Who Mara...

[Mara]

portia likes it too.

 

[Mara]

and here are some pictures of my burgeoning patio garden from spring of this year, aka about march or so. it''s a lot bigger and crazier looking now! some of these look much better bigger but oh well, space constraints!

 

[Mara]

i like how the background flowers are in focus here but the big front one is blurry.

 

[Mara]

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[Mara]

i love this one...it''s kind of blurry and crisp at the same time.

 

[Mara]

here are some of my tulips this year. tulips are so hard to get long and beautiful here in too-warm california, so we do the best we can! but these got really pretty once they grew out a bit.

 

[Mara]

and here are some from i think may of this year, so a few months later.

 

[Mara]

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[Mara]

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[Mara]

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[Mara]

last one for now...!! looking at all these garden pictures have inspired me to go to the nursery and see what the latest plants are for this month...hee hee. i will be back later hopefully with more pictures, i think i have some more recent Princess Portia pictures that I can add in as well!! thanks for bumping the thread gals hehee.

 

[diamondfan]

Mara, you have a green thumb. How stunning and inviting all the flowers look. It must be nice to sit out there and enjoy them.

 

[Lorelei]

Date: 7/7/2007 3:56:30 PM
Author: diamondfan
Mara, you have a green thumb. How stunning and inviting all the flowers look. It must be nice to sit out there and enjoy them.

I agree, great job with the flowers! Need some more ring shots while the roses are blooming....

 

[Skippy123]

Mara,
your flower garden is amazing!!!!!

 

[marcy]

Hi Mara,
Your flowers and your photos are beautiful. I love to take photo shots too. I smiled when I read some of the photos were from March. We have about a 3 month growing season here in Wyoming. Flowers are only a dim memory to us in March.

 

[Skippy123]

Date: 7/7/2007 7:47:10 PM
Author: Skippy123
Mara,

your flower garden is amazing!!!!!

Are those the flowers you were getting when you weren't working. Wow, I can't believe how many beautiful flowers you have growing; that must have been lots of work! they are gorgeous

 

[snlee]

Hi Mara, I love your new Mini Cooper! I''ve always though Mini''s are so cute and silver is my favorite color! What a green thumb you have. Your garden looks amazing! All of your flower shots are beautiful!

 

[Gothgrrl]

Mara, you and Greg are such a sweet looking couple. Wow, your so tiny! I wish I had half of your figure. I just love looking at your pics. I love how you capture all the colors of the flowers. It's always fun when I see new pictures you post.

I just love Portia. I have been showing hubby how cute your dog is. I really want to get a westie. And you lucky girl....you got the cute mini!!!

 

[hlmr]

Thanks for sharing the gorgeous flower pix.....those roses are so beautiful! You definitely have a green thumb!

I just planted a new rose bush...petals are pink with white. I hope it will survive the location I picked for it!

 

[asscher_girl]

Hi Mara! You''re new car is too cute!

I love it. And those flowers are gorgeous too. When I see flowers now I think "hmm, I could get a great flower shot w/ my ring on that flower" haha

You 2 are so cute together! I hope we can all get together for dinner some time soon. I''d love for my FI and myself to meet the both of you.

Kinda off topic, but can you recommend a dry cleaners to me? We are not happy with the one we are currently going to in Willow Glen.

 

[Mara]

ha ha marcy, yeah that is part of the reason i love living here....if we move anywhere it has to have a decent growing season or else i think i'd get depressed. many times i have to force my roses into sleep because it stays so warm here and they'd bloom themselves to death if i let them.

thanks ladies for the compliments on the flowers...i can't take all the credit as sometimes it seems like they grow themselves (with just a little care, oh and WATER!)...our patio is about 14x30 so it's pretty big for a patio, i love my patio garden even if it does take a lot of hand-watering time especially in the summer months. i pretty much have to water almost every morning for about 15 minutes. on the weekends though we do love sitting outside and relaxing on a warm day smelling the wafting of the flowers. i would cover the patio entirely in them if i could.

skippy...i have been gardening for about 10+years now...i basically go every few months and replenish the flowers that are flagging or dying out with new flowers more 'in season'...i still do have some pansies surviving from jan of this year even though it's really too hot for them right now but some of them in the shaded areas of the pots are somehow making it!! but really i like the big country garden overblooming look so i always like lots of plants and filler in the pots under the roses and stuff. i had a real country cottage garden at the last place i was at...before we bought our townhouse and i loved it. so hopefully at some point very soon we'll have dirt of our own, not sure if it will be here in CA or elsehwere but somewhere! but until then the patio does the trick for my zen garden hehe.

snlee...thanks, the mini is sooo awesome. i thought well i could get something like a mercedes c230 for the same price but this car is just so me, and it's really loaded to the gills, and is FAST...greg says it can beat almost any car out there, even a 150k car...on curves and tight areas. it also gets pretty zippy on the freeway and is just so much FUN to drive. i am so happy we went for it finally.

gothgrrl...haha you are so sweet saying i am TINY...i'm 5'7" so i never think of myself as tiny, but i guess standing next to greg i can look kind of smaller hehe. but what a compliment, woo hoo! and yes if you are contemplating a westie, i highly recommend them...they are the best dogs. we adore portia. tonite at dinner we saw two westies in a baby carriage that this family brought into the back restaurant patio area with them, they were 12 and 13 years and so pretty and mellow, we were petting one of them and she sat up so we could rub her belly. such lovebuckets and such BIG personalities in small dogs.

heather...i will keep my fingers crossed for your rosebush! give it lots of sun, water and oscomote time-release fertilizer and chances are it will be fine. well draining soil is a must. keep me posted!!

asscher...hmmm dry cleaners...we are using the one over on alameda right next to cahill park apartments, next to the corner coffee shop. i can't remember the name of the dry cleaners, alameda cleaners maybe? that's where greg takes his stuff and he has been using them for years on a weekly basis, and he really likes them. i only take dry cleaning in like once every few months as i am sooo lazy and most of my wardrobe is not dry cleaning, but i have liked them so far as well. there is also another place over on race street kind of near alameda which i have walked by a bunch of times but never actually used, so can't necessarily recommend them. and yeah we'd totally love to get together with you and your FI at some point...we can meet downtown at a restaurant or something!!

