Monthly Archives: May 2022

Things I’m Loving

 

Spring seems to go so fast here in Indiana.  No sooner than something blooms and poof! It’s gone.  The lilacs were so beautiful this year. Even the newer shrubs set on flowers and they smelled so good, but they are gone now.

The wisteria on our little cabin by the pool was just so gorgeous this year. I’ve been trying to grow wisteria for years.  Several years ago we went to a book signing of Susan Branch’s in Cincinnati, where she and her husband passed out wisteria seeds they had collected from their wisteria at their home.   So we brought those seeds home and planted them in pots and when they were larger, we transplanted them, one by the cabin and one by the house. Both plants took off, but this is the first year we have had such a gorgeous display of flowers.  The plant by the house is growing up the side of the house and birds are finding it to be a wonderful place to build their nests.  Birds also love this one on the cabin.  We watch them carrying nesting material into the shrub.

I finally have wisteria and I’m loving it.

For years I  tried to grow azaleas.  Once when we drove through the south and saw all the azaleas growing everywhere there, I wanted one, but thought our climate may be too cold.  Bought this azalea at Rural King a few years ago and this year it bloomed just like I was hoping it would.   I had another one in the front yard that bloomed so beautifully also.  It really must be a good year for flowers.

I have irises growing everywhere.  I love irises because they are so easy to grow and you almost can’t kill them.  They spread and you get a lot of flower for your buck.  I wish I had taken pictures of all the different colors of iris I have, from pinks, to rust, to yellow and these purple and white ones.

We made a trip to our favorite nursery where I bought a lot of flowers to plant in planters and I got this hanging basket for my shop.    Geraniums are another flower that is easy to grow.  You just have to dead head them a lot in order to keep flowers coming on, but they are worth it.

The snowball bush was loaded with snowballs.  Our old snowball bush wasn’t as pretty this year.  It needs a good trimming and I hope it will rebound next year as it looks a little puny right now.

My little garden in front of my shop has flowers coming up. Zinnias, lavender, nasturtiums, marigolds, cosmos and other flowers are coming up.  I just know this will be a thing of beauty later on in the Summer.

There’s even a chicken among the flowers.

I received these two hydrangea plants for Mother’s Day.

They were both set in this little planter, but I replanted them in the kitchen garden so they can grow big and hopefully have lots of hydrangeas in the future.

Speaking of blossoms.  Here are three of the sweetest ones.

Molly, Sugar and Lucy.  My sweet pups who keep me busy.  Lucy LOVES to play fetch. She’d do it 24/7 if I would play with her.   She has me well trained.

 

David finally got the pool opened and has taken advantage of it.  It’s still a bit too cool for me.

It makes me cold to watch him swimming in it sometimes.  Brrrr.  The water has to be in the eighties for me to go swimming.  We will have those days before long.

I have been mindlessly knitting two inch squares for one of my Christmas projects.  Let’s just say I’m loving what I am making with these and will show you closer to Christmas.

I am using a lot of my leftover yarn from knitting stockings.

Here is a little peek at some things I have sewn.  Oh, I love what is in those rolled up little packages.    This week I’m working on aprons.   They aren’t as fun for me to sew for some reason, but I have so much fabric I need to use that would make cute aprons.

That’s all I have for you right now.   David is looking forward to surgery this Summer which won’t be fun for either of us, so I’m getting as much completed as I can before he has it done.

Hope you are enjoying the warmer days.  We did have really bad weather go through our town this week and a lot of people were without electricity.  We weren’t, but our neighbor lost a huge limb out of a tree.  I’m thankful all we lost was the internet.  Bye.

 

 

 

Busy, Busy, Busy

That headline pretty much says what my life is about right at the moment.  In a few days, I will not be as busy, I hope.  I’ve been trying to plant all the flowers and all the seeds I have received in the past few weeks.  Finally got most of the seeds underground except for pumpkins and some torch flower seeds.  To be quite frank, I’ve run out of room in my yard and garden to plant much more.   My cup runneth over.  I received two really pretty hydrangea plants for Mother’s Day which have not been planted yet.  I can’t plant them where the pups can get to them.  David told me the other day they had dug up something we had planted(it looked like a stick when we planted it) and he thought it was lost, but he found it in the yard and replanted it and didn’t tell me until he noticed there were leaves coming out on it.  I can’t remember what kind of plant it is so we will have to wait and see when or if it flowers.

