Category Archives: Taking walks

Into the Woods

Growing up on the farm, we kids spent a lot of time playing in the woods behind our house. It wasn’t a big woods, although at the time it seemed big to me. It had a little creek running through it that my brothers would dam up and then on hot Summer days we would swim in the little pond they had created. When I think about it now, I cringe because of all the snakes, crawdads and water spiders that were probably in that water. But to farm children on hot summer days, it was a welcome relief and fun besides.

Since I have been married I have wanted to live on a farm or have some land. We are at the age where a working farm is probably out, but this week we became land owners. Something I never thought would happen. We bought a few acres in Brown County, up a steep hill, in the woods. We closed on it yesterday and went for our first walk in the woods. It has a little stream that runs down below the hill. I cannot wait until David gets his bush hog and clears a few paths so that we can go for lots of walks in the woods. We aren’t sure what we will do with the land. Leave it as it is, build on it one day, who knows. It is just nice knowing we have some land that we can take our dogs to where they can roam and run and chase squirrels and we can get away to the country.

Peace and quiet and green all around.

Thick brush that will have to be cleared if we want to be able to walk there.

A clearing, perfect place to build a little house in the woods.

We even had our first visitors. How about that?

There is something about owning land that makes a person feel good. My dad owned eighty acres and the land is still in family hands. I am glad of that. I planted some hollyhocks seeds along the woods. Next Spring we will see if they come up. Bye.

Down Memory Lane

Leave a reply

While decorating the Christmas tree I always get nostalgic remembering Christmases past. David and I have shared so many together with children and without children. It was so much fun having children to get us up early Christmas morning and watching them racing down the stairs to open the presents that Santa had left. It’s not quite the same with two “old” people who get up later and creak down the stairs and make coffee and eat something before we open our presents to each other, but I would not want to change anything for the world. Christmas has always been special to me. I love the carols, the church services that celebrate Jesus’ birth, the Sunday school parties where grownups act like kids sometimes. I love that we celebrate Christ’s birth even though we are probably a few months off on when He was born.

Hanging each ornament on the tree reminds me of a past Christmas.

Santa on a stork. David’s grandmother gave this to us when we were expecting our first child, our older son. The son who did the 5K with me on Thanksgiving day. I have kept it and put it on the tree every year since.

This little snowman candle looks its age. It use to hang on my grandfather’s tree. One year Daddy, my brothers and I went back in the woods behind my grandfather’s house and cut down a tree and brought it back to decorate. I don’t remember my grandparents having a Christmas tree very often, but I remember this one particular year. The ornaments were few, but I loved them and when both my grandparents had passed away, I was fortunate enough to get their ornaments. I have two of these snowmen. They are probably seventy or so years old. I love them.

A friend traveled to Europe and brought back this cute little wooden doll. Pull a string and her legs go up.

Our grandchildren made both of us an ornament one year. We found one broken this year which made me sad, but we still have this one.

McDonald’s gave these away in Happy Meals one year. I kept this one and put it on the tree. A Christmas mouse.

We made a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania one year and I bought some tree ornaments. It was the vacation when, as we were driving there, our younger son sat up and said, “I think I left the freezer door open.” We had this big freezer that had a door that was hard to shut and I was always reminding the kids to shut it tight. I guess it had been ingrained in our son’s head and he thought he had left it open and panicked. David and I just looked at each other and said, “Well, it’s too late now. If all the food is defrosted there is nothing we can do about it.” I actually even forgot about it the rest of the trip and when we got home, the freezer door was closed tightly and all the food was fine. But it makes for a funny memory.

Things our children made at school always get put on the tree.

A few years ago we went to the Virgin Islands and I bought this wonderful sailboat with Christmas lights strung on the sail.

Through the years I have made ornaments. This is suppose to be a reindeer with twig antlers.

A tiny manger scene I have had for years.

One year my daughter and I decided we didn’t like all the “old” ornaments so we went to Target and bought all new balls and decorations for the tree. David did not like that tree so he put up another one with all the old ornaments on it. Now I very seldom use the new ornaments we bought although I do love these particular ones.

I love our tree. We considered not putting it up this year as we had put a tree on the new porch, but it just didn’t seem right not to have a tree in the house so while I took a three mile walk last Sunday with Belle and Molly Marshmallow which became a drag me three miles walk, David put the tree together(yes, it’s a fake tree) and we decorated it and I am so glad we did. It sits in my girly room where I can see it while I work on Christmas projects.

