A Rose in Golden Hour

We've moved yet again, at the beginning of April. Our new home has some roses that I've been impatiently waiting for to bloom. Roses are one of my favorite flowers, and I haven't had any since the one I killed in our first home.  I thought these were going to be miniature roses by the size of the plants, but they've turned out to be small, but not tiny pink roses.  I discovered the first blooms today!

I also discovered just what people mean about "golden hour" being the absolute best time to take pictures.  The girls and I went outside about 7pm this evening.  Knowing that it was evening I decided to take some pictures.

Here's the rose.  Looks pretty nice doesn't it in these first two pictures?

And here we are about 7:30.  Notice how much the color is starting to pop?

And I really thought this was it too.

You can't see too much difference here, but now it's 8 o'clock...

And bam!  Look at that color!!  Seriously, scroll back up to the top and look at the difference!!!  Just before sunset really is "golden hour!"

But just in case I was enjoying myself too much, Miss Bubbles (almost 1 year old) wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

...And that was the end of that rose blossom.  She took every single petal off. :(  Thankfully there's lot's more buds!

Except for the last two, none of these pictures where Photoshopped.  What you saw was exactly what my camera got!  Thanks for looking!

Spring 2012 Herb Update

Here at our new house we have a shed, so I was able to store my herbs in there rather than in the house this past winter.  Unfortunately, I didn't remember to have Hubby put them in the shed until sometime in December.  So they got snowed on several times, and were encased in ice for a while.  Then after they were safely stowed in the shed, I forgot to water them for the rest of the winter!

Once the weather warmed up enough to melt most of the snow, I asked Hubby to get them out again.  I really wasn't sure if they had survived.  It still took me a few more weeks before I was able to get out there and trim all the dead stuff off.  Here they are before the trim.  They look pretty dismal, don't they?

As I was cutting the sage I discovered that it, at least still had a tiny bit of life in it!  Thankfully I still have plenty of dried sage leaves in my kitchen, so I'll be able to let it grow uninterrupted for most of the summer.

However, I didn't find anything living on the mint.  Time will tell if it comes back.  I honestly won't mind having to replace it though.  It's never been as fragrant as I'd like, so I'm sure I can find another variety that I like better.

A New Home

Our little family recently moved out of town into the country. We now live in a cute little double-wide. We knew we were lucky to have such a big house for our first home, and didn't have any problems filling it up with our junk. Now we've had to figure what to get rid of, and how to fit the rest into our new house!
We have a gorgeous view from our front porch.
And it's even possible to see the beautiful sunsets now!!!