Winter in the Rio Grand Valley

Okay, it has been a busy and fun winter with lots of Square dancing, day trips, biker nights and enjoying the mild weather in the valley. In the midst of all of these activities I have also managed to get several flower beds set up around the house and on the property. Now that my flowers are well on their way to being up and blooming I just have to fight off the rabbits, which is something I have never had to deal with before. We are on round two of trying to figure out how to keep the rabbits out of the flowers which Darryl so lovingly describes as the buffet for the rabbits. The first attack from the rabbits was about a month ago so, I went to the local garden center and ask what to do about rabbits in the area. They sold me some spray that is applied to the flowers, veggies and the soil all around that is good for about a month, which seem to work as a few of the flowers that they had chomped down were back up and about to bloom. I headed off to Ft. Worth to take care of Lane (my granddaughter) and left Darryl in charge of watering the flowers. I had only been gone a couple of days when I got the call...... "the rabbits got in to the flower bed last night and ate down all of the flowers". Now luckily this is just in one flower bed which is located quite a way from the house. So I pleaded with Darryl to spray the flowers again to ward off the rabbits 'til I could get back. Much to my surprise not only did he spray all of the flowers he even went to the local Home Depot and talked to someone about what to do about rabbits. They told him to use blood meal, which is suppose to be a really good deterrent and last for quite a while.

In addition to all of this my mom came for a visit as did our friends Sheri and Bill from Reno. Since this was the first time visit for all of them we tried to cram in as many site seeing and other activities as we could while they were in the Valley.

Oh, and have I mentioned I love living in the Valley, the laid back casual life style, the mild winter weather, the early blooming flowers and the great days of riding! And did I mention all of the wonderful 'winter' Texan friends that we have???

Having said all of this I am posting pictures of the things we did this winter.