So I did make a promise.....

To show off some pictures from our vacation last month.  Well I have yet to download pictures from my cameras.  I am notorious for it.  Ask my family....I can have pictures on my cameras for months.  So sad!! lol!  

Well, what I will show you are some random pictures that I was able to get with my phone before the battery died.....\("o)/ nooooooooooooo!  If you follow on Instagram @fifiybr you've probably seen these before and they're not the best of the pics....so don't judge.

Quite a bit of pictures....so you can just scroll thru if you don't feel like reading any descriptions.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Driving down I-10 East, lots of wetland.

Driving through the French Quarter.

Walking around the French Quarter, this was one of my favorite things to see.  Balconies filled with plants.  I loved just walking around, plus I was trying to find out where Brad and Angelina live. No luck!! lol!!

Inside the St. Louis Cathedral near Jackson Square.  Beautiful stained glass everywhere.

We had brunch at Cafe Du Monde!  YUMMY!!
Beignets and Cafe Au Lait

Stopped by and bought stuff in the French Market.

We had a visit from swarms of Mayflies off of the Mississippi.  My pic does not even show the amounts that were gathered on street signs, lights or buildings. The news said that this was the biggest swarm ever seen in years.

Visiting one of the many shops off of Decatur St.  I think this was the Pepper Palace.

The fountain in Spanish Plaza by the River Walk.  It is surrounded with seals of the provinces of Spain.  We would have walked around to see them all, but it was really rainy those days, there was water every where and I had flip flops on....not good.

Okay....I do not, I repeat do not eat oysters.  But I will forever eat charbroiled oysters.   We stopped by Drago's which are known for their charbroiled oysters.....YUMMMMMMM!  Believe me they are the best.

This is definitely not the best picture, but its a pic of the Bienville Statue.

 Beautiful bridge crossing the Baton Rouge port.

On our way home we made a stop in Lake Charles....L'Auberge du Lac Casino Resort. I love this place, it's really very lovely. The rooms are awesome, the staff is great and great shows.  We just played slots.  I didn't become a millionaire, but we did stuff our faces at the Le Beaucoup Buffet.  TheHubs and I had points on our PlayerCards so instead of paying 20+ bucks per person we only payed  3 bucks and change total...woo hoo!!

Finally, crossing state lines!!

More familiar territory.  So happy to almost be home.

We had a fabulous time there.  We hope to go back again maybe next month.  

Thanks for stopping by!  

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Spring cleaning in the yard!!

Besides scrap busting for the past couple of weeks, I have also been doing a little Spring cleaning in the yard.  Well when I say "I", I really mean "we" as in theHubs and myself.  He cuts the yard and edges and I do the weed pulling, planting and sprucing.  This is sort of looooong post, but I have pics!  "You've been warned" lol!

March was here and then it was gone, I kept putting off the yard work.  I had no motivation to get in the backyard and clear thing up...it was getting kind of ugly back there.  Looking in the back yard is kind of scary....weeds up to my eyeballs, which isn't saying much because I'm like 5'2, there are spiders in the grass, wasps and bees a buzzing, ants.  Fun times!!  

Look at this....ocean of weeds!!  Looks like a family of Leprechaun's invaded my space. This stuff was in the WHOLE BED.  Which is about 50 ft across and varies between 3, 5, 8, and 12 feet wide in some places.  Every time I pull weeds from this bed, I ask myself....."WHY"  well more like screaming that is.  I knew it had to be done.....theHubs said he would hire someone to come and clean it out, but I said why should we waste money paying someone to do this.  Plus, I could use that money to buy more plants or potting soil. So I got to it and started.  One Sunday, took me about 5 hours minus this corner below.

See this pic below....well in this corner there should be a moss rock border, Lantana bushes, a hibiscus plant...I think. Sometimes I wish we had nothing back there, it's too much work.  But then I'd be mad because I'd want plants and color back there.  

I was there another weekend and only got halfway done here...I started to see my plants! Now you can see the rock border too!!  I just wish you couldn't see the cable boxes.  Thanks "SBC"  why did my yard have to have them....oh well once the plants start growing you can barely see them.

This is what I did on Good Friday!!  It doesn't look like much yet....I have to wait a couple more weeks before the flowering plants start blooming.  I also added a Yellow Lady Banks Rose bush....I can't wait to see that start to crawl.

This whole bed was full of weeds!  The biggest tree here is a Texas Lilac, it can be trained to grow as a bush or as a tree.  I loooooove this tree,  it has about a zillion buds on it and it looks awesome with its flowers.  The only bad thing about this tree is the tree leaves look very similar to a marijuana leaf...weird, lol!!  I can assure you, there is no illegal plant growing going on in my back yard.  I have a Bradford pear tree,  a couple of Crab Apple  trees, Althea bushes, and a Rose of Sharon bush, Lantana bushes, sage bushes.  The knockout rose bush is in full bloom....even though it hurt me to my heart to hack it up, it was getting kind of wild.  See below ↓ I cant wait till all the color comes in.  It looks amazing....then when fall comes it looks sad and pathetic no color and no leaves.  I can see the backs of my neighbors houses and we have no privacy at all.  Due to deed restrictions we can't put in 8 ft fences....booooooooo. And since we to share fences with 4 different houses it would be kind of hard to get any of the neighbors to pitch in any funds to replace the fence.  That's the burbs for you. 

