no weeds here, ma'am

Lately in the afternoons, the kids collect wildflowers for their self-styled flower shop. They carefully pick them, trim them, gather the stems, and wrap a little tape around them. In order to acquire a bouquet from the shop, you must offer flowers of your own.

It's hard work gathering all those flowers. Time to take a break ~

~ maybe sit in a rusty chair

~ and think about blackberry jam

good morning

Just a few quick pix: The morning glories grow next to a flower pot where our cat, Sika, sleeps. I tried to get a shot of her in the pot, but she jumped out as soon as she heard me and began to slink against my leg. Stovie the stove pipe was created by Lee years ago. I like the little blue button that is blooming at his collar. And last but not least, Leah's lego sculpture.

melon surprise revisited

Checking on the wild cantaloupe this morning, I determined that it is actually a watermelon. A few feet away, however, in another patch that sprouted from another day of seed-spitting, there are two much smaller melons coming along, and they are indeed cantaloupes. So while everyone is beginning to look forward to winter squash, we are tending sweet melonfruit. And not just sweet melonfruit, for the biggest surprise of the morning was finding passion fruit growing from a wild passion flower vine in the same area. I cannot wait to make maypop jam!

Being in a fruitful mind, the kids and I finally picked the crabapples that were growing from a small tree at the foot of the drive. I suppose I'll make jam with them as well -- I can't really think of anything else you can do with crabapples, except eat them raw and make a funny face.

The other shots are just some wildflowers we planted a while back. I should explain that all of the pictures you see on my blog were taken using a cell phone. Not that they would look any better if I had used an actual camera, but I like to think that they would.