I love spring rain. Or summer rain.

Basically, I just love rain.

I love the way it sounds, the way it smells and the way it makes the colors in my flowers come alive.

I’m on Day 4 of this happiness theme…. 

Today, I’m really, really happy that I get to go have a 90 minute massage in a few hours.  I need it badly and am really looking forward to it.

There’s also a lot of happiness eminating from my little garden.  Bright red azalea in bloom, aubretia tumbling down the rock wall, splashes of blue forget-me-nots, all my perennials growing nicely….  and the Sluggo I used seems to have negated the slug problem… at least temporarily.

Happiness abounds.

What’s making YOU happy today?

Kauai is known as the Garden Isle – for good reason.

Here are some of the beautiful (and sometimes strange) flora we have encountered…

Hibiscus is everywhere.

I love Bouganvilla… particularly this salmony/pink color. But the deep fuschsia is awe inpiring as well.

Bouganvilla creates fantastic bursts of color along the roadside, climbing walls, pruned into trees, arching over walkways.

Plumeria is just coming into season. We continue our quest to find pink plumeria blooming on a low enough branch to photograph…

I LOVED this funky looking blossom below… we found a tree covered in them. I believe it is called Ohi’a Lehua.

It looks like it belongs in a Dr. Seuss book, doesn’t it?

Along with a bottle brush tree.

(weird, huh?)

This tree looked like it was covered with big yellow rananuculus.

There are many red ginger plants around, but I prefer the pink.

An orchid growing in a plumeria tree.

I love blue flowers…

OK, enough for tonight. Tomorrow is our last day in paradise….

Aloha is a wonderfully all-purpose word.  Can mean hello, goodbye or I love you.   

Today it means I’m getting the heck out of the snow and on my way to paradise.  Here’s what my cute little flowers looked like today just before I left.  Could we have picked a better day than today depart???

 As you can see below, we’re having fun already.   Just walking out the door of our lovely hotel suite to pick Ashley up from SeaTac airport!

 We take off for Kauai in in the morning…

ALOHA!

A few weeks ago I stopped at Molbaks and picked up some primrose and daffodils to grace my patio as I am waiting for the bulbs and flowers from last year to bloom again. That sweet baby daffodil just keeps blooming.

And after discovering my first little crocus bud munched into oblivion before it could bloom, I’ve regularly followed shiny little slime trails to pots and rocks, searching for and dispoing of the evil slugs that lurk beneath… just waiting to feast on my garden.  

And then today….

I opened my blinds today and looked out into my garden and saw this!

The cute little iris that I’d planted early last spring (just before it bloomed) had survived the winter and has burst forth into glorious color on my patio.   

Daffodils and tulips from last year are several inches out of the ground and developing buds.  YEAH! 

And…  

My slug hunting has paid off, because the crocus and and primrose are also in bloom.

I love flowers.   Anything new in your garden?

One of my favorite things about living in the northwest is the abundant supply of affordable, fresh flowers.  Even in the middle of winter…..  

I live a little over 1 hour south of Mt. Vernon, home to the annual Tulip Festival.   Jealous?   

In March, you can drive around Mt. Vernon and see acres and acres of daffodils. Tulips in April. Iris in May.

I love the northwest.

While at Central Market (great place for natural foods) Tuesday, I noticed a sign announcing the arrival of the Mt. Vernon hothouse tulips, just the day before!  

And there they were…. rows of fresh cut tulips in a rainbow of colors….  for only $4 per 5 stem bunch.   Prices get even lower when they start cutting in the fields.

Obviously, I had to have three bunches. And aren’t they lovely?  Makes spring feel not so far away….

Southwest has airfare on special from Phoenix to Seattle in April………….

It’s snowy and cold today (has been all week) and I’m so glad I work from home.  I have a fire blazing in the fireplace, holiday music playing and am thoroughly entertained by the fat little birds that are hopping around my patio, on the snow and in the feeder.  They make me smile.

I love these fat little juncos…

And chickadees are so cute and pretty…

Sweet, fat little birds.

Yesterday I decided to plant my “winter garden.”    Last year I bought a couple of decorative kale that stayed beautiful through the entire winter, along with the pansies.  So I thought why not replace all my summer annuals and enjoy color all year long?  

I found a several varieties on sale at My Garden Nursery, just up the street, and was inspired to create a purple/pink/green and white themed garden.   Here are the results.

