Clematis and other garden fruits

All our clematis are blooming. The first one that bloomed was a large pink one but it only had 3 blooms and faded fast. Here are the rest...

This is a very old fashioned one called a Jackmani

These are all on the same trellis and are supposed to be red white and blue....but you can see they are all different..But I love them and all the shades of pinks are gorgeous with the white ones.

tiny muscadine grapes. They won't ripen until towards the end of summer. Right now they are tiny. 

Our blueberries should be ripe by the end of May or first part of June. We had to shake them to remove some as there were just too many for them to get large and it stresses the bushes. 

This is our only chestnut tree. We had ordered 3 English Walnuts and this is what the nursery sent us. We cut down 2 and left the one. The long thing things that look like stems are the blooms. The nuts are inside sticky pods when they ripen.

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Easter Photo's Late

I have been so busy trying to get things back together after I lost everything in that lightning strike and so just got around to getting these photos of Easter off my camera. Our kids and grandkids came to church and we had a really good time. 

Oldest: Nicki

next oldest: Taylor

Youngest of Middle son: Payton

youngest of all: Molly

All of us together

 Molly is the only one that hunted to Easter eggs. 

Her daddy is our youngest son. He had hurt knee but was a real trooper. He has had surgery since to repair the knee. 

The middle son and youngest DIL were both working.
Oldest son and family had their own time at their church as their kids are mostly grown now. 

Flower Garden photos

Just some more garden photos.

Water iris around our 2 small goldfish ponds. Also English Ivy.

Oldest Clematis on front trellis

Close up of this light pink clematis. It is huge!!!

Newer Clematis. Were supposed to be deep red. 

Close up of the above clematis

This one was supposed to be blue. 

Lightning Strike and more iris

Spring rains have been occurring lately. We had terrible storm this past weekend with lots of lightning. One hit our house and even though I had serge protectors...they don't help when lightning does a direct strike. So lost my newer laptop computer and printer. Also fried our computer board that operates the oven on our cook stove. The bad news was that the stove just went out of warranty about 2 months ago so it is going to cost us $275 just for the part...not including labor.  I made appointment with the Geek Squad at Best Buy where I got the laptop. I had just bought the full coverage...when I got there, they told me I needed to send it to their service center....but I remembered I had extended warranty so they sent it for me at their expense. If it can't be fixed, then I get credit towards a new one for the cost of the old one. I'm so thankful I got the extended warranty. Sonny didn't want me to at the time. Also glad I had my old computer worked on back in January and just absolutely love it...forgot how nice a big huge monitor could be. 

I'm also making an effort to start saving my work each time I use it and to unplug everything during a storm. Also going to start saving photos of things here on my blog or facebook. At least then I know I have a back up...so the next few photos are of just the irises. They have wound down now and not many left so wanted to share these anyway.

Youngest granddaugher

I mostly had purple ones to bloom this year. Strange how that occurs...last year I had mostly yellow. I'm clearing the bed of the white ones this year as most of them are ones that have reverted to a wild state. 

Tomorrow I will put up other flowers. 

blooming Iris

The iris are really beginning to bloom. I've taken a few photos and thought I would share.

This is one of the hybrids I bought a few years ago. It is a  lovely purple and white. But lots of dotty sprinkles in the white part.
Most of the purples that are blooming now are the old fashioned antique ones and were from my grandmother's garden from about 30 years ago.

These are 2 more hybrids. A light blue and a purple and yellow. The purple and yellow also have the spotty sprinkles in the yellow part. 

This is a love peachy pink...more pink that peach. 

This is more of the true peach colored one. 

This clematis was supposed to be a red one but it is a deep purple. It blooms all summer long and just fills out the trellis so nicely.

These are wild water iris. Think they may be a Siberian type iris. We dug them up from the wilds years and years ago and they are not planted in water. But they are planted beside our 2 small goldfish ponds. We planted ivy as a ground cover around the base of it and around the ponds. But they bloom so nicely...just smaller than the traditional iris. 

We finally got the 2 mosaic deer heads up on the mantle. Love the looks of them. 

And as always...

Past dated Crawfish boil

Sonny and I once lived in Louisiana and loved eating "crawdads"..they are like miniature lobsters but better...just not as much meat in one bite. We learned to eat them like the cajun people eat them by "sucking their heads"...no really eating it all has a much better flavor. Now I can just see you going on google to look up "How to eat crayfish?" 

Well 2 of our sons still work on off shore drilling ships. The oldest finally quit and is now driving a truck but the other 2 always come through Louisiana on their way home and this time of year is crawdad season and they sometimes pick up tow-sacks full of crayfish to boil.  So last middle son was in, he had a crawfish boil. 
To give you an idea of what to do you first put your crayfish in a cooler and add water and salt, This allows the crayfish to puke and cleans out their systems...kind of like shrimp with the devein-ing thing going on but leaving all the innards inside. Then after they sit awhile in the salt water, they are then added to a big kettle of boiling water in which is added crawfish boil spices. You also add lemons cut in half and squeezed into the water and onions cut in quarters, small new potatoes, corn on the cob, mushrooms, and any other veggies you want to add. When the crawfish are done, they are bright red like a lobster. You then put them on trays along with whatever of the veggies you like and you have a feast. It is always good to eat this outside as it is pretty messy.  

To eat a crawfish, you first pull off the heads along with the pinchers and then the tiny legs and the meat just pulls out easily.

Anyway here are a few photos from our son's crawfish boil.

That is our son standing over the big kettle behind the table, His friends are puking the crawfish in the white coolerr.

This is the oldest granddaughter Nicki with her long time boyfriend Kolin. You can see the crawfish in her tray. 

This is our daughter-in-law Jackie (2nd from left and then the youngest granddaughter Payton, beside her and then Taylor with the pigtails and pink cap. 

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A note on our hawk family. I've not seen them in awhile so am hoping they survived the tree downing we did. The nest looks in good condition and thought at first we had fledgings. The baby hawks are called EYAS or EYASS. (I didn't know that). But anyway here is the latest photo of the nest. 

Hopefully I can get a photo of the babies when they hatch. 

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And as always.....