Tulip Fields

My little girl is on Easter vacation this week, so I've been busy having fun with my children. I'm sad that the week already is more than half over! Last Saturday we went on our annual excursion to the tulip fields. Princess wore her tulip sunglasses and tulip sweater and was so excited to see the beautiful flowers.

The fields were GORGEOUS!

The weather has been very chilly here though and it really doesn't feel like spring.

We did manage to dodge all the rain though--it was just windy and chilly for our visit.

Boots!

My little guy wanted to walk between the rows of tulips, but that isn't allowed.

Despite the cold, Princess took her winter coat off for a few pictures so we could see her tulip sweater. We've been visiting the tulip fields every year since she was four months old and every year she's worn tulip clothing for the visit.

There also are beautiful display gardens run by one of the tulip bulb companies.

My sweet boy.

The display gardens have the bulbs tightly planted and the colors are gorgeous!

We'll be back next year!

Blooming Peony

Look at this gorgeous peony blooming!

Peony flower / timelapse from munich timelapse on Vimeo.

Happy Friday!

Hydrangeas

My Endless Summer Hydrangeas finally are in bloom! Oh how I love them!

I have them planted all along the side of my house and they seem to be thriving there.

They are taller than my 3 year old!

I just love seeing them in bloom. They're blooming earlier this year than usual because we have had a few spells of extra warm weather...although not today, that's for sure!

Blooming!

The bees are buzzing and the flowers in my yard are beginning to bloom! Spring really is here...at least for a few days! We've had a handful of days with glorious weather and the sunshine has jolted my spring flowers into bloom!
I have three of these columbines under my front window. They're about three times the size they were when I planted them a few years ago!
This is one of my new columbines that I just planted this past week.
This flower is my new-found love! Zoom in on the picture--the folds on the blooms are amazing! The structure of the bloom just is really really neat. The plant is called Leprechaun's Gold and is gorgeous! The leaves are a yellow-gold and just so pretty. Love it!
My dianthus just are starting to bloom--soon they'll be a rim of pink around the front edge of this bed.
Here is a sideways (overexposed--it was bright outside!) shot of the bed under my front window. Lots of plants still growing--I see lilies, black-eyed susans, and daisies yet to come! Oooh, and one of my hellebores is trucking along in there too! This bed is really coming along well. I think in another three years or so, it will be a mass of blooms from the late spring through summer!
Here is another view of that same bed. Isn't the rhody gorgeous?! I've been slowly and steadily pruning it back to health for the last few years. It was spindly and not too healthy when we moved in five years ago, but now it is doing great! This year I need to prune the height down a bit because it is getting too tall for the space--I'm 5'10" and the top blooms are at eye level with me!
Another view of the front of the house. See that big bush to the right of the path? My plan is to rip out the bush (it is half dead anyhow) and the groundcover and put in slate stepping stones (or something similar) and a little black metal bistro set. Wouldn't that be cute?! Our front porch is too narrow to sit on, so a little bistro set in front of it would be very handy. (Currently the porch serves as the parking zone for the children's front yard toys...they're pretty well hidden up there!)
Vinca--ahhh how I love thee! My vinca is just about done blooming for the year. It is my very favorite groundcover. I'm lucky because in my area it is a perennial and comes back again and again. I just love seeing those little purple flowers bursting into bloom at the start of spring each year!
My lone bleeding heart! This is in my backyard and I was so excited to see these two measly blooms. I thought the construction work destroyed my three bleeding hearts (the plant was dormant when construction started, so I couldn't see where to dig them out)...but apparently one survived!
I planted a couple of California poppies in my backyard this year. This is near the grass in the backyard and the plants need to be sturdy because stray soccer balls sometimes come rolling through here!

The last couple of years I've tried to be good and spend my money mostly on perennials rather than on annuals (although I did buy geraniums for my pots and some petunias for my front yard) so that I can enjoy the flowers year after year. Although I like the instant gratification of annuals, I do like looking forward to seeing my perennials pop out of the ground and it is exciting to see them get bigger each year.

Happy Gardening!

