This was a jam packed weekend with a little bit of everything. Off we go:

My niece/god-daughter turned two so we headed up to the ‘rents house for the festivities:

There is still no better spectator sport than watching the little ones chow down on cake with reckless abandon:

There were like 500 babies/little kids at the party, including my nephew/godson who just learned to walk this past week. He was like a mini Frankenstein roaming throughout the bash:

And the required “let’s get the kids together photo” that always works out so well. Note how poorly my son is holding his cousin and my daughter legendarily never looks into the camera:

One last thought on this party – Our kids were by far the oldest at 8 and 5 as most of the kids were between like 6 months and 3 years old. My wife and I just sat back and loved watching the chaos and parental insanity as the kids cried, knocked over lights, crapped themselves or fell off the deck. To have been there already and survived it is awesome so we just kicked back and gave each other “the nod”.

On Sunday, my son and his baseball team were on the field at a minor league baseball game so we hit the park for the day:

The kids loved being on the field with the “real players”:

After the opening ceremonies, we found our seats and had a healthy snack:

Seriously, cotton candy is friggin evil stuff. I’m pretty sure we just upped our dental bill by about a $1000 dollars this year.

This mascot had his eyes on my wife so I made a point to find him after the game and pummelled him a bit:

A lot of people find baseball super boring but I still say there is no better way to spend a relaxing spring/summer afternoon (beverage in hand) than at the ballpark. My wife and I still miss the days when we had partial season tickets to the New York Mets.

And to cap off the weekend, I toured the grounds at home to see what was doing. I must have taken 500 photos and I think I’m becoming that parent who shows you 100 pictures of his boring kid where you snooze off after photo number 5. Good luck making it through the following:

Overnight, the Joe Pye Weed emerged and we all yelled “Can I get an amen?”:          

I am a fan of growing deciduous shrubs in containers that I know will never survive elsewhere. This Sambucus  ‘Black Lace’ is doing well so far:

Same goes with the Prunus Cistena (PurpleLeaf SandCherry), especially after underplanting with yellow Sweet Potato Vine:

Do you have peony envy?:

Like parmesan cheese (more specifically, parmigiana reggiano), ornamental grasses just make everything around them better:

A new Heuchera (Coral Bell) picked up at last year’s Garden Writer’s conference. It is the only plant that survived the plane ride home. I dig the silvery tone and veining on the leaves:

I thought I lost her, but ‘Sweet Kate’ Tradescantia (Spiderwort) survived the winter. There is another one that just popped up as well so color me happy:

I am a sucker for Astilbes and they look fantastic so far with all the rain we’ve had:

Spittle bugs? Kind of looks like someone hocked a loogie if you ask me.

My daughter and I managed to sow some lettuce/kale/spinach seeds (better late than never … we’ll do our best to prevent it from bolting as the weather warms) on Sunday night:

Just as we finished, the sky turned evil and it is supposed to be nasty here for the next few days:

Oh well, guess we’ll have to stay inside and catch up on all the shows we’ve got piled up on the DVR. I’m talking Real Housewives of OC, Sister Wives, Survivor … educational type shows.

John