Pink...Blossoms & Tea

Pink is the color of universal love. Pink is a quiet color. Lovers of beauty favor pink. A pink carnation means "I will never forget you". Put some pink in your life when you want: calm feelings, relaxation, acceptance and contentment.

It's been a busy week so blogging seems to get put aside. Sorry for the long break but hopefully you'll forget about it as I put some "pink" in your life :-)
Let's start with my favorite the stargazer lily...
then these old reliable petunias. I haven't purchased petunias for at least 4 years because I have discovered they self seed. Most will eventually turn to a purple or a purplish pink but these pink and white ones stay true to this color.
Next we have the pink/white themed "blooming tea" party I hosted yesterday for my stepmother, Anna, and her friends. If you have not heard of blooming teas or as they are really called a tea posy, they are a hand tied dry tea bundle that you put in a clear glass teapot and when you add hot water they open into a bloom. Fun to watch and tastes great too!
As the tea blossom opened, the ladies enjoyed sitting in the garden with all the beautiful birds and blooms including this cosmos...
and this pretty zinnia.
Continuing the pink theme, I served them mini muffins and pineapple blossom fruit kabobs on a bed of pink strawberry cream cheese sauce.
The first course was enjoyed while being able to view the poppies...
lantana...
and lisanthus.
Next it was more pink plates serving the savory course. Tea sandwiches of basket weave cucumber and dill; tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella flowers; rye flowers with cheese & olives and lots of sunflower crackers with birds and carrot blossoms as well as more crackers with red pepper & carrot blossoms.
There was more pink to enjoy with the Kent Beauty Oregano...
beautiful water lilies...
and Sweet William dianthus.
The sweet ending to the afternoon involved chocolate...truffles, cream puffs and mini chocolate cakes with violets.
Last weekend my neighbors, Jeremy & Sara, had a beautiful wedding reception with gorgeous white centerpieces of white lilies, huge white roses, white alstroemeria and babies breath. On Monday evening they brought me two of the centerpieces and I squished one into my new wire cage teapot. Aren't they gorgeous?

Let's talk about LOVE...

Everywhere I go all the places that I've been
Every smile is a new horizon on a land I've never seen
There are people around the world - different faces different names
But there's one true emotion that reminds me we're the same...
Let's talk about love

From the laughter of a child to the tears of a grown man
There's a thread that runs right through us all and helps us understand
As subtle as a breeze - that fans a flicker to a flame
From the very first sweet melody to the very last refrain
Let's talk about love
(lyrics by Celion Dion)

Let's talk about love
Let's talk about life
Let's talk about love...

and Nathan asking Tammy to be his wife!

I was all set to do a post this weekend on the color theme pink, but instead I'm "tickled pink" to announce that Nathan and Tammy got engaged this weekend. We love them both and wish them a long and happy future! These are the best of times in my "garden of Life". Check out Jayme's post as well.
Poor Tammy, the ring had to go back to get resized but will be back on her finger by Monday night!

Yellow sunshine...

Yellow is the color of sunshine. It's associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy.
(from the Color Wheel website)

Osteospermum, Kenai Pineapple BlushSunflower, unnamed
Plains Coreopsis/Calliopsis (Wildflower)
Coreopsis-Threadleaf, Golden Showers
Nymphaea, Hardy Yellow Water Lily
American goldfinch, male
Tithonia, Mexican Sunflower (this plant has always bloomed orange, I don't know what happened this year!)
Tigridia, Mexican Shell Flower
Yellow comparsion...Female Orchard Oriole (left), Female American Goldfinch (Right)
Daylily, unnamed
Gloriosa Daily
Nemesia, Sunsatia Peach
Mums, unnamed (even though I cut them back until July 1, they are already producing blooms - the earliest I can remember)
Taraxacum officinale...
or as it is commonly called, Dandelion. This is one I wish I didn't have to include in my yellows, and if you look at just one individual blossom it really is quite pretty but a mass of them on my lawn is not :-) Oh well, I can just tell people I am growing "sunshine"!

Orange...

Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. Orange represents enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation.
To the human eye, orange is a very hot color, so it gives the sensation of heat. Nevertheless, orange is not as aggressive as red. Orange increases oxygen supply to the brain, produces an invigorating effect, and stimulates mental activity. It is highly accepted among young people. As a citrus color, orange is associated with healthy food and stimulates appetite. Orange is the color of fall and harvest. In heraldry, orange is symbolic of strength and endurance.
(from the Color Wheel website)
A few of the spots of orange in my gardens...
Tiger Lily (my favorite, it reminds me of my mother's gardens)
Morden Sunrise Rose
Baltimore Oriole
unnamed Peach Daylily
Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa
Monarch
Potentilla - Cinquefoil, Miss Willmott
Hemerocallis, Yellow-red Daylily
Anagallis, Wildcat Orange
Portulaca grandiflora, Moss Rose
Orchard orioles
Belamcanda chinensis, Blackberry Lily
unnamed Butterfly

family fun....

When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.
(Joyce Brothers)We had a wonderful weekend driving up to the Duluth area with Nathan & Tammy to visit Jayme & Scott. We chose this weekend so we could also take in the Maritime Festival and see the "tall ships", the Pride of Baltimore II, the US Brig Niagra and the Madeline. The only problem was that we missed the highlight of seeing them in full sail coming into the harbor (check out Scott's wonderful photos HERE) and 125,000 other people decided they wanted to come see the ships too. It was a fun experience to see them up close and personal and we did manage to go aboard the Baltimore II after a 40 minute wait in line but the other lines were too long for our patience levels.
Jayme has lived in this area since 2001 and we have made many trips up there and visited many sites but never knew D-town had it's own Miss Liberty. Our fun loving daughter is always happy to oblige with a fun pose :-)
The crowds in Canal Park were giving us all a headache...
so we headed over to visit the zoo...
and shot some more funny poses :-)
We spent some time at Jay Cooke SP where Nathan & Tammy posed in the same spot that Jayme & Scott have posed for us many times.
The river was beautiful, cascading over all the angled rocks...
what a difference the same view was this past April!
Crossing the suspension bridge was also a lot less eerie...
than it was in April with the rushing water right below us.
Jayme and I can never photograph enough of nature, especially beautiful waterfalls...
so we also visited Gooseberry SP...
one of my favorite spots on the North Shore!
But as beautiful as these falls are, I like this quote...
The family is one of nature's masterpieces.
(George Santayana, The Life of Reason)
because I have the most fun in life with my family. With six busy schedules and over 4 hrs separating us, we don't get to spend as much time together as we would like but when we do I could not be happier! Back to the garden tomorrow...

What a week...

It has been quite a week since I last posted. Jeff & I celebrated our anniversary with a wonderful dinner out in this screen porch at the Terrace Store. It is one of our favorite destinations in the summer.
Since we were celebrating 32 years, we ended our wonderful meal with a dessert for two (Milky Way Mousse Cake).
On Thursday morning we were awakened to the sound of hail hitting the house in the darkness. It soon ended and we got a call that round two was heading our way and it was severe. By 7 am our area had a severe thunderstorm with 80 mph winds and many trees went down. We were lucky in that our property only sustained tree & garden damage not our lively hood as many farmers sustained crop damage. After a trip into town to check our son's house it was totally shocking to see the amount of trees down and blocking most of the streets, as well as an elevator bin & catwalk down and blocking a major highway. Jeff spent the majority of the day with his employees using heavy equipment to drag trees off the streets and to the brush site while I cleared the garden of branches and surveyed the damage. When he got home we set to work on our yard, we hauled loads and loads of branches off the lawns and the whole place is a mass of shredded leaves. Friday morning we headed off to Duluth for the weekend and came back to pick up more branches yesterday. There is major cleanup of fallen trees to be done in the grove but that can wait until time permits. The power surges before the electricity went out caused my DSL modem to go out and I didn't get a new one installed until this afternoon. How attached we get to our modern conveniences was very noticeable this morning when I didn't get to catch up reading my favorite blogs :-)
The climbing rose sustained a lot of damage and we will be pulling the rest of it out after the little mourning dove fledges. He is fully feathered and growing by leaps and bounds.
More on our weekend up north tomorrow...