Look what arrived this past week. Really, these were taken over a week ago, but I already had my Hawaii posts scheduled so this one was pushed back a bit. Click on the images for a better look at the foliage. Oh, and these photos are all straight out of the camera. No computer editing with the exception of the labels. Pretty, right?
I have a lot on my plate this week. Piles of housework to finish, a number of errands to run, email messages to respond to, and basically plenty of catching up to do. So what made top on my list this gorgeous afternoon? Harvesting lavender, of course. Yep. In my mind that seemed to be the most pressing task and somehow inched its way to number one. Bummer of a way to spend the last day of summer, huh? You should smell our kitchen, my shirt and my hands.
I know spring has been here for a few weeks now, but I'm just getting around to taking photos of the gorgeous blooms in our yard. We have tons of purple blooms and green and red leaves there now and they've really brightened up the area. Here are a few photos I took today:
1. Our grape vine...look! Grapes!
Yesterday was my birthday (yay!) and I had a great day. In the morning Chad surprised me by planting the rose bushes we bought on Saturday while I was away from home. Very cool. We used to have pink mallow tea trees in our front yard along the garage, but the pesky grasshoppers ate and killed them last fall. Seeing as how most of our neighbors have rose trees in their front yards and that they all seem to be thriving we decided to give those a try. I wanted white roses but we couldn't find them so we ended up with red. And actually, I'm really glad we did. I think the red looks beautiful. Thanks for planting them for me, Chad!
We spent the rest of my birthday with my parents in Visalia. We went out for spaghetti, opened presents, had lemon meringue pie for dessert and had a fun time hanging out. Hard to believe it's over already!
This summer one of our red Japanese Maple trees died. Yesterday we returned the tree (or rather, a tree trunk with a few bare dried up branches) to the store where we bought it. It was one of many maples we have in our yard so we weren't too upset about it, but it was still a bummer. Last week Chad and I decided we wanted to plant a fig tree in its place. We already have one in our yard and we love everything about it. The leaves are beautiful, the branches are funky and weird, and the entire tree has more than doubled its size since we bought it in late May. I hope this new tree does as well as our current one.
We also bought a purple Crepe Myrtle bush for the front side yard. Chad planted it in the dark and did a great job despite the lack of lighting!
A new dragonfly friend spent the evening in our front yard posing for photos. The lighting at dusk was a little funky so getting a good shot was difficult. Here is my favorite photograph we took of him. Try to imagine a bright blue body behind these super green eyes. So cute!
Our holiday weekend was spent at the coast. Friday night we had dinner at Avila Beach. Saturday morning and early afternoon we enjoyed downtown San Luis Obispo. We ate breakfast at the Big Sky Cafe, walked along the creek, looked at Chad's old place (now boarded up and condemned), shopped, and people-watched before hitting our friends' wedding. The wedding ceremony was in Shell Beach and the reception in Los Osos. The weather in Shell Beach couldn't have been more perfect for their big day and everyone was happy to feel the sun and the light breeze. Los Osos was Los Osos: cool and foggy. Good thing the reception was inside!
Here's a new photo of our garden. If you go back to the posts from April 27 or May 18 you can see how much its changed. The planter box seemed so large when the landscaper put it in but it definitely doesn't seem big anymore. Every day there's something new to see out there. Our watermelon plant is getting greedy and taking up the middle section of the box. We may have to figure out another place for it because I don't want it taking over and shading everything else. It's grabbing onto the strawberry plants and pulling its way to the ends of the box. Weird. The corn stalks, tomatoes and the rest of the lot are still growing well. No ripe tomatoes yet but lots of flowers and small green fruit sprouting...so that's a good sign.
Here's a photo of our finished yard. Of course it's not really finished... I still have a short list of shrubs I'd like to buy and there are parts of the design I want to tweak, but the hard work is done for now. It feels great to look out the windows and see green grass, planted shrubs and woody bark. Now let's hope everything grows!
Today when I was out in the yard this little guy flew over to me. I've seen dragonflies in our backyard before but this one had such an unusual pattern on his wings I wanted to get a few shots before he flew off. He posed for quite a long time and I got plenty of photos of him from different angles. 
We successfully got the plants in the ground this weekend and the bark shoveled over the soil. Thanks to help from our neighbor and especially my parents we finished 90% of the job yesterday. Chad and I finished up the small easy section we left for today in about 90 minutes this afternoon. I'll put up a new photo of the yard later this week.
These past two weeks I've stocked up on tons of plants for our yard. We have a quarter of them planted and hope to get the rest in the ground this weekend. Chad is the hole digger and I'm the designer, planter and irrigation installer. We make a good landscaping team.
Our backyard trees are now hooked up to the automatic sprinkler timer. The landscapers installed a water-saving drip system for our trees and plants and I finally installed the hoses and connectors to each tree today. The plants will still be watered by the hose until we plant them, but hopefully that'll only be for a few more days. Now I have to figure out how much water everything needs.
Today I began the big (but fun) task of plant shopping for our backyard. Fortunately everything was on sale at Lowe's so it wasn't as crazy expensive as I thought it was going to be. We've decided on the the purple and green color scheme for the backyard which I think is going to look really pretty when everything is planted and growing. Today I ended up with twelve purple flowering plants, two of each variety, because that's all I could fit in my trunk. Here's what I chose:
This weekend my parents brought us a huge glazed green pot for our front entryway. (Thanks Dad and Mom!) Last night Chad and I went shopping at Lowe's for shade plants and this is the combination we came up with. We already had the fern in the center--it was kindly planted by a bird at Chad's house in San Diego. The rest of the greenery is new.
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.
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.
