Nature Friday – Fall Leaf Beauty

Hi everyone! It’s Millie and Walter here. On the days it hasn’t been raining we’ve enjoyed hanging out in the yard while our dad takes pictures of some of our fall leaves.

Let’s see what dad’s found to show us.

We like being outside when the weather is nice. There are lots of different types and colors of leaves in our yard.

What a fun day we had while dad was doing his pictures.

We hope you enjoyed seeing some of the cool things our dad photographed in our backyard. 

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

We also want to dedicate this post to our dear friend Arty from the LLB Gang who sadly went to the Bridge just over a week ago. He was a great friend to everyone in Blogville and will be dearly missed by everyone, especially his family.

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Nature Friday – Snow Covered Beauty

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. This week we had some of that snow that sticks to everything and looks so pretty.

Frosty trees in black and white

Alaskan cedar in snow

Is dad taking our picture, Millie?
I don’t know. I’m watching out for tree rats in the yard.

Nature photographer at work

Let’s see what dad was taking pictures of when he wasn’t pointing his camera at us.

Rose hip covered in snow

Frosty barberry bush berries

Hydrangea flower in snow

The birds love these frozen rugosa rose hips

After all the rain we had it froze with some interesting leaf formations in it.

Oak leaf in ice

Maple leaf in ice

Squirrel!
Are you sure because I didn’t see anything.

We hope you enjoyed seeing some of the nature in our snow covered yard this week.

Join the Nature Friday Blog Hop

We are joining the LLB Gang for their Nature Friday Blog Hop. You should pop over to their blog to see all the other posts.

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Nature Friday – Fall Foliage

Hi everyone! It’s Millie & Walter here. We wanted to join the LLB Gang on their Nature Friday blog hop this week. These pictures were taken a week ago and show off some of the beautiful fall colors we had in our yard this year.

Backyard trees

The big yellow tree is our Katsura tree with our Linden tree to the right. The linden tree doesn’t really change color much before dropping all its leaves.

Japanese Maple trees with a Fringe tree in the middle

Let’s take a close look at some of those colorful leaves.

Japanese Maple with Barberry in front

Japanese Maple

Here is a closer look at the leaves on this tree.

Multicolored leaves on same tree

We love how this tree has leaves that range in color from yellow to orange to red. This particular tree has never looked so good.

More Japanese Maple Leaves

At the back of the yard is another Japanese Maple with the beautiful leaves you see above. Let’s take a look at some non Japanese Maple trees in our yard.

Stewartia (on left) and Hickory tree

Last but not least here is a look at one of our varieties of spirea we have.

Spirea leaves

We can’t remember this spirea looking this colorful before.

That is it for a look at some of our fall foliage. We hope you enjoyed our beautiful fall colors. Since these pictures were taken most of the leaves have fallen off the trees and we even had some snow today.

Be sure to pop over to the LLB Gang blog and check out the other Nature Friday blog hop posts.

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Throw Back Thursday – My How Things Have Grown

Hi everyone it’s Cindy here. While moving all my files from one computer to another I discovered a picture that took me back over a decade ago.  A young Angel Nina was hanging out in the yard while helping Charlie do some gardening.

Many of the plants towards the front of the planting were just put in the ground during that spring of 2005. The small tree in the middle with the red leaves is a Japanese Maple. In front of the maple tree to the right and left are a couple of evergreen shrubs.

Here is the same Japanese Maple and evergreen shrubs about 11 years later. Some of the shrubs that are in the top picture were moved as the tree and other shrubs grew and crowded them out. You never know how a planting will turn out when it first goes in the ground. It’s always fun to stumble on a picture of what our yard looked like when a planting was first done to remind us of how it once looked. Gardening definitely takes patience to wait for the final outcome.

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Come Fly With Us!

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Madi and Angel Easy to show their friend Sammy our favorite place in our home town.

Little Black Dog in Big Snow

Whether it’s right after a winter snow storm where we love to plow through the fluffy white stuff and wrestle until we look like abominable snow dogs or…

Little tan dog under big tree

…it’s early spring when the trees and shrubs are just starting to bud out and the grass has started to green up or…

Happy tan dog in shade of big tree

… it’s the heat of the summer where you can cool off in the shade of the Katsura tree during a game of fetch or…

Two dogs playing on a cool fall day

…it’s a wonderfully cool fall day to play fetch and search the yard for hidden treasures (maybe a mouse, mole or vole to dig up) there is no better place than home.

We love our back yard and are sure Sammy would enjoy visiting us here any time of the year.

