Join me for a little walk around my yard

This past weekend the weather broke here and we were able to turn off the air conditioner (our electricity bills will plummet! Yay!!!!!) and open up our house. Today is a quiet day - Dan had jury duty this morning (he is one of those people that gets called up every couple of years while I have only been called up once - and at the time we were in Trinidad so I didn't get the notice until after the jury was due) and I am cleaning house and ridding out. I want you to know that I actually filed every single one of the layouts that was piled up waiting to be filed. This was a major job!!!!!!!!! Fortunately I had picked up a couple of 12x12 3ring binders at the thrift store so I had enough binders even to create a These are a few of my favorite things binder and a Harlee-Quinnz binder. I can't tell you how happy I am to have the layouts put away!!!! While I was working with layouts, I also did something that probably would make some people crazy: I actually ripped apart a bunch of old layouts that I didn't really like or that I had made specifically for a challenge and the LO didn't mean anything to me - I saved the photos, alphas, and any embellishments for future use and in some cases, I even saved the paper.
I just had lunch on the lanai and was noticing how fragrant the rosemary in our yard was so I was inspired to walk around the yard taking a few photos.
Roses are fairly difficult to grow in Florida as it is basically too hot for them but we have one small bush on the shady side of our house that has 6-8 blooms a year - in the cooler months. Today I saw that it had one bud.

Our key lime tree is loaded with limes - I usually use them to make key lime pound cakes - except they are not really pound cakes as they are very low fat and made with yogurt and vegetable oil. I might be persuaded to share the recipe - the cake was originally a lemon cake but I substituted key limes. Tonight we are having tilapia for dinner so I will slice a couple of limes for garnish.

This is a basil plant that has grown up wild - I had a vegetable and herb garden last year and this basil apparently came up from seeds from the old plant - actually there are about 8 basil plants - amazing!!!!

And here is the fragrant rosemary just outside the lanai. I just love the scent of rosemary.

This is a fancy hibiscus that is also just outside the lanai - notice the varigated leaves. We have a beautiful red double hibiscus just beside our front porch but it doesn't have any blooms right now. We also have gigantic allamanda bushes across the back of our yard and they have bloomed so much this summer they have literally fallen over from the weight of the flowers. We also have ixora blooming along the front of our house. We also have lots of azalea bushes and they are riotous with blooms from February to April.

I need to finish my cleaning so I can do some painting and scrapping.

Tomorrow I will be doing a posting on the Harlee Quinnz Designs blog http://www.harleequinnzdesigns.com/blog/ so come on over and check it out. Today Larissa has a posting on making a little paper doll from Harlee Quinnz ephemera and paper. My blog will be for a small wallhanging and instructions on how to make the velvet fabric flowers that I have been making for my layouts.

Hope you have a great day.

ttfn