Guess Who Turned Eight Years Old?

Eight years ago, on a glorious spring day, Sylvia joined our family in a memorable birth underneath the maple tree. Today, she chose a very special birthday dress to celebrate this remarkable feat.

She has grown from a cute little baby into a thoughtful young lady.

 

Dawn baked her a devil's food cake and decorated it in her favorite colour.

 

Erik played her Happy Birthday on his cello.

 

She totally enjoyed being the center of the universe for her special day. Everyone was super nice to her. Dawn painted her nails and decorated them.

 

And of course there are the obligatory candle light pictures.

 

 

Joan's Beauty

 

Once upon a time, we were driving through Vermont with good friends, one of whom is a gardener too. Somehow the car decided to make a visit to a nice looking nursery. Amazing how the car just knew we were dying to stretch our legs and check out some plants.

 

I was overwhelmed by the number of choices, so many plants!, but I got some perennials for my new garden, and some marsh marigolds for the pond. While we were shopping both Sylvia and me fell in love with this fuchsia. It only took a moment of hesitation (wouldn't it look great on the porch??!) before I decided to buy it.

 

The sales woman was a very lovely person and her name was Joan, so Sylvia decided to name this fuchsia "Joan's Beauty". Every day when I see my porch with Joan's Beauty it makes me smile.

2018 follow up: Joan's Beauty sadly has not survived our New Hampshire winters but we did get a new fuchsia this year. So far it has been unnamed .

Baking Cookies

 

The kids decided to bake cookies. It is so nice that they are the age that they can just decide it and do it. I can't wait for them to reach the age that they can do it without fighting :p

 

 

Flower Gardening and Very Slow Wild Life

It is a while ago I have done any flower gardening, so it's fun to figure out how to incorporate in my yard. For now I am working on the front yard, where the sumac and the sumac and did I mention the sumac used to grow.

 

Friday night I worked hard on the left garden, because I knew it was going to rain all Saturday and figured that would save me time and energy watering wise. I got that garden planted and indeed it did rain on Saturday. How convenient!

 

We have had quite some rain this year and there are snails everywhere. I suspect they even ate all the leaves from my marigold seedlings, I am NOT amused.

 

Still, notwithstanding the annoyance factor, there is a certain beauty in the perfection of a snail, and I can't make myself to get rid of them. Yes, I am a softie. And so is Sylvia. This is her pet snail...

 

Luckily it's an outdoors pet and she got distracted by something else shiny pretty soon, so the pet snail escaped to wherever snails like to go in my garden (my precious marigolds!)

 

I got snapdragons (I love that name!) and I bought foxgloves which I thought were whitish, but they have some color to them after all. I haven't tried foxgloves before, so will be interesting to see how they do.

 

Those irises are Sylvia's birthday flowers. A friend got them for me since they would bloom on her birthday every year. I love them and so does she. It's a bearded iris, Sylvia (and me) just learned how to recognize that, thanks to a gardening friend.

 

And this is just a volunteer wild flower.

 

It is great to be back to gardening!

Path of Life

 

We have a local sculpture garden which my kids love.

 

Jane took all the pictures. We spent a windy Sunday afternoon at the garden.

 

There are some nice funky sculptures.

 

It's a great way to spend a weekend afternoon. So much to see and experience.

 

Too bad this current weekend is just rain rain rain rain, which is not very conducive to going to this sculpture garden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China Town

We spent a day in China Town and had a great time. We had fun window shopping and browsing some stores.

 

I found a nice set of go stones, while the girls got cool dresses and Erik got an impressive shirt. Everyone was happy.

 

Of course we had to drink some bubble tea!

 

We also bought a small Buddha statue to bring home, to celebrate that we are keeping the house.

 

Wild Life

I still love my little frog pond in the back yard. Even if it has totally been grown over by some kind of water plant. I have been trying to thin it, but it doesn't seem to care. At all.

 

The frogs don't care either. We have very fat and green frogs happily living here. I was planting a new perennial next to the pond when I saw this beauty. He let me take pics and stoically kept ignoring me.

 

Beauty and The Beast

We went to a local production and it was excellent. Sylvia went the first night and insisted on going again the second night. Which was just fine by me since there was no admission charged.

 

The second night's high light was when Sylvia got the rose which had been used in the play. Very special!