Flowering Crabapple Tree

Once again, my favorite tree on the whole property is this lovely flowering crabapple.  In another week, the lovely pink blossoms will be open, and the tree will be the focal point of the back yard.

Front Yard in Springtime

Here's the front yard, with the rhodies ready to bloom, and the shrubs all leafed out.  The white picket fence will be replaced in the next couple of weeks, and I can't wait for that to be completed.  It will pull the whole front of our property together.

Apple Trees

These apple trees are growing to heights beyond my expectations of a 'dwarf' tree!  I do love the fragrant white blossoms this time of year!

Adirondack Chair and Plantings

Here is my new Adirondack chair and stool.  I added plantings and pots of flowers around it.  This was a long-neglected corner of the yard that I cleared out, laid down bricks, and created a quiet spot for Summer reading just off the family room.

The second picture is a close-up of the new plantings in the small flower bed next to the chair.

A New Hydrangea

I found this beautiful, light blue hydrangea, and added it to the other three in the corner of the back yard.  It gets the needed five hours of direct sunlight each day, so I hope it does well here.

My Beautiful Back Yard!

I worked most of the day Saturday and Sunday in the back yard, cutting out borders, laying down mulch, moving my new glider and Adirondack chair into place, and many other tasks.  After all the work was done, I shot this picture.  It looks so quiet, pastoral and serene. 

The glider and the Adirondack chair are made out of recycled plastic milk cartons, and are guaranteed for 20 years.  No more painting of lawn furniture!

A New Border of White

I planted some new perennials along this raised bed over the weekend, and I expect they will grow quickly and fill in this space.  I'm also thinking of tearing out the ivy here, and filling this in with good garden soil and planting a large kitchen garden here.  What do you think?

A Corner of the Back Yard

Here is a little corner of my back yard that is out-of-the-way, and I love this private space.   The armillary sphere is from Copenhagen, picked up during one of my aunt and uncle's world trips.  This bed will be filled with large, established hostas in a couple of weeks, and during this last winter, the area has self-seeded with various ground covers.  The fuschia will double in size, and I hung the new, shabby-chic small birdbath on the fence this week.

A Trip to Home Depot Garden Department

Last week, I was having a hard time concentrating on work on such a sunny day, so I ate a quick lunch and headed out to get my car in the parking garage.  We drove across the street to Home Depot, and I had a great time filling up my cart with hanging baskets, annuals and perennials.  After I got home from work with my 'treasures', I had a fun evening hanging the baskets and putting the flowers in their beds.

Tulips from La Conner

These beautiful orange and yellow tulips were at Top Foods last week, cut fresh from the tulip fields of Skagit County.  They have sturdy green stalks, and they still look fresh after a week.

Purple Clematis on the Back Deck

I love to watch the dead, brown vines from winter turn into lush, hardy and purple-colored flowers of clematis. They spread quickly, and soon I will have a lovely floral screen on the deck, making it a private and fragrant place.

My Kitchen Garden

My kitchen garden survived the fall and winter weather, and I had fresh basil, thyme, and rosemary these last months.  I added a couple of new herb plants from the Yakima Market last week, and they all look right at home together.  I'll use all of these herbs tomorrow night when I make a vegetable frittata for dinner.

Can you see the diamond pattern I painted around the perimeter of the deck several years ago?  It adds a festive touch.

A New Border in the Back Yard

Now that I have gardeners to tend to the front yard and the side pasture, I enjoy having the time to plan and finish the back yard.  Recently, I enlarged the flower beds on the west side of the yard, which contain two huge rhododendrons, a lilac bush, a forsythia, and a weigela.  I put down several bags of mulch, and added sword ferns and "Bridget" heather.  They add color and texture, and enhance the curve of the new beds.

Apple Blossom Time

Here are the first apple blossoms, which fill the air with a sweet scent on these breezy spring days.  Soon, small apples will be forming, and we'll begin the joy of watching our tiny 'orchard' fill with apples and cherries.

Rhubarb, the First Spring Crop

Here is my first rhubarb of the season.  This Ruby Red plant has been bearing well for over 10 years now. Soon, we will be making our first Strawberry-Rhubarb pies of the year.

The First Flower Baskets of 2013

Last weekend, I brought home my first four baskets for this season!  Last year's total was 38, so I have a lot of basket-shopping left to do.  It's one of my favorite things to put in the yard and garden.

Here's the first fuschia basket, and the first petunia basket.  I love the pale-yellow color of the petunias.  I've never had one this color before.

William Shakespeare Rose

The William Shakespeare rose looks very good for this time of year.  It has leaves on all of its branches, and last year, the lovely, dark-red roses searched their way out of my garden and over the neighbor's fence to see what was on the other side.

The Raspberries Are Coming!

I love raspberries!  And I love the way they surprise you in the spring, looking like a row of dead sticks one day, and then the next time I check on them, they are all leafed out like the picture below.

I'm already anticipating the wonderful plump, red berries that ripen on these canes each year.  Soon we will have pints and pints of berries to make into jam, to share with neighbors, and to use in salads and pies.

The Mason Orchard Bees are Out!

