We got our free rock!!

I have a customer who was going to be doing a reroof. He said the existing roof had all this lava rock on it, and wondered if I was interested in taking it for my gardens. I checked to make sure that the rock wasn't going to hold the heat and cook my plants, and was told that it was so small and pourous that my plants should be okay. So I told my customer I'd be happy to take it. A few weeks later I was told it was ready, I came home from work and filling my driveway was all this lava rock. There must have been at least 12 yards of the stuff.

Here are some before pics of the gardens that we were planning on putting the rock in. I had gone through and weeded them a couple days before. This garden has a bunch of perennials in it. I had also planted some bulbs in it last fall, but none of them have come up yet, so I'm hoping that putting the lava rock on them, won't keep them from appearing. It's not on really thick, so they should be able to pop up okay.

And here's the after with the rock. I love how the green against the rock really stands out. That dead looking plant should come to life with some greenery and yellow flowers. (I hope). That should look really sharp in there.

This back garden has some boxwoods hedges and some daylilly plants in it. We had put in red bark a few years ago but it has really faded and and started to decompose into the ground. So we thought it would be pretty to put some rock in here as well. Here's the before pics:
And here's the after pics. Again, I love the look with the deep red and all the green from the plants.

Oh, how the seeds are growing.

Due to the economy, I decided to try my hand at growing some of my flowers from seeds. So I bought 9 diff kinds of seeds and a seed kit. It seemed pretty simple, plant the seeds, water, watch them grow. All the packets said "guaranteed to grow", the proved true for 8 of them. But the one that didn't grow were some zinnias of which I have another kind of them growing in another section, so I'm not too upset about it. Plus the fact that if all of them grew and survived, I've got 72 plants to have to put somewhere when it's time.
So here they are about 2 weeks after I planted them in mid-February. Growing nicely, all behaving.


And here they are in mid March. All growing big and tall. They started to get so big and droopy that we had to create some trellis type things for them to grow around to keep them upright. I can't put them outside until sometime late in April, so I'm hoping that I can keep them alive long enough until I can get them outside into some pots or the ground. But I am happy with their progress so far. I wish I had some flowers to go along with the greenery, though.

Scotty cleans Bob

Bob will do anything to get clean but not have to do it himself. He'll come out when we vaccum so he can be cleaned that way. And if the vaccum is nowhere in sight, then he'll just cuddle with the next best thing. Here he snuggles with Scotty. But we know where this will lead.

Now that they've both become aware of the situation, Bob will send the "clean me" vibes to Scotty.

Ahhhh, and Scotty has picked up the vibe, and thus the cleaning begins. What I love is when Scotty detects an "itch" and proceeds to "chew" the area to get rid of the itch. How he knows where the itch is, I don't know.

World's cleanest cat.

I have a very clean kitty. I wouldn't say Bob LOVES to be vaccumed, but he certainly doesn't mind. I've heard of cats who do this, but didn't think one of mine would be one of them. But here's the proof.