How Does Your Garden Grow?

After a big afternoon of swimming and running around and not taking a nap, we spent Sunday evening at my parents', so we could have cake for my dad's birthday. Everybody loves cake. The only thing better than cake is more cake! Mmmmmm, cake. (I actually had only one little weensy taste, and that was all: damn diets.)

A lot of the plants that I have in my backyard either came directly from my mother's garden or are flowers that she has in her beds. I think my bleeding heart bushes might have come from this hulking monstrosity here that is taking over this one section of my mom's yard like pretty little kudzu. (Yes, I did just call a bleeding heart bush a "hulking monstrosity" -- that thing is like three feet high and about twenty feet wide and is capable of consuming small towns in a single gulp.)

Compared to my tiny little green-stamp backyard, my parents live on a palatial country estate, and their lawn and garden is filled with all sorts of delightful things, like caterpillars, slugs, and in the hottest part of the summer, a neighborhood cat who sleeps under the rhododendron bushes. There are also old-fashioned rosebushes that are almost aggressively pert and fragrant.

But of course Shae's favorite thing about my parents' house is ... well, my parents. Every time we visit there is a toy picked up at a yard sale, or a cute new outfit, or bubbles, or something. And of course there are popsicles and Hawaiian Punch and treats out the wazoo. (We don't really give her Hawaiian Punch at home, but I let my parents indulge her.)

Shae and her Pop are totally besties. That's why she got to sit in his lap and help blow out the candles when we finally got around to having cake.

Man, that was some good cake. *drools*