Fade to Black --Living to Stuffed-- ***Outdoor Wednesday***

It's time for another Outdoor Wednesday hosted by Susan at A Southern Daydreamer! After you've finished here, make sure to visit Susan and say hello, then visit the other OW participants!

Recently I bought some flowers to use on my now extra patio table. It's a fairly ugly table and having it sit in the corner all naked just wasn't working for me.

While cruising Ace Hardware, I came upon this pretty, interesting looking plant. Love the color of the leaves. And look at those adorable berries!



Does anyone know what this is? Well, I'll tell you. It's a peppercorn plant!

Who doesn't love a Gerbera daisy? Of course, a week after I potted this it stopped flowering. Dammit!



New Guinea impatien...



This next little plant is called a Crossandra "Flame". Love the apricot colored flowers.




This next one has me all verklempt, even though there's nary a sign of a bud on it. A few weeks ago, while reading Kathy's blog, Casa Dolce Casa, she extolled on the virtues of this beautiful flowering plant. She had me at "vanilla", which is what the blooms of the marine heliotrope smell like. According to Kathy and the nice nursery lady at Ace Hardware, the scent from the flowers is quite powerful, and vanilla being my very favorite scent in the whole world, I had to have one! Unfortunately, all of their heliotrope had just been cut back so no blooms for me just yet! I cannot wait until they show up though!



This next plant is one that I planted from seed a few months ago. Ugly as sin, and more than once I've threatened to throw it out if it didn't start perking up. Well, it's still ugly as sin, but just a few minutes ago I noticed it had flower buds on it. I swear, I nearly wet myself! Well excuuuuuuuuuse me, (insert Steve Martin) I'm sucking down coffee here and it doesn't take much to get me to pee!

What had better be a purple zinnia...



Now I'll show you how ugly it is. I guess I could take off those dead leaves, eh? This plant is so ugly (brings to mind Yo Mama jokes, but I don't think there are any that refer to plants) that it just sits on this here chair for now.



But even more than pretty flowers, one of my favorite things about the outdoors is bad weather. Here are some pictures I captured of the angry skies this week.

Saturday, had to stop at our golf course club house to snap these. Amazing.









I snapped this yesterday while at a stop sign in my neighborhood. I probably could have gotten a better shot, but just as I had my camera ready a car pulled up behind me. I didn't want to be rude, so I just snapped real quick and was on my way.

Today (yesterday, by the time you read this) Jill came to bring Madison home after having her for 9 days. As usual, we immediately went out shopping. While Jill and Mikayla were inside a store, I stayed in the car with 3 of the 4 kids. Loved looking at this sky.


Now you may not consider this "outdoors", but what you're about to see used to be outdoors. When they were alive.

We ate dinner at Clark's Fish Camp. The food is basically overpriced crapola, but the atmosphere is wild.


Yes, all of these animals had been alive and kicking at some point. The restaurant owner is an avid collector and has hundreds of taxidermy animals inside the restaurant.





I took this next picture especially for Picket and Ginger.
Once again, animals that used to be alive.

A sampling of what you can order for dinner. (Gulp)

And look who I found floating around beside the restaurant's dock! Look closely or you may miss him. It was Twilight and I've yet to find a setting on my camera that takes a good shot in low light. Click to enlarge!

Yes, Tiney spotted another gator. Two in just over a week! Ooh, the excitement!!!




I hope you enjoyed my Outdoor Wednesday post this week. I'm guessing a lot of you are wiping your brow in gratitude that I'm slightly less "wordy" on Outdoor Wednesdays!

Have a happy hump day (am I the only one that giggles when I say that?) and make sure to visit Susan now!





Pssst! If you love me, you might love my sister more. Go visit her at Jill's Believe it or Not, and tell her I sent you!