Tag Archives: Father’s Day

A trip to Milaeger’s

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Yesterday, the weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot. We decided to make a trip to Racine, WI to buy plants at Milaeger’s Gardens. It is about an hour’s drive and well worth it. The kids were all restless and ill-behaved but we still managed to get several nice window boxes and a nice assortment of plants to go in them. On the way home we stopped at a nearby Wal-Mart to pick up potting soil and a small pond kit.

I installed the window boxes on our front deck and planted everything while Michele went to Target to get a few outdoor chairs plus a table. Then I set up the pond. We need to get some more potted plants besides our nice Norfolk Island pine to complete things but still the deck is transformed already.

Michele and I decided to do all of this as our combined Mother’s Day and Father’s Day presents to each other.

Father’s Day present

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Last weekend Michele and I went with the kids to some nearby garden centers to look for hanging baskets for the front porch. We found a place called Ritchie’s Greenhouse near Muncie that had fantastic plant stock, some of the nicest I have ever seen. And, just about everything was on sale. Needless to say, I got pretty excited. To my surprise, Michele also got excited and told me to just go ahead and purchase whatever I liked. I’m like a kid in the candy shop when it comes to garden plants! We settled on four beautiful hanging baskets filled with apple blossom begonias, each mixed with spike plant and cascading ivy for contrast. We also bought several large-sized perennials such as daylilies, delphiniums, russian sage (I’ve always wanted one of those!), and lupines. I love lupines because they remind me of the South Island of New Zealand where they grow in wild profusion in the foothills of the Southern Alps, near Mt. Cook. (Anyone who has seen the recent Lord of the Rings movies will remember the gorgeous mountain scenery in the movies. Those scenes and backdrops are mostly the Southern Alps of New Zealand.) We also bought some annuals like spider flower (cleome) and some lovely wave petunias.

On the way home, with a van full of plants, I was on a “high.” That’s when Michele told me, “Guess what, that’s your Father’s Day present!” What a great idea!

Father’s Day

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Lots of things have happened since my last entry. For one thing, this past weekend was fairly relaxing. Father’s Day was restful, and I enjoyed it. Michele and the kids took me out to Red Lobster for supper, and then Michele made a special Mexican dish tonight that I had requested. It was a new recipe from Rick Bayless’s cookbook and it was VERY good! Samantha, our adopted kitten, has grown quite a bit. The weather has been unusually cool but today it was hot and humid. We’re looking forward to upcoming trips. There are a lot of perennials that I have to plant that we’ve bought at garden centers at a discount. I finally finished installing the new perennial border in the front yard and it looks very nice. The vegetable garden has been a disappointment because the five rows of beans I planted never sprouted, plus rabbits ate the peppers and some of the cabbages, and the cucumbers got to dehydrated. The tomatoes look like they’ll survive, but not much else. We’re looking forward to hopefully getting our van back from collision repairs tomorrow.

Boy or girl?

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Today is the day we go to the doctor for Michele to have a sonogram. We may be able to learn whether our baby is a boy or a girl, but it’s doubtful, since our doctor will not state the sex of the child. That’s his policy. We’ll videotape the sonogram and see what we shall see…I need to plant the perennial garden (about 60 plants) that was my Father’s Day gift from Michele and the children. That’ll be a big undertaking. I read an appropriate verse in Psalm 65 this a.m.: “You care for the land and water it; you enrich it abundantly” (Psalm 65:9 NIV). P.S. Just got back from the doctor, and…[drum roll, please]…it is fairly certain that we will have a baby girl!!! Whoopee! And it looks completely healthy at this point (5 months). I really just want a healthy baby and would have been happy whichever sex it was, but am really happy about the fact that it is likely to be a girl.