Purple pretties

In case you hadn't already guessed it, my favoritest color is purple. I loved it as a kid and I love it still! Ergo, most of my flower choices hinge around purple. I particularly like purple and yellow together. Cannot tell you why, but it just is!

Here are the million bells that arrived over a month ago with nary a bloom:They are certainly living up to their name now, right?!!

The forget-me-nots that I planted in memory of my grandmother have started to bloom:

Balloon flowers still ballooning!


And my butterfly bushes are attracting all SORTS of attention! Looky! A Painted Lady butterfly:

And a Red Admiral butterfly:

ANNNNND a Black Swallowtail!! SO COOL!




Not only have I always been a fan of purple, butterflies were always a fascination and I have quite a collection of them from all over the world! My husband complains that they are dead bugs hanging on the wall, but poop on him! They are beautiful bugs!

And last for today, a big bumblebee also enjoying the nectar!

Happy Friday, all! Have a great weekend! If you're in MA, enjoy this GREAT weather! Woo HOOO!

It's a Jungle in here!

Well, it WAS a jungle for a while in here! I have been taking care of seventy-leven plants that finally made it over to their final destination on Monday of this week! I have been buying plants here, there and everywhere for this new client of mine. She hired me to put plants in literally every room of her house. Some rooms have three or four or more plants in them, so it has been quite a task finding just the right plants to go in the various spaces she has. Some rooms are sunny, some are very dark and some are in between! So, lots to consider when choosing the proper plants for those locations!

I ended up with some really pretty, really interesting varieties! Favorites were the pygmy date palms and these neat plants that are in the ficus family - ficus variegans I think they are called:Their leaves are very papery and light. New leaves are not variegted; I'm assuming they become variegated over time! Interesting!

I also LOVE LOVE LOVE this cool braided money tree that I got from a special source:Isn't that so neat? So unusual!

And here is the jungle on the table off the kitchen!That's alotta plants!

And here are these nice tall plants I found for her dining room called canela:The leaves are like giant ficus tree leaves. (Nice laundry and recycling crap!!)

In food-growing news, my eggplant is getting larger and it has the cutest blooms EVER!


I LOVE those blooms! They are so happy!

The tomato plant is still just grow grow growing...Millions of green tomatoes on there right now - just need some good sun to ripen them and I'll have quite the crop! We've had rain for days and days now, so everything got a good, hard soak, as needed!

Ok. That's all I gots for today. Happy almost weekend!

Boaty trip; the final chapter

I wanted to thank you all for commenting yesterday. Now I know who's really reading and I am most appreciative! I hope I am slightly entertaining and that you enjoy my fine photographic skillage. We've got some doozies coming up for today! Not really. It was a LOOONNNNG ride home from Quisset! Not all that much exciting to see except for a kazillion osprey in the entry to the Cape Cod Canal! Here be a photo:
They are awesome, huge birds and very adept at fishing! It was amazing to see 15 or more of them in one little area diving for fish...

First thing, was we departed Quisset about 9:15 or so. We both didn't sleep at all the night before. It was glub glub glubbing and sloshing around on our mooring all ding dang night. I felt like I was trying to sleep in a washing machine on the gentle cycle. Oy! So, say bye, bye to Quisset!It was a nice enough morning - a bit of wind in Buzzard's Bay and cloudy, but we could see the end of the clouds and once we made it through the canal it was GORGEOUS in Cape Cod Bay and the whole way home!

Here was a tug boat we passed in the canal:Sort of like hardware stores and garden centers, I have a particular fondness for tug boats. They just exude character!

So, here we are heading up the coast toward home. This is Duxbury, I think:There are place there along the South Shore (as its called) that are perched up on the edge of dunes. They look like they could topple into the water at any point:Looney tunes!

Here are some creative pictures of the roiling wake behind the boat:
It's sort of mesmerizing like when you stare at a fire.

And I like this shot of us underway:See how calm the waters were that day? So nice.

Salem coming into viewThose two towers you see to the left of center are the hideous power plant. Its only redeeming quality is that it makes for a nice landmark from sea. That's it.

Boston:I like how the water was all sparkly!

