So my ear pain came back with a vengeance, so bad I could not sleep and that brought tears to my eyes. Today I went to the ear doctor who cleaned out my ear and then proceeded to lance the lump behind my ear without anesthesia. Talk about painful! I said it was worse than childbirth. There was a pregnant nurse in the room with us and I apologized to her for saying that, but then I told her it was true! Never have I ever felt such excruciating pain and hope to never again. This afternoon I feel no pain for the first time in almost two weeks, but I have to go back tomorrow to see if further surgery is needed. This time with anesthesia, my doctor promised.

I will let you know how things went on the other side. Once again. Please pray for me if you are a praying person. Bye.

So I finally am here again. I’ve been away on a pain filled journey that I wish never to return to. This past week I had the most excruciatingly painful earache of my life. Well, really the only earache I have ever had. It started a week ago when my ear had been bothering me. Itching and tingling. So I asked David to put some peroxide in it to maybe stop it. I have used peroxide in my children’s ears to help with the pain. Not long after he did that, I got a huge, painful swelling behind my ear. David said it looked red and painful. I tried for a couple of days to medicate myself, but it was not getting better, but worse and I was in tears with the pain so I went to my GP who gave me some antibiotics and drops for the ears. They were actually drops for the eyes, but he told me to use them in my ears. So, I did. And two days later, my ear was even more swollen and painful so David called an ear doctor, but they could not get me in until the next week, so he said, “I’m taking you to the ER.” I have a real fear of hospitals and dread going. I have not had good experiences in most cases when I have been in one so I really did not want to go, but I had no choice. I was pleasantly surprised that day. Our hospital has upped its game with the ER. It is large and bright and the people working there were very nice. Soon I was having my vitals taken and before too long I was in a room waiting for a doctor. The doctor who saw me was very kind and told me I should have never been put on antibiotics because I had a fungus in my ear, due partially from wearing hearing aids. He said the drops I had been using had citric acid in them and were burning my ear instead of helping it. Boy, does my doctor have some explaining to do! Anyway, with a prescription for the pain and different drops I went home and here I am a few days later feeling much better. There is still some swelling, but the doctor told me it would take about eleven days for it to go down with the drops. The only thing about the drops is I have to lay down and stay still for an hour every time I get them so it’s been a real disruption in my activities.

So onward to more pleasant things. The garden is bursting with bloom this year. It’s been a very good year for zinnias, geraniums, hibiscus and hydrangeas. Here is a show of some of the blooms in my garden.

Because we are not mowing our back yard, these hollyhocks came up in a place I know I didn’t plant them. They have been so beautiful.

These hollyhocks I did plant in my little kitchen garden. They have been lovely. I hope they reseed themselves.

These lilies are all over our garden.

We got these at New Creation lily farm a few years back. They never disappoint.

Rudbeckia or Black Eyed Susans. I can never have too many of these.

The hydrangea beside our front door has exploded into bloom. So full of flowers. I hope to dry a few for Fall decorations.

I did not plant one sunflower seed this year and yet, there are sunflowers coming up everywhere. The birds did the seeding this year I suppose.

This is the same garden as is in my header, but it has also exploded. My flamingo has almost disappeared. I water this every day or it would not look like this, I’m sure.

This is the geranium I got at an antique store’s garage sale! The best geraniums I have ever had.

The story behind these flowers is a mystery. A few years back, I planted some of these seeds in my little kitchen garden, no where near where these are growing. This year flowers began coming up all over our driveway that is gravel. We have had coreopsis, these flowers I call Queen Anne’s Lace, but are called Daria in the seed catalog, and Chinese forget me nots. And not just a few flowers have come up, but like someone threw hands full of seeds in our driveway and they all have come up. I truly love these flowers so much and hope they return next year. Years ago our son and his then wife gave us several figures of children for our garden. I have painted them all verdigris this year and placed them around. Each has a name. This is Jason, after our oldest son.

Those big, tall, ferny plants are coreopsis. No, I did not plant those that are growing in the gravel and they are huge. And more sunflowers. It’s been so wonderful to watch all these flowers come up that I had nothing to do with. Not to say I didn’t plant a lot of seeds, but the ones growing outside pots and planters are not of my planting. I also have tomato plants that I have already made fried green tomatoes from and had one red tomato so far.

David repainted this six foot tall flaming I bought years ago. He has been hidden in the garden for too long so he has been brought out where everyone can see him who comes into our drive. He has a place where I could put a pot of flowers if I so choose.

It’s not only flowers that have taken my time, but this year we are trying to freeze some sweet corn for the Winter. We had not had any sweet corn since before Covid. If fact, a lot of the little vegetable stands where we use to get corn closed up shop and never reopened sad to say. We could not find any sweet corn last year, but this year we found a family owned market south of town that has the best sweet corn I have ever tasted. Before I got sick, we got several dozen ears of corn and I froze eleven quarts. Tomorrow, I think I feel like trying to freeze some more.

I love having frozen sweet corn to serve at Thanksgiving and Christmas and I will have plenty this year.

This is what a good Summer supper looks like here in Indiana on a hot Summer’s day. Yum.

We aren’t the only ones with beautiful flowers. Our daughter and son-in-law brought me these gladiolas from their garden. They stayed beautiful for days.

I bought two of these cement head ladies at the antique sale I told you about a few blogs back. They can hold flowers in their heads. I just think they are beautiful. David hung that birdhouse beside her today on another project we did together. I will show you that my next post, hopefully.

David made a new cupboard on our back porch to hold things, but also to insulate that wall where the plumbing for my washer goes. The past couple of Winters, my washer pipes froze up and I had to thaw them out with my hair dryer. David is hoping this extra insulation and this cupboard will do better protecting the pipes so they won’t freeze again. The doors to the cupboard were my idea using old fence boards we have laying around. David did such a good job on this and I really love it. We can keep our back porch less cluttered now.

