Around the House and Garden

Peeper pics! Look how cute they are now. We have six babies total.
Here's a nursery group pic. They are bobbling around and eating fine. Aren't the striped ones adorable? They remind me of chipmunks!

Wow. This is the best I've ever done with any type of beans. The bushes are just loaded with Henderson bush Lima beans. I'm really not a good gardener. I just don't give up. Persistence is the key to success right?
My garden companion, Josie, perched here for the longest grooming herself and watching the birds flying overhead and twittering across the yard. The herb garden is doing well. This is the prettiest my lavender has ever been. It does poorly in our humidity, but I keep on trying! I think the raised bed is a big help. It might not like it's roots to remain too moist.
This is a portion of a huge pecan tree that fell during Katrina. When visiting Yosimite we saw benches made from large logs, so Byron wanted to make one out of a portion of our tree. We didn't have the ability to cut the main part of the tree into firewood because it was just too large. This was a wonderful way to use something that "wood" have otherwise been wasted. He still needs to sand it down and smooth it. It's right in front of our "bon fire area".
This is Datura. It makes a nice large semi-tropical shrub. Dies down during hard frost. I love it because of its many clusters of grape like flowers, then the orange berries that appear afterward. It also has a wild growth habit, which appeals to me. Just a few prunes here and there keeps it in nice shape.
Here is a pic of "bullet proof" flowers that do well in our heat and humidity. Purple gomphrena, strawberry fields gomphrena (a little lanky now), Pentas, vinca, and whirling butterfly (guara). I have interspersed some winter annuals for our area that are small still, rocket snapdragons and begonias.

See how shredded the giant bird of paradise leaves are from the recent wind storms. They are still beautiful in their own way. Another bud is about to bloom one of it's prehistoric looking blooms.
Here is my Mexican sage blooming next to my agave. This agave is in a concrete urn. They get huge if left to their own devices. They are also called century plants due to the mistaken belief that they only bloomed every 100 years. Europeans who brought them home from the Americas to grow in their green houses believed this. If growing in optimal conditions or in their native southwestern habitat, they will bloom every 10 years. The agave's woody blooming stalk, which grows from the center, can be 10 to 40 feet tall depending on the variety. Occasionally a large one blooms in our area, and it calls for a local newspaper story!
Again finally, success with peas! This is my purple hull peas.
Some type of skipper I believe.