More Memorial Tree pictures nearly one year later!

My last post to this blog was over 9 months ago. Much has happened in that time and I'll get to some of it in another post, but I want to share some pictures of the Lovely Royal Empress tree we purchased as a memorial for our two dogs, Snicker and Choco in 2007

The three pictures above were taken on March 18th, 2008 and the one to the left, where my husband is out watering some of the plants in the yard, was taken yesterday, May 13th, 2008.

In the "stick with flowers" picture above, the tree is over 6 feet tall! In the most recent picture the tree is so much taller than that! The huge leaves in the picture are even bigger than you might imagine. They are greater than two stretched-out hands of mine (about 16") side by side. And they are so soft that if I ever had to be lost in a jungle without a bed to lie on, I'd lay on a bed of those soft, pliable leaves happily.

Below are pictures of our recent additions to the yard. My husband decided that we should look out our back office windows and see bird feeders! Well, we saw a LOT of birds this Spring and found out that sunflowers are THEEE thing to feed them LOL. Well at least in "bird" opinion. And we have squirrels that come and visit us.

Also take March 18th, 2008 this shows the beginning of our bird feeder addiction. Actually the smaller single shepherd's hook was first and it had the large bird feeder on the right hung on it. that one has solar lights that glow off and on all night long. I have yet to see a night feeding anything on the birdfeeder so the solar option was probably wasted on the animals. It makes a good conversation starter though. wink wink

This picture was taken yesterday May 13th, 2008. It clearly shows many sunflower plants growing from the seeds missed by the birds and gives you an idea of the size of our backyard.

Neal dug out most of the grass and put in a black plastic edging so the sunflowers and assorted birdseed growing plants would not get mowed over with the rest of the lawn. We have some interesting plants growing in there right now. Some even looks like corn plants and that was before he bought the squirrel feeder.

The Royal Empress tree is way in the back of the middle of the picture. The portion of the Australian Pine shown to the left of the Royal Empress tree was a Christmas gift from our neighbor Renee' when Caelum was just a toddler. He might have been two or three and he is 20 this past December! That tree (trees-two are in the grouping) is so high I can't even estimate how tall it truly is!

In this picture you can see a close up of the squirrel feeder Neal just bought. The box on the left is set up so they have to open it to eat from it. Now if *I* were a squirrel I would just continue to jump up on the double shepherd's hook pole to the solar lighting birdfeeder and get my sunflowers there. And guess what? That is what they do!

So now you have seen a bit of the way we have been amusing ourselves in our back yard. Oh and these pictures from yesterday? They were taken from my sewing room window. That is the view I have now that I can actually get to my sewing table. and that takes me to the next post! the sewing room re-do. Or CLEAN-do. RE-do to come later this Fall hopefully.

lots of animal friends wished for you,

denise/deBRAT