Favorite Flowers

I absolutely love flowers! If I were an old retired lady (with a good back, and without the means to live the remainder of my life in Hawaii) I think I'd spend a majority of my time puttering around in my flower gardens. Nothing beats the feeling of the warmth from the sun while digging around in dark, rich soil. Somehow my dreams are shattered by the fact that I'm far from being retired, and live in the swamps of WA State amongst a field of clay. Oh yea...and I also have a really, really brown thumb! For now I'll just pop outside and take a few pictures of those flowers that somehow seem to thrive with no help from me whatsoever.

The kids (aka Mike) got me a magnolia tree for Mother's Day a few years ago. It's always the first thing to bloom, and marks the beginning of Spring. Although the month of March was a wet one, I was able to dodge the rain and get a few pictures. I love my magnolia tree!




My all time favorite flower is the tulip. Every year I talk about going to the tulip fields but never quite seem to make it. I love looking out on our back deck and seeing this spash of color.



I need more tulips in my life!!!

Sheesh

I'm so bad at this blog business!!! I'm determined to keep up with it though, so I'm going to try to remind myself to update 2x a week...that's my new mission in life :)

It's been a rough few weeks for us, 3 friends ungoing breast cancer surgery, another close friend loosing his battle with cancer. It reminds me to cherish the time I have and to let go of the little things that get me down sometimes. Friends and family always feel so useless at times like this. Please keep our friends in your thoughts and prayers.

The last time I posted in my blog we were headed out for a weekend in the mountains. It was such a relaxing time. Here are a few of my favorite pictures:






The pics are out of order but the bottom one was taken right off the deck of our friend's cabin. There were as many as 16 elk in their backyard. There's a group of 6-8 elk that come every day. The females hang out for a while with the little ones then they take off for the day and come back and get them later on in the afternoon. Apparently our friends have become their babysitters....isn't that wild? This little guy on the bottom comes right up to you. Mike snapped a picture of me giving him an apple wedge...it was awesome to get that close. The other pictures were taken at a nearby elk feeding station. Volunteers from the Wildlife Federation load up a tractor and throw off bails of alfalfa for the elk. The mountains are full of snow during the winter months, so they have no food. It's really cool to see all the elk come down the hills. This was their last feeding for the season, so we felt lucky to catch it in time. There were about 250-300 elk that day, and at times they've counted well over 1000 - pretty cool, huh?