Lookie here.... we have some buggy competition going on.  It's good and bad....these are the leaves to the Crab Apple tree.  So now they're gonna get eaten by the caterpillars...and I saw like a billion of them.  No worries,  they asked for permission and I said as long as you turn into lovely butterflies and visit it would be okay.

The Crab Apple is full of blooms too!!  Soooo pretty!

The front yard is pretty much full of colors.  I love it!  This plant below is a Duranta bush and will flower all the way to Fall.  

Pretty right???? Next to it I have some Morning Glory and Passion vines crawling. 

Hey lil fella...what'cha doing there.

With all the Spring cleaning going on, I broke all my nails, went through 2 pairs of garden gloves, got bit by ants (knee, arm, shoulder, hands, ankles, thigh, and a toe)....why do their bites hurt so bad, killed  6 (BIG) spiders, scraped my calf with the shovel, got a lil sunburned, almost ate a knat, almost stung by a red wasp - there's a nest in one of the bird houses and had a lizard jump on my leg.  I told theHubs that I'm glad we only do this a couple days out of the year....my back was killing me.  See fun times!

I hope you enjoyed my Spring post.  Thank you for stopping by.

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Wordless Wednesday - Spring has Sprung at my house

A week ago - 03/27/12

Tuesday - 04/02/12

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I'm kind of grossed out now!!

If you read my previous post.... you were probably like awww or gross!!  Well I'm totally disgusted now!!  :^p  

All this time I thought they were caterpillars......NOPE!! Thank you to one of my kind readers who has informed me that they are BAG WORMS and they turn into ugly moths!!!  EEEEKKKKK!  Now I have the creepy crawlies!!  

I was all like awwww I'm gonna have a swarm of Beautiful Butterflies and I'm gonna go stand outside and let them land in my hair,  then I was gonna twirl while blowing bubbles!!  <---- That dream failed....lol!!

Oh well!!  Gonna have to call someone to take care of the situation!!  :(  I'm kind of bummed, about telling my nephew that they're not gonna be butterflies.  I'll just tell him their ugly brown butterflies, lol!

I was wondering where all the orange butterflies came from then, so I went looking around the yard!!  I found a couple of open cocoons on the second floor eaves of our house and some on the trellis of the passion vine! 

Wah.................................

Yeah....it's hot again! and Yes, it's another post of me writing about the TX heat! Oh and caterpillars!! lol! ☺

We're breaking records here!!  This heat is getting to me!  I just want to sleep in a dark, cool room!

But sadly I have to work and I need toothpicks for my eyes!! (Φ,Φ)  Who remembers that episode from the Tom&Jerry cartoon !!  Why is it that of all of the episodes I always think of this one and the one where a little cat sings "mama yo quero"!!   <----- Weird!! lol!


Okay, back to this heat!!  Major water restrictions now, most of Houston is on voluntary odd/even schedule for watering out doors.   Since I don't live in Houston....per se....  Our neighborhood is not on water restrictions "yet"!!  There have been reports in some neighborhoods that the fine will be $10,000 if you are caught watering!! What.....that's a little excessive don't you think!!

 There's all kinds of Stages going on..... Craziness!!  We need some relief soon!!




With all the heat going on,  I have a slight little problem with a certain little insect!!!  The Caterpillar!!!  While I love nature....Really!! These little suckers (no pun intended) have literally sucked the life out of our Cypress Tree and it's the one planted in front of our house! Not pretty!  Cypress trees are supposed to be green, plush, full spears that are growing out of the ground.  (*_*) it just looks sad and pathetic!

Look at him....Chomping away on my tree! ugh!!

                                     

LOOK!!!! He or she needs to hurry up and change into a butterfly!!

When I got too close they went back into their cocoon!

What a great disguise!!  At first I thought it was the tips of the tree burning off cause of the heat.

You can see a couple here....I stopped counting a 370....so we estimate at least 500 to 600 cocoons!

During the taking of these photos, I found out there was a Yellow Jacket nest in the middle of the tree too!!  I almost got stung in the eye!!  That would not have been fun at all! 

When I first noticed the cocoons I actually thought the tips of the tree were burning off, so I started to grab them and throw them in my snipping bucket, then I thought.....it was kind of squishy.  Okay I yelped, lol!!  and threw it across the yard! lol!  This was the first clue, upon closer inspection, I saw they were moving....eeeewwww! Then I noticed the heads and little arms holding on to the plant and chomping away!!  It's crazy to see something like this happening....these little insects have disguised their cocoons with pieces of the tree - hence why I was fooled!!  Nature is awesome!!   Also, I became a little "cooler" to my nephew!!  He loves nature too....He has a no-kill policy for bugs!!  He thought it was incredible to have all this going on in front of my house!  He thinks I'm a scientist now!!  lol!!  I ♥ the mind of a 7yearold!

Yesterday, I saw about 10 to 15 orange butterflies around my passion flower and morning glory vines!!  It was amazing!!   I hope I see more today!