Christmas memories are wonderful. Sometimes they make you laugh, sometimes they make you miss someone, and sometimes they just make you happy. Hope you have more happy memories than sad ones this Christmas. Bye.

Talking Turkey

Leave a reply

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was very nice. It started out early with a 5K walk put on for a senior project by one of the high school students in our town. It was a cold, but beautiful morning. The runners and walkers met in one of the parks we have here.

The park has a covered bridge. The original bridge that was here was set on fire several years ago by vandals and the city had to find one to replace it. I like the new bridge even better. It looked so pretty in its Fall setting.

The river was running swiftly that morning. This river floods the park about every year or so.

I went here to get my number and my shirt. Registration included bringing at least five cans of food for Love Chapel, an organization that helps needy people. They gathered over four thousand cans of food that day. How great is that?

I am beginning to get a collection of 5K shirts. I hope I can walk in a few more next year.

Our son arrived from Cincinnati with a friend and her son. My son was not a happy camper about the run. But because he’s the one who talked me into doing it, he was compelled to run it. Yes, he would run it. I would walk it. I don’t run if I don’t have to.

There were around four hundred people participating in all ages and sizes and clothing choices.

Shawna and her son walked with me. We were bundled up against the cold. I think I had about four layers on, but my legs still got cold.

Some people really got into the theme of the race by dressing the part. This man looked like he was riding a turkey.

There were several different turkey hats.

Even cooked turkey hats!

Here we are completing the walk. I think we were the last ones as everyone else was running. See that boy behind us? He probably walked four miles as he meandered all over while we walked the trail.

Then we went home. Dogs were played with. We ate a huge meal. I have not been hungry all day today.

We played Dizzios. I lost as usual. I keep telling my one grandson that one day I will beat him. He is really good at this game.

I love these two. They made David and me turkey pictures. They are so cute.

When I looked around our table, I knew exactly what I was thankful for. Family and friends. What would the world be like without them? And love. That’s what it’s all about. Bye.

Smells

Leave a reply

Have you ever been somewhere that you smell something and it takes you to a memory of the past? That happens with me quite often. It happened today as I was walking Belle. I smelled fish and water from the gravel pit near where I was walking and suddenly, I was in Traverse City, Michigan. You know how it smells around large bodies of water? That is how it smelled to me. It smelled like Traverse City which sits on a bay of Lake Michigan. We went to Traverse City for our honeymoon and for years afterward we would take the family up to visit David’s grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. We haven’t been there in a long time. His grandparents and aunts and uncles have passed away and his cousins have moved away.

When we honeymooned there we were poor and ate most of our meals at Burger Chef. Anyone remember that fast food place? Remember the Big Chef sandwich? At Traverse City they served the hamburgers on homemade buns that were so delicious. At the time we were there, the Cherry Festival was going on. The streets were crowded and vendors were set up all over town. We ate I don’t know how many french fries sprinkled with salt and vinegar hot out of the oil from the vendors. We walked all over, swam in the cold water and spent one night on David’s uncle’s boat. We watched fireworks over the bay. It was a wonderful time. I felt so free and happy. I was married to the man of my dreams and we had the world at our feet.

Another thing I smell that brings back memories is a bologna sandwich. I can smell one of those and be back in the cafeteria at Greens Fork School. Sometimes I took my lunch and mother always sent a bologna sandwich, chips and a fruit of some kind. I bought my milk at school. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like the food in the cafeteria. The cooks there were the best. They served delicious homemade food to include macaroni and cheese, cinnamon rolls, mashed potatoes and green beans. All made fresh in the cafeteria kitchen by the three or four ladies who worked there. We had no one telling them what to fix. They were all mothers and knew what we kids liked to eat and what was nutritious. You could smell what they were cooking throughout the school and by lunch time your stomach would be growling so loudly and you felt you would die if you didn’t get something to eat.

Smelling cedar takes me to Christmases past. I have always loved Christmas. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but they always managed to have a wonderful Christmas for all us kids. There were always lots of gifts under the tree. We always went to church to celebrate Christ’s birth. Our church had an advent wreath and every Sunday before Christmas a family would read something from the Bible and light one of the candles. One Christmas, one of our sons played baby Jesus and was carried down the aisle by a teen-age girl playing Mary. I was so scared she would drop him, yet so proud he was in the play. She didn’t drop him and he didn’t cry. I think he slept through the whole play.

