Yesterday, my friend Jessica and I made some old-fashioned strawberry jam. We bought our strawberries from a local stand and spent several hours making five batches between the two of us. Mine had a few variations like strawberry-rhubarb & strawberry-raspberry (the raspberries were from our yard). I think they all taste like strawberries and sugar, lots and lots of sugar 🙂
It definitely was a fun experience and I am looking forward to our homemade apple sauce in the fall Jessica!
 
 
I keep finding beautiful creatures in the yard. The camouflage frog was sitting in my strawberry plants, posing.
The moth looks very vogue dressed in a snowy white fur cape with zebra accents (antennae and legs).
Mr. snail also looks snazzy, especially in black & white 🙂
I noticed this cool looking moth near our front door the other day. He was still there this afternoon so I thought I would get his picture before he flew away. I think he looked like a leaf, he was very green!
On Monday I had fun picking strawberries and raspberries from our yard. I was amazed of how many we had growing. The previous owner had planted a row of raspberries and filled in below with strawberries. We heard the raspberries are ever-bearing so we should get another crop in the fall. They sure are good, but don’t have a very long shelf-life…so you have to eat them all in one sitting or freeze them 🙂
Todd & I had a nice weekend despite the 90° plus weather 🙂 Ok, so it’s not as bad as growing up in California…but it’s hot with no air conditioning! Saturday evening we met up with our new friends from Christ Group (about 11 of us all together) to watch the fireworks in Sumas. It’s about a 10 minute ride from Everson and they have the show every year a week before 4th of July. Our friend James (Todd’s work) told us about the event because he was one of the helpers to light off the fireworks. I have to say, it was a great show. They did a good job and the finale was amazing. I hope this becomes a tradition for us.
One of my fuchsias just opened up on Saturday too. I am very excited! It’s neat to see something you planted come to life, especially beautiful and exotic fuchsia blooms. I have five planters on the front of the house with three different fuchsia types. Only one, (Lena variety) has fully opened.
When these were beginning to sprout we thought they were weeds. So we sprayed and pulled and sprayed some more until most were gone or shriveled up. Thank goodness we still missed quite a few because they turned into beautiful poppies. I grew up with the California poppies but never realized they came in more colors than just orange. The red and purple are opium poppies 🙂
 
Here are a couple photos I took awhile ago of our master bedroom. I posted a few other decorated house pictures back in March (kind of embarrassed of the floral couches, someday soon I’ll get new ones)…I guess I am a little behind with the updates.
This is the best angle of our room. The slider gives lots of light…when we have light 😉
The dresser is in front of the wall that Todd built…it used to be a closet opening from our room into the office. The closet now only opens in the office…if that makes any sense. Remember this post?
My roses have begun to open with lots of pink, peach, yellow and red blooms. All of them have buds, but I can’t quite make out some of the colors yet. I was only able to include a few names of the roses which still had tags attached. I am missing more then half of the tags, which is sad since I don’t know roses very well. The reason why there are a couple pictures of each rose is because they were taken on different days. I was playing with the lighting and am still trying to learn ISO & F-stops with my old “advanced” point & shoot 🙂
Todd & I took a drive thorough the beautiful countryside in our area. We headed East on Mount Baker Hwy through Deming for a couple miles, then right onto Mosquito Lake Rd (this is for those who know the area). Several miles down, we turned off onto an unkept road that took us through some trust lands. The first few photos are from that area. Then we made our way back on Hwy 9 through Van Zandt on home. It was quite beautiful back in there, well worth the gas 🙂 We also visited parts of the Nooksack River, where the bridge & flower pictures were taken. The bald eagle pictured lives near our part of the river (he was very tiny, even all the way zoomed in)
Back to the garden. The weather finally cooperated so I could get some flower shots. Just to warn you, there will be many more flower posts before the year is up… especially now that my roses are starting to bloom 🙂
La Casa Blanca 
