Nice Houston

Lately its been one of the nicest times of year in Houston, with weather in the 70s and low 80s with some clouds and the occasional cool front blowing in from the north to keep things from getting too hot. We're now reaping the rewards of all of the gardening we did last spring. Here's a few shots to enjoy.

Here's Neil coming around the corner of house (pay no attention to the goofy look on his face). Here you can see the greenhouse with the orchids, and the back trellis with some carolina jasmine. the orchids haven't started flowering yet, as a matter of fact it was only a few weeks ago that we could keep them outside regularly overnight, because they're not supposed to get too cold. The jasmine is popular around here, growing on pretty much every fence in the neighborhood.

Below Neil is admiring some of the climbing roses. Behind the roses are some blueberries. We had to put netting up around them (that's the soccer goal looking things) so that the birds wouldn't eat them. We had them last year and they started growing blueberries but we never got any because the birds got them first. Pretty cool huh? The look on Neil's face that is . . .

Here Neil has just finished posing for the camera and getting a round verbal thrashing from Raquel for looking so silly . . . hence the laughter. Behind him you can see the blueberries again, and the climbing roses. All the way in the back is the orchid house from before.

This is the Rangoon Creeper. Scary huh? Raquel grew up with this flower in Brazil.

It took us a year and a half to figure out what kind of flowers to put underneath the pecan tree in the front of the house. Someone finally suggested impatients to us and we figured we'd try that. We planted these ones about a month ago and they're going nuts with pink and red flowers. Really cool. Below is a shot of Neil reflecting on the patience required for flower cultivation.

The life of a photo model is a hard one.