A Time For Everything

 

Let's catch up a bit. I've been remiss in my blogging duties since the beginning of the year. Blogging wasn't high on my priority list while I was preparing to be gone on the cruise as well as while on the cruise, you know?

Once we came back, things went down with my daughter's life partner--which you saw in my previous post. Life feels like it's on fast forward right now--hockey playoffs aren't helping--and time is at a premium. There just doesn't seem to be enough time (or energy, quite frankly) to get ALL THE THINGS done. So I've had to prioritize.

I flew to Colorado mid-April to help my Brown-Eyed Girl get her car and her cat to Texas. She returned to CO to finish packing up the household stuff she wants to keep and transport it to Texas. My house looked as if a moving van vomited in it. And that wasn't even all her stuff. Just under half went into a storage unit!

So what have I been up to in between prepping for vacation, being on vacation, and dealing with a family loss?

A bit of home improvement!

I worked on one of my hall closets...all my random lap / dog blankets were in a stack in a laundry basket. But it was a huge pain in the butt to get to any of the blankets at the bottom of the pile. What you see are actually shoe racks. Walmart had them on sale, so I got two for the price of one. This is soooo much better.

On a smaller but similar vein, my charger cables were all hung on a single hook and I had to juggle up to 8 to 10 cables to find the one I wanted. So I made my own cable sorter. I already had the small clear hooks which are very small but have enough room for the diameter that most cables come in. I've since added a couple of extra hooks to this. This started off as a magnetic white board for lockers and cost me all of $3! This was very handy while on the cruise. Cruise cabin walls are metals, so my cable sorter had a place to live.

* * * * *

On another front, I've been wanting to plant flowers to bring pollinators back into my world. It took me a while to get to it, but I finally did so. I'm not quite done, but I started and I'm excited. I started with gladiolus bulbs several weeks ago and they're growing well.

Then a couple of Sundays ago I finally got my flower pots filled. I planted petunias and sweet william from seeds, but -- !! When I was picking up more potting soil from The Home Depot, I saw and bought pale purple vincas! I really like vincas. They're easy to grow and harvest seeds from, but I've only ever seen white and pink ones. The price was right so I bought three plants and replanted them in the American flag planter I bought years ago with...guess what?...vincas in it. :0)

* * * * *

And now it's playoff time, so DD and I have gone to games and watch parties.

Have a super week. Catch you later.

 

 

Image courtesy IMGBIN.

A Miracle for Sale

I paid a dime for a package of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We’ve got ‘em assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lip,
“Pansies and poppies and asters and peas!
Ten cents a package! And pick as you please!”

I paid a dime for a package of seeds
And the clerk tossed them out with a flip.
“We’ve got ‘em assorted for every man’s needs,”
He said with a smile on his lip,
“Pansies and poppies and asters and peas!
Ten cents a package! And pick as you please!”

“You’ve a dime’s worth of power which no man can create,
You’ve a dime’s worth of life in your hand!
You’ve a dime’s worth of mystery, destiny, fate,
Which the wisest cannot understand.
In this bright little package, now isn’t it odd?
You’ve a dime’s worth of something known only to God.”

There are seeds, but he plants and the blossoms are here
With their petals of various hues;
In these little pellets, so dry and so queer,
There is power which no chemist can fuse;
Here is one of God’s miracles soon to unfold,
Thus for ten cents an ounce is Divinity sold!

* * * * *

The only reference I found to this poem via Google-search credited a man called Bob Foster with writing it. I have no idea when.

Many many moons ago, my mom shared this with me. So long ago that I still lived in Nebraska. It really affected me at the time so I kept it. At some point, I printed it on a sheet of decorative paper. And I've kept that paper all these years as well. It's taped to the wall of my home office although it's a little too high for daily notice--I really should lower it so I can enjoy its message more often.

Anywho--take care and have a lovely Easter weekend.

 

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the vinca I dug out of the patio a couple of years ago. It's been sitting in a small planter next to my lawn chair and for some reason I started taking pictures of it every day or two as spring turned into summer... After a random "pinch" last year because one of the plants was getting too tall, I realized that the pinch was good for the plant. So this year, I pinched a couple of them early on and something lovely happened... Both of the plants I pinched grew extensions and I've had record number of blooms all at once.

Last year, I'd enjoy two to four blooms at any given time...this year, I've gotten up to thirteen!!

