Dogs, Garage, & Flowers

Trixie loves playing with the water hose-- to the point that if you try to water plants with Trixie nearby, she will bite at the water-- hurl herself after it-- and potentially crush the poor, thirsty plants in the process.  She has to go inside for the sake of the plants' continued well-being (not to mention the continued well-being of my sanity).  But every now and then, we point the hose out over the lawn and let her have at it.

She looks like a different dog, when she gets wet.  (True for all long-haired and/or fluffy dogs, I guess.)

We've introduced Luna to the hose, too, and she's a little interested, but not nearly to the degree that Trixie is (and maybe that's a good thing).  On the other hand, she displays some interest in the plastic kiddie pool that all our other dogs have shunned.

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I'm pretty sure Donald's posted this photo (as well as some of the dog photos above) on FB, so you've probably already seen it, but here's a photo of the garage workbench and cabinets:

(Still haven't finished putting everything in place...  Yard work has taken up all "outside time", lately.)

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This past winter got very cold (by our standards) and killed back some plants harder than usual.  The umbrella plants under our covered patio, for instance, are still very slowly recovering.  Nowhere near as tall and lush as they were last year, but they're alive.  The sago palms were also hard-hit.  It's taken them a long time to put out new growth, but they finally have.  (Late May, early June.)

I don't know if I had any other options, but the frozen, dead fronds seemed so dead that I just cut them all off.  I don't think they'd have recovered.  The downside of doing that is that removing fronds makes the plant into more of a (very) short tree shape, which I'm not sure I love... But oh well.  It's what the plant wants to do, naturally, so I guess I'll learn to like it.  ;o)  (I'm slowly learning how exhausting it can be to fight what a plant naturally wants to do.  They can be extremely stubborn, plants.)

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This new batch of daylily seedlings is doing so much better than the last!  I'm not sure how much of it is due to better practice and how much is owed to a better supply, but I'm happy.  Now if they'll just stay alive... Daylilies are hardy, so chances are good that most will, I think, so long as I take a reasonable amount of care. 

It's sad to think that we won't see blooms from them for at least a year--  maybe two or three.  Worth the wait, though. 

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 Flower photo "slideshow":