okaaaay, mother's day and our beautiful backyard

Dylan just gets cuter and cuter each day.  And he's been such a sweetie pie lately too (not that he isn't always, but he's been showing his two-year tendencies a lot...part of the not napping thing).  One of his funniest things these days his is saying something like "watch tigger and pooh" and we respond with "you want to watch tigger and pooh?" and he'll say "okaaaay".  This works in any situation really and is pretty funny.

Dylan playing with his sand and water table in our backyard.

Dylan makes "marshmallows" in the sand. For those of you who read my blog back in the winter, we started making marshmallows with snow. He made the leap to sand when I filled a cup with sand and turned it over.

We've been working hard on our backyard the past couple of weeks.  Denny found some really cool planters at Sam's Club that let you plant tomato plants upside down and then whatever you want on top.  We have a nice mix of herbs and salad greens growing currently.  This is the first year I actually started some of my herbs from seed.  It is so satisfying to watch something you started from a seed grow up through the soil and form a sprout and then start looking like an herb.  I'm loving it.  I also planted carrots from seed and I hope some survive (probably the ones I still have inside will).  The outside ones have been dug through by some critters.  Denny did a lovely job of transforming our mud and weed "grassy" area into a nice play area for Dylan.  He pulled all the weeds and leveled the ground before covering it with a weed cover and recycled tire bits.  We topped that with our two planters right in front of my kitchen windows and Dylan has a sand and water table in that area as well.  

Here are some shots right after we planted our planters (taken on April 28th) followed by photos taken just a couple of days ago (on May 18th):

In the back is salad mix, right corner is cilantro from seed, in the front is a transplanted cilantro plant and a thyme plant and behind the thyme is my thyme from seed.  Before....

And after.....(I need to take some new photos again.....that salad mix grows fast!).

Basil, rosemary, oregano (transplanted) and parsley and basil from seed. Before...

And here they are after.


My salad mix sprouts.


Parsley and Basil from seed.


A side view of the planter with the upside-down tomato plants.

I quite happily took a $1 yard sale table and did a mosaic on it recently as well. I have a bunch of broken pottery I found a couple of years ago next to a store in Fussa, Japan. I guess they had a couple of shipments that came in broken. A very nice find. I'm so happy I finally did something with the broken dishes. Here's the finished table with Dylan "helping' me sand the edges.

Dylan also had great fun helping us put our composter together.

I hosted a Mother's Day brunch last Saturday.  In preparation for that, we found a lovely hydrangea and a hibiscus tree to add to our backyard. I invited my mommy friends over for tea and delicious treats. For recipes from brunch, click here.

None of my group shots came out very well...too much sunlight. So, here's a shot of my empty tables and Wendy bringing her food in.

We did a lot on actual Mother's Day and I'll make that my next post (and I promise it won't take me weeks and weeks to post about it ).