My very favorite months of the year, March, April and May are coming to an end. May is half over already and I can hardly stand it. It does cross my mind sometimes just how many more March, April and Mays I have left to see in this world. I have always loved Spring in all its beauty and I never feel like it lasts long enough.
The Snowball bush outside our back door has reached its peak and is beginning to fade.
We got this from a start of David’s Grandmothers’ Snowball bush that was in her backyard and was huge. Ours is getting pretty big, but still needs to grow some to get as big as hers was. I wonder if that bush is still there.
We had to move this clematis that was by our back deck as we are getting a new screened in back porch built, and were afraid it would get destroyed by the builders. You get big men in big shoes clomping around a garden and the flowers cringe and so do I. There is a Mama Robin who built her nest in a crook of the porch on my shop and every time someone goes out the back door, she flies away and chitters and hops around in distress. She’s been doing a lot of that lately with all the men working right beside her. I hope those eggs get hatched, but I’m worried she has been off them too much.
This is my little garden right by the back deck where the new porch is going.
Finally after all the cold weather, my garden burst into bloom, overnight, it seems like.
We’ve done a little traveling and a little visiting.
Visited my sister who I haven’t seen in almost a year which is too long. We always are glad to see each other. She was like a second mother to me when I was growing up. My mother kind of let her take care of me and when she got married, it just about killed me because we shared a bedroom and she was always around from the time I was born. I cried for a week when she left to start her own home, but I did visit her and her husband a lot and babysat their children years later.
My sister’s husband who has been like a brother to me. He’s eighty years old and still raises a large garden big enough to feed a small town. He had a kidney removed a few years back and could not have a garden that year and it was hard on him. But he’s been making up for it. I hope he has many more years to raise his garden.
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They brought out this quilt I made for a prize at a family reunion years ago. I made a larger version of it that people signed and put their birthdates on. My sister won this quilt and there was no shenanigans going on for her to win it. We had a young child pick out the winning name and it was hers! The reunion is called the Ridenour reunion for all descendants of my grandparents and there are a lot of us.
On the back of the quilt I put a label and these pictures of my grandma and grandpa Ridenour.
My grandpa was a dapper fellow in this picture. I can see why my grandma fell for him.
And my grandmother was beautiful with big, brown eyes and long hair done up on the top of her head. She and my grandpa went on to have four daughters and all of them are gone now, but the youngest one.
Easter came and went so quickly even though it was late this year. We had our annual Easter egg hunt and the kids got money for certain eggs they found.
Here’s Grandpa counting the eggs to see how many dollars someone gets. It’s always exciting for the kids.
When we visited my sister, we also took a trip to the city where we use to live before moving to our present house. David was transferred with the guard years ago and I was not a happy camper about leaving the house I loved and my friends and family to move one hundred miles away. It may as well have been a thousand to me.
We had this big house on top of a hill and below us was a city park and a big lake we use to ice skate on in the Winter. I loved that house so much and we were so happy there.
We drove through the park.
And looked at the lake and I took pictures from afar of our house on the hill.
This was our bedroom window that looked out on the park. It was so beautiful up there. I still miss it even though I love our old house we live in and love where we live and would not want to move back.
This is the drive up to that house. The people living here now paved it, but when we lived there it was gravel. One winter’s day, I was taking our children to church and my car slid on ice from the top of the hill, clear to the bottom and across the street below into a ditch. My neighbor saw it happen and came out and helped me get the car out of the ditch and I drove on to church. When we got back home, we had to leave the car at the bottom of the hill and crawl, on our hands and knees to the top! I can still see my children crawling up that hill.
Below our house was a railroad track. It seems we have always lived near a railway.
Now it is a walking and bicycling path which I would have loved when we lived there.
Down that way, which use to be railroad tracks, was the best raspberry bushes. The neighbor girls and I use to walk down there to pick the raspberries and would come home with raspberry juice all over us from eating them. It was so much fun.
Driving home the next day, we took back roads, as usual. We went through the town where parts of the movie, Hoosiers, was filmed and they had this mural painted on the side of a building.
I loved that movie because it was so true to life as to what it was like in Indiana in the fifties with our passion for basketball. Every Friday night we would be in the high school gym or at another school’s gym to watch the boys play basketball. Three of my brothers played basketball and I loved to play it. We had a basketball goal in the haymow in our barn and I would practice shooting free throws for hours. I got to where I could hit one hundred of them in a row. Hoosier hysteria was a true thing back then. We loved our basketball. I think a lot of the professional sports have ruined the excitement for high school basketball.
Driving the back roads of Indiana, you see the creativity of Hoosiers. How many people have this carved in their back yard from an old tree?
An Indian with a bow and arrow. We see lots of things like this driving the back roads that most will never see as they drive the interstates.
It was a fun weekend. We met up with a very good friend and went to an antique show and sale.
I bought this to go along with my Shirley Temple doll. I loved Shirley Temple when I was growing up. She was at an innocent time in our history when people would flock to the movie theaters to see this tiny little girl sing and dance. She was astonishingly talented and could dance with the best of them.
Two other things I purchased was this…
Don’t know why. I just liked it. And this….
A miniature screen door that looks almost exactly like what we are putting on our screened in porch. I will hang this on the wall of the porch when it is finished.( I had to remove the picture because I noticed I had an account number on the table and our tithe envelope for all to see. Didn’t mean to do that.) Just suffice to say it’s a cute little wooden screen door handmade by some artisan.
As I leave you, I want to show you this amazing three layer chocolate cake I made today. It is astounding in its elegance. It will amaze David when he walks in the door. I really put a lot of work into it and I really want to show it off because I don’t think I could ever make another one just like it….
It gets even better.
It could win prizes!
Well, at least I hope it tastes good. Bye.