Sometimes I smell newly turned soil and I am back on daddy’s farm sitting on the tractor with him as he plowed the fields. I loved being with my daddy although he did give me the name “Snicklefritz” which means a mischievous child. I spent as much time with him as I could when I wasn’t playing or in the house helping mother. He taught me a lot about farming and the care of animals. I am so thankful I grew up on a farm and had the parents I had.

When I smell baby powder I am back with my little babies, diapering them. I used cloth diapers and had to go to the laundromat to wash them every week, but I loved the soft, fluffy diapers that I pinned on my babies’ bottoms. Now I also think of newly washed puppies when I smell baby powder because the dog shampoo smells like that.

Do certain smells bring memories to you? Hope they are good memories. Bye.

HOT!!!!

Leave a reply

Okay, it’s almost the end of August here in Indiana and it is hot! We had the coolest July on record and now Summer is coming back with a vengeance.

I use to love hot weather. I would lay out by our pool for hours baking in the sun. The hotter, the better. I am sure I did some real damage to my skin, but I did use Oil of Olay on my face all those years and still do and it has helped keep some of the wrinkles at bay. But I loved the hot weather and dreaded the winters. Now I am exactly the opposite. I dread the hot weather. I feel like all the strength is sucked right out of me. I don’t feel like doing anything outside except water and feed the animals and then it’s straight back into the air conditioning. Just a few years ago, we didn’t even have air conditioning and I remember the last Summer we didn’t have it was miserable. We spent most of the time in the pool. Now it’s too hot to even go out in the middle of the day to the pool.

Now I know I could live in Alaska gladly. Even the winters don’t daunt me anymore. At least when I don’t have to drive on the icy, snowy roads. I told David we could move up there and get our food stored up for the Winter and never have to go out and in the Summers we wouldn’t be so hot all the time. If I could get my family to move up there, I would sincerely think about moving. There are no swimming pools up there except at motels though, so we would have to give up that. I could, gladly, for glimpses of the mountains and the water and all the wildlife.

Today it was so hot at church. The air conditioning was going, but I felt hot and tired and wanted to get home and get in front of a fan with a cold glass of water. But I didn’t do that. After David and I ate a quick lunch, I took Belle for a one mile walk and it just about killed me. Even Belle kept looking at me like, “Are you crazy trying to walk in this weather?” I haven’t walked five miles in so long because it’s been too hot for me and I really miss it. I am so looking forward to cooler temperatures.

Okay, I have whined enough and got it out of my system. Sorry I subjected you, my dear readers, to that. But you just have to whine and let off steam once in a while. I am not the stoic kind. But I will change the subject.

Have you read any good books lately? I am finishing up “The Swordsman,” by my sister-in-law, Terry Craig. It’s really good. It’s one of a trilogy about what could happen if there was a plague and wars and other catastrophes all around the world and what happens to Christians during this time. Terry is very imaginative and writes a really good story. I am so attached to the main characters right now and hope she will write another book about them some day. I read it a little each night before I go to bed which might not be a good thing because there are some troubling things she writes about that could happen and I see happening now. But I don’t want it to end. Have you ever read a book like that? One you hate to finish? I get so engrossed in the characters in some books I almost feel like I have lost a friend after I finish the book. Terry’s previous book that I read, The Sojourner,” was one of those that I didn’t want to put down, but I didn’t want it to end either. You can get her books on Amazon if you are interested. Terry did not pay me to write this!!

Fall is fast approaching and we have plans to do some fun things when the weather cools down and we feel like we can leave the puppy for a day with the other dogs. Molly has been staying out most of the day with the big dogs and they have pretty much accepted that she is not going anywhere so they might as well like her. She has almost doubled in size just since we got her. She eats all the time. Today she tasted mashed potatoes for the first time and almost ate the bowl. She is so sweet and I have been slowly teaching her about the leash though she doesn’t like it very well. I want her to be a good walking companion like Belle is. When the weather cools down I am going to take up walking and get back to at least five miles a day again.

Hope you are having a great weekend. We are just being lazy today and that is fine with me. Bye.

Wild, Wonderful, Wacky Weekend

Leave a reply

David’s brother and sister-in-law visited us this weekend. They brought their four grandchildren too. We had two of our grandsons with us so we had a full house. People were sleeping everywhere.

