Life at a "Swell's" pace: June 2012

The splendor of the Hawthorn trees in Oregon

These trees are one of a kind in front of my home here in Oregon. They are quite the eye-catchers and we have had so many people stop by, or see them on the internet, and ask what kind of tree they are.

Their bold, pink ray of color that seems to almost blind you when you stare at them too long.

And, even though these Hawthorns are magnificent, the pollen is incredible!

But, even with all the pollen, the trees are amazing with the color the cast. Everything around them almost seems to glow with a pink shade for about 3 months.

And, you can see another down-side to these beautiful trees. The THORNS! Yeah, they are a pain when you run into them. We try to keep most of the branches cut from about 6-feet down on the tree that way there isn't any eye-pokers lurking around to stab someone.

I always cut a few limbs off here and there and place them in a large vase in my house just to see the bright colors when I wake up. My bathroom has a black and brown theme to it so these bright, pink Hawthorn limbs bring out a different mood in my bathroom, especially in the morning when I don't want to get up and around. And the leaves and the berries that come after the blooms have fallen off are very edible too.

The tiny blooms do look amazing in a small dish of water.

Pink flowers for Friday

After digging frantically through my photos to try to gather up all the ones from my trips back and forth to Arkansas, I came across some flower pictures I took late one night. I love fresh flowers, but honestly I love live flowers, in a cute little pot, the best. When someone gives me fresh cut flowers, how can you say no though, really?

How can you say not to fresh cut flowers when they look this lovely? I received these from my precious little boy, Skylar (his daddy helped) when I landed back in Portland after an Arkansas visit with my beloved, John. I love the color pink and pretty much any bright color, so ~~they~~ Skylar did a great job picking out the perfect bouquet of roses to give me. Plus, they were a nice surprise after being shoved on an aircraft for 8 1/2 LONG hours!

We took a little day trip to the Daffodil Farm here in Oregon to pick daffodils around the end of March and in that bunch of flowers we had our self some twins.

Pretty cool huh? It's probably more common that I know about, but it's still pretty neat to grab a bunch and see the twin sisters of daffodil beauty.

Lapse in judgement

This started out with me about to get onto the dog. It didn't end that way at all! I will admit, I had a lapse in judgement today on what was more important. Damn dog!

"Skylar, what happened to your face!?"

"Hardy jumped on me and tried to get my sandwich."

"That's it, this PITA dog is driving me nu....aww, you're so cute....who's the cutest doggy in the world......."

"MOMMY! He scratched me!"

"Cutie goochie *baby talk words* cute doggie. Mean 'ole Skylar wouldn't share his sandwich, huhhhhh."

".....uhhhh, I'm the kid here, momMMMYYYYYY, HELLLLLOOOOOOOOO.....UGH! WHATEVS!"

Our Garden Currently: Starting our seeds for the summer garden

It's that time of year again, when starting seeds indoors for your garden is the norm for most yard-gardeners, like us. We always start with the basic seed pods that come in the ready-to-use sod, seed starters from the brand Jiffy® are kind of our go-to brand. We like these a lot because they are so easy to work with, especially when it comes to the tiny, itty-bitty, little seeds. You can get your own seed tray pellets with the soil pods at a local farmer supply store or purchase the ones pictured, here.

We soak them with warm water overnight and prepare the soil pods. This is a great activity for kids to get involved in. My son loves to help!

We are really big into herbs right now because of how much better they taste. Here we've planted Rosemary (my favorite) and Chives.

Then we branched out to Oregano and Spearmint. Spearmint can be used for pretty much anything really, but I like to make a tea with it and add it to hot cocoa.

I often save my seeds from the different crops from year-to-year and these seed packets make it super easy to do that because they are made from plastic and tend to last longer than paper seed packs.

I am still working on a good seed container to store my seeds in through the down months of no planting and growing. I've had some suggestions, but nothing seems to be really working for us. I'll keep racking my brain till I figure something out other than a large plastic box (what I am using right now, ha!)

And there it is. We'll cover these up and see how they do.

And, I have finally managed to get my ground cover to take off the way it should in my front flower bed. Now to clean out the flower bed so it looks "normal."

This ground cover I used is called 'Common' Periwinkle.

Road Trip: Our great adventures at the Daffodil Farm in Oregon

This Daffodil Farm has been in Oregon for quite some years and we love it. Over the years more and more people have found out about it and have taken advantage of all the flowers too.

So many different varieties of daffodils to pick from and the stand even has ones already cut and packaged if you don't want to get out and pick them yourself. We think picking them is the best thing though because you get what YOU want. 20 stems for $5, can't beat that!