Filed under Andrii Frolov Art, Oil Paintings I Love
Yesterday I got lazy, but I’ve been trying to do something in our yard each day. Things are starting to shape up now, but I’m having more and more trouble finding time between rain showers to do much.
I SHOULD have weed whacked yesterday. My husband mowed the yard a couple of days ago, so he’s done his part, but I just couldn’t get motivated. I’ll try to get it done today, though scattered showers are forecast and we are under a flood watch. Adding insult to injury, the forecast is for scattered showers and thunderstorms for the NEXT SIX DAYS!
I’m in the frustrating position of feeling guilty no matter what I’m doing. If I’m outside working in the yard, I feel guilty that I haven’t vacuumed the tiled areas on our first floor. I actually saw a clump of Amber hair floating around yesterday… If I’m inside cleaning or paying bills, I feel guilty because if it’s not raining, I should be outside weeding, pruning, planting things…. THE RESULT – yesterday I read the rest of a book. (I know. I’m a slob.) :0)
SO – when I finish my blog posts for today, I’ll get outside and at least get STARTED weed whacking. I’ll try for two sessions today, plus my yoga stretching this afternoon. I’m also planning to finish off enjoyment of a rotisserie chicken by making chicken salad as part of our dinner tonight.
I hope that your Saturday has both productivity and fun.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Filed under Bead Embroidery, Embroidery/Sewing Art
Here’s a picture of last year’s crop before we had the truly horrible winter that killed off the bulbs –
This is a planter on one side of our front porch. I had planted some iris in it. They bloomed, but the planter looked ‘unfinished’ or ‘unplanned,’ to me, so I decided to dig up the iris and relocate it. There is room for growth on either side of this planter. (Besides no one comes in our front door anyway. Everyone comes in through the garage.) I’m hoping the third bulb is happy here, growing its heart out.
Here’s where I relocated the iris. (As you can see, Amber – including her feet – was helping me.) There is a Rio Samba rose plant in the center, which has bloomed once this spring. I pruned it so I hope it will bloom again soon. My SIL told me about two phone apps that may help me identify what the perennial is with the little spikes of purple flowers. It’s on my list to see how the apps work and see if one of them will help me. Fingers crossed.
I spent a total of 2 hours working in the yard yesterday. I re-weeded the trio of planters that run between the top of the driveway and our front yard, and pruned things more harshly –
If the rain holds off, I plan to spend quite a bit of time outside today, too. I want to weed whack where my husband couldn’t get with the mower, spray KillsAll to help me have to weed whack less and make it easier for my husband to mow, and then tackle another planter –
I hope your weather is such that you can enjoy being outside, too.
Filed under Gardening
I fertilized everything. Looking good so far. We’re really enjoying the spinach and lettuce in salads. I also have a couple of HEADS of lettuce doing well. :0)
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
I felt this way earlier. We had to get up early to go get lab work done first thing this morning at our doctor’s office for a routine appointment next week. I had to get up twice during the night to talk sternly to Amber, who was barking at ghost gophers. She was finally quiet. My husband gets up before I do much of the time, but he was sleeping soundly when I awoke. Murphy’s Law that since we were both finally sleeping well, we had to get up.
After our tests we rewarded ourselves with a nice breakfast at The Dari, our favorite restaurant in Greenwood. My husband is pretty picky about how he wants his eggs, and he’s gotten spoiled here because they ALWAYS get it right.
We are now home, I’ve just made a pot of coffee and MAY be able to function rather than essentially sleep-walking through the morning. (My husband is taking a nap.)
The weather people are trying their darnedest to look like they know what they’re doing, but I think they’ve thrown their arms up in the air about whether it will rain or not. I’m still reading forecasts, but then just look out the door and decide.
I did some work outside yesterday that I’ll show you in another post. I plan to spend more time out there today (weather permitting) and weed whack if it dries enough or weed and prune more planters if it doesn’t.
