Things That Rock

About 2 weeks ago, Chris & Laurie over at "Miss Flower" tagged me for a meme - 7 Things that Rock. It takes me awhile to think of things for these memes, but I have finally come up with some good ones. Hope you enjoy them too. (Thanks Laurie & Chris for tagging me!)

ONE: Gardens, of course! But especially beautiful tropical plants growing in a Minnesota garden. That ROCKS, right? This is called "Christy" (so I had to have it!). It measures almost 12 inches! WOW!

TWO: Living with a lake right outside our door totally ROCKS. This year we've added kayaking to the mix, and we are having a ball. Today was our longest ride - we did 4 miles this morning. Way fun!

THREE: Fun things in the garden ROCK. I go mostly for rusted iron, but one of my favorite decorations was a birthday gift from Mark several years ago - this cool gazing ball. You can see through it, but it also reflects everything around it. I love it!

FOUR: About 11 years ago, we replaced a deck with this very cool porch. It fits the look of our house so perfectly and is a wonderful place to sit and read, eat dinner, entertain. It's screened because we do live in Minnesota where the state bird is the mosquito - so it ROCKS.

FIVE: Our glider literally ROCKS! This glider originally belonged to Mark's grandparents - for as long as he can remember it sat out at their farm. When his grandfather died, Mark's parents moved the glider to their home. When we moved into this house in 1980, they gave it to us. I sit out here and read or watch the lake or enjoy my gardens almost every day. The dogs love to glide with me - I don't plan to ever part with it!! (If Mark's dad comments on this post, we may learn more history...)

NOTE: A comment left by Mark's dad, Everett: Supposedly Mark's Grandpa bought the swing from Sears & Roebuck in 1929. I fixed it up in 1949 for the first time and then maybe three times later. I bought it on the estate sale and it is so good to have you have it.
Thanks, Everett - Mark and I are both happy to have more history on the glider!

Mark has put new wood on once and painted it a couple times since we've had it - and it's due to have both painting and new wood again. Not bad!

SIX: The great lazy dogs ROCK my world. Pets of all kinds rock - but standard poodles are really great dogs. Ours are naughty and undisciplined and drive me crazy - but I would be totally lost without them.

SEVEN: I can't show you any more photos - but tomatoes from the garden ROCK!!!! We inhaled our BLT's - soooooo good! AND, the best part, there were 2 more turning red, so yesterday we had cheeseburgers with fresh sliced tomatoes - can you say Cheeseburgers in Paradise? YUM!

Let me know if you decide to play along!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH!!!

it takes two

I was out in the kayak the other day, and Mark came out in the canoe. He was bringing me some water ski gloves because I was getting a blister on my thumb from holding the paddle wrong. After giving me the gloves, he followed me back around the lake to our dock. Problem: my kayak was WAAAAY faster than the canoe. Yup, about 2 hours later, he had a lovely sit-in kayak from the same rep we bought mine from. He gave us another great deal on one of his demos. Mark is thinking that next year he might want to get into a sit-on like mine (the rep only had the one this year), but until then he's having a lot of fun with this one. (Oh, do you see I got a back for mine? Way more comfortable!)

I slipped on the cement steps going to the lake yesterday (OUCH!), so we haven't had a head-to-head competition yet - but I think mine is still probably faster. :) For sure it takes less work to move it through the water. I think we're going to have a lot of fun exploring the lake together for the rest of the summer.
Early this morning Mark took his kayak back into a channel area across the lake from us. This area has houses and bigger boats, but last summer when we took the pontoon back there, we decided it was a good place for the canoe - not a boat with a motor. The kayaks will be perfect for exploring that area. There are lily pads, cattails, reeds, submerged logs, blue herons, frogs, muskrats, beavers, etc. Today he mostly got photos of the lily pads. Next time I'll post a photo of them in bloom - it's very pretty.

June gardens

This is one of my favorite garden spots - daisies, mallow, purple coneflower and Raspberry Wine monarda all bloom together. Later purple phlox will join in too. It's a riot of wild bloomers. The monarda is just starting to open - this lakeshore garden used to be full of monarda and looked totally cool when it bloomed. But monarda has a way of taking over a garden, so last fall I took out most of it and, for the time being at least, I'm planning to contain it in a couple spots. We'll see how well that works!

This mallow plant is in one of the porch gardens, and is poking through the railings by the steps. Later a fall blooming anemone will do the same thing on the other side. I love these blooms - and how happily this plant sprawls.

The daisies are opening. I have several groups of daisies spread around various gardens.

All Summer Beauty hydrangea. It needs a little winter protection in Minnesota, and every fall I feel like yanking it out because who needs all this winter protecting work anyway... but then I relent and when it starts blooming, I'm always happy I helped it out. This is one that will bloom either blue or pink - mine is pink, and I'm okay with that.

The hollyhocks are so happy this year! I love this old-fashioned plant. On the right is one of my heirloom tomatoes - the plants are getting very big and new tomatoes are setting every day. I CANNOT wait to have tomatoes from the garden!!

Mark made me a special holder/sling for my kayak. Seems to be working pretty well. Look how clear and calm the water was this morning: you can see footprints in the sand bottom. (The black thing is not a snake - it's the hose for the lake pump. Just in case you were wondering.)

I am loving the kayak - feel pretty comfortable with it, but I'm still avoiding super windy conditions and haven't been out when there's a lot of boat traffic yet. I'll get there though!

(Some of these photos will click big)

a new toy

I have a new toy!! I love getting new things. This spring I decided it would be great fun to have a kayak. I wanted a sit-on model, and we looked at some on-line and in sporting goods stores. Quite expensive. Mark wanted to be sure I would actually use a kayak if we bought one. He's happy with the canoe. So a friend gave us a long windsurfer board and a yak paddle and I've been playing around with that a little. It's really not the same as a kayak at all!

Today Mark and my dad went garage saleing and found a kayak rep who had a sit-on demo for sale. We picked up the yak, paddle (better than the freebie), and a life vest for less than half price of new. Everyone is happy! I took it out for awhile this afternoon - very fun! I love it. It has a yellow top that turns kind of lime green when it's in the water with the sun shining on it. Cool.

A plus, the rep's wife is a gardener and wanted some ideas on shade plantings. I gave her some ideas and told her to stop over sometime to see what I have. If she likes some of mine, I'll divide some up for her. A new gardening friend and a new yak in the same day - very cool.

My parents are staying with us for a couple weeks. They live in south Texas and come back to Minnesota and Iowa to visit all of us each summer. We're supposed to be sunny and 90's this next week - perfect lake weather! I'll keep you informed on my kayaking progress!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KAREN!