Look!!

One of the first pics I took back in May, maybe?






And here are some others...










I'm pretty chuffed at seeing this thing still blooming and growing. It's a highlight of each day to go on the patio each day when I get home and see if there are any more blooms.

It's the small things...

Two years ago, I found a vinca growing up from in between the squares of my patio...

I gently tugged all the plants out of the patio and transplanted them into a planter.

They're doing well even two years later.



Happy Monday!

Not much going on, really...just reading, writing, and watching TV. But my vincas that grew up out of the patio last year are back!






I'd transplanted them from the cracks in the patio squares to a planter and they (obviously) are growing and blooming again.

Also, the mimosa tree is in beautiful bloom:





Have a great weekend.

About a month ago, I discovered a vinca growing up the cracks of my patio. It was a pleasant surprise amidst the weeds. While I didn't want things growing out of my patio, I didn't want to just rip it out and toss it in the lawn bag.


So I grabbed an empty flower container and I replanted it along with several of the other vinca sprouts I found. It was touch and go for a few days as they adjusted to their new home, but they finally decided it was okay and I have been enjoying their precious blooms every day since!





Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

My sunflower is close to seven feet now and there's one blooming, and several others getting ready to bloom.

Ten days ago...

 Yesterday...


I love summer flowers and I definitely want more.

What about you?

My back yard! So what's going on with it these days?? Not much really. We had so much rain through April and May that it was all we could do to keep it mowed. There was no time or effort left over for much else. But June brought heat and things are drying out. I did trim up the azalea bush and weed one of the flower beds, so it's looking rather nice. Now if only the wisteria would bloom. I'll have to do a little research on that. The lemon slice super bells are blooming, though...


Now, my other flower bed was flooded by all the rain and gets regularly trampled on by the dog, so it's a lost cause. There's a flower bed kit at The Home Depot I'm saving up for though. And it'll go in this spot. It'll be raised up a bit and I'll probably invest in some decorative fencing to keep the dog out too.


I found this vinca growing up out of the spaces in the patio.


And I have a sunflower growing in the bird feeder bed...it's taller than me now. I can't wait till it blooms.


Have a great rest of the week!

Hope you had a lovely day...

DH treated me to flowers and burgers on the grill as well as doing the shopping for it and cleaning up afterwards. We also watched one of my favorite movies--Star Trek Into Darkness. Over all, a very pleasant day.

...to rest and relax. The weather was perfect for yard work--warm but partly cloudy.

Before the weekend started, I made a list of all the things I wanted to get done yard work wise. Sadly I went great guns on Saturday and was left pretty wrung out on Sunday. So instead of carrying on my yard work, I took care of the normal inside chores such as laundry.

I've been wanting to get my backyard lawn back up to snuff--actual grass rather than 90% weeds. That requires me to rake up all the crap imbedded down in between the grass and weeds. A very tedious and labor intensive task.

But here are a few of the things I accomplished...


Remember this lovely and fun planter I bought last year around this time?


Well, the flowers died, of course, so I replaced the flowers and now I have this...

That's blue lobelia in the center with white vinca and red petunias alternating around it. What do you think?

I also had plant my lemon slice super bells...



I still have quite a few tasks to get done. Hopefully, my energy will back up to near normals and I'll get some more yard work done today. Best of all I got to sleep in today. I don't get to do that very often.

How has your weekend been so far?

The evolution of my azalea bush. :)

And those flowers don't have to be from a man. Although that's always nice, isn't it?

My family lives far far away from me. Oregon, Nebraska, Michigan, Denmark. Most of them are women or girls--I have four nieces, all sisters and all born within five years of each other. (I think. No more than six, though.) And the oldest is entering her teenage years. I don't envy my sister. My own two daughters were enough.

The point of my post is that they're far away and I don't get to see them very often at all, so last year I started sending the nieces flowers on their birthdays. I wanted them to know I'm thinking of them and that they're special to me.

These are the flowers I sent them last year...





I've been sending flowers to mom and grandmother for a few years now. Last year, I added my step-mom to the list, and this year, I'm going to add my sisters. I think I'm going to have to add a line item to my budget for sending flowers. Those flowers to Denmark--not cheap! And I've added a tab to my master spreadsheet of stuff with the pictures so I can keep track of which flower arrangement I've sent to which niece. I'm not so worried about the grown women, but I don't want to duplicate the girls' flowers.