The warm weather (over 55 degrees) coaxed the bees out of hibernation this morning.  Aren't they great-looking little bees?  I like the bee on the right front tube, looking right at the camera lens.

I hope they got a lot of rest over the winter (they've been in my refrigerator since February),because they have a lot of work to do to pollinate our Maltby neighborhood.

Late Night Cooking

There is nothing more relaxing than coming home from a busy work day and cooking something wonderful in my country kitchen!  After dinner tonight, I assembled all of the ingredients for a homemade chicken pot pie.  It's one of our favorite weekday dinners, served with a green salad and homemade apple pie and ice cream from Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream in Maltby. The smell of this pie cooking wafted through the whole house this evening, and now it's cooling on the sideboard, ready for dinner tomorrow evening.

Can you smell this, seasoned with herbs from my kitchen garden?

New Home for Our Mason Orchard Bees

Look at this beautiful carved wood bee 'condo' from Molbak's!  Our old one was not working well enough to protect the delicate larvae, so this year we found this larger model, and stacked up the long columns for the bees to lay their eggs in after they pollinate the trees and flowers this Spring.

The wood grain is beautiful, and I love the shape of this bee house.  The bee larvae are resting in nesting material at the back of the paper columns, and should be waking up soon.  I love seeing these small bees on all of our trees and flowers.  They will do an excellent job of pollinating everything within a half-mile radius of our yard.

Getting Ready to Start My Heirloom Seeds

Here are my new trays to fill with potting soil to receive my heirloom seeds!  They'll reside in the greenhouse until they are several inches high, and then they'll 'harden' by being set outside for a couple of hours a day until the weather is warm enough for the small seedlings to be transplanted to the raised beds in the garden.  I can't wait to get my seeds into these containers next weekend.

The Back Yard Tour in Spring

Here are some shots of the back yard in early Spring.  The camellia bush did not have more than a couple of blooms last year, but this year, it's making up for the poor showing last time.  The bush is just loaded with lovely fuschia-colored blooms now!

Two orange begonias look festive on the little bistro table, and my new heather and ferns provide some color and texture under the rhododendrons along the new fence.  The yellow forsythia blossoms got washed away with the heavy rains this last weekend, but the color still grabs your attention.

A Spring Tour of My Yard

Here's the front yard tonight in the filtered sunlight, around 6:30 p.m.  My 1950's metal motel chair trio hints of summer evenings drinking iced tea and visiting with friends and neighbors.  My viola basket brings color to this part of the front yard as you move through the pergola to the back pasture.

Vintage Linens from M&M Antiques in Monroe

I found this lovely gingham embroidered apron a few weeks ago at the antique store with the chicken on it.  Yesterday, I added these two embroidered kitchen towels to my collection.  Since I am going into the pie-baking business, I love the blue towel below!  And the red embroidered towel is such an intricate kitchen scene that you really need to spend a few minutes looking at all of the detail to really appreciate the work that someone spent to design and create it.  These types of 'fancy work', as my Aunt Elsie called it, is a dying art.  Fortunately for me, I am able to find lovely examples such as these to evoke my childhood, and represent a time when cooking and homemaking were art forms.

Apple Pie on a Sunday Evening

This evening, we peeled a bowl of Granny Smith apples for a pie.  Baking these large 9-inch pies in my Yellow Ware pie plate guarantees an evenly-browned, flaky pie crust.  Pieces of this pie will be paired with Salted Caramel ice cream from Snohomish Gourmet Ice Cream Company here in Maltby.

Maximum Exposure

For the last four weeks, Kathy Collins, a local watercolor artist, is exhibiting her one-woman show watercolors at Kaewyn Gallery in Bothell.  These painting are impressionistic in nature, and reflect brilliant color and light.  She has a series of works of Northwest beaches.

Her show runs from  March 8 through April 20.  We bought the piece below yesterday, and it's called "Maximum Exposure".  It refers to the technique she uses with her paints and the canvas, reflecting light and capturing the essence of the feeling of walking on the beach here in the Pacific Northwest.

We can pick up this lovely piece after April 20, when the exhibition closes. It will be wonderful to add another original work to our collection that captures the places we've traveled together, and of the places we return to often.

The Ultimate Birdhouse

Here is a folk art birdhouse made in New Orleans, currently residing at M&M Antiques in Monroe.  I stopped by yesterday to see it, as I saw it on the M&M Antiques blog.  Melanie is asking $245 for it!  Wow--that would bring some high-rent to our current Maltby bird condominiums!

It's beautifully built, has exquisite distressed details, and is surprisingly heavy.  I hope someone can't live without it, and will buy it soon.

Easter Brunch in Downtown Snohomish

We had our family Easter dinner at the Cabbage Patch Restaurant in downtown historic Snohomish Easter Sunday.  Here are a couple of shots of the lovely Victorian home turned into a restaurant.

Easter and Spring!

After the four inches of snow last week, Spring finally arrived last Thursday, March 28!  The days leading up to Easter were sunny and in the 60's and 70's--Easter Sunday got up to 74 degrees!

It was one of those Sundays that will not be forgotten--birds singing, fragrant blooms filling the air, and the meaning of this pivotal day occupying our minds.  This day defines our Christian tradition. It's always a time of hope and renewal, of life and death, and then life again.