Thnapshot Thursday

I'm going to take you from the idyllic, serene and oh-so-utopian world of catalog pictures to my garden. 
(Read this post if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)

My garden is where chaos reigns.

These are my weeds.

Some are blooming, making them prettier than the others but also more deadly, because this is how they multiply. 

Plus, when weeds bloom, this means they have
been around for a while.

This is my nemesis. It is taking over the yard.

I do enjoy the purple tones in the clover.

Now, I need to explain something. 

These weeds DRIVE ME CRAZY. 

But my husband?  Not so much. 

Oh, he notices them sometimes and he's definitely the one who pulls them up whenever I ask him to.  (I use my bad back for an excuse and it's still working so I'm sticking with it.)   I have never heard one word of complaint from him when I ask.   

But I hate asking - I really do. 

I was thinking, if we lived in a catalog...

  

Becky brought in samples of the weeds she wanted Jeff to remove and was thoughtful enough to label them!

Becky cleverly left an intricately handwoven with sustainable white vine garden tool basket in the middle of the entryway so she wouldn't have to ask Jeff to pull weeds.  He would simply kick the handsome but durable rattan basket every time he entered the house and it would serve

as an earth-friendly reminder.

Of course Becky kept an eclectic galvanized metal planter filled with Pellegrino, an expensive brand of lemonade and chipped ice on the terrace so Jeff wouldn't become dehydrated while working in the garden.

Ah-hem.  Back to R-E-A-L-I-T-Y.

I do have a lot to love in the backyard right now...

The hydrangea are absolutely stunning!

These two flowers are from the same plant.  The pink one is a cutting that I stuck in the ground in a different part of the yard.  The soil is more acidic where the blue one is planted and more alkaline for the pink one.  This amazes me.

Clematis reminds me of my mom.

Do you have any plants that bring back memories

of someone you love?

The dahlias are so happy and it tickles me that these were all moved at the wrong time of year, yet they've flourished.

The center of a rose is a miracle!

So, I wrote this post just like David wrote a psalm - honest whining at the start, turning to gratefulness and praise in the end.  But I have no one to blame for the Pottery Barn humor but myself!