No dirty dishes in my sink!

This is what my sink looks like this morning...

I can't believe that the peonies are blooming finally.

I will be cutting many, many bouquets of these in the coming days,

 and placing them everywhere in the house.

I truly do wait all year, just for this one bloom!

I have a love affair going on with these flowers.

I love roses...I love hydrangeas...

But I adore peonies...

So today...I have a sink full of gorgeousness.

How I wish they lasted longer in the garden. 

But thankfully they dry beautifully, and I can enjoy them year round.

These are my first bouquet, but there will be many more to share later...

Because I have forty of these plants in my garden!!!

Some are early bloomers...some are mid-season bloomers...

and still some are late bloomers.

I also wanted to share some pictures of the garden as it looked before the weekend.

It changes daily and I can hardly keep up.

This is the last of the poppies blooming now.

Aren't these colors so pretty.

The one's in the top of the picture are Patty's Plum

 and the ones below are Watermelon.

A close up of the Watermelon poppy

 Some of the iris are still blooming with the early peonies.

I love this color combination in one of the beds

Here is the naked lady (Athena) looking lovely with Jacob's Ladder.

She kind of looks cold doesn't she?

I love this iris blooming with the columbine.

Siberian iris with variegated dogwood.

A view of the garden from the porch looking towards the driveway.

We have a long'ish' drive to the house that is lined with forsythia, and

last year I added some roses in front of them to add color to the drive.

I can't wait to see it in the coming years in bloom.

A view from the porch in the other direction.

We have a large expanse of grass between us and our neighbor.

 We will be fencing it off to pasture someday, but now we mow it.

Thank goodness we own five acre feet of canal water with the property.

That is a lot more water than we ever use in a Summer however.

So mowing is where I will be most of today, after I publish this post.

Here are a few more views from the porch before I go.

Remember the piece of white iron fencing I bought at Farm Chicks?

It is propped up against this tree for now.

This is where it will stay I think.

Ivy geranium of the porch.

Thank you so much for stopping by today. I do hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

For those of you from the US, I hope your fourth of July was as wonderful

as mine. I was able to go to the flea markets on Friday in Hailey, and to Rebecca's

(a little shop in Bellevue) that I featured last year on the fourth of July. She is only

open on the 4th of July and Labor Day weekend, and I wait all year for it.

I will share some of that experience in my next post.

And now as you can see in the photo below...my shovel awaits.

Poppies in the garden...

I thought I would show a few pictures today of the poppies that have started to bloom this week in the

garden. I know I've said this a million times already this Spring...but everything is later than usual here in my garden. I have been a bit impatient, but the poppies are worth the wait.

I like to purchase new varieties of poppies as they come out, because the breeders are coming up with

some gorgeous colors in recent years. I have several different colors here in the garden and would love to share some pictures of them with you.

I know that there are many who read my blog, who are not gardeners and don't get as excited about flowers and viewing them as I do about showing them, so I apologize to you now. Isn't it great when we all have such different ideas of beauty. That's what makes it so great here in Blogland.

When I joined up for Where Blogger's Create, I was torn between showing the garden or showing my studio. The garden is truly where I feel I am the most creative (and it is darned sure where I work my pants off). When we got this property in 1998 it had been a horse pasture. Originally it was part of my grandfather's homestead. My grandfather had died in 1967 and my uncle had the property. His son bought it from him a few years ago and decided to divide it and sell off a couple of lots. He built his house on the adjoining lot and I couldn't ask for a better neighbor (or cousin).

My aunts tell me that this section of the property is where the dairy barn used to sit. Must be why everything is so happy.

I had always dreamed of an English garden, and with the blessing of my husband, started to garden obsessively passionately, planting everything I could get my hands on.

As you can see I got my hands on a lot of poppies!!!

I'm just crazy for them...

In every color I can find...

This one is my favorite and the only un-named one that I have.

 It was in a pot marked assorted poppy mix.

I am always so excited to see her bloom.

The snowball viburnum is also in bloom now. Here it is in it's green stage from about ten days ago.

My bushes are still little. They have only been in a couple of years.

I finally bought some for the garden because I would drive by other yards and see them and wish I had a few. Then they would quit blooming and I would forget about them until the next year when I would see them blooming again for someone else, and on and on it went. Did I ever tell you I have short term memory loss...or in this case is it long term?

Here they are as of today! All white and showy!

As I was going through my pics today deciding what to post, I found some from a few weeks ago that

I didn't get to share because a couple of friends dragged me to Farm Chicks with 'em. I'm still on a high after that show!!! It's like I'm on drugs or something, trying to find out where I'm going to get my new (junking) fix!

Anyone living nearby, you just HAVE to go to that show. (First of all, 'cause I want to meet you in person) and because it was just so great! I will let you in on a little out of the way coffee house that makes the best berry scones I've ever eaten in my life. That alone was worth the eleven hour drive.

Okay, that's a lie...but they were sure good!

Anyway...on to the pictures...

I took this photo when the crab apple by the pasture fence was still in bloom and the lilacs had just opened. Oh man...you cannot believe how wonderful it smelled back there. It even over-rode the smell of fresh horse manure!

This pretty lilac was just opening when I snapped this. It's my favorite lilac in the garden.

Beauty of Moscow

This one is a blue lilac and has a heavenly scent.

President Lincoln

Thank you for hanging in with me today and hanging out in the garden.

This is where I love to create the most.

A little of this, that, and the other for White Wednesday.

Well, I'm afraid you're in for another long post here today, because I have a lovely giveaway win I want to share,

and finish showing you the last of the pictures from Farm Chicks.

But before I do that, I wanted to show you how a couple of the girls are doing.

I chose to show you two that come the closest to fitting in with the White Wednesday theme

for today.

Do you remember them when they were just teeny, and I brought them into the house

for a little portrait sitting? (and they pooped all over everything)

Well...this is Rossie and Harriette now!

Rossie is the one on the left in both photos, and Harriette on the right.

I have to tell ya...Harriette is and always has been my favorite!

I know...I'm a bad  'chick mama'. But she is! She has the 

sweetest temperament AND she is the prettiest.

I will have to show you the other girls another time, but I just had to brag today

 about these two sweet peeps.

Now for the amazing giveaway I won from dearest Cindy at Stitches-N-Stuff.

When this came, it was wrapped so beautifully, and I just knew that it would be special.

You see, Cindy sent me a beautiful gift before and I know what her handiwork is like.

She is an amazing artist with a sewing machine. You can't even imagine what was waiting

 for me wrapped in white tulle and ribbons.

Look at all this beauty...

A wonderful verse about charity folded up and tucked in a tin with lovely white and

creamy buttons.

Wait till you see the beautiful angel soap dish...

you see, angels are very special to me and Cindy knows this!

Now for the handiwork itself.

A beautiful bag sewn up in all my favorite shades of creams and white!

A close-up of this lovely piece of Cindy's heart.

Cindy, I want to thank you for this lovely gift and for being my friend.

I LOVE it ALL and will enjoy my bag as I take it everywhere this Summer

when I go to the flea and farmer's markets.

From farm chick chickens to Farm Chicks the show...

Here are the last of the views I saw when I was at this wonderful event.

Oh I can hardly wait till next year!

I am joining Kathleen at Faded Charm for White Wednesday.

Because I am totally out of whites at the moment, I have decided to

to only post for White Wednesday about once a month. I have enjoyed this so much and

it was hard for me to make the decision to do so. I think this will work best for me this Summer and

I hope to be back to regular white posting in the Fall...

because I LOVE white!!!!