Spring garden 2012

There’s more than just daffodils and sick babies here (thank og). Plenty of other things are blooming, including–may I give them a shout out–all the blooming trees in the world. The redbuds, the pears, my goodness. So beautiful every single place I drive! Anyway, this post is about my garden…

I have several varieties of grape hyacinth planted around the property. I have plain purple and bigger plain purple, small plain white and a very fuzzy gray-purple that came in a mix. These, though, are my favorite. The variegated ones. Aren’t they nice? I hope to add the baby-blue kind and the pink kind this fall, but I dunno. The pink kind are still $15 for 5 from Brecks, so I would need to find a more reasonably priced source.

The lungwort is blooming. I love these plants. I meant to divide them before they bloomed this spring, but spring came so quickly that BOOM! they were blooming. Maybe they won’t mind being divided later, still before the stinking heat comes.

And here is the other, more striking variety of lungwort. I like this one better of the two. It has such nice dappled foliage after the flowers are over, too.

The miniature iris from our friend Laura are blooming. Hello Laura, see, I haven’t killed your miniature iris!

And pansies. Mimi and I bought these. Mimi had to pick a blossom off of them in the plant nursery and hold it while I wheeled her around the greenhouses looking for temptation. When it was time to put her in her car seat I thought I’d better take it away. Oh my. The drama.

Aside from daffodils, that’s all for now–except for my flowering quince, which is about twelve inches tall now, two springs after I first planted it, and which puffed and struggled and managed to blossom ONE flower this year. Go go little quince.

Sickie baby

Mimi has a cold. She also had an ear infection. Now we have the cold too. There is no end to the nasal discharge around here.

Pudding is happy to be exempt from this particular family experience.

Crayons

We are working on learning to color. If she just figures out that she should put the paper down, she’ll be golden.

Zoo day

It looks like today is the last of sunshine and heat before things cool off into more appropriate early-springlike temperatures, so I got a bee in my bonnet to take Mimi to the zoo in a nearby town. The drive is under an hour, just the length of an episode of Sesame Street, and the zoo is small so how hard could it be?

Well, not entirely painless and I think that our local petting zoo is way more bang for the buck, now that I’ve been to the other one. But the trip filled up a whole morning and all the trees that can bloom are, so really, quite a nice outing.

The zoo had the small zoo’s usual suspects: a lot of reptiles, a lot of birds, and a lot of small furry mammals that were all asleep in high, shady places where they couldn’t be seen. This is why I’m sold on our petting zoo, which is full of LARGE and DOMESTICATED animals that can’t wait to make friends. Much more fun, both for toddlers and adults.

The monkeys were nice, though.

Mimi is old enough to notice the animals when they’re being interesting, and to point at them and smile when they’re cute. The monkeys and the meerkats were her favorites.

Hello, meerkats!

Daffodils 2012

Everything is a month early this spring. At Mimi’s birthday party I overheard someone saying that NOAA predicts above average temperatures for the next 90 days. Goodness. I hope that summer will be milder than usual to compensate… six whole months of these kinds of temperatures (50-60 at night, 80 during the day) would be dreamy!

My daffodils are at their height. I love them, passionately, more every year, even the yellow ones.

Ruffles and doubles, miniatures with multiple heads, yellow and orange and green and white and pink.

My advice to you is PLANT DAFFODILS. They are hands-down the best thing in the spring. Critters don’t even eat them! They will come back and multiply every year. And plant as many kinds as you can! They all bloom at different times so you have a surprise every morning.

Oh boy howdy I love them.

So plant some, okay?

Birthday party!

Mimi had her first birthday party this afternoon!

There was a big birthday cake with pink icing

And tea sandwiches in yellow, pink, and green just like the decorations

Mimi had her own small “smash cake” and willingly fed bits to anyone who wanted some

She also had a birthday crown with jewels

And lots of presents and cards!

Phew. I had been looking forward to her first birthday party for months and months and months. I call the day a success. She likes frosting!

Saint Patrick’s day

A whole year, huh?

Yeah. I guess it has been.

One year

Baby Girl is one year old. As I type this, it is thirteen minutes from being the exact instant she was born, one year ago. Which means I was probably out cold at this instant one year ago. Oh well.

For her birthday, we packed up the car (because a day trip with a one year old is like a week-long camping trip for adults) and took the long-ish drive to IKEA.

Mimi got the kid’s meal with macaroni and cheese and steamed vegetables for lunch. Her dad slipped her some fries and chicken finger bits, too. She wasn’t interested in my Swedish meatballs, hmmm…

She got to play in posh showrooms,

And dormitory showrooms (seriously IKEA, what’s with the “Swedish military barracks” setup at the front of the store?)

Sparks found a Captain’s Chair. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t have fit in the car.

IKEA is exciting and fun, but we all got very, very tired. It’s good to know that even grown-up one year olds can still sleep in their car seats.

Happy birthday, my bestest, tiniest girl. At one year old you pull up to stand and “cruise” while hanging on to furniture. You say “mama” and “dada” and “hi”, and sometimes even “kitty”. You drink from sippy cups and straw cups. You have four teeth and we’re pretty sure you’re getting two more. You fearlessly climb on anything and everything you can, including me. There isn’t a single stronger, smarter, more beautiful, or more loved one year old girl in the world. Keep it up kiddo, we love you so so much.

Back up and running

If you noticed the outage on this blog’s main page, I apologize. It looks like the custom CSS I had written became obsolete. I have a new theme now and everything is peachy again!

March 10

Dear winter,

BAM!

Spring baby clothes

Oh, those baby clothes. I can’t get over them. If the weather would warm up just a liiiiittle bit…

Most of them are “Big Sky” by Baby Gap, but some are “Villa Centinale” and some are basics from Old Navy.

I should stop trying to assemble wardrobes from thrift stores and just admit that buying beautiful baby wardrobes is something I enjoy immensely, and since I may never have another daughter, I will go for it.

Plus that President’s Day sale just wouldn’t quit. Gap wanted Mimi to wear their clothes.

I’m sewing some more things. I have two top-and-bottom sets finished, two pairs of pants nearly done, and three dresses in the queue.

Almost spring

The winter was a mild one, but it was still winter and every day still got dark at 4:30. Spring is coming now and I’m so excited. After giving Mimi her early morning bottle, I crawled back in bed amidst a pale dawn glow.

I took a walk around the flower gardens yesterday while Mimi napped (she is dropping her morning nap and sleeping 2+ hours straight in the afternoons. Bliss!) and found many tiny green points coming up. Hooray! All of those flower bulbs are going to make flowers! Yay!

A friend is going to divide her bush peonies for me. I think I will buy a box of four more roots at Sam’s Club for variety. I want a big bed of them by the side of the house, with hollyhocks behind. Deer don’t seem to eat peonies, but they sure eat hollyhocks. The hocks need some protection.

I hadn’t planned it, but Mimi will have a new spring wardrobe. Baby Gap got to me… and the President’s Day sale sealed the deal. She has a lot of beautiful new and slightly bigger clothes to wear for springtime, and it’s a good thing because it’s already a stretch to snap the onesies that were new at Christmas. My girl is a long and skinny one and we have no idea where those genetics came from…