Whiteley Creek Homestead

The daily downpours, that we have received for weeks, transformed my front porch cement into a lovely carpet of algae. Today we were blessed with a full day of sunshine, so I mopped the porch floor. It wouldn’t have mattered what I did today as long as it was spent outside. Any task was enjoyable. After I finished the floor, I went inside and brought lemonade and peanut butter oatmeal raisin flax cookies out to the table and Dick and I sat a spell watching a “thirteen line ground squirrel” skitter back and forth under the lilac bushes. He stopped long enough to spy our cookies… hoping, I am sure, that we would leave a crumb or two. The gray weathered wooden box is an old chicken nesting box that I cleaned up and Dick hung it on the wall for me to set potted plants in. I tied a variety of aprons, from my stash that I had gathered from yard sales, onto the backs of the chairs to give it a softened “garden party” atmosphere.

I wanted you to see this unusual gerbera daisy on my front porch because when it is beginning to bud out, its petals are a lime green color with a burgundy center. (See little flower in foreground.) In its mature stage, it turns a sunny yellow color with the same burgundy center.