Cardboard Boxes and a Garden Tour

Last fall Josephine discovered that her best friend Sylvia had a large refrigerator box in her driveway that she had transformed into a house. Josephine really wanted to have a cardboard house as well. When we got a new fridge and stove, I saved the boxes (much to the chagrin of my husband) in the garage until the rainy season was over. Well, finally summer is nearly upon us as well as our dry season, so the boxes are finally out of the garage. Today the girls transformed them into two little houses, and they even asked that I cut small openings in the sides just large enough for the blue tunnel to connect them.

This picture is of Sunny doing her "snälla" expression. Snälla is Swedish for "please", and this is how Sunny looks whenever she wants something, as she says in her sweetest possible voice, "Snä-lla!" In this very instance, she wants to go inside and watch a movie.

All three girls in front of the completed cardboard houses:

And now for the latest tour of the garden. This living in a real house with a real yard has turned me into a little bit of a novice naturalist. It's so much fun just walking around the yard and seeing what is growing and how everything is doing.

The chives that we planted from seeds are starting to come up.

The raspberries are just starting to ripen . . .

. . . as are the boysenberries.

The nasturtiums that we planted from seed in the front yard are starting to flower.

And the alyssum we planted, also from seed, in the front yard . . .

. . . are now producing little seed pods. I'd never looked this closely at an alyssum before, but it creates these very teeny-tiny little paper-like seed pods.

We have a few daffodils left. After the initial ones were all past their prime, a few more came out and surprised us.

In the front yard we have this wonderful California poppy volunteer.

And the lantana that the frost had seemingly killed is now not only back, but starting to flower as well.

The echeveria that I had transferred to a large pot out front is doing very well and is already making more babies.

And here's the whole succulent garden which my mom and I planted last November. It looks very happy.

And finally, the bacopa that I had bought this spring and put by the front door has now more than tripled in size.

I love how this plant spills over the side and always has pretty little white flowers.