Black Velvet Petunia and a Frog - Ribbit

Today I spent a few hours taking some shots of flowers and testing out my new Canon 60D. I'm new at this, but I got some really cute shots. I even got a frog that has set up home in our pond area.  We draw in a lot of frogs with the ponds, there is quite the habitat forming there. We had this old birth bath (if you are a follower you would have seen this in a past post filled with orange water lol). It was just laying around in the back yard getting really yucky so we cleaned it up and brought it up front to plant in. We added some ivy from our back yard, a pretty center grass I picked up and the local nursery as well as Black Velvet Petunias. YES, you heard me correctly, Black Velvet. They were gorgeous and I have to do these again soon. 

This is a new plant below that we added this year. It is a Mini Columbine that I found at Lowes. I love love it, and so do the my Hummingbirds that visit this yard. I have went back several times to look for another one and I'm not able to find another. I will have to split this one, once it gets established. It is a perennial so it will come back each year.

Below are my Daisy's trying real hard to bud and flower. Can't wait to see what this one turns into. 

Below is another planter that Kelly and I threw together from some extra plants we had that did not make it into the ground.  We always end up with extra and this is a great way to incorporate them into the garden. 

This pink plant is new as well. I for the life of me can not remember the name? I do remember it's only an annual.  If anyone know definitely leave it below in the comments. I know somewhere in this house I have the plant tag for this (I save my tags every year). When I found it I will update this post with the name. 

Ground cover is fun as well. The chick in Hens is super pretty and the white plant is a type of Baby's Breathe. Very pretty and great for covering bald spots.  Our Garden is really new so, so until it gets established it will have lots of bare spots! 

Next up is my Frog. It was really cool to see them start living in our pond. It's awesome that we have created a beautiful bird, animal and flower habitat in a place where there was only overgrown half dead brush. I'm learning a lot about gardening as I go along. 

Cleaning Up More Flower Beds

Today we cleaned the right side of the house. We had some serious overgrown weeds all over the place and some over grown ornamental grass that needed some serious attention. It was spreading all over the place and needed to be tamed.  We had done some cleaning in this area before, but today we will add the final touches. 

We needed a method for confining the wild grass and Kelly came up with a great idea to use our left over flower bed pavers to keep the grasses isolated just around the satellite dish area. I did not want the grass growing into the near by bush you see here in the above picture. It was overwhelming the bush and killing it.  As you can see we confined it! 

(Update 2014 - The above picture makes me really sad. Maddie is in the picture , The grey colored cat, and she went missing just after this picture. It was a heartbreaking lose for my husband and I. Very sad to see her in these pictures, it seemed things were so perfect than. A perfect moment in time). 

Stormy Weather and Sanford and Son...What?

Today we had a pretty strong storm rip threw here. It was not a Tornado, but it packed some serious high winds. Several branches in the back yard came down so Kelly took advantage of it and did some additional trimming as well.  We also had a eye sore spot where we had piled some junk in the back yard and it was time to get it cleaned up.  As you can see I have containers and birdhouses just piled around :( - Not a good thing.

In the picture above you can see the old bird bath just filled with ORANGE water? That bird bath is going to turn into something pretty soon! It is actually a broken fountain, but Kelly has a wonderful idea about bringing it up front and planting in it. I think we are going to go with it. 

On to the other cleaning we did that day, below. Check out this mess. I am almost too embarrassed to post this here, but it does get cleaned up and needs to be shown. I hear the Sanford and Son music playing in the background when I look at this mess, lo. Maybe it will shame me enough never to do this again!! It was beginning to look like a junk yard - GAHHH.

LET THE CLEAN UP BEGIN...

So much better, ahhhhhh. This needed to be done so badly. Now this area is not done and there is still a lot more that needs to be done here, but this is a great start! 

Can't ask for more than this! Now at least Sanford and Son won't be moving into my backyard any time soon.

Favorite Window Garden

I moved out here to Missouri in 2008, from New York.  My boyfriend, ow husband, owed this house for several years before we met and did very minimal gardening for the few years he was here.

This garden was planted in July of 2008 and is one of my all time favorite gardens that we have set up in the front window. If you look closely you can see two tomato plants there as well. It may seem like a silly place to put them, but those were the best tomatoes we ever yielded to date. It must have been beginners luck. Over all, I just loved the colors this small little garden brought to the front of the house. 

The pine tress are still up at this point. These trees do not stick around for long. They end up getting a disease that turns them brown, and they eventually have to be pulled up. Kelly and I are not really fans of these pine trees to start with, so they would have been pulled up regardless of disease or not.  Photography skills are not at a prime here, check out our reflections in the windows, lol :)

The only thing I disliked about this garden was this hummingbird feeder. It leaked something terrible, but it was pretty to look at. It caused a major ant problems and I have upgraded since.

I was really wanting to say my photography skills improved here, and then the good ole reflection picture had to ruin it all and now these unsightly vertical shots.  It's all a learning thing with photography just like everything else. Practice is the key here, and I will need lots of it. I promise as this blog goes on you will see an improvement to my pictures. In current times, 2015, I have a Cannon 60D.