Flowers

The farther we get into Spring the more flowers I have blooming. It makes the yard look so much better.

This is the bed to the left of the steps. All the annuals I planted last year came back and I planted more coleus and two more elephant ears this year. The old elephant ears and the banana plant even multiplied. Now there are three of the big elephant ears, several of the red stemmed ones, and four banana plants.



Another plant I transplanted from my mom's graden last year was this gladiolus. It bloomed for the first time this week. I have some more glads that I planted this year that should be up in the next few weeks, but I don't know if they'll bloom this year.



My lilies have started blooming. We've had these since the summer before we got married. I had them in planters and transplanted them to the beds last summer. This is a blackbird lily.



This is a tiger lily. If blooms in a very nice orange. They have both multiplied tons since I've had them. I even gave two small ones to my mom last year.



In addition to the lilies we also had gerbera daisies in planters from our old house. We finally transplanted them this year. One is pink and the other is a light orange. They went in the bed on the side of the house.



We also have three tomatoes, two squash, and two cucumber plants. They have each grown a lot since we planted them. There are even tiny tomatoes already. We should have squash soon and maybe even cucumbers.

In other news, I am having to do without my allergy medicine because my doctor wants to retest me to see what new things I am allergic to. It has made for a miserable week. I look forward to being able to take my Zyrtec again. I've also had to stop my pills for preventing headaches because it somehow changes the way your body reacts to the tests. But it is good practice for when I have to stop them to try to get pregnant.

Speaking of which, my doctor's appointment had been changed and now I don't go for a few more weeks. It is frustrating because I want to start trying to get pregnant, but I also know my doctor wanted to know before we started trying (due to all the meds I will have to stop). On the plus side I haven't had as many headaches as I expected since stopping my meds. That is always a good thing.

So, our niece graduated from high school last weekend. It made me feel old. It was a bittersweet day for her because on the one hand she was graduating, but then on the other hand her mom wasn't here to see her graduate. I know that Sandy would have been so proud of her. Her grandmother from Walterboro came for the graduation and it was the first time she got to see Mercedez's baby. It was so cute.

Remodel job

Shawn and I (mainly Shawn) have been working on my mom's bathroom for a little over a month now. My parents have lived in the same house for almost 32 years and some things just need redoing. The bathroom had sustained water damage about 7 or 8 years ago and the work was only halfway done because the insurance company didn't want to actually pay what needed to be spent. So, a year and a half ago we had given my mom the new towel bars and flooring for Christmas, but had never gotten around to installing any of it because we were trying to figure out what to do with the sink and cabinet. To get an equivalent cabinet would cost a lot more money than anyone was willing to part with, so we decided to fix up the existing cabinet and my mom bought a new sink and faucet. We painted the cabinet, put in a new bottom to the cabinet (it had rotted away due to water damage), and put on new hardware. While installing the sink and faucet, Shawn added shut-off valves for the water because they had never been installed before (bad plumber way back when).

This is the sink once installed.



This is what the cabinet looked like with new paint and hardware.



We installed new wallboard to make the bath tub area look better. We also put in a new soap dish. In addition we re-caulked around the tub.



Then we put in the new towel bars, tp holder, and shower curtain rod. This is the double towel bar next to the tub. There is also a towel bar over the toilet.



My mom decided the lovely 70's era light was not making things look good anymore and bought a new light fixture. We discovered bad electricians work (the light box was barely attached to anything so we put in a new one, not fun) and installed the new light after lots of trial and error.



Then after the new paint job and all other work was done we put in the new flooring and shoe molding. Then the new shoe molding got painted.



This is a shot of most of the work from the doorway.



This is a straight on shot from the door.



We also painted the door and door casing to make them look like the rest of the room. Then we painted the frame for the mirrored medicine cabinet. All in all, it looks like a completely different room that doesn't look anything like the rest of the house.

More Spring Things

The Gunter farm has had lots of babies born this year. For the first time, we have had lots of incidents with the new babies. The new calf poked his eye on a tree branch and needed eye drops to fight away infection. We are pretty sure it will be blind in that eye, but he is doing much better.

Then a baby goat that was about 3 months old was eating some food when the oldest billy goat came up and swung his head around to shoo the baby away. Unfortunately, his long horns caught the baby goat's leg and the baby ended up being picked up and swung around. He ended up with a broken leg and limped around for a few weeks. Now you can hardly tell him from the other baby goats.

So, the baby goat that was born on Easter had an injury as well. My dad has tin laying around that he uses to cover the wood piles for the fire place. The goats like to walk around on the tin and we think the baby walked on part that had a hole and scraped his back leg. At any rate, he had the top layer of skin taken off from right above his hoof. So he was doctored on a lot and now is doing better and will walk on that leg.




While all this doctoring was going on with that baby, another goat had a baby. This makes the third black baby we've had, which is cool, we just don't know where that color is coming from. The majority of the other goats have had cream colored babies that either turned white, or a dark tan color. So the black babies have made things interesting.



In other news, our rose bush has gone crazy. This is after a storm that made lots of petals fly away. The funny thing about this rose bush is that the blooms are so many different colors. Some are dark pink with yellow centers. Some are light pink with white centers. Some look almost red at first and fade to pink. Some have a center that starts out orange and turns yellow.



Then finally, my yellow irises have bloomed. They have much bolder color than the purple ones.



Most of the irises have finished blooming, so this will probably be the last picture that will feature them.



We've planted out veggies so when they start growing bigger I'll post pictures of them. I've also planted more flowers in the front and have more stuff to put out. Pictures of that will follow soon as well.