Do You Wanna Rain Dance ..

In between shopping for birdbaths, plants, and dirt and digging up a 10 x 15 area of the yard around two trees, we made time Saturday to attend the first annual Rain Barrel Festival at Dogwood Park in beautiful downtown Cookeville. The dogwoods are still in bloom, the red buds are gorgeous and the magnolias are not quite spent yet.

The festival wasn't much, but was a fund raiser via silent auction of the hand painted rain barrels. This silent auction runs a little different than others I have seen, as you know what the previous bids are. I thought I'd share some pictures I took.

Summer Anyone?

Ok, summer it seems is starting early this year! Whew. And of course we picked this weekend to start our landscaping project in front of the house. We took a small area between two trees and planted a birdbath, bird feeder, some hostas and a couple of azalea bushes out there. We haven't mulched yet, as I am hoping to put down pine straw. DH is a bit iffy on it, but I feel pretty safe saying I will probably get my way.

Anyway, this is what it looks like now.

Some of the hostas are from Michigan and made the trip down last June when the Wild Ones visited!

I'm sure DH wants everyone to know how hard we worked - and we did. Digging up sod around trees is hard. Finding a place to transplant it was my job. It doesn't look that big but it was a 10 x 15 area. The birdbath is in the shape of a flower and stem. The birds are happy with it!

Let them eat cake!

Older daughter had her just-this-side-of-thirty birthday party on the 17th. I am slow in posting this - too much other stuff going on - but this is her teeny tiny little birthday cake. As you can see, once the candles went in it became the devil cake. It might have been devil's food at that - family's predilection for chocolate being what it is.