Pretty plantings

When we moved into our Oklahoma house 2 and a half years ago I decided it needed a bit of sprucing up on the outside. OK, maybe I was bored in rural Oklahoma. Whatever. It gave me something to do. I did lots of research for a pretty flowering vine for the front yard and a climbing rose for the back yard. I spent hours narrowing the plants down for the proper hardiness zone, amount of light received, color of flowers, climbing capabilities, evergreen leaves (for the front yard), reblooming properties, etc, etc, until I finally found what I thought were the perfect plants: a cross vine (bignonia) for the front porch planter and an antique rose (Crepuscule) for the back patio. I read about them online, and then spent gobs MORE time finding them at reputable gardens for a decent price. I lovingly planted them and then waited for their fabulousness. And waited. And waited some more.

My completely awesome, well-researched, PERFECT plants were not performing!!! Sure, they were growing, but where were all of the flowers? I need quick results from plants because we're never around long enough for me to see just how beautiful a plant will be after, say, 5 years of growth. These poor plants didn't bloom much the first year. I had high hopes for the second year, but was again disappointed. Then...

I walked out onto the front porch one day and saw my beautiful cross vine looking like this:

And few days later my rose set a bunch of blooms too:


I'm so glad I got to see these plants look beautiful, even if it was right as we got ready to leave them behind. Hopefully they will entice another plant-loving person to rent our old house so they'll have someone to love them and treat them well.

Here's Colin with our base-housing iris

Air Show in Altus!

The base hosted another air show this weekend. We had one here two years ago, but this year the Thunderbirds were scheduled to be there. Fun! Of course, they showed up a day early to practice, so we had a sneak preview of their performance on Saturday. The girls spent the rest of the weekend pretending that they were Thunderbirds. I even had to intervene in their play once to confirm that yes, girls can in fact be Thunderbirds.

The day of the air show Phil dropped by our friends' house to retrieve some chairs they'd borrowed and discovered that they had a real life Thunderbird pilot at their house! Yep, #5 pilot Rick was there -- it's a small Air Force and everybody knows everybody else and he's a great friend of our friends. Who knew? Phil took the girls over there to meet him and they were completely star-struck. He was really nice about posing for pictures and was great with the kids.

It really made the performance special, and the kids kept waving at their new friend. Plus we got to sit in the special "Thunderbirds VIP section" for a little shade during the air show -- our friends had a few extra tickets so we jumped on the opportunity.

Turns out Rick is the lead solo pilot, so he gets to do the upside-down flying, and other neat-o stunts. He told the girls that he would do a REALLY loud fly-by, but that it was a surprise so they couldn't tell us parent-types. They were so excited when he went buzzing by! Claire whipped right around and said, "Mommy, THAT was the surprise!" And several kids around us (who weren't in on the surprise) started crying. It was pretty loud!

The day of the air show was absolutely perfect: big blue skies, a few white puffy clouds, and lots of Oklahoma wind to keep us from getting too hot. ;)

Claire even made sure to tell the folks around us during the C-17 demo that her Daddy "used to fly C-17s!"

(Click the pics for bigger, more, and a movie, too!)