Even with this celebration for Sammy we are sad to report that today he crossed the rainbow bridge. He was in poor health and that is why Madi and Easy wanted to let him travel the world with this blog hop today. As many of you already know our dear friend Easy didn’t win his battle with bloat and crossed the rainbow bridge a few days ago. We know Easy and Sammy are having a great time meeting up with all their friends that have gone to the bridge before them.

Here is a beautiful fall rainbow from our back yard to share with all our rainbow friends and the Angel sisters that lived here before us.

In addition to the pain from loosing Easy his pawrents have been left with a hefty vet bill that their insurance won’t cover. To help them donations are being accepted through PayPal. You can learn more about how you can help by visiting Murphy & Stanley’s blog. We made sure to get out our mom’s plastic card to send some money to Easy’s family.

It’s been a tough week in Blogville but we hope this tour of our back yard brought a smile to your face.

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Fall Foliage Friday

Hi everyone! It’s Walter here.

We are finally seeing some great color changes in our yard. The above picture was taken a couple of days ago and the big tree in the middle, a katsura tree, is now all yellow. Today I’m going to show you just the colors on our Japanese maple trees. We have a wide variety of them throughout the yard and boy are they putting on quite a show.

Check out the beautiful yellow and orange on the Japanese maple on the right above.

Now lets look at a different view of that same tree. You can see much more orange to red color on this side.

Here is one of the lacy varieties of Japanese maple next to our yellow barberry.

This is a close up of that maple tree. Don’t the leaves kind of remind you of feathers? My mom said it reminds her of a feather boa, whatever that is.

Here is a close up of some pretty leaves against the grey bark of the tree.

One more close up of the leaves on another tree. These leaves are like a big fan and have such pretty colors ranging from yellow to dark orange.

Last but not least just look at the trees in this picture. The red tree on the far right and the one in the center are both Japanese maples. The lighter yellow/orange one in the background on the left is a Red Maple (not a Japanese type).

In case you were wondering what that darkish brown is on the corner of our house it is caulk that our dad put in some holes that a crazy wood pecker has been hammering into our house. It is one of the downfalls of having a cedar sided house. As you know we love the birdies around here but we didn’t want one making a home inside our house!

I hope you enjoyed this walk around our yard. Next week I’ll show you some of the other trees and shrubs that are giving us a nice show of color. Happy Fall everyone!

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Flower Friday – Trees & Shrubs

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. We have so much in bloom this time of year that we are just going to show you the trees and shrubs that are flowering this week.

It’s really looking rosy around here this time of year.

Old Fashioned Rugosa Rose with bee

Yellow Knock Out Rose Bush

Yellow Knock Out Rose – closeup

Therese Bugnet rose

‘Purple Pavement’ rugosa rose

Last week we showed you one of our deutsia and this week we are showing a different form of that same shrub.

Deutsia shrub covered in flowers

Deutsia Flowers

The next picture has a tree, shrub and a perennial. We love the color contrasts of all three next to each other.

Catmint, Japanese Maple, & Yellow Barberry

Potentilla in bloom

Kousa Dogwood Tree

Kousa Dogwood Blossoms

Last but not least…

Spirea flowers

We have a lot of spirea around the yard and all of them are covered in these lovely pink flowers.

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Flower Friday. Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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Flower Friday – Catch Up Edition

Hi everyone! Today we are joining Jakey who is filling in for Dory for her Flower Friday Blog Hop. We are way behind in showing what’s blooming in our yard so today we will get you caught up a bit. Of course we totally blame our secretary for the lack of service on our blog lately and apologize for not commenting much either. We want you all to know that we are still reading your blogs though.

Let’s get on with the show! Most of the flowers in today’s post are shrubs but we do have a few perennials blooming too.

Columbine – covered in cotton

The cotton has been flying from the trees for weeks. If you look closely at the columbine you can see some of the cottony seeds sticking to it.

Backyard border featuring our columnar beech tree

One of the interesting things in our yard is the nice mix of foliage colors we have as seen above.

Deutsia with bug

Red azalea blooms

Pink rhododendron blooms

Doublefile viburnum with bee

Variegated weigela with white flowers

Japanese Maple with Yellow Barberry

Snowball viburnum flowers

Deciduous azalea

Variegated weigela with pink flowers

Perennial garden – from south east corner

Now let’s take a look at what is blooming in our perennial garden.

Perennial geranium with light pink flower

Perennial geranium with dark pink flowers

Siberian iris

We hope you enjoyed this edition of Flower Friday. Be sure to pop over to Dory’s Blog to see who else is participating.

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