I love these two people. We laughed a lot. I had to leave the table one time after something Terry said because I was laughing so hard. I love people who can make me laugh.

The gang of six. The four on the left are Bill and Terry’s grandchildren. The two boys on the right are ours. They got along really well. They are second cousins, I think. This will probably be the only time they will ever all be together as we live so far apart.

We tried to pack a week’s worth of fun in two days. We had a cookout and we had sweet corn, so David put the kids to work shucking corn. They did a great job.

“I came all the way to Indiana just to do this?”

We didn’t make them do child labor all weekend. There were fun times.

Swimming and getting dunked in the pool.

Hot tubbing. Funny how much kids like to get in the hot tub. Especially that bald headed kid there in the corner. We had to keep him under control at all times.

David had built everyone a birdhouse and the kids painted theirs. Well, some did.

I did no painting and still managed to get paint all over my hands.

Terry is a good artist and I asked her if she would paint a birdhouse for me and she did. I will show it to you on the next blog. It’s really pretty. She didn’t get to do all she wanted because of time constraints, but I love it.

There was chicken holding. The girls behaved very well with all the handling. Penninah likes it.

I fell in love with this sweet girl. I could have kept her, but her parents want her back, so that won’t happen.

We went to Zaharako’s, a local old fashion ice cream parlor and ate ice cream. We took the kids to an inside playground we have in our city and they played there for a while. We blew up balloons with lights in them and they waved them at cars at night as they passed. We played Dizzios. We had a birthday party for the twin boys who turned eight. Yes, we tried to do it all.

They all went to church with us Sunday morning and we filled one and a half pews. Then we ate dinner and went swimming again and then they all packed up and left and our house felt so quiet.

This picture kind of sums up what two pair of grandparents feel like after a full weekend of fun times. Bill and Terry still had to go visit some more relatives for a couple of days and then drive back to North Carolina.

We still had our two grandsons for a little while and I took one on a walk with me and Belle. The other one wanted to watch television.

So we walked about a mile.

My grandson took this picture of Belle. Turned out pretty good I would say. They went home, but we will be spending time with them again next weekend. Our son also came over from Cincinnati for an afternoon, so we got to visit with a lot of family which is what I love.

I will leave you with two beautiful pictures of insects I took with my new little camera.

This butterfly matches the flower it’s on. Hope your weekend was wonderful too. Bye.

A Graduation, Roosters, Oh, and a Turtle

Leave a reply

Last Sunday we attended a graduation party for a great-nephew. My nephew grew up just down the road from my home and I babysat him once in a while. Now he has a boy graduating.

The last time I saw this boy he was the ring bearer in our daughter’s wedding. How swiftly the years have past. I made him a little suit with white shorts and a blue blazer for the wedding. I was putting the hem in the sleeves of the blazer the day of the wedding so they would be the correct length. He came from Cincinnati the day of the wedding so I had not been able to do any measuring. He was a very good ring bearer. Now he has a full four year scholarship to college.

The chocolate graduation cake. My husband already had taken a piece.

My sister is his grandma. The one thing about sisters, you always sit in a corner and giggle about silly things. She didn’t want her picture taken, so, of course I did.

This is my gorgeous niece. We went to her graduation party last year. I wrote about it last year and how we somehow got lost getting to her house. Anyway, she is already a junior in college. She thinks she might want to go into politics.

We stayed all night at our son’s house in Cincinnati and were going to go to King’s Island, but it was raining so we headed home. On the way we went through the small town of Brookville. You will see why I loved it that we stopped here to antique.

Roosters! Practically every business had a cement rooster in front, all of them painted in different colors. I loved it. We have been in towns where there were cement painted pigs, cement painted cows and in Alaska, they had all different colored moose(meese?) I think our town should do hens.

Today, after church and lunch I took Belle a walk. I was trying to walk 5K. We had been walking for a while when I noticed something in the road ahead. As we got closer, I noticed it was a turtle. Belle didn’t know what to think of it since she has never seen a turtle. She growled and it popped into its shell so I picked it up and brought it home to show David. That thing was heavy. Belle kept looking at it like she was a little afraid of it.

It took a while, but he finally came out of his shell, kind of like me. Ha.

He was sort of pretty for a turtle.

