Awards, Plants and Gophers......

Terrie from Terrie's Little Piece of Serenity gave me this award. I must say that I am truly humbled. Isn't it wonderful how God sometimes works? I threw my back out and have been bed ridden off and on for a month. It's depressing not to be able to be able to do the things I love to do like gardening and keeping my house up. Even playing with Maggie has become difficult. This award came at just the right time as I've not been my normal perky little self. Thank you so much, Terrie, you'll never know how much this means to me! Bless your little heart!!!

I did manage to take a few pictures the other day. This is the arbor that I can see from my bedroom. The roses are doing spectacularly this year, as are the foxgloves. For some reason my hollyhocks are not coming up as I wanted, so I will have to work on that. The two pots you can barely see, along with two more are going to be planted with lavender. This is a really hot area of the garden and lavender will do just fine there. On either side of the bricks I'm going to plant boxwood. The yellow Julia Child rose is in a pot because I have lost so many roses to gophers. I have a pink rose that I'm going to transplant into a pot and put on the other side of the arbor. For some reason the gophers have left my climbing roses alone, so keep your fingers crossed.

This little rose that I have in a pot is aptly named Popcorn. It looks just like buttered popcorn! I first saw it planted when we visited the Luther Burbank Gardens in Santa Rosa, California. It was thrilling to be able to see all the plants that he "discovered" such as Shasta daises. They had a hedge of Popcorn roses and it was beautiful.

This is my white clematis. To me clematis' is such a beautiful and magical vine. I have another that will be flowering in another week that I have in a pot. This one is in the ground and is climbing an arbor. Sadly, it has lost some of it's top growth that I have had to prune off. I have noticed that there is a new gopher mound not far behind it. When it is through blooming I think I'll move it to a pot. Why so many gophers, you say? We live in the city in a tract home. However, behind our fence is county property and fields and orchards. Once when we found a gopher hole we put the hose down it and turned it on. We never did see any water and I'm sure we just irrigated the acreage behind us!!!! So now I do lots of pots and plant things in the ground that gophers don't like, such as daylillys. If anyone knows of any plants that gophers don't like, please drop me a line. On a good note, we have new renters in the little cottage house behind us and they have horses. I don't believe (tell me if I'm wrong) that gophers like to be near horses so maybe they'll go somewhere else. Or is that just wishfull thinking?

Have a lovely, restful weekend! Thank you again, Terrie!!

*On a side note: In the preview there is a space between the above two sentences and when it is published there is none. It happens to me all the time.Does anyone have any blogger hints?

A BIG THANK YOU to PamKittyMorning for helping me out with my spacing problem. She says to go to the Edit Html tab and adjust the spacing there. Works like a charm! Thanks, Pam!!!