Tomato Cream Sauce Dining Room

It’s not done yet but I had to share.

This color is a bold one for me.

I love it!

I’m planning to make a quilt out of 18th century dutch reproduction fabrics for that empty wall.

I think I’ve found my go to plant for my front porch – caladiums. They get just a little bit of sun in the early morning. They are already putting out new leaves and I planted them less than two weeks ago.

The Native Garden in June

Yesterday morning I decided to take photos of our mostly native garden to share here.

We’ve had so much rain that the spittle bugs are causing damage. They are sap suckers and totally denuded our mountain rue. They now moved onto the redbud trees. Dave sprayed them with neem oil.

A couple weeks ago I found some containers half priced at a garden nursery. Above, you can see two of them. They are on the pine tree stumps.

Meadow petunia

This black-eyed susan is ready to burst with blooms.

The fencing is to keep Duke off. It helps some.

Impatiens are one of my favorite annuals.

Augusta Springs Wetlands Park

A couple of weeks ago we took a morning walk just a 20 minute drive from us in the George Washington National Forest. It was early enough on a hot day that we were comfortable even in the sun.

We started to go up this path which led into the woods. It soon got muddy so we turned back. We’ll do that loop another day.

Those are two red winged black birds on the cattails in the middle of the photo above.

Fun!

In the Garden

Iris blooming in front of the Soft Rush.

We’ve been harvesting strawberries for about 2 weeks now. They are big and beautiful and lacking in flavor. I’m guessing that is because we had so much rain while they were ripening. Our weather is perfect this week and the berries taste a little better.

Some of the rain came in the form of fierce storms. After once such storm we noticed that one of our big elms in the front yard is splitting in two! One estimate is $3400 to take it down. Ouch! We are now looking into the possibility of cabling it.

An opossum inside the tree crack.