Tulip Fields

My little ones still aren't back to 100% yet, but they're doing a lot better. We went on an outing to the tulip fields because we all were going stir-crazy at home! We did some geocaching on our way there and one of the caches we found was near an eagle's nest! The nest was HUGE--look closely at the picture (or click it and make it bigger!) and you'll see an eagle in the nest. There also was another eagle circling overhead.
We visit the tulip fields every year during the month of April. It was a bittersweet trip for me this year because of all the memories. In 2004 we took our little girl to the fields for the first time on her four month birthday--we bought some cut tulips and brought them to my grandma. I remember how much she liked the flowers and how she cuddled my baby girl. After she got some good cuddles in, she called my aunts and they came over to see my girl. Now my grandma is gone and my aunts aren't nearly as interested in my girl as they used to be. Sad.
These fields are planted by a bulb company that sells bulbs nationwide. The fields are gorgeous and remind me of the Netherlands.
Most of the daffodil fields were done blooming, but we found a few that still were full of color.
Anyhow, my little ones weren't willing to do very many pictures this year as they weren't feeling too great, but I did get some good shots.
With my boy in a daffodil field
My two children found a "confused" tulip (aka a tulip that didn't match the others)
Lots of good sniffing going on!
I'm a softie for a little boy in OskKosh overalls!
Pretty cute, huh?! Although I do like pictures of people walking away from me, these pictures show his back because he was bellowing "you no take my picture, Mama!! NOOOOOOO!"
I made him turn around because you're not supposed to walk down the rows (although they turn a blind eye if you just go down a little ways) but he still wouldn't look at me!
That's okay--I really like pictures where I catch my children utterly absorbed in something.
I didn't have as much time to play with my camera as I wanted to have though...maybe next year!
Finally I resorted to bribery to get a picture with happy children...and it worked! I also did a few elephant noises...

Organic Tomatoes

The other week we harvested our FIRST organic tomatoes! They were gorgeous red globes chock full of meat and with hardly any seeds. So tasty and good! At last count there were 39 more tomatoes in our little garden in various stages of ripening. I have a feeling that most of them will be ripening at the same time! Good thing we love tomatoes!

My tomato plants are HUGE. The Early Girl plants are almost 6 feet tall and the Roma plants are about 5 feet tall. They're just enormous! Next year I need a better staking system. I wasn't thinking they would be this tall, so I'm a bit worried they'll fall over as the fruit at the top ripens. I've already trimmed off extraneous (non-blooming) branches and done what I can to lighten them...now it is a wait and see approach!

Mmmm, I'm looking forward to harvesting more tomatoes!

For more Talk About Tuesday, visit Lara at The Lazy Organizer.

A harvest!

Woohoo, we're finally harvesting something other than romaine from our vegetable garden! My Early Girl tomato plants are five feet tall (no exaggeration!) and we're finally seeing the first red tomatoes! Woohoo! The roma tomato plants are a foot or so smaller and the tomatoes still are green...but I have faith they will get red soon!
The other day the children were thrilled when I pointed out that our first strawberries have turned red. Oooh the excitement over those few red berries!! I know you're supposed to pinch off the flowers and whatnot the first year of your strawberry patch, but that didn't sound very fun to me...so I let them go. It looks like we'll have more berries soon, too!
Aaaaand...we have a cute little green pepper growing! Look at it--so cute! (Excuse the blurriness--it isn't blurry in real life. For some reason I focused on the leaves instead of the pepper.)
Apparently this wasn't enough of a harvest for us. Well, okay, truly we only picked the strawberries--the pepper obviously wasn't ready and the tomatoes needed a couple more days...so truly we picked six strawberries... ANYHOW, we decided to push our luck (please note that I use the term "we" quite generously--really it was my husband!) and pull a carrot too...despite me pointing out that the bushy top of the carrot wasn't very bushy.
Um, yes, that would be a carrot. We all had a good chuckle over that and then we stuck it back in the ground. Man, these carrots are a pain in the rear--first hardly any of them sprouted and now they're taking for-freaking-ever to grow! Hopefully they'll start growing a bit better now that they're established.

A few more parting shots of the strawberries...since they really were all that we harvested.