Patio Reading Anyone!?

Hi everyone! Happy Monday!

I’m officially back in the USA and settled at my home. It truly was an amazing trip but I’m really really happy to be home!

I will be spending the next couple days catching up on your blog post and seeing what everyone has been up to! While I do that I will be sitting on my deck.

Here is the current situation… Thank goodness I have an excellent cat sitter that takes care of watering everything while I am on vacation! She waters and feeds the cats and she also waters my plants! I am so grateful for her because I can take trips and know everything here is under control… She probably does a better job than I do myself!

I love my Clematis! I had a different purple one the past three years but it finally died this year. I had to replant this beautiful one at the beginning of the summer.

I only have the clematis and three other flowers. The whole rest of my patio is herbs. I use these all summer long to make some really fun recipes. Maybe one day I’ll do a post of all the recipes of things that I make with my herbs I grow.

Isn’t this one beautiful!?!? Love the color!!

And this one… I get one of these every year… The hummingbirds love this plant! The place I get it from grows them so large it takes up a whole side of my patio… It truly is my favorite plant next to my clematis!!

and here are all the herbs…they are all doing well this year with the exception of basil. I bought a basil plant with brown under leaves…the lady at the store told me that is would be fine once it got sun. Well I planted it between my other two basil plants and it turns out it had some kind of mold that basil gets. I was so angry within three days all of my basil plants were covered in molds and brown spots. Don’t ever listen to people at the store… Listen to your gut. I only purchase it because it was the last basil plant they had left - I should’ve listen to my gut! Ugh!!

I usually have A LOT of basil but I planted this little guy under the clematis and he’s the only basil plant that survived.

Here’s the curly parsley - I use this in my Tabouli


Here’s the sage…

Here’s the oregano….

And now the dill…this is delicious on potato’s and salmon!!


Here is the lemon oregano…

And then here is the rosemary…

Next is the mint planter…it has sweet mint on the sides and chocolate mint in the middle…yum!!!

Last but not least is my favorite tree that then I will be bringing in once winter comes… It is a pineapple guava tree. Fingers crossed I can actually get fruit from this someday!

I hope everyone is having a great Monday!! I am off to read what everyone has been up to!! 

Hugs to everyone!! Be grateful for both what you have and what you do not have!!!

Friends Friday...

Happy Monday everyone!!

I had a fantastic weekend and I hope everyone else did also!!!

The weekend started off with meeting up wiht a great friend of mine John.

We have been friends for years and we make sure to get together for our birthdays every year.

I took this picture since I was teasing him about his CLAM-SHELL phone! Yes, you read that right, he still has a clam-shell phone! He will not cave and get a smart phone! HA HA!

After getting home from spending time with John; I took out my trash to our condo dumpster area...this is what greeted me! Ahhhh! Scared the crap out of me actually!!! WOW! He popped right out of the dumpster and just hing there waiting for me to leave! HA! What a cutie...but definitely scary!


Saturday morning I planted my flowers and herbs for the year. Remember that plant that was aphid infected? I returned them to Costso and they gave me a full refund. I ran to a local grower near my home and bought all of these...first a new Mandaville...


And a clematis...


This is got before; it is the one with the baby birds in it...


This is curley parsley, oregano and thai basil...


Regular basil...


My mint ...delicious!!!


Catnip (of course)...


and my fuscia from before...


After planting was finished; I went up to my parents house for the weekend.

Every Memorial Day (after we honor the fallen) we celebrate all the family birthdays in May and put in all the lake toys for summer!!!  Which means it is time for lake fun to start!

That post will follow soon!!!

Hugs everyone!

Patio gardening in full swing!!

On Monday I was able to stop and get all my herbs on the way home from work. I got all my herbs and flowers planted...cannot wait to start harvesting the awesomeness in salads all summer!!!!

The picture below has my hanging pot with yellow pansies...and the ledge planters have basil varieties, flowers, rosemary, dill and more flowers!!!

This picture shows the awesome corner planters I bought already assembled this year - love them!!! Also a shot of the ledge planter on the right that has cilantro and spearmint and below that the circle planter that has curly parsley.

And this is another shot to the right of the patio....did I mention that I love gardening and flowers and herbs?!?!?!

So - my advice to you....get out and plant a flower or two or three!!! Happy planting to you all!!!!

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Tour of My Patio Garden

Here is a look at the progress of my perty patio garden!!!!!

Here is the view standing in the patio doorway looking left...

Here is the view looking right from the doorway...

This is my big pot of basil :-)

This is my planter with basil on each side and iin the center of the planter is lemon verbena (I plan to use for tea) YUM!!!!!!

This is my topsy turvey baby tomato planter...it hangs on the side of the building and has two red cherry tomato plants and one yellow....already ate one tomato off of this planter....Walt a I shared it (did not really fill us up) LOL!!!

This is one of two big tomato planters...I am trying this new this year and we shall see if I get enough sun to actually have tomatos grow on these....

And the other big tomato plant...

If you look close you can see lots of flowers on them - hopefully this means we will also see lots of tomatos make it to maturity!!!

This is my pot of Lemon Thyme...a little spider has moved in this pot and made a little and seeing as how no recipes call for spider babies or web I may not be using this.....:-) But it is still pretty!

And here is the closeup of my Clematis...already had about ten huge purple flowers and here is a closeup of a new one ready to open up!!! There are like ten buds waiting to open now - yippee!!!!

Hope you enjoyed the garden tour!!!!!!!