Enjoy today and the coming weekend.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________, weather
Filed under Embroidery/Sewing Art
Filed under When Wood Comes Alive, Wooden Faces
We are home again, NOT having drowned getting groceries and other supplies, plus our mail. It started sprinkling as we started home, but we could unload the truck in the dry garage, so it was all good. Now it’s quite overcast and sprinkling more heavily, with harder rain starting about 3 this afternoon, according to the latest forecasts.
Does anyone know why the humidity is listed only as 78% when it’s raining?
Since it IS raining, the iris will have to wait until the weather is cooperating to be relocated.
One thing on my wish list these days is that grocery prices will come down reasonably soon. I realize that no one can simply wave a magic wand and bring prices down, but we didn’t even buy much today and had the highest bill in my memory. Depressing and scary.
May you stay safe from the weather and the grocery store. :0)
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
We’re supposed to have storms starting later today. We’re going to go shopping in a few minutes to get our mail and get some groceries in for what looks to be a rainy few days ahead.
I planted my elephant ear bulbs in three different brick planters around the front yard yesterday. Clearing out one of the planters was quite laborious, with having to lop off a LOT of heavy branches from two trees behind and around the planter. I may have to do more down the line, but it’s enough for now.
The bulbs are huge and look like small bowling balls without finger holes. I couldn’t tell from looking at them which was ‘up’ and ‘down.’ I researched, and it said the end that is more rough, with what might look like gouges or holes is the end where the roots will come out and should go DOWN in the hole. I’m now anxiously awaiting a spurt of greenery to show.
If the rain holds off for a while after we return this morning, I’ll see if I can get the iris I dug out of one of the planters bracketing the front porch relocated in planters around the yard.
My only plans other than the above are to clean up my area around my computer, pay bills, file, bookkeeping, cooking, etc. Exciting, huh! :0)
I hope that your Thursday is a happy one.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
I have ONE of THREE elephant ear bulbs planted now. I’m trying to cut stuff off OVER and around the planter, and then dig up stuff IN the second planter for the second bulb. There is a tree or trees behind this planter, and I’m having to reach way up and lop off branches, then catch them before they fall on me, and then throw them in a pile to haul off when I’m finished.
If I didn’t like the idea of changing the focus of these three planters so much, spreading the elephant ears around the front yard, I would just declare this a dumb project and regroup. I can SEE how the elephant ear plant might look in the 2nd planter, so I’m taking a break, drinking a bunch of water, resting, and then will go out for another session.
One of the problems of living in woods is that the vegetation would like to go back to where it was, not only encroaching on what we laughingly call the ‘civilized’ part of our yard, but totally engulfing it so that it looks like we were never here -even after 37 years. Half or more of what I do every year is hack stuff down.
I need to remove enough stuff that the elephant ears have the room they need to grow. I can continue hacking at stuff around this planter, but I want to clear enough area that I don’t have to come back right away.
Happily enough, if I can finish with this second planter, the third one won’t be as much work.
Filed under Gardening
I’m excited. The elephant ear bulbs I ordered a while back were delivered this morning. They are HUGE and GORGEOUS!
After seeing how large they are, I’m planning to put one in the regular 8 foot brick planter in the rock bed in front of the house where I’ve been planting them for several years. I’m going to plant the second bulb across the yard in the middle of another brick planter that is beside the well house, and the third in the middle of a planter that runs in front of the other end of the house, spreading the wealth all across the front yard. :0)
I may need to move some things, and maybe prune some others, but I think it’s time for a shake-up, changing the focus of a couple of our planters. I love spring because it’s full of possibilities.
I’ll tackle this after lunch. There won’t be anything to SEE until the plants sprout, but we’re due for rain tomorrow, so it would be good to get the bulbs in today.