 

[monarch64]

Love the update Mara, so fun seeing all your new pics, you definitely have a green thumb! I don''t think I''ve ever responded to your "who''s who" here, but just wanted to say I''m glad to have made your virtual acquaintance and that you and Greg are welcome in Chicago anytime you please, we''d love to have you! You are such a fun personality and so helpful, I know you''ve been here for a very long time but I appreciate all the time you still devote to the boards and especially to the WWT. And I love your style advice as well, hee hee!

 

[diamondfan]

Mara, Portia is just too much. She is precious, love the wings photos. You also look so adorable with hubby and the new car is so cute too. Drive safely...does it have all wheel drive for when you move to PA?!

 

[Skippy123]

Wow, gardening for 10 years; that is great!!! I planted a lot of flowers but I need to learn how to divide bulbs because I have a lot of bulbs growing in big bunches. I can grow day lilies well. You are so lucky because SJ is perfect for flowers. We have cold winters and hot summers so it is nice that your weather is great year round.

I love your new mini; I tell my hubby Mara (PS Queen) has one. hehehe. Hey, I think you should be a review columnist for dining. You make a person almost feel like they are dining there w/you; you really have a gift!!!

I also love a your mini trips; you and Greg sound like you have a great time. Your mom and sister sound like they are so much fun; I think it is great you all go hiking together!

I like that you said the world is becoming one big melting pot; I love diversity too!

I love that you went to Tahiti! I hope to someday go there; it is just crazy expensive. Hubby and I looked into it and for 6 days it would cost us something like $10,000. Do you want to go back soon? I think it is great you got married in Kauai; I just love Kauai. It is so laid back and beautiful!

 

[marcy]

Mara, I had to smile that your pansies are not doing well in the heat. Pansies are one of the few flowers that can take a frost or two before they die here. My mom has a little plant box right outside her back door where pansies will make it through until November because they can take the cold. My favorite photo was the yellow rose; that was very pretty.

You and my husband could have a good race in the corners. He loves to drive as fast as he can going around corners and on exit ramps. I just laugh and hang on to the arm rest. Okay, I admit it. I do drive fast sometimes too. It is fun.

Portia is adorable.

Thanks for posting all these great pictures!

 

[Gothgrrl]

I''m impressed...10 years gardening. I can''t even keep a cactus. LOL. I forgot to ask, does Portia still have that snaggle tooth? I was trying to look for it to show hubby. I just laugh everytime I see that!

 

[onedrop]

Mara thanks for posting the pictures from your wonderful garden! They gave me inspiration to go ahead and do something with our flowerbed. Did I see peonies in a couple of pictures? If so, are they difficult to grow?? In any case it''s clear you have a special talent in the garden. Thanks for sharing!!!

 

[Sevenwires]

aaaah!!! I just saw the picture of the car today! I totally want one! Did you get the manuel or automatic?

 

[Miranda]

Mara, you and Greg are so cute together! LOVE the new car! It''s the perfect size! Once again, you need to bring that green thumb down to my house! I so envy all of your lovely flowers!

 

[Mara]

hehe thanks ladies for the flower compliments, i do love my little flower garden, it''s a little bit of heaven even if it does take a fair amount of watering and work in the summer months. right now it''s looking pretty crazy, i should take some new pictures. i am definitely still daydreaming of the time hopefully someday soon when i can have a big yard and create my garden with ''rooms'' from scratch. ahh!!

sevenwires, haven''t seen you around lately! how are you doing?? the mini is a manual, i think it''s just sacrilege to get a sports car (aka we got the S with sport suspension) with an automatic, i don''t care if it has that tiptronic thing or whatever. i need the good old fashioned feel of a manual when i''m driving a sporty car for sure.

skippy, we LOVED tahiti, i posted some pictures on here previously of our trip, it was just divine. we daydream about it all the time and would love to back soon. we are probably going to hawaii in jan of 2008 and i would love for us to extend a week to do tahiti again but i don''t know, it will depend on schedules with work and all that...but yes we had a blast. i would highly recommend it. and it was not that expensive for us because we started from hawaii and our travel agent worked some magic with the costs...so we managed to knock the price down a few thousand and had the most amazing experience, our little hut was ON the beach, it was just the best.

onedrop, i think you are thinking that my roses are peonies...those are english roses, fluffy with their habit, not like the standard tea roses in bouquets and similar. they are so scented as well, yummy.

lol marcy re: pansies growing...i can keep them alive for 1/2 the summer if they are in the shade and they thrive in the winter because it stays fairly warm here.

gothgrrl, yeah portia still has the snaggle...she hardly shows it though!! she''s much more mature and elegant now that she is older, yeah right!!
monarch, thanks so much sweetie for the chicago invite. i think that is where greg went to grad school (kellogg)...and i recall he really liked it out there...but BRR too chilly for me. but if we ever pass through i will so look you up!

df...i asked greg about the all wheel drive on the mini for PA and he just laughed. what does THAT mean?!

maybe he is hoping we wouldn''t actually need it hehee.