When was the last time you received flowers?

Movie Monday is being postponed until next week. I had the movie watched and the post is all ready to go (I swear), but this weekend was so productive and I bought myself a new camera and got some awesome pics that I wanted to share!

So the new camera is a Canon Powershot SX160 IS with a really awesome zoom lens. Much much better than my previous little Kodak. It was a good little camera, but I've gotten to the point where I want closer pics of things that *I* can't get closer too. (pics to follow) And the battery would no longer charge properly. Yeah, sure, I could have bought a new battery, but...see reason above for buying a nicer new one. Got a good deal (I think so, anyway) at Office Depot.

So I finally finished edging the bird feeder bed:


 On Mother's Day I received three miniature rose bushes, one from each of the kids:



Eventually I lost (okay, killed) one of them, but have managed to nurture the other two along. One bloomed a few days ago and the other has a bud... I was very excited to see these.
Several weeks ago, I'd bought a cool hanging planter for them. They've been doing pretty good hanging on the side of the house, and I do mean hanging on the side of the house. Sonshine hung it from a small little plastic bracket right up under the eave holding the coax cable to the house. So the planter has been resting against the brick.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I happened to be in Albertson's and found another mini-rose bush. So I bought it with the intent to transplant it into the bottom pot of the planter. And then I got a bee in my bonnet yesterday to dress up one of my trees. So now I have this:



I poured ceder mulch around the three huge rocks there at the base of my oak tree, then bought a shepherd's crook to hang the planter on. The crook needs to be embedded into the ground better, but I didn't have the weight to get it all the way in, nor did I have a mallet to help me... The roses are shaded through the hottest part of the day and should do great right there. Plus, I can see them from my kitchen window and my office.

And now for the *really* cool pictures that I took yesterday afternoon:



Now, this here is our resident tree lizard. I've named him Handsome. He's been around a few years at least, and it's always fun to watch him scurry around the tree or across the yard.

And this here is Steffi, one of several squirrels that visit our yard. We're pretty sure she's the same one--none of the others seem to eat the squirrel corn. We'd been calling her Steve, but I finally realized she doesn't have boy parts.

And that, my friends, is that. I'll have a 4th of July update on Wednesday.

Last night DH, DD and I watched Sonshine get inducted into the National Honor Society. I'll admit I was surprised because while he's smart enough, he's not always diligent enough in keeping his grades up. But hey, if they want him, so much the better for college applications.



In the last couple of weeks, we've also attended the Band Banquet and the Spring Concert.




We're on the downhill slide toward the end of the school year and we're all very glad.

In other news, the plants and flowers I planted are doing well! Nothing has died on my watch, so that pleases me. In fact, the Gerbera daisy my daughter gave me several months ago re-bloomed. That surprised me because that one just looked like it was going to wither up and die on me. But with a little TLC--okay, just regular waterings--it decided to stick around.



They don't look so great, but hey--it's alive and blooming. I'll take it. An aspect of flower beds and gardening I'd forgotten about and hadn't taken into account: weeding! But I've managed to stay on top of it despite all the rain we've had and all the watering I do. I need to get after the stuff growing beneath the bird feeders now.

In years past, when DH and Sonshine go work the fireworks, I've taken on projects around the house. Don't you know it's just easier to get it done without the men around asking questions and just generally getting in your way? I've got a couple of projects in mind: re-organizing the master bedroom closet or adding a shelving system to the living room. I'm really leaning toward the closet just because the need is greater. Believe it or not, DH has way more clothes than I do and they're smushed together on his side of the closet.

My proofreading is going well so far and I've gotten another awesome project creating a series bible for two different series for an author friend.

It's been a while since I talked about getting out of debt, but most of the money I'm earning from my new "career" path is going to go towards paying off debt. I mentioned a specific credit card a few months ago and that bad boy will be paid off at the end of June. I'll roll its payment over to another debt. Anyway, I'm so excited about this. It feels good to be able to truly actively work at this, rather than just pay monthly and wait for things to get paid off in due time. Speaking of paid off--we'll also make the last car payment in June as well. Of course we're going to need to put some $$ into the all the vehicles soon. Now I just wish I knew something about investing. Something else to learn in due course.

And that's all for now...time to get Sonshine out of bed and off to school.

How are YOU???