04/13/2015
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Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Faith, Family, Family: Jason, Family: Me, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: easter, Family, family pictures, family portraits, flowers, spring | 
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Posted by mahlbrandt
04/01/2015
“Forzinnia” … that’s a combination of forsythia and zinnia. A couple weeks ago Ali helped pick out and then plant some zinnia. Last week our forsythia started blooming and she helped me clip some to put in vases. It’s no wonder she was getting the names mixed up! I love, love, love Spring in Nashville. Achoo! The allergies are a small price to pay for the beautify of this time of year.
Our zinnias should hopefully start blooming this month. Hooray for April! It’s a great month to have a baby.
1 Comment | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: alianna, flowers, forsythia, spring | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
11/19/2012
My parents and I took Ali to Cheekwood Botanical Garden on a lovely Sunday afternoon (while Jason was on his way home from an 11-day tour). It was absolutely gorgeous in the park. Combine that with my beautiful daughter and I couldn’t stop taking photos! Ali’s grandparents couldn’t stop breaking the rules and picking flowers for her. Here are a few of my favorites photos:
1 Comment | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: autumn, beauty, botanical, fall, flowers, garden | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
03/21/2012
Yesterday was the first day of spring, though it has been looking and feeling like spring for weeks now in Nashville. I’ve always been a summer lover. Bring on the heat! Spring temps here are reminiscent of the summers of my childhood in Pennsylvania and Michigan, but the flowers here are just amazing! Especially the flowering trees like red buds, cherries, plums, pears, magnolias. It’s decidedly the more beautiful time of year. Monday morning I snapped pictures during Lucy’s and my morning walk and on my drive to work:
2 Comments | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: beauty, creation, flowers, Nashville, spring | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
04/07/2011
I’m having a lazy blogging week (blame it on the new mattress…) so here are some pictures of spring around our back yard. We had a major spring storm on Monday and in the days following the grass has been so green, the flowers so intensely colorful and the sky so blue.
Azaleas.
(Sorry for the weird dusky color going on here…)
Succulents. The tips of my boots. Lucy.
Dogwood Tree.
Surprise! And a little sneak peak of the fence. Jason was busy staining while I was snapping these pictures. Daylight was almost gone so I’ll be taking some more photos over the weekend for the next official Modern Wood Fence DIY update.
2 Comments | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: azalea, dogwood, fence, flowers, garden, spring | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
03/21/2011
Happy First Day of Spring! I’ve always been a summer girl—bring on the heat!—but spring in Nashville is breath-taking. (Especially if you have allergies, harharhar…) I love all the flowering trees. Here’s the view out my front door in the morning:
And some various signs of spring from around our yard:
2 Comments | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: flowering trees, flowers, Nashville, spring | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
07/28/2010
It’s hot, hot, hot and humid this July in Nashville. Our echinacea is blooming …
Our zinnia are blooming (liatris and canna lilies in background are done) …
and our crepe myrtle tree is blooming.
The crepe myrtle, banana tree and Japanese flowering plum tree all seem to be having a height competition.
That’s all good and lovely, but sadly, our peach tree is not doing so well. The tree looks fine but all of our peaches got some kind of worm that ate them from the inside out. That and some of them got black spots on the outside. Very disappointing. The last remaining peaches rotted on the tree. We need to do some more research before next year. Does anyone have experience with peach trees?
Then there is our vegetable garden… Our romaine lettuce got too hot and turned bitter. Our pepper plants have been suffering from too much sun and aren’t producing. Our brussel spouts have been eaten up by bugs. Our Better Boy tomato plant looks sickly. (Our Better Boys were bad last year too. Not getting this kind anymore!) Our watermelon plants got too hot in pots and the one and only melon dried up while we were on vacation. Our arugula is m.i.a.
But, it’s not all bad news. Our Beef Steak tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and grape tomato plants are doing great! We’re harvesting them faster than we can eat them and they are delicious! (Most of what you see there is the Beef Steak plant.)
I did a little research on the tomato skin splitting. Early on they kept splitting right before they would get ripe. Turns out it’s from not enough water and then a lot of water. Like 2-3 dry days and then a heavy rain. We’ve been watering them for 30-60 minutes a day on a low sprinkler setting now and they’re doing great.
Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: flowers, garden, peach tree, tomatoes | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
04/08/2010
Nashville has all kinds of flowering trees in the Spring and Summer. As a Pennsylvania transplant I was in awe our year. After 5 Springs, I’m still awed by the beauty of God’s creation and the wonder of new life springing up.
I’m so happy to have this tree in our yard. It’s a Japanese Flowering Plum and I love everything about it – the pink flower petals that “snow” off in the breeze, the sweet smell, the dark bark and the deep red leaves. It’s 3 or 4 years old and this is the first year it’s really been blooming in all its glory.
Two summers ago we planted a peach tree. It had fruit on it at the time and after a few months we enjoyed about 6 bites of delicious peach. (They were tiny.) Last year we had too much rain and all of our peaches got black spot. This year it’s flowering beautifully, spring has been mild and we’re hopefully for a good turnout this year.
Not as pretty as the flowering plum but that’s OK — because this one serves a different purpose. Each one of those pretty pink flowers has the potential to become a delicious juicy peach.
4 Comments | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation | Tagged: flowering trees, flowers, our yard, peach, plum, spring | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt
