It has been rainy, dark and dreary all day. We still got up and went to church, me grumbling that there probably would be fewer people there because of the rain and cold. Boy, was I wrong. We had a nice crowd and a large choir and I was so happy we went. We had a guest speaker as our pastor took a well deserved vacation this week during Spring break. I love my church family and love seeing them.
We came home and ate some takeout we got and then I decided I wanted to get in a warm bed and read a while. Well, that lasted just a few minutes and two hours later I woke up! I have found a really good author I will tell you about in another post. A few years back I discovered Jan Karon and her Mitford books. If you have not read them they are about a rector in the little mountain town of Mitford where everyone knows everyone else. A Mayberry sort of town. The books are so good and they make you want to live in Mitford and get to know the people. Well, I have found another author who writes about a little island off the coast of Scotland where everyone knows everyone else and all the happenings on the island. She has written several books about this island each book centering on different people who live there. Now I want to live on an island north of Scotland although it might be too cold too long for me and they do have days that don’t have much sunlight in the Winter months. So I will try to remember to give you the author and some titles of her books my next post.
Later today I went out in the greenhouse to water and check what was coming up.
A few days ago my Amaryllis looked like this.
Now it looks like this and there are two flowers in this pot. Another pot behind it has another bulb ready to bloom. Amaryllises always amaze me. You get this big, ugly, almost dead looking bulb and it sits there in the soil for weeks and weeks and you think it’s dead and then suddenly, boom, there’s this tall flower and they aren’t little flowers. This plant is several years old. A couple of years ago I had it in an upstairs bedroom and pretty much forgot about it. It got very little watering, but one day, I went into that room for something and there was this beautiful full flower. I was shocked. The next year I had it out in my shop and it bloomed again. This is the third or fourth year it has bloomed and I think this year’s is the largest one yet.
Just gorgeous. I think it likes the greenhouse. Other flowers are blooming now, too.
Geraniums and one little petunia that seeded itself in a geranium pot. And I have vegetables.
Leaf lettuce and I have cherry tomatoes coming up, but didn’t get pictures. So the greenhouse is buzzing now. David is preparing garden beds for my annual flowers, plus I have some lavender plants I ordered online and Rudbeckia or Black-eyed Susans coming. David made a bed for strawberries we started last year and is also growing rhubarb. He never showed much interest in gardening until the last couple of years and it’s kind of nice. I can’t wait to have fresh strawberries and strawberry shortcake. I love wilted lettuce, too. To make it I fry a few slices of bacon in an iron skillet until they are crispy, remove them and crumble them up. Then I sauté some chopped onions in the bacon grease until they look translucent add some brown sugar and apple cider vinegar, stir and pour this over a big bowl of washed leaf lettuce. Put the crumbled bacon on top and toss a little, then eat. It is so good. You really need a lot of leaf lettuce to make this because it, well, wilts when the hot bacon grease mixture goes on it and you really think you don’t have enough lettuce!
it is still raining as I write this in the evening. I have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow. The last couple of times I didn’t need a shot in the eye, but he still wants to keep checking it. I really like the doctor, but his office visits take several hours. We drive one hour there, spend at least two or more hours in the waiting room and another hour drive home so it’s an almost all day thing. David takes a puzzle book with him and I take a book to entertain ourselves.
we had a total eclipse of the moon several nights ago. It happened at 2:30 to 3:30 in the morning. David wanted to stay up and I told him to wake me up. There I was in the early morning hour looking at the moon, in my nightgown. It was cold so I went into the greenhouse to get warm. Then I came out to look again, but I am not a cold liking person so I went back inside and into my warm bed. David did take pictures so I got to see what it looked like. I will have to show you those another time, too, because they are not on my iPad.
Here are a few quilts I have made for the quilt group I joined on Facebook.
I have so enjoyed this group. I made a boo boo cutting some of the blocks so I made a mug rug to use.
The little blocks around it are another quilt this group is making. Each week we get a new block pattern to make four more blocks. When I get this done I am going back to finishing some of the many quilt tops I have in storage. So many quilts. So little time.
And between all this I try to play with the pups. Now that the days are warmer I spend more time outside with them and they love to play fetch. I love my dogs so much. Sometimes I see on Facebook dogs looking for a home or they will be euthanized. It just breaks my heart. If I were a rich, old lady I’d buy me a farm with a huge heated barn where I would hire people to help me save as many dogs as I could. I don’t understand people who get a puppy or dog and then put them in shelters because they are too much trouble or they just don’t want them any longer. My dogs are my children now and depend on us to take care of them. I could no more give them up than I could give up an arm. I have always had dogs in my life ever since I was a little girl. I can name every one of them. Some had long lives. Others were shorter, but they all meant something to me.
Well, I have rambled long enough and hope I remember to tell you what I said I would tell you in my next post. Bye.
