Random photos

Quite a few photos to dump today! :-)

First off, now that the weather is nicer - there's too many plants and weeds sprouting everywhere! I'm trying to thin out the hostas around the front:

And then, I thought these were hostas and were offering them up to my neighbors.  But they are actually Lily of the Valley. And as you can tell, quite invasive!

And supposedly, these are pretty invasive too - creeping bluebells. Well, right now I don't see any bluebells but they are definitely creeping everywhere too! So out they come too:

Another creeping thing and I think this one is actually called Creeping Charlie.  I wonder how they came up with this name. Ha!

I replanted this hydrangea from the yard into a pot.  This seems to be a good spot for it, like it was meant to be!

I did have to pull out this log out from the pot out first though. Actually, I couldn't pull it out. I needed Graham to help me and I had to lean the pot so I could dump the log out. It's heavy alright! Glad I didn't break the pot and there were ants everywhere. Ewww!

Speaking of help, I had the boys (including Bobby!) help me make little pots out of newspaper:  

It was for our first ever neighborhood Earth Day event.  It worked out quite nicely although we didn't have a lot of kids show up.  Hopefully better turn out for next year!  But so glad the Youth Committee that I'm part of was able to turn my idea into an actual event :-)

Boys are finally also cleaning out all those leaves by the outdoor firepit.  Hope to be able to use this spot more often now that the weather is warming up:

And at first, I was going to use all these pavers to make a pathway between the outdoor deck and the back patio.  But now we have some cucumbers and tomatoes to plant, I've decided to use it for another raised bed instead.  Yay for Bobby for helping out. Those pavers are heavy!

This doesn't look half bad!

I did have a trellis but now I've used it for our creeping Hydrangea. More photos to follow on that later! So anyway, now I have to figure out what else I can use as a trellis instead of buying something that's too expensive.

In the meantime, the birds are back making another nest in the outdoor heater.  They just don't learn, do they?!  But I can definitely tell why they would use it.  Definitely a nice shelter with that huge top!

Thankfully, there were no eggs in the nest yet:

The birds just won't quit making more nest in between the outside wall and downspout.  As long as there's no poop around the area!!

Can you believe it, we had frost last week!  So I had to cover up all of my tender plants with kitchen towels and what not:

Thankfully everything survived!

Including this little pansy that's growing through the pavers in our front porch. This one didn't actually get covered during the frost.  A friend told me that pansies are like cockroaches. Nature sure find its way. LOL!

I'm glad I waited to plant the strawberries.  This tiered planter was meant for some herbs but looks like I'll have to think of something else for our vegetable/herb garden now:

These little ones are in little planters for now.  I'll have to figure out where to put them.  

I did discover some raised bed that were left by the previous owner.  So I'm very excited about this discovery and now I just have to figure out where to put them!

So... we tried to fix Graham's bicycle.  He managed to get his chain really stuck to the back of the gears.  And finally had to bring it in to an expert/bicycle shop. And due to a backlog, it will take about 3 weeks or so before we can get it back.  Yikes!

And yup, more furniture.  I just can't help myself.  See a need, fill a need :-D

And this was rather random, I saw this map for $2.  And it's of Pueblo, Colorado.  This is the town where I got my ticket for "Aggressive Driving" many many years ago when I was still touring as a professional golfer.  What a weird coincidence to see it in a thrift shop.  So, yup - had to get it too. LOL!!

And answer to finding my spices.  Yay for $4 each!!

The shelves are a bit deeper than I like so they are limiting more of what I can put into the cabinet.  But I can at least see all my spices now.  Thank goodness for some really sticky velcro tape because I really didn't want to make any holes into these cabinets:

And this was probably not necessary but I really wanted some sort of hanging pendant in our toilet.  I don't know why.  Ha ha! I'm not quite liking this though, so... to be decided, I guess:

I'm down to my last pack of Japanese crackers!  These are sort of like saltines but for whatever reason, I just really like these.  I picked a few up during my travels/transit in Japan to Malaysia end of last year:

Also finally decided to try out this coffee and tea mix - in a bag. Picked these up in my hometown last year as well Definitely an interesting taste!  But I think I'm starting to like it, especially when mixed with some condensed milk.  Who doesn't like sweetened condensed milk?! :-)

We recently went to another STEAM event.  Unfortunately there wasn't too many things that caught Graham's interest.  He was able to do one of these little soldering projects again though for free:

Looks like he passed because it lights up. Yay!

Charlie, on the other hand, did not succeed in making "Oreo Sushi":

We will need to recalibrate his recipe another time!

And oh, what time is it?  Lake time!  

Yup, another spontaneous purchase.  I do have a clock I really like - but for only $10 - it would have been cheaper to buy this used one than trying to fix my old clock.  I guess eventually perhaps I will still want to fix it.  But for now, I love this one!

Last but not least, photo of me in my new readers.  Yeah... long-sightedness is getting pretty bad now where I have to wear readers when I have my contact lens on!!  I think these look pretty fancy :-D

Okay, that's it for now!