in the pink

 It's the final days for the peonies...

The sudden shift from 60s to 90 degree heat has frizzled the delicate petals.  But they were so beautiful while they lasted!  Meanwhile...my roses are all opening up.  

They don't love incessant rain and then punishing heat, but we'll see how they do.  They look so beautiful in the back house garden.  Because I love remembering how far it's come...here is the before, from three years ago.

And now...

Almost entirely perennial, with a heavy emphasis of yellow, one of my favorite colors in the garden. The other gardens that border the house are delightfully overgrown, as well.

Just the way I like it!  See Claudia in a lot of these pictures?  She's always following along, or "contributing" to the household in other ways.

yes...she ate the whole thing!

She's not the only contributor around here...a black rat snack slithered out of our garage this morning.  They are wonderful to have around for keeping the pest population down!

We have even more helpers around here.  Last week, I discovered a dead mouse in one of our humane traps in the barn.  We normally check them daily but somehow, this one was missed.  I threw the mouse out onto the driveway.  Just ten minutes later, opening the door to come back up to the house, I disturbed a whole flock of turkey vultures!

Here's one hanging out in the yard last week!

They can smell dead animals from a mile away.  I couldn't believe that the flock had located that tiny mouse in a matter of minutes!  Pretty amazing.  

Inside, it's all coming up kittens.  They play hard, and they sleep hard.

Klaus is a bit more dignified, searching out dark closets for his naps, but Frances is an exuberant napper and will stretch out anywhere.

But, he generally prefers my lap, which makes it a little bit difficult to work sometimes!

Klaus will occasionally crawl into my lap, but he's much too serious to go in for the full cuddle.  I think that he's mostly curious:  what's the big deal?

As dignified as he is, he purrs continually while playing.  What a sweetie!  

These guys have kept me so busy that I just haven't had time for hobby fun.  However, I just bought enough of this Three Irish Girls yarn to make a sweater!

Regrettably, I frogged the last sweater that I was working on.  I bought all of these gorgeous Icelandic wool...

...but it was scratchy and have no "give," kind of like working with cotton.  My hands ached while knitting.  I hated to waste the money...but I was able to resell the lot for nearly what I paid for it!  Win win.

Have a great week!