We started our day yesterday with a trip to the local botanical garden in hopes to see a corpse flower in bloom. It didn’t work out, it still wasn’t blooming. They were hoping for that evening. I will have to try again on Sunday. In any case, I got this photo of Mr. Ink humoring me.

We have a membership there, so we go whenever we can. But, due to the corpse flower, admission is free so it was quite busy. We did spend time wandering around outdoors anyhow, and found that the other end of the gardens were quite a lot less busy than the entrance. The rose garden was completely in bloom, and the peony garden still had some blooms, and we had a great time as usual.

Once home we mowed and trimmed, since Mr. Ink’s hands are still torn up from his hours and hours of stump removal. Then, we headed out to the rock store to pick up rocks for the retaining wall he’ll be building in place of the leaning one near that burning bush stump. That was quite a chore, I haven’t picked rocks since last season and forgot what a dirty sweaty mess it is. But, I am glad I went along, since that was one less load that Mr. Ink had to pull.

We got home from that and did quite a lot of “puttering.” I did some cleaning and laundry and weeding. Mr. Ink did some planting and watering and a bit more stump removal. We didn’t concentrate on anything particularly long, and I interspersed my time with some spinning.

Remember how I said I needed to spin less? Maybe I need to start that next week. Because I got halfway through another loop cloud.

I decided it would be particularly sad to not enjoy the exceedingly pleasant weather on the patio. It’s not likely to be this gorgeous all summer. Indeed it isn’t, since this morning it’s raining like crazy again. There’ll be no patio sitting this morning, nor any puttering around my plants and weeding, and a bike ride is even unlikely. (Though I am genuinely not complaining, I do love a good rainstorm and the downtime it brings.)

With that, I’ve got a few garden shots. My poppies are looking stunning. I took this photo yesterday. Looked out the window this morning to see another orange bloom and a yellow bloom on there. But, with the rain, a photo wasn’t in the cards.

I also grabbed a quick shot of my lady’s mantle.

I love flowers, but I love good greenery just was much and lady’s mantle really has greenery to show off! I also repotted one of my geraniums yesterday. It had done so well at work over the winter, but when I brought it home and attempted to acclimate it to being outdoors, as well as trim some of its legginess, it started to look really rough. Upon further investigation, it was totally and completely root bound in the pot it was in. I lifted it out by the stem and all the dirt came with it leaving a clean pot. So, I put it in a much bigger container, and it already looks much better. I am sure it’s enjoying the current rain quite a bit.

Miss Butterfly is off with her dad’s side of the family. That kid is becoming so responsible! She’s currently at her grandmother’s house taking care of her toddler aged second cousin. Her grandmother has been taking care of Butterfly’s great grandmother who is currently in the hospital quite a bit, and that’s severely cut into the time that the baby is cared for. So Miss Butterfly is there and on call for that sort of thing. In fact, her grandmother has just asked if she could come over for 3 days next week now that she’s out of school in order to help out and be on call as a sitter when needed. I love that they feel she’s responsible enough for the job, and that they want her over because she’s helpful, rather than being yet another burden on her grandmother. So, apparently Miss Butterfly’s first summer vacation activity is babysitting, and I suspect it’s a role she’ll be very happy in.

That’s about it from here! Not sure what today will bring in way of photos and projects but I look forward to whatever the day brings.