Dinner From the Grill and Flowers in the Garden

I picked up some yellow squash the other day and decided to have it for dinner tonight along with Iowa Tenderloins.  But it was warm here today – so I decided to cook it on the grill.  All chopped up with salt, pepper, olive oil and chopped garlic!  Then I decided to grill some sweet onions to have on top of the sandwiches.  As you can see my whole grill is consumed by yumminess.

Ozzy was nice enough to keep me company

And some photos from my deck and “garden”

Finally my Bleeding Heart is blooming!  July 24th – Can you beleive it!

Its the year of the Columbine this year… I have White, Blue, Purple and Red all growing- and Im pretty sure we only planted the red one… the rest are volunteer… I might have to see if I can scrounge up some yellow columbine seeds to make my collection complete.

 

Hummingbirds

 

The last flower pictures youll see for a week!

So I planted a iris probably 4 years ago and it is finally going to bloom.  I had just about given up on it, and actually forgot it was even yellow.  Here is a picture of the buds- hopefully it will stil be in bloom when we get back from vacation.

I love the way these poppies come up.  its like the are bowing thier heads just getting ready to shine.

And I have strawberries on.  I bought a couple of strawberry plants a couple of years ago, and now they are fruit bearing.  We will see if they are ripe when we get back-  Sure hope so.

And my roses are blooming! 

I promise these are the last boring photos of my garden.  Check back next week for exciting photos from Grand Teton and Yellowstone!  I hope to get photos of a moose and more!! Headed out tomorrow for a grand driving tour of Wyoming and Montana!

 

Flowers

My wild rose is in bloom and the columbine combo makes a nice photo. 

We decided not to dead head our poppies and just let them go to sead all summer.

And the Pansies just keep getting bigger-

 

Backyard photos

 

Noah Mows the Lawn!

Noah learned how to mow the lawn this weekend.  So now he gets to help out a bit more, not that I mind mowing cause I really don’t.  I put on my ipod and listen to a book!

 

Patio Fireworks

Al and Rosalie came up to help us celebrate the 4th.  We hit Target cause Noah was sure he needed some fireworks, and after picking up the box of pre-packaged box of fireworks that cost $100, I talked him down to $50.  Then after dinner of Steak and fries and salad we lit off a few. Take a look

 

The Pansies have taken over!

Here are some updated photos of my little flower garden.  I bought a couple of Asiatic lilies and put them in my flower boxes. My irises are close to all being in bloom and we bought a new blue columbine to replace one that didn’t come back this year.  You can see below how the pansies and violas have taken over the garden.  I’m going to have to pull some around my Hen and Chicks as I think they are being strangled out.  We have so many different varieties of pansies and violas that at this point they are starting to cross polinate and coming up with some unique color combinations- its kinda cool!

 

Flower Boxes

We spent most of Saturday shopping for flowers and planting the new flower boxes that Al andNoah made for me earlier this spring.  We usually plant our flowers for the season around Father’s Day, but since we spent last week in Iowa, we were not here to plant.  Its actually a good thing we didn’t plant, because we did have snow last week.  We also got our hanging baskets which hang from the eves of the deck.  I didn’t take any pictures of the deck off the master, but we have 2 boxes there and 2 big planters.  We planted some strawberries a couple of weeks ago in the two big planters.  Anyway, it was a long day of planting, but we are very happy with the results.  Take a look!

 

And look! My Poppies are starting to pop!  Most of my poppies are self started from seeds that had fallen.  We planted 2 poppy plants about 2 years ago andnow they are everywhere!  I even found some growing on the other side of our fence in the lot next to us.  As they start to bloom more I will  put more pictures up but this is the first one that has popped open.  My 2nd plant of irises is about to pop open too… I think there are like 5 flowers on that one- stay tuned for photos.

One plant that always reminds me of my mom is a fuschia-  Nancy loved Fuschia-  I can remember almost every summer she would find a big hanging basked of fuschia- so everytimeI see one it makes me think of her.  Well I found a couple of smaller plants at our local greenhouse and bought 2.  I was not sure what I was going to do with them, but they fit nicely in this single pot!

 

Flower Update

Here are some new photos of my flower’s progress.  Unfortunatly we had some snow last week and most of the buds on my iris were shocked, but I got one bud out of the deal.

and the flox are in bloom… Check back on Monday for more photos as those new flower boxes are going to be planted this weekend! Hopefully our snow is gone for good- at least until September!