tend to 're-seed' themselves! 

Notice that I didn't pull everything up over the nest on the far left, hoping Mama Duck will return!!

It took us most of the day...so we were pretty wiped out!  it got to ~ 93 degrees here today with HIGH humidity so we forced water....but didn't eat at all...that isn't smart!!  I got to feeling pretty bad, so instead of our intended cookout, we took our showers and went out to a restaurant.....I'm feeling better now....**Note to self...eat before going out in the heat next time!! It looks so much better around here, so I guess it was worth it....plus I ended up 'standing up' my parents and a cookout!! :\ (sorry Mom & Dad)

The callas are thinking about blooming some more also....see him peeking out?

I got to talk to Jess again tonight on Skype....she is working really hard, and learning lots in the vet hospital in India! She says it is REALLY hot there, and they have "rolling" power outages, which turns off what few AC and fans they have in the hospital!!  She is pretty tired, but having fun!!  Here is a pic of her and her classmates on their way to surgery....she is the third one from the right!! {Not that I'm a proud Mom! :) }

If you are interested, she is updating her blog as she goes here! 


Hope you all had a Happy 4th!


::Hugs::


Cheri


Just found this video on You Tube!! Enjoy!!