Father's Day Dinner

More goodness from my garden.............

We had a wonderful dinner for Father's Day of Filet Mignon, mashed potatoes, asparagus and carrots. For dessert we had pound cake with these strawberries, vanilla ice cream, topped with whipped cream. Yum! Are we blessed or what?

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

My obsession..........

OK, I've let you go for a few days without pictures of my garden......Now, it's time to see more!



I've shown you this border before-----
Right side of garden.........

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

This is the left side of the garden......

Below is a rosebud...

Sorry, it's a little blurry, but I don't know how to remove a picture, so it stays.

This is the most fragrant rose I've ever smelled~~~~
The rose is: Climbing Aloha -- Rosa trepadora 'Aloha'

Below is a Coral Bells 'Caramel' on the left and Bergenia on the right. These are both new this year~~

Lambs Ears sending up her flower shoots---

We had a sunny day yesterday, and today it is raining again. I worked outside for 3 hours in the rain this morning. I've decided that this is the only way I can get the work done. The forecast is for rain for the next TEN days. Oh JOY, the lawns will be nice and green! I'm trying to be optimistic about this! So much for now.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Strawberry Time...........

The strawberry patch has had a very good yield this year, in spite of all the rain we've had this spring. It rained most of the day today and I was out there with my raincoat on, picking strawberries. This is what I did with them............

10 jars of strawberry preserves

This will last for a while, since I'm not really supposed to have much sugar.

Yum!

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Two More Cakes!

Boy, it never rains but it pours! My daughter's friend saw, tasted and liked my grandson's graduation cake and asked me if I would please make one for her son who was graduating this past Saturday. So, I did. But today (Sunday) is another grandson's birthday, so I needed to make a cake for him, too. Now, I have never made two cakes for the same weekend, so I was curious to find out if I could pull this off. I started by baking the birthday cake on Wed. night. Then, I baked the large 12" x 18" cake on Thursday morning. I also made some of the icing that morning and crumb coated the birthday cake. I went to work at 12:00 'til 6:00 pm. Thursday night, I crumb coated the large cake and decorated the birthday cake. Friday morning, I iced and decorated the large cake and finished it up by noon time when I had to go to work. "Piece of cake!" No problem. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and I finished in record time. Here are some pictures of those cakes:


First, is the birthday cake for my 7 yr old grandson:
He wanted a beach cake----

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

Sand and seashells:

Beach umbrella--

Sand castle:

Message in a bottle:

See the little shark fin?

These pictures are of the graduation cake for Jonathan--


Borders:

Graduation cap:

Little scroll and some of the writing:

Another shot:

Overall picture of the cake:

I love making these cakes and I love to make people happy. And seeing the recipients so happy makes it all worthwhile!

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

My Grandson's Graduation Cake!

I can't believe that he's graduated from High School! They do grow up too fast, don't they? So, I made his cake for the Graduation Party and I thought I'd show you the steps of making a cake. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of all the steps, there are way too many! I just did the basic ones. Please remember, I do not sell any cakes, so I am not a professional, I just do this for fun. The cake was white chocolate and the icing was vanilla buttercream. It tasted really good and I got lots of compliments on it.

This is a picture of the finished cake:

(click on the pictures to enlarge) Some of the ingredients--

The cake is in the oven--

Pretty close to being finished--It's baked and on the rack to cool--15 minutes. This is a 12" x 18" white chocolate cake. It smells awesome!

This is the little cake that will go on top of the sheet cake. It will be the bottom of the graduation cap.

This is the back of the cake board--



The prepared cake board--






This is what the cake lays on. It needs to be strong and stiff so that the cake doesn't crack when you lift it.


This is the graduation cap cake in the oven.

This is the vanilla buttercream icing. This bowl was full when I started to ice the cake.

Smoothing the icing--

It reminds me of ironing. Instead of clothes, I'm smoothing the icing on the cake.

All finished and pretty smooth--

The next step is to put on the writing and the borders--

This is the cap with the black icing on it. I put this on the cake last and then piped some borders around it. I made the mortar board from cardboard covered with black fun foam and placed it on top of the round cake. I had a gold tassel and I put it on the board and attached it with some black icing. It looked cute!

Here is how it looked--

I added some other details and a little scroll (diploma) tied with some red ribbon. The school colors are red and white--


Again, the completed cake----

Congratulations, Cameron. I love you and wish you all the success in the world. You've worked hard and you deserve it! Love, Grammy

I hope you enjoyed the "behind the scenes" of making a cake.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Garden Nerd........

That's me.............Especially at this time of year. It is said that "You may be a garden nerd if you ever took pictures of your garden in the dark." That's what I did last night. It was about 8:20 PM here and pretty close to dark. I needed some pictures of the latest flowers that were bloomin' yesterday. So I grabbed my camera and away I went. They actually came out better than I thought! So here's what I saw ~~

Rhododendrons are still going strong..........

This is a small one in front of a bigger one. I buried one of the branches and this little one rooted and grew from the branch. I was supposed to dig it up and plant it elsewhere, but I have decided to leave it. I like it where it is. Kinda' like Momma and Baby.....

(click on pictures to enlarge)

Dianthus..........
Peony closed up for the night......

Knockout Rose..........

Strawberries are comin' along.........

Wild daisies............. (I just love them and let them go freely in my garden)

Japanese Iris.......




Veronica........................

My Gardening Angel and Creeping Thyme in bloom..........

So, this is what a Garden Nerd thinks, lives and dreams about.

Can you think of anything more beautiful?

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean