My Flower Garden
As we get closer and closer to winter, the leaves are changing colors and falling to the ground and there are very few flowers left to see in the wild or in the yards of my neighbors.
I flipped through the many pictures of flowers I took this year and realized how important my flower garden is to me
When I retired, I was not sure what I was going to do to "keep busy" - I played a lot of golf, watched a lot of television and wasn't enjoying retirement as much as I thought I would when I decided to pull the pin.
Then I started my flower garden - first a few lilies, the a couple of rose bushes, then wine and roses bushes, daffodils, crocuses, black-eyed Susans and the list goes on and on. Perennials, annuals, flowers, bushes and blue spruce trees in the front yard.
Taking care of the yard and flower beds used to be a chore, but it is now something I look forward to and miss greatly during the winter months.
Retirement is a much fuller experience now - traveling a lot (for pleasure and to see the grandchildren nd great grandson and the boys), golf, nature walks and hiking and of course golf. Hell I even went on a 3 hour ziplining adventure through a state park with my youngest this summer and it was a lot of fun.
photos?
Trout
Trying to figure it out - not sure why I am not able to cut and paste pictures I have asked for assistance
As you might figure out, I am proud of my lilies, I started with 10 bulbs and this fall I just dug up and repositioned nearly 100 bulbs all different kinds
I enjoy taking pictures of my flowers almost equally as much as I enjoy just sitting on the patio or the front porch and looking at them.
And when one of the neighbors comments on how good the flowers look - I am over the moon
Here are a few more of my favorites
Great photos and my favorite....Drum roll please....Number 3, the Indian Blanket.
Kavika
My wife and my mother-in-law both like those as well
I am an unbiased gardener - I love them all
Beautiful flowers RIO. What a nice way to spend your retirement.
And I had no idea that you have become a great grand dad. Good for you.
I'd like to just get mine married off, LOL!
Perrie
I find that with more time on my hands in retirement (and as I get older) I long for the time when all the kids were together and under foot. Now they have lives of their own all over the country and we see them only occasionally and worse yet the grandchildren are young adults - one in the Air Force and one a young mother and wife. Damn I am getting old!
Those are excellent photos of flowers. Robert. Although I like the looks of Lilies, I really don't like the smell of some of them. Most of the Lilies I've seen around here are the orange ones, like your second photo. What do you call the ones in the top photo? I've never seen Lilies that colour before.
One of your retirement experiences is......gold???
Buzz
I started out my lily bed with the orange ones, very common locally, and since have added new varieties - the ones you ask about are various Asiatic Lilies which I planted a couple of years ago. There are more colors in that group. And this year, I picked up a couple of different varieties from this year that will bloom for the first time next spring.
The "gold" was supposed to be "golf" - I corrected it, though I would not mind experiencing some gold along the way .
LOL. I might have guessed you meant golf if you hadn't said golf at the end of the same sentence. Anyway, best of luck with your new lily breeds and discovering some gold.
Thanks
I see you figured it out.
Very beautiful flowers, Robert. We've got several different varieties of lilies in our yard. My favorites are what Mr Giggles calls "lily trees". They get taller every year and produce more flowers. And they smell wonderful. We spend the early part of the summer on the deck just to smell the flowers.
Trout
I did still not sure of all the ins and outs of how to post and maneuver around the new site but I will figure it out
We have our eye on such a lily tree and ourselves just not sure yet where to put it
Glad you're back, I've been making this my Zen stop for the day.
I am a year into retirement, took me all of two days to get used to it.
Luther
Thank you
I love being retired - we are never in a hurry, seldom have anything that must get done today and are free to go as we please - no pets and my neighbor waters the flowers when I am away (as I do for him)
We live in a development where the yardwork and snowplowing are done by the HOA - so my time outside in the yard is fun rather than hard work
Nicely done, RIO; many photographers fail to eliminate distracting elements in their flower photos … your photos show your vital understanding of allowing your subject to be the strongest element in your composition.
A Mac
That is by far the best compliment I have gotten on one of pictures in a while - thanks for the kind words.
I love my flower gardens and often look through these pictures when we are hip deep in snow up here and think of warmer more pleasant times out in the yard