By the way, David has covid now.  I was really hoping we both had dodged the bullet, but he’s had a raspy throat and runny nose so he went in to the clinic at Kroger’s today and they said he had it and should stay home for at least five days and wear a mask around me since I don’t have it, yet.  Pray it doesn’t get any worse. He will be getting surgery on his shoulder sometime in the next few weeks.  Our Summer is really adding up to being fun, isn’t it?  Ha.

What keeps me sane is working in my shop on the Christmas projects for my sale on December 3rd.     I have made so many things and when I can get my pictures up again, I will show you. For some reason my computer is not cooperating with me and I can’t get my pictures onto my blog and I have a lot of them to show you.  Anyway, I spend at least three or four hours sewing and listening to talk radio and it becomes my calm and happy place.   I listen to Dan Borgino’s talk show. He’s not to everyone’s taste, but I like him.   I told David the other day I wonder what I will obsess about after I have all this sewing done and have had my sale.  There will be something, I know. Maybe I will obsess about cleaning my house.  It gets a lick and a spit once in a while.  It doesn’t really matter how often I dust, it always looks dusty and I don’t know why.  Just in the past year I’ve noticed things are dustier around here, even outside.  Our porch didn’t use to be dusty, but it is now.

I try to spend at least a half hour every day playing with the dogs.  I throw the ball so much my arm hurts at night.  You’d think I would finally have developed some muscle from all the throwing.   Lucy runs for a toy as soon as I open the door. She never wants to stop playing and if you want to see disappointment in a dog’s face, Lucy has it when I tell her we are through.   Molly has become fit as a fiddle where once she was overweight, now she is trim and muscular and loves to fetch also.  Just wish something like fetching would do that for me!

I have watched a couple of really good movies on tv.  I think they were both on Netflix.  One was  called A Walk in the Woods and starred Robert Redford and Nick Nolte as two old men who tried to walk the Appalachian Trail that runs from Maine to Georgia.   I never thought of Robert Redford as a comedian, but he has some pretty funny lines in the movie and Nick Nolte is hilarious as his alcoholic recovering friend he hadn’t seen in years.

Another movie which I found magical, but troubling at the same time was The Electrical Life of Louis Wain.  Louis Wain was an artist in the Victorian age who painted cats. He and his wife were some of the first people to ever keep cats inside their house at the time.   Cats were considered mousers and were kept to the barns.  He painted cats in some of the most magical settings and he became quite popular, but he did not copyright any of his work so he never made much money and died a pauper in an  insane asylum.  It sounds like a sad movie, but it really isn’t.

I find it hard to sit clear through many movies, but these two I enjoyed immensely. Right now, as I type, I have Hairspray on.   I’ve seen it before, but I love the music and it takes place in fifties so it’s right up my alley. There is a show like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand that the lead character, Tracy,  wants to get on.  I loved watching American Bandstand when I was a girl and I loved how the girls dressed and how the couples danced.  Many who appeared on that show became famous in their own right.  By the way, John Travolta plays the girl’s mother and he is hilarious.

I just wanted to stop in so you would know I’m still here.  I started an entirely different post the other day, but didn’t get it finished so maybe I will try to post that one soon.  Or I won’t. Not making any promises.  I had a nice Mother’s Day.  Went out to eat Saturday night with my daughter’s family.  Had phone calls wishing me Happy Mother’s Day and received those beautiful hydrangeas.

Hope your days are busy or not, if you prefer.  Summer is here. The temperature is climbing.  David has been in the pool already. Not me. The water has to be over 80 degrees for me to swim in it.   If the temperatures keep going up, it will be sooner rather than later.

I will leave you to watch the kids dancing in Hairspray.  Bye.