Blue-eyed Grass

Blue-eyed grass is one of my favorite spring flowers. These little flowers are showy and prolific! I love to see the mountain meadows covered in their blooms.

Snow mushroom

We pick snow mushrooms a little earlier than morels but many times we find both toward the end of May. The season will be off this year as we didn't get the usual snow pack. Much less snow that normal.

Morels

Seems like we (I) let too many other things get in the mix and too many other projects take over. My latest project is to learn to photoshop my pictures so they can be made into post cards and note cards. This picture was taken a few years ago on a mushroom picking excursion on Mt. Emily. I would love to see some comments! Good or bad so I can improve my work. Thanks!

For the first time in several years we have an abundance of apricots! Of course the nicest ones are at the top of the tree... Everyone is getting their share, birds, squirrels, us and our neighbors (who took home 3 - 5gallon buckets) so it looks like time to make some apricot jam and apricot/pineapple jam. It always feels like a little bit of summer when I bite into a fresh, hot biscuit with real butter and homemade apricot jam. How can you beat that on a cold winter's day?

Lavender Lilly

What a lovely morning! I am so far behind in posting pictures on the garden but it will happen in due time. This morning wasn't perfect for a picture of the lilly but since we have had so many days of hard rain and hail I thought I'd better grab a shot while the blooms were pretty! It looks pink, in the photo, for some reason, but it is pale lavender. Now to sit back and enjoy my coffe before heading to work...

At the end of May we took a trip to Oregon Gardens Resort. What a great trip! From start to finish it was a trip worth repeating! Rather than stay on the main freeway through Portland, we took off toward Government Camp and took a byway toward Silverton and chanced upon a Bear that was as surprised to see us on his road as we were to see him! No time to even take a picture! What a beautiful creature who thrilled us and made taking an earlier wrong turn worth the back tracking. The scenery was, well serene... The weather was perfect. Mount Hood was really showing off it's late spring, snow covered slopes, as we meandered our way along the highways and byways.

It's "Garden" Time!!

At long last we are ready to plant the raised beds. We let the beds settle for a couple weeks after tilling and also had them covered with landscape fabric to help them warm up. Seeds do so love warm soil! I spent a few hours moving all the little flower seedlings out of the two main beds and into the narrow, back bed that runs along the fence. The neighbor came out to let me know she had dug the grass from her side of the chain link fence so she could enjoy the flowers I had planted. How sweet of her! Her efforts are so appreciated! We started several herbs and vegies from seed this year as well as some flowers. There will be lots of transplanting to do this weekend! As we are still getting freezing temps. at night we will only put in the more hardy plants and seeds in one of the beds. Once the apricot tree has had a bit of trimming we can move the portable greenhouse over the other raised bed and get a few, less hardy, plants and seeds put in. In the mean time we can enjoy more spring flowers while we wait for the tasty bits from the garden.