May 30, 2012

We have been waiting two years for these irises to bloom.  Honestly we were expecting more yellow, but they are still beautiful.

Now we are waiting for our strawberries to ripen :)

May 29, 2012: A Little bit of Luck

This weekend, we went for a walk to buy some plants.  On the way home we found these two treasures: a Starbucks' gift card and two stamps.  We checked the value of the card on Starbucks.com, and there is over $10 on it.  Yay!

May 28, 2012

May 27, 2012: Pond

We have a small pond in our backyard, and we love it.  It is so peaceful to sit by the pond, listen to the water and watch the little fish swimming around.

We have been planting sedum around it to try to make it look more natural.

We have a bunch of water plants: water hyacinth, calamus, star lily, water lettuce and water lilies.

Here is the water lettuce and some creeping thyme.  The lettuce was damaged during a recent pond attack.  An animal has been visiting our pond at night (we think it's a raccoon) and munching on our plants.  We just hope he doesn't eat our fishies.

May 26, 2012

Gin and tonics on the porch.

Tomatoes are planted.  The Brandywine is already blooming.

Rob dug up a new bed, and we planted it with annuals and a couple of tomatoes.

The front yard.

May 25, 2012

I had the day off work due to a furlough day, and I got to spend it with this bundle of cuteness.

 Here is a picture of my new hanging fuschia plant.  I love it!

May 24, 2012: ESOL class

This is our vocabulary list for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class tonight.

May 23, 2012

The recent rain knocked over a couple of our lupine blooms, so I cut them and put them in vases.  This one is on our coffee table and makes me so happy :)

May 22, 2012: Roger Waters The Wall Live

First I want to apologize for the quality of the photos.  I am a rule-follower, so when I read that cameras were not allowed at the concert, I left mine behind.  It turns out it was ok to have a camera as long as you didn't use the flash.  Argh!  Anyway, we just used Rob's phone.  Hence the crappy pictures :)

Last night we went to see Roger Waters perform The Wall Live at the Rose Garden in Portland.  I truly have a hard time putting into words how amazing this show was.  It was actually difficult to take pictures because I felt like I was missing out on the experience.  The venue is huge, and at the beginning of the show the stage was bordered by a partially built wall.

 You can see a blurry little Roger Waters in the bottom left corner with his hands in the air.

 Throughout the show images were projected onto the wall.

A lot of the images had to do with war, and images of people killed in WWII, the war in Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

 There were a bunch of giant inflatable puppets, like the teacher from "Another Brick in the Wall."  His eyes glowed and shone light out over the crowd.

 During the song "Mother," there was a giant mother who loomed above the stage while a video of Roger Waters singing the exact same song thirty years ago was projected on the wall.  I didn't get a picture because I was too busy watching everything on stage :)

During the show, the wall slowly got bigger and bigger, building around the band, until there was only one brick left.  That small hole was plugged by a brick right before intermission, and the second half started with the band completely obscured behind a giant white wall.

 Later a huge inflatable pig floated around the arena.

 The band was moved out in front of the wall.

 Roger Waters picked up a big gun and was shooting all around like a crazy dictator.

"Mother, should I run for president?"  The crowd answered with a resounding "yes!" :)

May 21, 2012: Snail

Found this snail in the garden today.  Had to take a picture before we killed him :)

He's so slimy.

May 20, 2012: Wine, an Eclipse and Tomatoes

This afternoon, we visited Marks Ridge Winery with some friends.  We tasted some wine and had a picnic.  They had Gewurztraminer, Dry and Sweet Riesling, a sweet Rose, and some Pinot Noir.  Rob and I preferred the whites.

The view was really beautiful, even on an overcast day.

They had two beautiful dogs.  They ran barking at every car that drove up to the tasting room.

Some beautiful columbine were blooming.

Of course, there was a vineyard :)

When we got home, we got to experience the solar eclipse.  It was really overcast, so it was difficult to get a good picture.  But I got a couple towards the end, as the sun reappeared.

We planted three of our tomato plants during the eclipse.  Maybe some eclipse magic will help them grow big and strong.