Colors of the Rainbow

The ranch is full of colors at the moment and I just wanted to share a few with you.
 

 

I love these sunflowers that have red in them. It's just a little more jazzy than the plain yellow.

 

 Even though these wild lovelies are named Scarlet Globe Mallows, they appear more orange in my opinion. When my husband and I were dating way back when, he would go to one of the local floral shops in the "big" city (which means the population is under 80,000) and he'd pick out some of the more wild/colorful looking flowers for me. One day he brought me a couple of the most beautiful orange roses and I've loved orange flowers ever since.

 The plant up top is sweet clover. True to it's name it has a strong sweet smell and the bees love it! This year we seem to have an over abundance of it. Now that it's getting to the end of it's season and starting to dry out, it becomes a very large fire hazard out here on the prairie.

 

My garden is finally starting to kick it in gear. We started the summer off cool and rainy. I can't complain, it's been beautiful, but it's not so great for veggies that are craving some sun and heat.

The rain gauge has been empty for a while now. The only thing that has been in it was the two inches of sand I dumped out that the girls poured in. We're starting to heat up and get dry out here on the range. Our oldest turned 6 earlier this month and was lucky enough to get a pool for her birthday. I think it would be safe to say that they would live in it and pretend to be mermaids for the rest of the summer if they could.

 

 Haying season has been in full swing for a couple of weeks now, and there isn't much left to cut. After our main hayfield was hailed out early this summer, we've been blessed to get enough rain since then for the guys to get a decent second crop out of it. 

 

  

 

 Mary Toodles has finally learned to use her pedal bike so now she and her sister are the local biker gang on the street. We start each of our kids on a Strider bike and when they out grow that, we move them up to a pedal bike. I've noticed that they seem to be able to handle balancing a bigger bike better and faster and we haven't had the need for training wheels for either of them. 

I hope you're all having a good and safe summer where ever you may be!

Take Care and God Bless!