And home port again - nice and close:

It was good to get home to be with the doggies! They were most thrilled when we arrived after our 8-hour and 15 minute trek home on the boat. My husband and I were both all wobbly when we got to shore...It's an odd phenomenon after being on a boat for the better part of 4 and a half days; your body gets used to the motion and then when you get to shore, you start swaying to get the motion back!! We slept the sleep of death that first night back home! And, of course, had to get burritos from this new place in Salem called The Howling Wolf taqueria. OHMYGOD! They are so good!

Ok. Off to the dog food place and then we are spending the evening with Dan's sister who is here visiting from California. Her boyfriend is also making his first visit out to meet our family (I have a sneaking suspicion that they are engaged and are going to make the announcement while they're here, but don't tell anyone!!).

Will keep you posted!

Happy hump day!

Boat trip numero four

Seems like my posts on our trip are lasting longer than the trip itself! Hope it's not too boring for all 2 of you readers!! (Hi, Mom! Hi Female!)

Sad thing is, I'm not even sure my mom is reading this thing anymore! Pitiful, really!

ANNNNYway, last I left you with beautiful sunset pictures from our slip at Martha's Vineyard. We awoke the next morning after sleeping VERY well, to a day to beat all others. It was picture-perfect in every way. Calm, calm, bright blue sky, perfect temperature and just heavenly.

So we ate a nice breakfast - made delicious Spanish coffee that I had special-ordered (because there is nothing as good as Spanish cafe con leche in the morning!), and then we got dressed and ready to take off for another harbor. I wore my new Black Dog t-shirt:If you are not familiar with the Black Dog lore from Martha's Vineyard, you can read this article from wikipedia. Suffice it to say that a real black dog that once lived there became the symbol of "The simple life." Not fancy, no frills...That's sort of how the Vineyard is. Not fancy and frilly like Nantucket.

I liked my new t-shirt. It's super soft and comfy. This was the scene as we left the harbor:See how pretty and calm it is?

Here we are at Wood's Hole again:

And here is the world-famous Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute:
I always thought I'd end up working there.

After much discussion and ideas about where to spend our last day and night on the boat? Where do you think we went? Right back to Quisset! We loved it there the first night despite less-than-desirable weather, so we wanted to head back there on such a pretty day to enjoy it!

Hello, Quisset!

Here was the view from our mooring:And here's the beach along one side of the harbor:
That's my husband over there on the left with the snorkel!

Later that afternoon, there was a huge commotion in the sky. Three HUGE helicopters were flying right over us toward Martha's Vineyard. Turns out it was President Obama!That was the biggest of the helicopters right there above our boat!

After fishing (we caught 5 scups!), swimming, sunning, reading and generally having lovely day, we showered and then went to our upper deck to watch the sun set:


It was then time for dinner:
We made fish sandwiches! I cooked the scup with onions, then toasted wheat hamburger rolls with cheese melted on them! Served with fresh pepper strips and zucchini! Deeeelish!

We have just one more installment of trip pictures and then we'll proceed with talk of flowers and such.

Have a lovely Tuesday!

Boat trip part tres

So, here we were in Martha's Vineyard on day two of our trip. We decided to get lunch at a restaurant - I had delicious gazpacho and a salad with yummy grilled shrimp. It was delish!

Before we left, I realized that some of the things that I wear actually were born on the Vineyard! There are these clothes that are very popular in MA called "Vineyard Vines" - they are super preppy, but cute, so ordered online three shirts and my favorite pair of flip flops from them!

Here:


I love the cute whale logo! It's funny, when I was a whale research person, I didn't like anything with whales on it, even though everyone and their brother would buy me whale-related gifts. Now? Very fond of the whale-related thingies! Aren't those flip flops so cute?

While we were at the dock, I, of course, was looking for critters in the water. This is what I do. I love to discover unusual things in the ocean, which is not difficult to do since the ocean has SO many cool things living in it! There were jellyfish EVERYWHERE at this dock:

They were about the size of a large sand dollar. Some of them were popping up right through the surface! They were fascinating to watch!

Here's boaty at the dock during the day:
Pretty, no?

And that evening, we were treated to a spectacular sunset. It had been cloudy and overcast most of the day, but MAN, what a gorgeous sunset:




I love that last picture.

And the grand finale? A rainbow!You know what they say, red sky at night, sailor's delight! And it was the truth. We awoke the next morning to the most perfect, perfect day...

More to come tomorrow! Hasta manana!