Filed under Gardening
Filed under Phillipe Faraut Sculpture, sculpture
Happy May Day! I just dated myself because I had a bad time trying to find the image above. To ME, May Day means children around a May pole winding long, colorful ribbons around it. I never actually DID that, or even WATCHED others do it. I guess it was just conveyed in pictures, coloring books, and more. Anyhow, it’s an image that is fading away.
So we’ll just wish each other well and hope it’s a nice day. It was rainy here when I first got up, but the sun seems to be coming out. I was planning to work in the yard, weed whacking to neaten up after my husband mowed the yard a couple of days ago. Hopefully, things will continue to improve so I can get outside.
The cheerful mail lady just drove up to deliver the three elephant ear bulbs I ordered recently. They’re HUGE and beautiful balls of promise. I’ll get them planted as soon as the weather permits.
Quotesgram
Since it’s the first of another month, it’s time for accountability check on my efforts to lose the lard.
WEIGHT: down 23 pounds since my heaviest. (I gained 2 from eating at the Mexican restaurant locally, enjoying every bite as I gained the weight. I’ll get it off again ASAP and then go for more.)
GIRTH: I’m down a total of 3 inches overall this month, with bits down a bit here and there. The biggest good difference was on my abdomen – down an inch from a month ago.
I’m hoping that ‘slow and steady’ ultimately wins the race.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
I had a nice harvest from our little garden this morning. I just finished washing it and putting it in gallon bags for the fridge. We’ll have some of it tonight in a chef salad for dinner.
I’m going to look online for cooking fresh leaf spinach because I’ve never done that before (even though I’m older than dirt, there are lots of things I haven’t done yet :0) )
I still have some pruning, supporting, and weeding to do out there. I’ll do another session soon.
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
Filed under When Wood Comes Alive
I was doing okay until I caught myself this morning, starting to open the door to the garage to go out and feed Abby. I guess different things will cause me to lose it over the next period of time. I’m happy we got to share 13 years. When I left a message for our son, he answered, “I’m sorry. She was an exceptionally good cat.” And that sums it up.
Since we’re having a nice morning, I’m planning on harvesting some lettuce and spinach this morning, plus seeing what is needed, otherwise, in our small garden. I probably need to prune tomato plants, do some weeding, some added supports for the tomatoes, etc. It’s nice to have a quiet day where I can do several sessions in the yard, resting in-between.
My husband asked me to go out to dinner last night, to one of the local Mexican restaurants. I was excited about going, but started worrying about what I could eat, being on my low-carb eating plan. I researched, finally deciding that I could order fajitas, take my own zero-net-carb tortillas, and ask them to leave off the rice, beans, and tortillas, and not bring chips and salsa to the table.
As the day wore on, I kept fighting with myself. I had actually put two small tortillas in a sandwich bag in my purse, and then decided, NO. Last night we had a wonderful time at the restaurant. It had been over a year since we had gone out to dinner. I had chips and salsa. I ate a beef taco salad. It was all delicious. I enjoyed every. single. bite. I gained 2 lbs. I don’t care. It may be another year before we do it again, and life is short. When you’re invited out to eat, or eat at someone else’s home, all bets are off as far as a ‘diet’ is concerned, in my HUMBLE opinion. Eat everything. Enjoy the experience. The next day is soon enough to get back on the more healthful eating plan.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
My husband fell on the ice at the bottom of the driveway in January, breaking his collarbone. The recovery period was 10-12 weeks. He was functional well before that, but changing the mailbox decoration, where he has to get up on a ladder to get a decoration from off a hook in the shop, maneuver the heavy metal decoration down, carry it out to the truck, then get the current one off the mailbox and the new one on, and then store the now unused decoration was more than I wanted to THINK about, much less DO.
The decision was reinforced when our dog, Amber, pulled him down while she was on the leash, making him fall headlong into one of our brick planters, slashing the back of his ear and dislocating his little finger almost exactly one month ago. His ear is still healing from the injury and the 8 stitches needed to stop the bleeding.
Yesterday he brought up the subject of changing the mailbox decoration.