He was giving the evil eye to David as he took pictures.

His underside was pretty also. When I was growing up you could buy baby turtles in the dime store and little habitats for them where you would put sand and some water. Usually they didn’t last very long which is why they probably stopped selling them.

After we took several pictures I took the turtle back from where he or she came and let it go on its way. See, I find just about everything on my walks.

David saw a fox in our front yard yesterday morning as he was going to work. Hope it’s not looking for chicken. Bye.

Walking the Color Blaze 5K

Leave a reply

Back in January I saw on Facebook something about a 5K called Color Blaze. I didn’t have a clue what kind of 5K it was, but I saw that some people I knew were going to walk it, so I registered to participate.

Fast forward to today and my grandson, husband and I went to our fairgrounds where it was to be held. It started at 10:00, or so I thought, so we got there a little after 9:00. We got our shirts and walked around and I sat down by a lady wondering to myself why people were coming in so late for a 5K that started at 10:00. “It starts at 11:00,” she told me. Oh, well. So we waited almost two hours for it. I was tired before it started and it was hot.

This is my eight year old grandson who was going to walk with me.

This is us before the 5K. We look all nice and clean, don’t we? See those women in the tutus? People dressed up in crazy outfits.

Here we are again. See how white our shirts look?

Then the fun began. Color powder was going everywhere, even up my nose!

We got packets of colored powder and my grandson was enjoying throwing it on me. Good times!

The powder flew.

People were shouting and catching color packets they threw at us. It was a color blast.

Suddenly, we weren’t so clean anymore.

We were in the middle of this and it was hard to see anything when the powder was flying. I had to hold my nose to keep the powder from choking me, it was so thick.

We made it to the finish line. The first mile my grandson got a stitch in his side and was not sure he could make it, but he did and we walked every mile and didn’t take a short cut once. It was so good to see the finish line, though.

David was our photographer and although he wasn’t walking, he got colored powder thrown on him also.

It was a fun morning, but we were tired and hungry afterward and went to Musillami’s, a local drive-in hamburger joint very popular with the locals. They were packed with cars, but we got our lunch pretty quickly and ate it with gusto.

Then we went home and I washed our car, we took showers and hopped into the pool. I am pretty bushed right now and the weekend is just starting as we have a graduation party to go to tomorrow, a movie tomorrow night and King’s Island on Monday. Not bad for two old folks.

I will leave you with a picture of a hot air balloon that was floating lazily above our house the other day. That’s something I would like to do one day, go up in a hot air balloon. Have a great weekend. Bye.

Leave a reply

Here we are looking at June coming in a few days and I’m wondering where my three favorite months went. I love March, April and May. They are the months that bring the first warm weather after the cold of winter. Flowers appear again and everything turns green after a season of grays and browns. My garden is blooming. Here, let me show you a few of the flowers.

A peony growing in my kitchen garden.

A beautiful yellow iris. I love its bright orange center. Is that the stamen? I forget my flower parts.

Peonies and Irises make good companion plants.

I love salvia. It’s a xeric plant and pretty much takes care of itself.

This plant mysteriously appeared in the garden last summer. I truly do not remember planting it and haven’t a clue what it is. Anyone know?

It has this lacy, ferny foliage.

Gorgeous. There are thousands of different irises. I have just a few, but each one is a work of art.

They come in every hue and color. I was looking at some in a catalog and some of their roots cost twenty and thirty dollars a piece. I will stick with the less expensive ones. They are just as pretty. This one reminds me of a bright, beautiful sunset.

Who’s that I see wandering in my flower beds?

It’s my sweet Belle, here in her bed with her bear. Such a spoiled pupper.

My grandchildren were here this past weekend and one of them still likes taking walks with me. I told him to look down as we walk because I always am finding things. Keys, balls, flags, tools, money. Well, he spotted something as we walked.

He found this little screw driver laying by the side of the road.

He was very proud that he found something. This grandson is walking with me this Saturday in a Color Blaze 5K. You get splashed with colors after every mile you complete. We have to wear white. I am so looking forward to it. I love walking 5Ks and no, I don’t run. I use to run years ago, but my joints won’t take it anymore.

Have any of you seen this hose advertised on television? Have any of you purchased one? We bought one and I tried using it the other day and it squirted water all around the couplings. It’s a piece of junk. I might be able to use it as a jump rope.

