That Lovely Weekend

Father's Day weekend: Saturday.

L-A-Z-Y day around the garden.

The Oriental Poppies are popping, and sometimes manage to catch the bud shell inside the flower blossom.

Who knew Oriental Poppies were so co-ordinated at sports like that?

The Columbie multi-variety seed pack planting is bearing fruit.

Or should I say blossoms.

Each year I think I need more columbine.

This year...I am almost satisfied with our collection.

We've got lavender blue and white.

White on white...

Large blue on blue...

(They seem especially robust!)

Deeper blue violet with white...

And rose pink and white.

The deep rose and yellow and yellow and white varieties have yet to make their debut.

Then there is this "is it or isn't it" white on white flower.

Is it also a Columbine?

Anyone know?

I have one shade garden bed that has a mix of Japanese maples, hostas, coral bells, lobelia and random other shade happy plants.

My efforts to plant perenials and self seeding varieties has worked well in this my second full year of gardening here.

At the southern end of the garden the seasonal Neff's Canyon snow melt stream is racing by.

We keep an eye on it...knowing that the yard behind us is lower than ours and so any flooding would affect them before it affected us.

When we first bought our house, Dec. 31 2008, I insisted that funds be set aside to install a water feature through the garden.

The neighbors clued us in that we would be wasting our money to do so...a natural stream would be heard from May to early July.

They were right.  A fountain located on our deck from July to October satisfies my need to hear running water; we saved a bundle by not following through on my original water feature plan.

The batchelor buttons and bittersweet have returned after self seeding.

This year I will be more agressive in trimming them back. Last year they took over the flower bed!

A well mannered self seeder has returned as well; I keep forgetting the name of these lovely orange flowers that play so well with others.

A new addition to the garden:  The unplanted lower lot (slated to become a Japanese garden someday) has now been graced with a hammock.

The same hammock that was first hung in the back yard of the La Mesa CA house where we raised our kids.

The same hammock that was taken down in 1997 and has been moved four times since but never hung again until now.

The inspiration?

Bernie had to spend three days in Houston where the temps were soaring above 100 degrees. He flew home, went into the garage, pulled out the hammock and hung it up.

He said he had dreamed about the hammock the whole time he was gone.

I say its about time the hammock returned to relaxation duty!

It really is some kind of wonderful to sway beneath a green leaf canopy while listening to the rushing water just a stone throw away.

More relaxation inspiring additions to the area are now in the works...stay tuned for updates.

So what other sort of relaxing games did we play on the lovely Saturday of rest?

I had happened to read Judy's post on June 15 about playing with soap bubbles with grandchildren.

It made me go dig out a soap bubble bottle and give it a whirl for my grandkid substitutes.

It took a bit to get Tate's attention; soap bubble are not nearly as interesting to a young cat as the various small gnats and flying insects that are so tantalizing right now.

Tate:  Huh?

Is it dead?

A quick swat...and the thing disappeared.

Humph. Not really Tate's kind of game.

Off to the shade garden....

The game of "Where's The Kitty" begins.

Hart joins into the game.

A goll-darned squirrel spoils the game by scolding the cats from above.

Tate decides something must be done.

He soon discovered his climbing technique isn't really the best. It took him a bit to figure out how to get himself all together and come back down the tree.

Bitsy Blue Eyes joined in the "Where's the Kitty" game.

Tate is really much better at hiding.

Then  Frenchie joined in the game.

This was a hard one: there are three cats in this picture.

Good luck spotting them all.

Some times they just play another game called "Statues".

Hart is really good at that one.

Saturday was just lovely, lovely, lovely.

Sunday, Father's Day was pouring cold rain.

We went to church with our son and his wife.

Jeff had earlier offered to come over and help his dad with a few projects but it was raining so hard that we took a rain check on that.

Instead we enjoyed seeing my Father's Day gift to Bernie, the DVD of the movie Hero (so gorgeous!  Bernie loves that movie and soundtrack) on Jeff's huge television.

A phone visit with my Dad and his Dad and a quick chat with LauraRN on her way to volunteer as a nurse at the Christian campground rounded out the day.

Bernie grill during a break in the storm; I took a picture of the beautiful sunset.

The local weather map showed that we had snow in the mountains; the cold actually helped slow melting and helped stave off potential flooding issues in the area.

We gage our stream by watching the roundish yellow stone in the wall across the way.

Even with all the rain, the water level only rose about an inch, making the stream brush the bottom of the rock.

We could hear huge boulders clump clunk glumping down the streams during the night. At one point I got up and using a flashlight watched human sized rocks rolling along in the water.

This morning the stream is still racing hard but no more boulders have passed by.
I suspect an investigative hike will be in order later on...

For now all is well in the garden...

And Tate is on-call for look out duties if needed.