WALK OVER

For quite some time now Mimi and her gymnastics classmates have been practicing handstands against the wall at the gym. Eventually they will do "walkovers". To my surprise the other night Mimi was already doing them. Still needs a little more practice though.

MYSTERY PLANT

While doing gardening work the other day, I noticed these plants growing underneath my kitchen window and for the life of my could not figure out what they are. Then I remembered that last summer I had purchased some herbs at our local arboretum then proceeded to forget to take them from the plastic pot and plant them. Also forgot to water them. Needless to say they up and died on me. Somehow the seeds must have gotten into the soil and these plants showed up. I pulled a leaf off to rub into my fingers and smell it. It smells almost like celery. Hmmmmm.

JAPANESE MAPLE TREES

Even though I do appreciate the luxury of being a stay at home mom at this late stage of my life, I absolutely love it, crazy, hectic schedule and all. Training a fairly new puppy, school for Mimi, playdates, baseball, gymnastics, piano lessons and swimming this summer. Also besides doing the daily chores of grocery shopping, cleanning house and laundry, I am working on beautifying our backyard. I have been making quite a few trips to our local Walmart where they have some fantastic deals on plants and such. In the top left picture is our Japanese Maple Tree that came with the house when we bought a couple of years ago. Last year I thought that I would plant a couple of more trees to spruce up our fairly bare backyard. It is a running joke in our family that mom "does not know how to read the instructions". Which is what happened here. I bought the trees just by looking at the picture (and not reading) on the package thinking "what beautiful trees these are" Time goes on and a pretty strong Winter came. By the time Spring rolled around both dad and I thought that these trees were gonners. Everything else was blooming except these trees. So the other day I went out to take a look. Lo and behold tiny little leaves are starting to pop out! I then actually read the package and was surprised to see that I had planted more Japanese Maple trees! Holy Cow! I guess there are different kinds of Japanese Maple trees as the picture on the package looks nothing like the one that came with the house. It does however look pretty on the package picture and yesterday Mimi and I were at Costco (my other home away from home) and saw that they are selling these trees for $54.00 and above. EACH! YIKES! I bought a smaller Japanese Maple tree at Walmart (my 2nd home away from home) for less than half the price of Costco. My apple tree is starting to bloom too. Things are slowly starting to take shape around here. Thank goodness. If you have the $$$ (which we don't), you can buy the plants full grown like my friend Shelley does. She says that she does not have the patience to wait. I on the other hand don't have the patience either but I would rather spend our money at Disneyland (hopefully in the fall) and the Olympics next year.