Ah, the fairies are coming into my yard. They sit on these toadstools every night. I never can catch them, but I know they are here.

The queen of the fairies sits here and reigns over her subjects.

I hope your day is bright and sunny. I have this sign outside my shop. My cousin was visiting one day and it was raining and he said my sign was wrong. I told him it’s always bright and sunny here. Hope it is where you are today. Bye.

Of Bugs, Bruises, Blossoms and Boys

Leave a reply

Each day fades away into the next and life here at our little plot of ground is moving on. David and I say almost every day, “Where did the day go?” I really thought when you were retired or at least semi-retired the days would be long and lazy. But then, I don’t think either of us would like that too much. David says if we don’t have something to do, I’ll think of something. Don’t want to be bored, don’t you know.

This past weekend I walked a 5K MS walk with my daughter and her family and some of her friends. One who grew up and spent as much time at our house as she did her own at times and we took on a vacation with us to Mammoth Caves. She now has three children, one as tall as she, and I am feeling old.

The day started out with thunder and lightening and heavy downpours of rain. But by the time of the walk, the sun shone through and we walked all over our town for 3.1 miles. It was nice seeing some of the gardens and the older homes that are kept up so nicely. My grandsons made it the entire walk without one complaint. I told them they would get ice cream if they walked the entire walk, so after a lunch of pizza, we went over to the local Dairy Queen and got them ice cream. It was a fun day.

We see our two youngest grandsons more often because they live closer than our other grandchildren. I would love to see the others more, but they have busy lives too.

These boys enjoy entertaining us. We went with them and their parents to a walking and biking trail in Nashville. It’s about a mile round trip walk. The boys took their bicycles and practiced riding. One had just gotten his training wheels off.

Their father, in the picture, took a fishing pole and caught two fish while we were walking. Pretty big ones, but he threw them back.

A few days ago, we saw bug webs in our crabapple tree and David took his blow torch and burned them out. He said as many dropped from the tree as got burnt up. And guess where they traveled? Right to our new porch. We were sitting out there and started to see worm after worm crawling up the pillars. Ugly little things that would rear their little ugly heads and wiggle around. Suddenly, I felt a tickle on my ankle and looked down and there was one of those worms crawling up my leg! I let out a scream and swatted it off and squashed it. David and I called them silk worms, but our daughter said she looked them up and they are tent worms. They do make little tent like webs in the trees around here.

Speaking of legs, oh, I didn’t? Oh, well. I have gotten two big bruises on my shins the last couple of weeks.

This one I haven’t a clue how I got it. I am always bumping into things while working outside. This one was a doozy, but didn’t hurt.

This one on the other leg, however, hurt like the dickens and I know exactly how I got it. I tripped on a step at our daughter’s house. I was thinking there were just two steps, but there were three and I went down like a sack of potatoes. The only thing I could think of when it happened was ” Get the donuts! Get the Donuts.” I had baked muffin donuts for my grandsons and had been carrying them when I fell. They have two big dogs that were jumping all around me and I was afraid they would grab the donuts. All was saved and I survived until the next time I bruise myself which could be any day now.

Mother’s Day was quiet and nice. I got this gardenia from my older son. A Yankee candle gardenia candle came with it. Gardenias do not survive outside in our winters so I will have to bring it inside when it gets cold. I have planted it in a bigger pot and it will get bigger and hopefully bloom this summer.

David put new shutters on our upstairs windows this morning. While he was doing that, the stone masons were putting the stone on our pillars. I’m really liking how it looks.

It’s been a month, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the porch building. It should be done this week unless it rains every day like it is forecasted(okay, I know this is not a word) right now. We had some thunder and rain this afternoon.

I’m loving these hanging baskets I got at Smith’s Gardens.

The snowball bush is loaded with snowballs. It’s the best it’s ever bloomed since we planted it.

This Gerbera daisy is so pretty and bright. This is a wonderful flower that I over winter in my shop and get it out in Spring and it’s just as pretty for another year.

The old fashioned Irises are blooming madly and have spread over much of the yard.

Then there is the mulch. The Brown mulch.

And the black mulch. Eighty bags in all. I will spread most of this myself and by the time I am done I will be able to bench press a cast iron skillet. Ha. Really, though, I do find I can lift things much easier after hefting this many mulch bags around.

I guess I won’t be lolling on our front porch any time soon. Won’t look like this either. Bye.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31