He chose this one to put up – Wile E. Coyote, Sonic the Hedgehog, and the Roadrunner, with Sonic accepting money from Wile E. for catching the Roadrunner and giving him to the coyote.
This decoration was fun and challenging for us. It was the first time we tried to do a more 3-D decoration, with the legs of the Roadrunner made from rebar. You can see on the back of this piece where I tried to blend the support piece into the painting of the figures.
My husband spent some time out in the shop after we put up the decoration yesterday. When he came in, he said he had a really bad time trying to put the Happy New Year decoration back up on its hook in the shop, and decided it was really too big and heavy and unwieldy to use again.
As we age, we’re trying to make some decisions as to what is important and what isn’t in the grand scheme of things. We like putting up the decorations on our mailbox, but will now stop putting up ones that are too difficult and might result in one or both of us getting hurt. The Happy New Year one is the first on the list not to use again. We do have another decoration of Calvin and Hobbes where they are hugging each other, that we can use in place of the Happy New Year one.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
We went out to take our trash down, change the mailbox decoration, and get our mail a few minutes ago. We found Abby on the woodpile in the garage, where she stays during the day. She was still with us this morning and was interested in eating when I went out to feed her.
She’s been a member of our family for 13 years. She had bad arthritis in both back legs and a large inoperable tumor on her kidney. We knew her days were numbered, and I’ve been bringing her inside when I could make time to sit with her and just love her.
I didn’t want her to suffer, and things were just quietly going downhill, but it’s hard.
We have lots of good memories.
RIP, Sweet girl.
Filed under Family
Filed under When Wood Comes Alive, Wooden Faces
I love this photo. There is a whole section loosely under ‘kids and animals’ on Pinterest that really makes me smile. I hope you’re enjoying these, too.
We keep our bedroom cool, and really dark, with a fan and a white noise machine running so we have a CHANCE to sleep well. Usually it works pretty well.
Since my husband’s latest fall, my inability to stop his bleeding and trip to the ER in Fort Smith in the middle of the night, I’ve been having some bad dreams. This happened last night. My husband woke me at 6am by reaching out to ‘see if I was still in the bed’. I was, and none too cheerful to be awakened after about 3 hours of sleep. I woke up again a bit later to find he had dressed and gone downstairs. (He is taking a nap now as I type.)
I love the whole feel of this place. I want to walk here, meet the people.
I’m in awe of the patience and skill required to do this.
I think this is simply stunning.
Isn’t this glorious?
I love living in a world populated by so many talented people.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
We had super heavy rain in waves from about 8pm until a bit after 11 last night. We were lucky. We were under a tornado warning – with Greenwood actually mentioned as ‘in the path’ but – other than it becoming ominously quiet at one point – the bad stuff passed by us. I watched the TV coverage until I could see the yellow and red blobs, along with associated tornado rectangles, had passed us. (I need to do a harvest of the lettuce and spinach this afternoon.)
I walked around the yard this morning to see if we had any damage. I found one rose bush branch was broken off, but that was all. The garden is still looking good. They certainly got the watering they probably wanted, and then some, but all looks good so far. (The lettuce plants here are head lettuce, and the heads are forming!) I’ll bring some bungie cords to put around the supports to give the tomato plants more to hang onto.
I’m planning to go out later – weather permitting – and see what needs more support, rearranging (in the case of the tomato branches) and what needs harvesting (lettuce and spinach.)
The clematis bloomed suddenly. The blooms are looking a bit battered after the storm, but I’m hoping they’ll perk up. I’ll bring my husband out later, since these are his favorite.
And this is the first bloom of our Stella de Oro lilies. You can see there are several buds, so I’m hoping we’ll have a nice display.
My sister-in-law sent me some phone apps suggestions that might help me identify my mystery perennials. I added them to my phone, and hope to make the time to see how they work later today. She also sent me a Kindle book on flowers and veggies. Isn’t she wonderful?
