Buds, Blooms and Butterflies

The past 2 weeks have been a flurry of activity around here.

Our granddaughter was born with a hemangioma on her bottom lip.  In her first year they performed laser surgery on it to destroy the blood vessels feeding it knowing she would face surgery at around 5 years of age to remove it entirely. Well, as kids go, she became aware of it and started to bite at it making it worse lately so the Drs. decided to go ahead and do it now. My daughter took her across the bay to Kings Daughters hospital in Norfolk,  while my son in law stayed home with our grandsons, for what was to be simple outpatient surgery. Well  2 days and 3 surgeries later they both came home safe and sound.  Our granddaughter came straight here to stay with us while her parents worked and to help the healing process away from the rough and tumble of 2 brothers.

So first up on our best buds agenda was a trip to Michaels for some new craft supplies. She picked out spring sticker books and a huge pack of cardstock with every imaginable color for the purpose of playing with the new toy making flowers to paste and color creating a paper garden.

Then of course there was the paints we had to have in her favorite colors and apparently 35 pairs of shape scissors is not enough, we need the pink ones.

We successfully kept the stitches intact and healing for 5 days before she went back home.

One of the MANY books we read is an old family favorite which i read to my children when they were young, Thundercake. We had a perfect day and storm to read it in and she wanted to make the cake, the recipe of which was in the back of the book.  We had just the pan to bake it in too!

We went out and took pictures around the yard with our cameras of all the spring flowers.

Our flowering magnolia has the most blooms on it this year.

There's just something about loads of pink blooms against a  green background that screams "SPRING IS HERE"

After she went home, I have to admit i did nothing for about a day and a half.

But this past week my husband and i started working on the garden and one thing led to another and before you know it we had 32 new blueberry and raspberry bushes planted at the far corner of our yard.

The raised beds need to be rebuilt as they have settled but we decided we will get one more year out of them before tackling that job.

I have become a fan of raised bed and container gardening over the past several years and this year have planted a few with strawberries that don't have lots of runners to see how they do. I also planted lavender in the smaller pots.

In what used to be the sandbox when the kids were younger we used to have an herb garden, but it was getting overgrown and we decided to remove the plants, refresh the bed and plant strawberry plants. I put about 60 in there this week. .

The containers got severely damaged last winter with the ice and snow banked around them. We have never had that happen before and I think i will try to get some galvanized pans from the farm center to place underneath to be able to salvage them this year. They too have a few strawberries in them. Then we built a new bed between the purple martin house poles and planted blackeyed peas and 2 varieties of green beans. We covered the beds with screening just until the seeds get a good start and to keep any stray animals out.

These pots have sugar snap peas and snow peas, a favorite of ours. I decided a few years ago to try them in pots with large tomato cages as the trellis and they work great. The grandkids come over and pick them and eat them on their way to the pool all summer!

The bed behind them is all iris and daylillies.

Now all we need is some sunshine and warmer weather!

And rest.