More pics from around the Hill

Tux is our unofficial Sassy Cat greeter!

I just love this daylily.

A baby Chickadee-dee-dee waiting for mom to come back with some lunch!

What’s Bloomin???

Here’s a few recent pics from around the gardens…

Along the front walkway. Stellas and lavender.

Crocosmia.

The back deck area.

Lovin this Calla lily.

Always a favorite… Stargazer lily

Stuff

When Mrs. Schmenkman was here over Memorial weekend for our annual shopping egg-strav-a-gan-ZA I had two goals for purchases… a new mirror for the guest bathroom and new chairs for  the kitchen table.

I didn’t make either goal that weekend, but I did finally score on the chairs. These are actually outdoor patio chairs from Target but I thought they would do quite nicely. On sale @ 30% off too so that’s even better! They meet the main criteria of being Sassy-Cat scratch proof too!

Anticipation

It’s always a much anticipated event in our household. As the weather warms up we start to think about it. As the days get warmer, and then hotter, we start to salivate. And finally, we are rewarded…

 

 

 

The first tomato of the season…

WOO HOO BLTs for dinner tomorrow night!!!

(open-faced on whole grain bread for me thank you!)

We love Jibbitz

No… not those cute little charms made to go in the holes of Crocs shoes.

This is the Jibbitz we love…

I brought him home from the BRWC last Tuesday.

 A couple had found him as a baby and hand raised him and they had handled him quite a lot. He is VERY human friendly and likes to jump and crawl all over you! I’m not exactly sure why the couple turned him over to the center, but last week I asked Peg… what are we going to do with that overly-friendly squirrel? She responded “release him far away from here!” So, of course I volunteered Sassy Cat Hill  as a release site.

I let him go and he promptly ran up the nearest tree but couldn’t quite figure out how to climb back down as he has lived in cages all of his life and only had to jump from place to place. He caught on very quickly though and he disappeared into the trees.

I never saw him again until yesterday afternoon. I was out watering plants and he showed up on my potting bench right near where I had released him.

 I went and got a handful of nuts and he quickly climbed up my leg to have a snack…

 

He hasn’t lost a bit of his friendliness, that’s for sure!

My dear brother, (aka the Baby-Genius) had given me this knot hole that he salvaged from a tree that had been cut down in my oldest brother’s yard. I made an owl house out of it, but Jibbitz seems to like it quite a lot so it’s a ‘Jibbitz House’ now!

Checking it out.

 Hey, Looks pretty good!

 Yep, I’m moving in!

Great Harvest

It’s berry pickin time!

I remember back in my younger days when even the thought of picking berries was pure torture.

All of us Kolar kids had to endure berry picking in Michigan’s Upper Penisula. I remember it being just awful. Hot, dry and what seemed like a gazzilion deer flies, no-see-ums, and mosquitos making your life pure misery. The deer flies were the worst… they lived not so much to bite you, but to torment you by flying around your head and driving you crazy with their high-pitched buzzing. They packed a mighty mean bite too though.

It was forced labor for sure… my Dad’s favorite little saying was “no pick-y, no eat-y” and the thought of not being able to eat those wonderful blueberry pancakes the next morning was just to much to bear.

I can remember saying that when I grew up I would never, ever pick another berry!

Well, I’ve grown up and I’ve been doing quite a bit of berry pickin the past couple of weeks. I still don’t like it much, but It isn’t nearly as bad when you have the bushes right in your back yard.  The blueberries have been very prolific this year. I had to net them all in because the mockingbird that I used to be happy to share with,  decided to bring along a lot of his extended family and I’m just not that generous! Here’s one of the first pickins… several more have followed since this pic was taken.

I was just outside and noticed that a bunch more are ready to be picked too.

But NOW my very favorite berry is starting to ripen… raspberries. I love them sooooooo much!

My Dad’s cousin’s husband, who lives in Charlottesville Virginia was kind enough to share a couple of plants from his berry patch a few years ago and this is the first year that they are just full of (as my BFF would say) “scrum-tru-lesent” berries. This is the first pickin…

All I’ve got to say is “YUM” 

and I’ve begun to tell Mr. C… “No pick-y, no eat-y!” A chip off the old block, that’s me.