Flower Friday - Sedum + Friday 5

 'Blue Spruce' Sedum

This week's featured flower is 'Blue Spruce' Sedum!  These bright yellow flowers bloom above the blue-green foliage of this perennial succulent.  The foliage grows in needle-like formations that resemble the branches of a Blue Spruce tree, and the flowers bloom atop long pinkish stems that stand above the foliage.  This six-inch groundcover grows well in full sun or partial shade and is very drought-tolerant.  It blooms all summer long and is evergreen in our region.  It is quite easy-to-grow and spreads quickly.   This variety of Sedum blooms best if dead-headed regularly throughout its flowering season.   To learn more about about 'Blue Spruce' Sedum (also called Stonecrop), check out Monrovia's  'Blue Spruce' Stonecrop page, Wikipedia's Sedum Reflexum page, or the 'Blue Spruce' Sedum page at Dave's Garden.

A few book & blogosphere notes:

1.  If you happen to live in the Northwest, the Wordstock Festival is an awesome event happening in Portland, Oregon this weekend.  Lots of fabulous authors will be making appearances, including L.K. Madigan, April Henry, Dale Bayse, Kaleb Nation, and Becca Fitzpatrick!  You can read more about it here & check out the full schedule here. 

2.  I Heart Monster is hosting a fun YA giveaway featuring eight awesome books (several of them signed), including Holly Black's White Cat, Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, Kimberly Derting's The Body Finder, Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth, and Melissa Marr's Radiant Shadows.  You can enter that giveaway here (ends 11/5).

3.  Check out Cinda Williams Chima's guest blog post at Novel Novice and enter to win one of three copies of The Demon King and The Exiled Queen (ends 10/15).

Friday 5 is a meme hosted by Friday5.org  This week's theme:  Mementos.

1.  Do you still have your senior yearbook?  Yes.  Where is it?  In a closet.

2.  What souvenir did you bring back from your last trip?  The last trip I remember bringing home souvenirs from was a trip to Disneyland.  We brought home several new pins, a photo album, family silhouettes, and autograph books.

3.  What visible signs are there of your most recent injury?  I don't have any very recent injuries (thank goodness), but I do have a new scar on my foot from an evil pair of shoes I wore for a few hours one day this summer.

4.  What’s the neatest wedding favor you’ve ever seen?  I loved the favors at my BFF's wedding.  They were little goodie bags that coordinated perfectly with the wedding theme/colors & were filled with fun goodies like playdoh, old-fashioned candies, & temporary tattoos.  :)

5.  What do you do with playbills and movie-ticket stubs?  I save them.  I have a binder with plastic slide protectors that is filled with movie tickets from the past fifteen years & playbills usually end up in a box with special holiday cards and other paper mementos.