In the snow...

I am at my parents' house for a couple of weeks, and I have been going through the photo albums to scan a lot of the pictures. 

When I was nearly sixteen we moved to Munich, Germany.  We lived there two years.  We got to go to a lot of neat places in Europe.

We traveled everywhere in the big green van--like to the youth ski retreats.  I'm in the front passenger seat of the van.

 Here I am with my dad on a wintry day.

 

This is my mom.

 

Here is the van driving away into the snowy forest.  I love the tall pine trees all covered with snow...  

The garden again...

This was the garden path yesterday afternoon.  The tomatoes are growing, and I have a couple of volunteer plants that now have their own little hill!  One of them seems to be a cherry tomato, and the other doesn't .  So it will be interesting to see what we get!

The volunteer plants are closest to the viewer, just to the left of the path. 

Here's a view of my little gnomie man, through the pinky-purple statice.

This is the "Heirloom Black plum" tomato plant, side by side with the Orange Russian.  And a few marigolds for color and spice.   

You can see that there are a few ripening.

Tomatoes in the Yard....

My neighbor Mary got me into this.

 She was going to plant tomatoes along our shared fence and said, why didn't I plant tomatoes too?

I haven't ventured with tomatoes for several years now, but I thought I would try it.

Of course, preparing the soil takes awhile, especially when it's compacted, and sandy, and there's a whole layer of green nylon mesh from when someone laid sod years ago.   

While I was at it, I decided to continue replacing the lawn with blue festuca, interspersed with a few other fun things.

 The tomatoes are looking really happy these days. 

(So are the irises and the statice...)

At the turn of the year...

On the last day of 2011 I went for a walk with my sisters.

Watching twilight come down in Kentucky...


My sister borrowed my phone and took this beautiful pic through the tree branches.


Then I was inspired and took this one.


The first day of the year we went to my brother's little church near Owensboro. We drove home with twilight coming down...

The sun through the winter trees...

..and flashing over the hill...