I still have plans to add kale and pansies to pots on the patio, but they’re still filled with blooming fuscias and other lovely flowers, so that will have to wait for a week or so.  Do you have any “winter garden” plans?

By the way,  my cute little hummingbird is STILL coming to feed from my fuschsia every day.  Doesn’t he know he should have headed south over a month ago?  I’m a bit worreid about him

This is the view from my office chair if I turn my head slightly to the left.  It makes my small condo seem much larger to have that outdoor space so accessible, and offers entertainment throughout the day.  

You might notice that I have acquired a new squirrel-proof bird feeder.  It holds about 5 times more birdseed and will allow about 3 times as many birds to feed at once.  It was getting mighty crowded around the little feeder – not to mention the squirrels using it as their personal lunch box. 

It took the birds about 9 months before they actually found my feeder – but now it’s the happenin’ hangout for the feathered set. 

In the afternoons I often have 2 – 4 dozen birds drop by at the same time…. some in the feeder, some foraging on the ground, others drinking from the birdbath and still others observing from the fench or rock wall. 

Regular visitors are chickadees, juncos, a pair of beautiful rufus-sided towhees and a whole family of pretty yellow American Goldfinch (Washington’s state bird).  I also had a pretty flicker drop by the other day, but have only seen him once.

A somewhat unusual guest earlier in the year was a white pigeon.  He had flown into my upstairs neighbor’s open sliding door and spent the night on her bookshelf - out of reach of her cat.  The next day, when she discovered and shoo’d him out of her condo, the poor thing just huddled with fright in the corner of my patio for 2 days, only wandering out to eat now and then. 

I lured him in a cardboard box with food/water and then called a gal who displays white doves/pigeons at weddings.  She came to take him home, where I’m sure he is well fed and cared for. 

I’m always delighted when this beautiful Stellar Jay makes an appearance. You can see he’s got more than his share of peanuts in his beak.

My mom was telling me about the squirrels in her back yard (in Salt Lake) and how they were gathering acorns and hiding them in a birdhouse. I asked if she’d gather up some of the piles of acorns that fill her yard each year and mail some – I thought the squirrels here might enjoy the treat. When they arrived, I tossed a few out under the tree.

I didn’t see the squirrels for a couple of days (I usually do in the late afternoon), but noticed that the acorns had been opened and eaten, rather than taken and hidden. So I tossed a few more out on the grass.  Next day, same thing – no squirrels seen, but the acorns had been cracked open and eaten.  I tossed a few more out and left the small bag with the few remaining acorns on my patio chair.

Well, Friday night around 2am (I guess that would be Saturday morning) I was working at my computer and heard something on the patio. Wanting to make sure it wasn’t a prowler, I quickly opened up the blinds to confront my stalker….  and I came face to face with this bandit….   

Cute, isn’t he? Yeah, I know raccoons can be a nuisance, but he was just enjoying an acorn snack. He didn’t seem bothered by me at all, and in fact just continued to waddle around the grass and the patio as I chatted him up and tried to take his picture in the dark. Apparently he’s made friends with a couple of the local cats and hangs out on their patios at night, hoping they’ll come out to play.

Today one of the squirrels was back – and discovered the eaten acorns. He was distraught. He searched and searched the nooks and crannies of my patio furniture, potted plants and and shrubbery til he finally found one, lone acorn. In his pleading little eyes I could tell he was sending a message to my mom…. “Please send more!”

So some news from my garden…. 

A couple of cute squirrels have been visiting my back yard every day the past couple of weeks, gorging themselves on the excess bird seed that drops to the ground from my bird feeder.

I have a clear view of them from the desk where I sit all day and I have found them entertaining distraction.

Despite the plentiful seeds on the ground, Scamper, here, isn’t satisfied with “leftovers” so he cooks up a plan. You can see him here, plotting in the trees.

After several failed attempts, involving squirrel contortion and acrobats, many resulting in near-falls to the ground, he finally succeeds in accessing the storehouse.

Not quite so cute.
  

 

So I moved the feeder to a branch further out, so he couldn’t reach. But he was persistent… and this is what I found him doing today. I laughed out loud when he lost his grip and fell to the ground (only about 4 1/2 feet), but find myself scolding him now every time he attempts this. 

Naughty Squirrel

Time to get a new, squirrel proof bird feeder.