Gary mowed the lawn today...After that we decided to go for a walk with the kids down the street to enjoy the sunny day... 

Lily of the Valley

I got these flowers from the plants shown on the ground below, almost as high as the feet. One plant consists of 2 leaves and a bunch of flowers like this. They have a very nice scent, I bet they can be used as perfume! I picked several of them (a lot hidden underneath the leaves, almost as if they want to kiss the earth), together with some other flowers from other weeds or trees and placed them in a vase. 


Update: My friend's mom told me it was Lily of the Valley...then the next day I saw it on magazine for sale! This morning, I dug out a bunch of them (they were located under the big tree that stood as one of the "guards at the entry point to our driveway) and transplanted them to our garden. Prior to that I tilled the soil in one spot of our lawn where there are small trees and lots of grass around them, along with a stump. I figured it would be better to put them there because they might probably need the shade. I will see tomorrow if they will overcome the initial shock...

So colorful and beautiful... 

My Flower Garden

This is now how my flower garden looks like. I'm going to work on it some when it becomes sunny...Have to pull out some weeds (I know now how to detect them.) and some invasive flowering plants I have to transplant to another site in the landscape, or in a pot to give away to friends. 

This is a pile of weeds I have pulled out...there are more piles, and more weeds to pull...sigh!...

Here is another cluster of plants being invaded by sprouts of another flower plant. If I would not remove these, soon they would kill this particular cluster and dominate my whole flower garden! (I could only compare them to the greedy colonizer, wanting all the [soil's] resources for their use, regardless of wiping out the other flowerplant [the colonized]. Too bad, the colonized do not really have a rescuer, unlike these plants which I am rescuing...But this brought a conflict to me. I would, as much as possible, want to leave nature as is...letting Darwin's "survival of the fittest" principle at work...But well, I want to enjoy the beauty of these flowers [a wonderful artwork by God!]...)

This was the tulips cluster before mulching...

Here I have pulled out the weeds at the cluster of the tulips, and put mulch (Mom said that this would choke the weeds that would attempt to grow from under).

I gathered some grass clippings (my husband mowed the lawn the previous day), then started putting mulch on the flowerplants. I asked the boys' help in gathering mulch. I was elated looking at them as they complied to my request (despite some objections)...

At this time the weeds are now quite distinguishable. Here, my tulips have lots of different kinds of weeds embedded in between them. One even had tendrils as if choking the tulips! I really needed to pull them out.