I have to look in a wildflower book to put a name on these blooms...notice how tiny they are compared to the wristwatch

 This is the ND state flower, the prairie rose with one bud ready to open and rose hips starting on ripe blooms

 Have to check the book on these tiny flowers too...always have called them bluebells

 And the same for these tiny "daisy" looking flowers

 This one I know, the Purple Coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia)

 Wild Lily, erroneously called a "Tiger Lily"

 Also a Purple Coneflower....the roots have medicinal value (Echinacea) and have been used by Native Americans for cold remedies, etc.

 Some guests that we took on a wildflower tour...this patch in the prairie is full of Purple Coneflowers

One of the signs that spring is really here are these crocuses popping up in the wild prairie

These usually show up in late March or early April, and their real name is Pasqueflower

Beauty in the sky....sunrise photographed from front deck

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Beauty on the ground....you almost have to click on the photo and enlarge it to appreciate this rock

 Standing in the exact same place you see the beauty of this canola field and tree line looking this direction....which man had a hand in creating

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by turning 180 degrees to look in the opposite direction you see  a ND landmark, Saddle Butte, 7 miles away across the lake and unlimited Natural Beauty

This flower bed was started in 2004 using field rock which is plentiful....the lonely apple tree will soon have lots of bedding plants for company and will be blooming a few pictures below

The rock garden provides a barrier between the parking lot and the garden

Kate from Russia looking at the bedding plants at Lowe's Gardens in Minot....Ronna and I are like kids in a candy store when we visit a greenhouse in the spring

The next spring in 2005 we added a rock loop to one side of the rock garden pictured above for a strawberry patch which Ronna and Marina from Russia are planting here

This shows the strawberry patch the year it was started as well as the flowers in the main bed

Another picture of the strawberry patch/flower bed

A 2006 picture in the flower part of the same bed

And another 2006 picture...hopefully we can get the clematis to vine around the heart

Notice how thick the strawberry patch is now complete with a guard to keep the birds out...it bore fruit from June through the middle of October

A clematis bloom in the flower bed pictured above

Moss roses...Arlen's favorite flowers as they grow in tough conditions....in rocks where there is little soil or moisture

We plant a few every year but most are from last year's seed which makes it through the winter

A close up of the moss roses....these are in the rocks shown below taken Sept 2007

Mums are late bloomers but hardy....this picture taken October 24, 2007 when most flowers in ND have succumb to frost

Large field rocks make a great natural looking  wall when landscaping slopes

The 24' X 8' flag didn't turn out so well this year as the petunias spread out too much and mixed together...it also was so dry that there wasn't enough water to keep the lawn green

You don't appreciate the size of these rocks until you put something by them for perspective....these benches are 8' wide

More shrubs and landscaping at the sign in the driveway....Katya, our first girl from Russia, with Lucky and Snickers

 Here are the blooms on the apple tree by the rock garden....the tree variety is called "Fireside" and the apple is as fine an eating apple as there is...the tree was loaded with fruit in the fall with some almost as big as a softball

 This apple tree is in the vegetable garden and it is a cross between a yellow variety and a delicious...produces a good eating yellow apple but it has never yielded like the fireside tree

We started a new raspberry patch in 2004...it produced lots of fruit in 2006 and even more in 2007....raspberry freezer jam is one of our guest's favorite treats here

You really don't think of North Dakota and watermelons, but we raised some nice ones in 2006

Ronna picking some fresh vine-ripened tomatoes and cucumbers for the evening meal

You don't really think of North Dakota and yellow roses either, but these came from the rock garden...the melon weighed over 20 pounds and was vine-ripened delicious

Time to make some raspberry freezer jam or can some sauce which is great on ice cream

 Still getting strawberries in October when the apples were getting ripe

Fireside apples on the left and the yellow delicious on the right which are about baseball size

These are unbelievably good made from real melted Kraft caramels

This huge flowering crab in the campground area is always loaded with blooms but usually only for about a week