This & that....

After a several cold & gloomy days, we enjoyed a very warm 80 plus degrees here today....so I scurried home after work and got a start at planting some annual plants. It is always a tough decision deciding what color scheme to go with. After some thought, I decided to go with a coral/lavender/white colored flowers for my flower pots.

I like to pay close attention to the color of plant foliage too. Using plants with varying colors in the leaves adds interest to the pots.

A Blazin' Lime Iresine. This is a "new" plant to me and I fell in love with it's lime and cream variegated foliage. If you look hard you will see it's vibrant rose-colored stems. This plant can handle shade with a few hours of sun and doesn't bloom but does add that nice contrast that I look for when choosing my plants.

You may remember a recent post about our mother robin....

She wasn't too keen on the flower plantin' that was going on below her. She and the husband would sit up in the tree and chirp & tweet their nervous little notes. I went in to grab the camera as she was feeding and she quickly tried to sit down on the babies so I wouldn't see them! As you can see, one is peeking out from under her. There were 4 eggs laid but I'm not certain we have 4 babies, 2 for sure. I'm kind of concerned about the nest building skills of these parents...really wish they would have made that nest a tad bit deeper. I'm really nervous the little ones are going to topple out before they are ready to be out of the nest.

While working away in the yard, I heard a not too familiar bird....I looked up in the crab apple tree and spotted an American Red Start. These little birds visit us for a short time in the spring and are one busy little bird. They are a very small bird. The male is a brilliant orange & black and the female is brown & yellow. They flit from branch to branch, fanning their tails in search of small flies that feed on the crab apple blossoms.

I couldn't get a very good picture of the little guy, but if you look hard at the center of the picture you can see the underneath side of the male bird. (Click on photo to enlarge)

Ahhh...is this heaven? No it's Iowa! (name that movie)

A beautiful spring day, planting flowers, enjoying baby birds AND a great end to a great day....

THIS....

an old-fashioned strawberry soda! So yummy and a quick & easy summertime dessert....

You will need...

OLD~FASHIONED STRAWBERRY SODA

2 Tablespoons strawberries, crushed (I use more then this!)

1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons vanilla ice cream

1/3 cup strawberry soda, chilled

In a tall glass, combine strawberries and 2 tablespoons ice cream; stir in soda. Add additional remaining ice cream until glass is almost full; pour in additional soda until glass is full. This is one serving size.

Enjoying the nice weather,

brenda