Mini Garden Makeover, and other things...

I don't think I could ever get tired of these roses!  They are just so beautiful and smell amazing too!

The blooms are so big too...

My canvas that I ordered came in the mail the other day and I love it! It turned out so good and I'm very happy.

 I decided to hang it in our dining room where I can see it often...

My sister, Dawn, came over for a visit last Thursday and it was so nice to see her and catch up.  Kira and my kids had a lot of fun playing and getting into trouble :P  I didn't really get any pictures of them while they were here but Dawn brought us all munchkins from Dunkin' Donuts and the kids were very appreciative of them :P

It's been so hot the last several days and the kids have been spending lot of time in their little pool.  

The puppies are getting big and very playful too.  No toes are safe in the kitchen!

A lady came yesterday and put a deposit down on the little girl puppy so I just have two males to find homes for now.  I think the kids will be sad when these puppies go though, they really are having fun with this litter.

I finished Katy's backpack last week and she loves it.

I started on a camouflage one for Chase too but that will probably take me a while to finish.  We've been outside too much for me to be crocheting a lot.
So, on to the garden "makeover", that I mentioned in my title.  It's not a huge change but I added a couple more paths through the butterfly garden for the kids and I to walk on.  I also painted my garden bench turquoise and I really love how that turned out.  It's fun to have an extra pop of color in the garden :)  Here it is before:

And here it is partially finished...

I had to move some black eyed susans, but the kids and I would usually try to walk through there anyway, except we'd have to step over things and in the mulch and dirt. 

So now the path cuts through there and curves around to the bench and a heart shaped stone. 

It will be nice when the black eyed susans, echinacea and phlox are blooming, then the kids can just walk through there and pick flowers along the way :)

All of the stones for the path I had gathered from around our property.  Well I made the path, through the flowers, to the bench and then I thought it should wrap around the bench on the other side too.  However I was out of stones and couldn't find a single one anywhere else.  My dear, sweet husband, Ricky brought be home some rocks from his job though and I was able to complete the path!

So here it is, all finished!

And here it is getting test driven :P

So that's it... super exciting, right?! haha!
Here's a few more flower pictures:

I like the unusual color of these roses. 

Remember a couple posts ago I was talking about how my poppies were coming up?  Well, I also mentioned how they kind of looked like weeds but they were not... Yeah, my dear, sweet husband thought he was helping me out by spraying the "weeds" in my flower bed the other day and these little poppies are no more now :(

Poor things.  He thought he was doing a good thing so I couldn't be mad at him, but he's not allowed to spray anything in my garden anymore that's for sure!  There are a couple other poppies in other places so hopefully I'll still get some of them blooming this year.
The foxgloves are loaded right now with flowers.

I'm really happy to have these in my garden.

This plant has been under the arborvitaes since we moved in and is very healthy and persistent.  I don't know what it's called though, any guesses?

Interesting flowers though...

The next thing I have to update on has been a long drawn out saga at our homestead.  First THIS storm happened (when I was very, very pregnant with Jo)... Quite a long time ago!  We had a big beautiful maple tree that had been badly damaged by that storm.  We were hoping against hope for a couple years that the tree would bounce back and become lush and beautiful again, but alas, it was not to be.  So 3 years ago we had part of the tree cut down, with the intention of building a tree house in the remainder of the tree. Well as time went on we realized that the tree house was just NOT going to happen so a few months ago Chad and his Father-in-law came and cut down almost all of the remaining tree and left only the stump in our yard.

It was sad that the tree had to go, it was such a huge tree!  It was pretty comical watching them try to get the huge stump onto the back of the trailer.  They eventually had to cut it again to be able to lift it with the skid loader. 

So then last weekend my brother-in-law, Christian, came and ground out the rest of the stump for us, and the saga of the maple tree, the eyesore of our backyard for 3 years, is finally gone!
Now just to grow grass seed there...

Ricky thinks he is going to move the wash-line for me to behind the garage, and then we'll have a nice open space for playing baseball :)

Random picture of the chickens free ranging:

and that's all for now.