Wisteria

Two weeks ago our wisterias came back from the dead. Or at least we thought they were dead. Both vines looked like plain brown sticks in a pot all winter and the were anything but impressive. But like I said, they returned for spring and we now have these beautiful and fragrant purple flowers in our back yard.

New Trees

Last week my mom and I drove by a nursery selling 5-gallon trees for $10 each. We stopped to see what they had and noticed five Japanese Maples on sale--exactly what I was looking for. Of course these were much smaller than what I had in mind, but $10 is much cheaper than $90+ for the trees we've seen in our area so we picked out two. We have one sitting in our backyard. It'll be planted by our bedroom when we're ready to landscape. Yesterday Chad and I decided to plant the other one to see how it does in the front yard. I think it'll be a perfect place for it.

Wildflower Trip

On Saturday Mom, Dad and I went on a short drive to the hills to see the wildflowers in bloom. It was a great trip and we all got some great shots of the beautiful scenery. Here are my favorite nature photos taken with my camera that day.

Sorry for the watermarks on my photos now. I just read an article about people stealing personal photos online and I want to avoid any stealing from my site.

Easter

Happy Easter! Here is a photo of the card I made and sent to family this year. I mailed them out earlier this week so everyone should have them by now.


The one in this photo looks crooked but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in real life. At least I hope it wasn't...

Pink Card

Here's a copy of my latest card - a thank you card for a family friend. She was kind enough to buy us two citrus trees for our back yard, orange trees to be exact. Chad and I are going to plant them in big pots on the side yard near our vegetable garden. Should be fun to watch them grow. We're especially looking forward to eating the fruit and drinking the fresh juice.

Birdie

This little birdie has been sitting on the fence near my kitchen most of the morning and afternoon. I think she likes my neighbor's park-like backyard. She also must have friends nearby because she's been singing like crazy. I can't wait to get settled on our backyard so birds will want to spend time back there too.

I didn't want to scare her away so I used a super zoom on my camera. I'm thinking that's why the color is so muted.

Anyone know what kind of bird she is?

Edit: My friend Loren's coworker supplied me with some additional information. Turns out my she-bird is a HE-bird called a House Finch.

Media Center

On Saturday Chad and I finally bought the media center we've been eyeing since Thanksgiving. We decided on the large center console and one side media tower. The set looks really great in the room - so much better than the rickety table we had our TV on before. It was delivered earlier today with just a little trouble from the delivery company, but it was worth it. It's exactly what we wanted for this room. Now all we need is a monster flat panel TV to complete the look, right? Someday...

Thanks once again to Mom and Dad. We had extra money left over from Christmas and we put it towards this purchase.

Unfortunately my camera is being stubborn and won't take a photo that looks good from any angle in the room today. Hopefully you get the idea from this shot. If you really want to see what it looks like I can send you the link from the company.

American Idol

On a not-as-personal note I'm 100% supporting Jason Castro this season for American Idol. I doubt he'll make it to the top two but as long as he's on the show he's going to get my vote.

Jason rocks!

Flowers

Our flowers are out and doing really well this month. They are so colorful and really brighten up our front yard.

Wood

Today I drove up with my parents to the cabin for the afternoon. They recently bought a bunch of wood and wanted to take a truckload up to Shaver Lake. I helped unload and stack the wood. It was easy and didn't take long with the three of us working on it.

Shelf

Today Chad and I bought and installed a couple floating shelves for our living room. We put one on either side of the TV area and I think they'll look really great once we get a media console. We also need to find a few lightweight items in greens/browns/oranges for the shelves add color to the room.

New Rocks

Yesterday Chad and I went to a friend's house in the hills. He let us take some rocks from his property back to our house to place in the front yard. We took 5 or 6 of the cute ones light enough to carry and put them in when we got home. Of course we wish they were a bit bigger but since we don't own a crane or a Bobcat we'll stick with what we got.

They're small but you can kind of see them around the plants in this photo.