Today I am joining Tootsie and Fertilizer Friday, where gardeners or flower lovers have a chance to show and tell about their efforts in the garden or just a flower pot of fun. Please stop by at http://www.tootsietime.com/ and visit her wonderful site and take a look at what is happening all over blog land now that Spring is in the air!!

My pond, my babbling brooke.....ok  it is NOT one of those but for me it is my water feature in my yard. It gives me that sense of peace that only running water can do. It was not the first water feature that I had,  3 ponds have come and 3 ponds have gone in my yard.

Made from an 1800's old claw foot bathtub - it weighs a LOT! Once we got it set in the garden it was there to stay.  We set it on brick stones to keep it from sinking into the ground and has held up well over the years.

You can see it sits nexts to my old outhouse lovingly named my 'Potty Shed". This is an older shot, as I now have trees grown up around it along with several bushes and perennials. The bees and birds love it, I ended up putting in some stones for the birds to sit on as they had a tendancy to get into the water and not get out. And after having lost I don't know how many fish to local kitty patrol this has been a life saver to the goldies. That is what I call my gold fish, they are now going on 10 years old, which I am told isn't normal for the life span of a gold fish. I guess they like where they live. In the winter we bring them inside and put them in an a fish tank where they happily await the summer months.

You can see the old copper shower head that makes the beautiful sound of running water in my back yard. I am not certain the age of the shower head but it came from a building that was built in the late 1800's and was at the time a 'state of the art' building.

Here is another view, as you can see the shower head is missing but only because it needed a good cleaning. It gets clogged up pretty fast with the moss and stuff that grows in a pond.

As I said I had 3 ponds in my back yard but they were torn out. Not because I didn't love them, I did. The first one developed a leak that just couldn't be fixed so then I tried a formed pond and I loved it but it was much to small...so then I bought a bigger form and Yes, I liked it but there were two things that I didn't like. 1. Was the heaving that happened to the ground below it during the winter and 2. this.............

Snakes, snakes and more snakes.......they came to visit, brought friends made families and scared me half to death every time I reached down to feed my fish or pull a weed. And I just didn't like them around so much when my grannies came to play so bye, bye pond until another day my little tub will have to do.

Not sad......just feeling BLUE!

 Blue - Blue - Blue

Am I the only person who finds it hard to find a trully blue flower? Every year I look for annuals, pernnials that would work in a red, white and blue flower bed or pot and I just can't find a good blue.

I Love Iris' and they come in so many amazing purple colors, like this iris with a 'blue' tongue or...

this Iris with a such a deep rich hue of purple.................or

almost blue but still purple.............

I can find all colors of Clematis - just not blue and Delphinimums are abundant in rich purples...

Just NOT blue.

I can find white with purple or

Purple with white but NOT blue!!

My shrubs are purple, and the bees really like purple but I need a BLUE!

Even our wildlfowers are purple, in the fields.....

Along the fences and ...............

and in our open fields.........but where can I find BLUE!!!

Oh, here is one of my two True Blue friends - Mr. Flax, can you see him peeking through the purple? Flax is absolutley beautiful and a definte true blue, just he only nods his head for a short while in early summer and my other true blue friend is the Bachelor Button, just don't have a photo of him. How many of you out there know of some True Blue friends? I would love to find more blues to put in my garden and welcome any suggestions.

Even though it is late Friday I am joining in with Fertilizer Friday at Tootsie Time - where a person could just get lost dreaming of spring and the flowerst to come.

Much Needed Help For My New Office

This is my new office, well new to me and I am looking for some ideas on how to make it a warm yet functional place to be. There is a door on each of the four walls, two of which are not used. Lots of shelving - of which I just threw some pictures and 'stuff' on them from my move.

I don't have any natural light, there are no windows except for  on the door and a little window beside it,  they look into a hallway. So I brought in some of my old fake flowers, I know that no one decorates with them anymore but I felt I needed some green. I do have two flowers under the counter with flourescent light but not sure if I will be able to keep them alive.  

By the way this building is historical, built in the late 1800's so there isn't any modern to it.

I found this clock at Hobby Lobby and was so disappointed that I couldn't open it to set the time or even find a place for batteries until one day I dropped it and the front bounced off. WaLa...I now know the time.

I have a bulletin board that I need to put somewhere and I find that almsot all my frames are leaning to the black colors. I even thought about recovering the chairs if I can take them apart easily.

Because I have meetings and a lot of people that need a place to set in my office I have kept a little table and chairs in the corner. You can see two doors behind the fake tree, I only use one and not often.

The desk is in an L shape and very HEAVY, I can't move it to another wall for two reasons, lack of space and lack of internet hook up. I am on the computer more than I am not with my job.

The door and little window have shades on them as this is a public place and for privacy they are needed but not all the time. Not sure why I have them shut now as there isn't any activity going on at this time of the year. The walls look white but they are actually a light butter cream color. I could paint but don't really have the time just now, maybe next winter when tourist season is over. The floorins is carpet much to my sadness because the orignial is the most beautiful oak flooring, time worn, but beautiful. I like to sit and think of the many hundreds who have passed through this building in its hundred some years, most of the soldiers.

Anyone have any great ideas they would like to pass along, I am all ears.

My BB getaway weekend.

Son #2 invited me to spend the weekend with his No. 1 son and watch some 7th grade basketball at a tournament in Sidney. I was excited to go, as I don't get much time with my grannie Taylor. He's a teenager now and well......you know, busy.  I love basketball and love watching it played so it really was a GREAT get-away for me. No dishes, no cleaning, and time spent with some great people, what more could a gal want. Taylor Michael we are proud of you!

Taylor and his team played 3 games on Saturday and the last game on Sunday morning. Taylor is No. 20 for the Chadron Cardinals. In this picture you can also see one of his team mates Jackson Dicerkson, who is jut an exceptional little ball handler. Jackson plays forward for their team.

They did pretty good for having 3 of their team members missing. Most of the teams had 9 kids playing so they could refresh quite often, however that wasn't the case of the Cardinals, they didn't get off the floor but for just a moment and then had to get back into the game. . They didn't win a game, darn it, but they sure put up a good fight.

Taylor looks like the middle of an Oreo cookie, smashed in between his teammate and one of the opposing team members.

I think Defense is the best part of the game for Taylor, he is pretty aggressive and does a great job keeping the opposing team from under the basket.

Now look really close at this picture, clear to the right......can you see him? Taylor went up for a shot was knocked out at the knees and smashed into the wall.....he didn't make the shot and didn't even draw a foul. Not sure how the ref missed that but he did, both of the refs did. But I told Taylor, "That's the way the ball................

BOUNCES!!

AND SOMETIMES RIGHT INTO THE OLE HOOP!

It was a lot of fun!

Counting down........

Counting down to........

the first day of March

to my birthday

to St. Patrick's Day

To SPRING!!

OK, maybe I just wanted to show off the blossoms from my 'Jeremy tree' from last year. He's a good looking thing all beautiful and white in the spring, displaying much needed shade,  and  red cherries for the always so hungry birdies during the hot summer months, and the oh so pretty in reds and oranges in the fall months. 

Come on Jeremy Tree bring forth thy beauty!

M.I.A. due to illness.

What a long week it has seemed to be, I haven't felt well and just found out I have bronchitis - YUCK! I have been home from work for two days.......I kind of feel like Miss Cali Cat, on the inside looking out. I'm ready to feel better, ready to go back to work and ready for some WARM weather! Hope everyone else is feeling well - can't wait to get outside, get some new photos and get back to blogging  I mean living!!