Wednesday, February 28, 2018 – Each year I like to take photos as our flowers, fruit, bushes and trees start blooming. I do it a couple of times after that as I love to see their growth and prettiness.
I’m loving watching the trees begin the process of birthing new leaves. We have several oak trees on our property and I enjoy checking them every day to see how much more the leaves are appearing. When they are in full bloom it makes swinging on the hammock underneath them all the more wonderful! 
We’ve added to our vegetable/fruit gardening effort attempting to grow avocado trees from the pit. Started one last week and one today. I’m trying to figure out how to grow mangos from the seed. I’ve planted about a dozen jumbo Virginia raw peanuts in a glass bowl, hoping to make my own supply of peanuts to cook this year.
I’m not sure the shells needed to be in the mix below but one site said to put them in there!
We bought two bougainvillea, one mandevilla and a yellow flowering plant to grow up the lattice fence we put in last week. The green grapes are now planted at the bottom of the lattice arch and they’ve already taken hold and growing upward.
Two bougainvillea vines
Mandevilla and Yellow flower plant (I did know the name of the yellow flower plant when we purchased it) are good for attracting hummingbirds.
Green Grape Vines growing up the arch
Roy’s mama’s bay leaf plants are not doing well even though Roy has tried several things to help them since we moved here. He dug them up this week and moved them to the front yard near where the rose bushes are planted. They will get full sun there and hopefully grow like they use to. They are the little bushes on the right and left side.
I trimmed back the pampas grass bushes and used some of the stuff I cut off around the rose and bay leaf bushes. There is more cutting to be done on the bushes so this will fill in nicely eventually. Can’t wait till these start to grow again and hide the hideous septic tank covers. 
We moved our cacti out front to where the bay leaf were so we have all our cacti in one place! We collected the cacti in our travels through the west.
The rose bushes in front of the house (not the ones by the septic tank) grow quite tall and they got a nice cut back yesterday.
We love the hummingbirds when they come visit so we purchased a few new feeders for when it’s that time of year. We’re hoping the humminbird plant vines will help also. My brother in law George said he puts his out March 12th and they start arriving March 15th. Can’t wait!
Our mums that died in the snow are now really coming back strong!
The fig trees are starting to bloom. I worried about them because they looked very dead last month. The satsuma trees still look dead. We’ll see. The blueberry bushes are starting to bloom so I’m hoping this year we’ll have a great crop!
Two of the blueberry bushes. The little green leaves are hard to see but they are there!
Fig trees
The heavy rains lately have the pond overflowing. The area between the white swan and the concrete turtle is where the culvert is located. We can’t see it at all now.
We went to my sister Harriet’s house for a visit. They have new floors throughout the house and nosie Rosie had to see them! It looks wonderful, they did good!
When we went to Tennessee a couple of weeks ago to see the knee doctor we stopped at a Home Depot there. I’ve been looking for a nice size bag of rocks that are smooth, flat round or just round. Our Home Depot in Hammond doesn’t carry those. The one in Tennessee did so we bought two big bags (probably 100 in each bag) so I can continue my paint obsession. I was just going to get one bag but my sweet hubby tossed a second bag in the basket for me!
Some of the rocks I painted and hid this month! Three of the rocks in the first photo were done using a technique called paint pouring. These looked okay but I haven’t gotten the hang of that yet.
These three were left in Tennessee at the knee doctor’s office
Hidden along the way home on Interstate 55
The neighbor across the street has great cows that often visit us. Here they were earlier today!
I’m working on extending the garden that runs along the fence to closer to the road. Two lantana bushes and one hydrangea bush were moved to this new part of the garden and are already sprouting blooms! I’ve painted a rock from every state we’ve visited and created a map of the Untied States in this new part of the garden. It’s all in an upheaval trying to get rid of grass and weeds previously growing there. When it’s put back together I will share!
We have our precious Madisyn’s birthday party Saturday to look forward to. She will be 9 years old on Sunday. Can’t believe so many years have flown by with that little one who is a very mature young lady now!
Ya’ll come back now, ya’ hear.
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