Winner of the buttons from the African Trade bead giveaway!

Norma's Clay

Is the winner of the buttons from giveaway 9c the fourth giveaway http://mariesegal.blogspot.com/2011/04/african-trade-beads-part-9c-fourth.html. Thank you for the great advice about my Grand daughter. Yes, I knew it was a stage and we found out she is cutting her 2 year old molars, all at the same time, I would be crabby too. I was going through a stage too! LOL!
Thank you Norma!
CONGRATULATIONS!! Sorry didn't mean to yell, I just get so excited. ;-D

I hope you all are having a wonderful, magical, and prosperous week. Are you remembering to breathe?
The week is almost over and the weekend is almost here.

Are you having good weather, have you been to the lake or beach yet? Are the birds in your neighborhood singing up a storm? Ours are crazy, the crows are hap hap happy! I got in the middle of a hummingbird territorial dispute this week and I was standing on the ground. They were so busy protecting their space they didn't realise I was standing there I guess. Sounded like dive bombers around my head and they were moving so fast I didn't know what was going on.

I am awaiting the arrival of the swallows. Messy but happy, darlings of the sky.

The gophers and squirrels and I have resumed our yearly fight over my garden if that is what I could call it. I plant things and they eat them, sometimes even before they sprout. I am just planting for the local rodents, I guess. It is very frustrating, but I do get a little exercise.

I am glad to be out there with them finally though. They have built runways into the garden from underground so they can make a fast getaway. I plug the holes with huge rocks and they hide the holes behind things. I only notice when there is huge mounds of dirt displaced.
Madi and I are growing a-matoes. She can not say the "t" yet. The girl loves them and will eat a whole one by herself. I can hardly wait to show her fresh ones right off the bush. I planted them in a bucket the first time and came back out 1/2 hour later and the seeds were gone, so I covered it with metal screen and you can see where they walked all over the top and tried to lift up the sides, LOL!!
They haven't got in so far. Today is a new day though, I haven't checked yet. We have small seedlings and Madi and I check them everyday. Tomatoes do really well here and the last time I grew them I had tons.
I might even attempt to can them this year, there is absolutely nothing like a home grown tomato, I probably shouldn't count my tomatoes before they bloom though.
Have a great rest of the week you all and surprise someone with your smile and your light every chance you get.
You just never know how you could brighten some one's day.
Show them your stuff, baby!

Red

These are the most beautiful flowers and add a light to my life. The red is brilliant.

Geranium

And... my gophers don't eat them (crossing fingers). They will even eat the garlic, just not as often. They LOVE roses and they have taken down a full grown apricot tree after (thank goodness) the first full crop. The apricots were some of the best I have ever eaten, which made it so hard to lose the tree.

One year they undermined the road (dug a hole under the road) and a big rain came and washed through the whole and washed out part of the road, when the rain was over there was a hole on the side of the road I could stand in. I am short, but it still came up to my thighs.

So I now spend time trying to find things that they won't eat. I also plant in chicken wire baskets that I make but that is no guarantee either. I drill holes in Cat litter buckets and plant in those, not so good for the bigger things though. But they don't go through those either. The buckets will also break down in a few years from the sun out here and have to be replaced. They have to be watered and fertilized more often also.

I get a perverse thrill after watering and seeing the mounds of dirt around the bucket and the plant still there. You know the movie with Bill Murray , Caddyshack ,that is real.

That's how I ended up with the huge crop of garlic I have. The gopher would dig a hole, and I would stuff a clove of garlic down there, LOL! We even have cloves of garlic in the little pathways. These don't get watered often.

It only worked for a bit and then he started on the tops of the garlic. He comes out of the ground for those. I believe the bulbs are still there, because the shoots will start again. You know the cartoons of the whole plant going into the ground a lit at a time, bit by bit, that is real people, I have seen it.

Green is green in my opinion and even if it is garlic, it is beautiful to me in the summer here. But those red flowers are divine.

Canna

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canna_(plant)

If I feel stuck, I go to nature to get some influence or stimulus. I also take very close up pictures. This is a plant I grew from seed and it has been with me for years under somewhat extreme conditions.
We have gophers, I mean millions of gophers, and they eat everything, even trees. OK, maybe it is only thousands. They go for the tender taproot of the tree and then BAM, the tree is dying right before my eyes and the fruit is dropping off the tree. You know those cartoons that you see with the carrot slowly going down in to the ground, I live that.
I planted this canna in the ground in one of my big cat litter buckets with big holes drilled in the bottom of it, and then I planted the bucket in the ground, I leave the top 3” edge of the bucket above ground to discourage the rabbits. I think poverty is the mother of invention. This seems to work. It is so funny and gives me a perverse pleasure to see dirt in mounds, evidence of the gopher, around the buckets and the plant thriving.
It is a beautiful example of reds.