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
Filed under ceramics, Clay Art, Stephanie Quayle
These pics are from a couple of days ago. All the plants seem happy right now. I really need to harvest lettuce and spinach, but will have to wait until the rain leaves us.
I was excited to see a couple of ‘heads’ of lettuce forming when I looked at things quickly yesterday!
I’m hoping to be able to get up close and personal with my plants tomorrow, doing some harvesting, pruning, and supporting. I also have four planters left to weed and lots of things to cut back…
Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds
There is a group of 6 books on Amazon comprising the Jake Moriarity series by R. G. Ryan. You can click on the link above to go there, but I have to warn you. If you enjoy strong, interesting people who confront scary situations, risking life and limb in order to save people in bad situations and right grievous wrongs in doing so, you may become addicted, as I have.
Jake Moriarity is a complex man. He insists that his work is ‘finding people,’ rather than the labels people would like to use, such as ‘private detective’. He’s very skilled and smart, with a special ability to see a crucial bit more than normal people might in a given situation, making the difference between success and failure. He’s a loner, but is very close to a chosen few and their interactions will make you tear up.
R.G. Ryan is a good writer. He crafts interesting stories for these wonderful characters. He is witty, with interesting turns of phrases. He has a strong sense of the ironic, making me snort sometimes from the sarcasm in one breath, then becoming quite touched a sentence or two after that. (My favorite lines in #6 are, “Weeping ensued. Treysi cried as well.”)
I just finished #6 and have downloaded #7. I follow him on X (the former Twitter). He told me that “Here Be Darkness”, #9 should be out by the first week in June, and that he started #16 a couple of weeks ago. I keep reading several books in-between treating myself to one of his because I don’t want to run out. :0)
Try him -if you don’t mind adding an addiction.
Filed under Book - Movie - TV Reviews, R.G. Ryan
I didn’t have a chance to take pictures at the car show this year, so I found this one that is quite representative of the diversity of vehicles people have worked hard to restore.
My husband had his first haircut since Amber, our dog, pulled him down into a brick planter, causing him to need 8 stitches behind his left ear. Michael – Tangles Hair Salon – (479) 996-6366 did his usual ‘miracle’ for the Lewises, plus taking care of the whole wound area. My husband was relieved to look well-groomed in hair, mustache and beard again.
We enjoyed walking around the square for a bit after, with my husband interested in the engine of each vehicle, me interested in the LOOK of the vehicles, both remembering working on our own cars – even changing some engines ourselves – years ago, when you could actually GET to parts and replace them.
My personal favorite every time I see one is the 1932 Ford Coupe –
There was a deep purple vehicle I saw in the distance as we passed, grabbing me by the throat, but we were already tired and it was raining lightly, so we didn’t see it close up.
We were able to get the “prescription override” on my husband’s medicine after the car show. Because I went through Humana, made sure I ordered a new supply that would be sent ASAP and explained he had NONE, they told me to go through our primary physician for the override. I contacted them through the ‘portal’ and they called it in to our local pharmacy. It cost us nothing and was ready when we got there. Whew!
We’re in the very active area for storms this weekend. Thankfully, we only got rain last night. We may have severe storms this afternoon and evening if the rain stops and it heats up during the day. Right now it’s raining lightly and quite overcast. I hope it stays that way.
I hope that your weather is quiet where you are today and that you have a pleasant Sunday.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Just a quick note –
We’re going to get a haircut for my husband for the first time since Amber pulled him down and he had to have stitches behind his left ear. After that, we’re hoping to see some of the car show in the Greenwood Square. We’ll pick up a medicine for my husband and then head home.
It’s quite overcast, with the wind whipping the tree branches around. I don’t know if we’ll drown while we’re out or not. The weather folks are saying it’s not supposed to rain until this evening and overnight, but they’ve been wrong before…
I’ll write when we get back.
Take care and stay safe.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
creativeartworksblog 