Nature at it's Best!

This week I'v been doing a little gardening after having so much rain lately around here! Here's a few of my succulent prim container gardens! Just can't get enough of these little plants! All of these containers I got a the antique mall.

Saturday I spent the whole day with my sister! Had the best time with her at the Quad City Botanical Center! Enjoy the photos below of our visit!

Turtle looking for a bite to eat in the koi pond!

They had some beautiful succulent containers!!

Black Elephant Ears

Mama Mallard Duck enjoying the sunshine at the pond.

That's me sitting in the butterfly chair

My sister and I

All of the Iris were in bloom! Amazing!

Red Admiral Butterfly

Purple Striped Iris! Never seen anything like this! Beautiful!

They had many many different types of conifer trees

Allium

Pink Peony

Allium

White Peony

Koi fish thinking I have something for them to eat.

Elephant Ears

Inside the greenhouse

Many types of elephant ears inside the greenhouse

After the Botanical Center we decided to stop at Prospect Park to see what we could find.

Wildflowers

Beautiful fountain in the center of the pond.

wildflowers

Walking back to the car, a cabbage moth wanted it's picture taken on a dandelion.

After our trip to Prospect Park went back to Sis's house and hung out till sunset to try to get a shot of the super full moon. As soon as the sun starting setting the clouds started rolling in. So we didn't really get a very good shot of the moon. Here is what I got. Not to happy with the way it turned out.

So that was my fun filled day of photography with my Sister!! I really hope we can do it again real soon!

Sunday I was able to get a few new items listed in my etsy shop!

The spindles that the crow's are on I got at the Red Barn Sale last year. Finally figured out what to do with them!

Happy 4th of July!

Well here it is, another July 4th. At least its not pouring down rain all day, like last year! It's just overcast with a chance of showers. No big events really for today just having daughter and boyfriend over later to do fireworks.

Took a few pictures of things growing in my yard today. I've got 2 tomatoes that I should pick in a day or two. And a cucumber that is almost ready to pick. It's getting pretty big. Not sure when I'm suppose to pick it. I've never been sucessful growing them until this year. I tried last year for the first time, with not one cucumber. So I'm pretty excitied! So if anyone knows let me know. It's about 7" long.

And I'm excitied about my green peppers too! I was only able to grow just 1 last year and it was huge too! So now I've got 5 little baby peppers growing nicely!

Yesterday I finally transplanted my succulents into their new hypertufa planters that I made in May. I absolutely love the way they turned out!!

And here are a few flowers that are showing there stuff right now. I just love using the macro setting on my camera!

Little bumbler on my Astilbe

This is a close up of a flower on my hosta plant

And always my favorite Petunias

A beautiful Daylily

Just for fun lately, for something different to do, I've been making these little coin purses. I recently posted these 2 bird ones in my etsy shop. I made them from vintage cutter tablecloths and old fabric and wool from the goodwill. Working on a penny rug one that I've taken scraps of wool from a cutter crazy quilt that I bought a couple of years ago. That quilt sure has come in handy for many projects over the years. I sure did get my moneys worth out of that thing! I will be listing it in my etsy shop tomorrow.

Life is Good

Here are 3 more dress ornies I'm listing in my Etsy shop tonight. These are selling great!

Had such a fun day yesterday out on the Mississippi!! Got to walk through the ewwwy goooy as my sister calls it. On the bottom of the Mississippi is this very thick mud. Had to walk through it to get to the sand bar out in the middle of the river. We parked our lawn chairs out there, hung out with friends and just watched the world go by. It was a great 30th anniversary!

Planted my succulents this weekend into the 3 hypertufa pots that I made in April. Still waiting for my other pots to cure.