Now We're All Settled In ...

We've been in our house for nearly two years now and love being here. The itty bit of grass that we have out the back is a real back breaker when you have to mow it - and it's a real drag having to water it everyday! NOT!! It's just great!

I've put a few more plants in around the place and unfortunately I've lost a few, but I've learnt a few lessons along the way about what goes well in this climate, heat and sun!

We were lucky to have nobody building over our backyard for so long, but over the past month they have started putting up a new home. We still get to see the amazing sunsets, it's just a little more limited, that's all.

Here are a few of the latest photos from around the house! Enjoy!  

Our daughter was doing an assignment for her Kindergarten year and it gave her a sunflower seed to plant. I love sunflowers so I thought we'd plant a few more and see what they thought of the weather here in Texas ... I think this picture proves they like it!

When I got rid of the sunflowers (you can see the remnants to the left of the photo) I planted my favourite kind of tree - the Weeping Willow. I wasn't sure how it would handle the heat and sunshine here in Texas so I was a little sceptical. This photo was taken on June 2007! If you look really close you can see my bourgonvilla plant that I bought and planted on the same day. I've seen them all over the place doing well so I think they like this climate!

Since I was planting one out the back, I thought I may as well balance out the house and plant one out the front.

Since our front door way is covered and generally doesn't have a lot of direct light I thought I'd try to see if ferns would like it in there. So I planted a few - a lavendar and some other assorted plants! Fingers crossed - we'll see how they go!

My Weeping Willow - September 2007. It seems to like it here - and the local hummingbirds love having it there. They can drink - fight, land on the tree and rest then go straight back to drinking and fighting with the locals. My bourgonvilla is doing really well as well. I love looking out my kitchen window onto that!

Here is the front view - the Weeping Willows like the front and the back of the house. They can even hang on with the wind ... not that it's windy here compared to when we lived in Great Falls, Montana!

And here is the front entrance way. The ferns really love it there as well as the lantana (I think) and the other plants! I do like our little entry way even though I can see I'm going to have to start cutting things back or else it will all end up being too overgrown and you'll have to bring your machete when you come and visit ... to cut through the growth!?!?!?!