McFlower Pots

It's a three mountain day here at the Three Cats Ranch.  The mountains are a little small in this picture.  It's easy enough to see Mt. St. Helens just to the left of the tree that sticks up in the middle of the view.  To it's left, you can faintly see Mt. Rainier, which is about 250 miles away.  Then, to the far right of the picture, you can faintly see Mt. Adams.  Beautiful day.  I decided the time was right to plant my annuals.

I left home early and went to one of my favorite breakfast destinations for my favorite breakfast sandwich:

Egg McMuffin.

On the way, I took a picture of the place I would open my quilt shop if I were 30 years younger.  I was stopped at a red light and managed to click this off just before the cars behind me started honking.

There are no quilt shops in our little town of Newberg.  There was a toy store here until recently.  There used to be two quilt shops in Newberg, but neither exists now.  The closest quilt shops are 15-20 miles away.  It seems to me one could make a quilt shop go in Newberg;  but . . . since I'm not 30 years younger, and I don't anticipate being 30 years younger anytime soon, this remains a dream of mine.  Better a dream now than a nightmare later.

After getting my breakfast, I stopped in at our local Fred Meyer store.  Unless you live in Oregon or Washington, you have no clue what a Fred Meyer store is.  It's practically an institution in this neck of the woods.  It's like Alice's Restaurant--you can get anything you want.  Fred Meyer was a local businessman who founded his chain of supermarkets in 1922.  It's affectionately known as "Freddy's" around here.  You can find pretty much anything you need or desire at Freddy's, and it seems like everything is on sale all of the time.  I went there for my flowers.

I like these gerbera daisies and African daisies.

I'm a little afraid the squirrels will eat the African daisies.  I decided to take a chance on them anyway, and after much gnashing of teeth, I left Freddy's with these.

I got a mix of the daisies, geraniums, marigolds, petunias, dianthus, pansies, and snapdragons.

These are my pots, looking pretty bedraggled at the moment.

There are two more pots in the shade that you can't see in this image.  That's the dead catnip growing next to the pot there.  (I guess actually it's not growing if it's dead.)  I still need to replace the catnip (for the cats, of course) and I need to replace some of the herbs in my culinary herb garden.  That will have to wait for another day. Everything else will be looking better momentarily.

This is our membrane deck.  It's a "membrane" deck because it is also the roof of our daylight basement down below.  It sprung a leak two winters ago, and we had to replace it last summer--at a cost about five times that of the national debt.  When we brought a contractor out to take a look at it, he told us pretty much the entire thing was not built to code, and we practically had to rebuild the house to bring it up to code.  We had our whiskey barrels with the tulips sitting on the deck, and we also had petunia baskets hanging from the railing.  Both were no-no's, according to our contractor.  So, now the whiskey barrels are relegated to other parts of the yard, and the petunia baskets are going to hang from the roof of the little pop-out greenhouse window that you see there.

I have hanging pots left from years gone by.  Rather than buy pre-planted ones, I decided to plant my own this year. 

They're looking pretty small right now.  I'm hoping they'll grow fast.  If they don't, I'll probably go back to the pre-planted ones next year.  It's worth a try, I figure, although it's hard to forego the instant gratification of the big ones for sale at Freddy's.

George is an excellent helper.  He's my constant companion on these outdoor projects.  Here's what my pots look like now.

Everything looks pitifully small at the moment, but with fertilizer, water, and sunshine, they'll fill in pretty quickly.

And now it's just past 1:00.  I have plenty of time to sew.  I finished my second pillowcase, and now I'm working on the binding of the tulip quilt.  I'm hoping to get my quilt sandwich made on the baby quilt, and then get it quilted before the week is up.