I’ve come to the conclusion David can do just about anything he sets his mind to. I just have to suggest a project and he’s off to the races and gets it done for me. Glad he can see my vision of things.

We are trying to make a meadow in our back yard for bees, birds and butterflies. I planted some milkweed last year and it came up again and spread and now I have lots and lots of seed that I will spread around in hopes of having more. Monarch butterflies lay their eggs in these plants. When I was growing up, milkweed grew wild along the fence rows and we had lots of butterflies, but they spray the fence rows now and kill a lot of the insects that flourished in them including the butterflies so many people are trying to plant milkweed again to help the butterflies out. These will definitely not get sprayed. On our drives through the country we sometimes see this plant growing wild. We tried getting some to bring home, but their roots were far too deep to pull any.

This is just the start of our meadow. David is having a hard time not mowing the back yard, but I keep telling him there will be more and more flowers and beautiful wild grasses growing as time passes and we will see more and more butterflies. We have already noticed an increase of the lightning bugs. They seem to like the tall grasses very well, indeed.

Not to everyone’s liking, but I have a vision and one day people will want to have my back yard. With all the flowers growing around it now, it’s really quite pretty and makes me feel so calm to sit and look at it.

We have already had some wild flowers bloom in it and I plan to sow many more seeds next Spring. That light green patch is a zinnia garden that hasn’t bloomed yet, but now it is and is so pretty.

The purple candytuft has already reseeded itself. I look forward to an abundance of it next year.

I have rattled along long enough for now, but this is what is happening at our house. We try to stay out of trouble and try to stay healthy, but sometimes things happen we don’t expect. I hope you all are doing well and enjoying your Summer or Winter wherever you are in this big, wonderful world we all live in. I still find it amazing that people read this blog all over the world and I wish I could meet every one of you in person. Just know I am happy you come to my little corner and see my not so exciting life that David and i have managed to create on our little patch of soil. Until next time. Bye.

I almost forgot! August is going to have two Super Moons. One this Tuesday and the other the last of the month. Having two full moons in one month is what the phrase, once in a blue moon comes from. So get outside and look up. The moon is especially beautiful this year.

It’s July and this month is going by rapidly like all the rest. But July is special to us because it is the month in which we got married. Not sure why we picked one of the hottest months to get married in, but it’s worked for us this many years. So fifty-five years ago in 1968 David and I marched down the aisle at my little Methodist church and got married with two ministers, not one. One of the ministers had been at our church the year I was saved and he taught me about the Methodist church and the other minister was our fairly new minister I didn’t know very well. They must have done a pretty good job between them of marrying us, because it’s lasted all these years.

I always tell people I first met David when I was about twelve years old at a basketball game where I was sitting with my best friend, who happened to be David’s cousin. David and his brother, Bill, started following Mary Ruth and I all over the school and when we went into the bathroom, they started throwing empty Coke cups at us through the door. Every time we tried to leave, they would chuck some more empty Coke cups into the door until Mary Ruth and I had filled up all the trash cans in the bathroom with cups. We were laughing and having so much fun and Mary told me later that I said to her, “I’m going to marry that boy.” I don’t remember telling her that, but she swore it was true, but I didn’t know which boy I meant at that time.

Fast forward to my junior year in high school and David’s parents were moving to the Virgin Islands where his dad was going to fly planes, but David did not want to go so he went to live his senior year at his cousin’s house, my best friend. The first football game of the year he sat behind me and my girlfriends and teased us. I thought he was going after another best friend, Carol, at the time so I didn’t think much about it until Saturday when his cousin called me to ask if I would like to go to a movie with her and David. Hmmm. Sneaky way to make a date, but I bit. So that Sunday we went to see the movie, Joy in the Morning with Richard Chamberlain and Yvette Mimeu(whose name I know I misspelled horribly.) It was a romantic movie and I loved it and I found myself holding hands with David through the whole movie and we kissed in the car going home and when I got out of the car my mother looked at me and I am not kidding, she said this to me. “You are in love, aren’t you?” It must have been written all over my face because, yes, I was in love. And that love has never weakened all these years later. I’m not sure why this kind of love happens with some of us and some of us have a hard time finding anyone to love. I cannot explain it. But I feel so blessed that it happened to me.

So we celebrated our anniversary by taking a short, two day road trip through southern Indiana. I have grown to love our state more and more. I’ve been to just about all fifty states and each one has its own appeal and its beautiful places, but I am always glad to return to Indiana with its green field and forests and farms dotting the landscape. I have read blogs about England and I see the beauty that is there, but it really cannot compare to Indiana. I really did not know how hilly southern Indiana was until this last trip. And there were valleys spread far below us with fields like patchwork quilts and little farms and cabins.

Down leafy back roads.

Past fields of corn and soybeans. Thank the farmer. It’s because of farmers we all eat so well in this country.

Past old, derelict buildings. David is always saying he wish he could buy these old building and make apartments into them. This would be a great apartment building. I want the room in the tallest part of the building!

Through small towns with murals painted on the buildings.

Past creations people have made on the back roads. We have a lot of creative people in our state. Seems the more you get into the country, the more creative people get. And we have famous people from Indiana, too. Red Skelton, Hoagy Carmichael, and David Letterman to name three. I liked Dave when he use to be funny. He got kind of cranky in his old age, but don’t we all!

this little owl was hand carved by someone and placed on his creation in his front yard. Most people will never see it, but creative people are all over the back roads of Indiana.

Up hills and down valleys. This picture does not do the view justice. It was awe inspiring. Like I said, I didn’t know Indiana had such wonderful valleys and vistas. Except in Brown County and we were not in Brown County.

Past Indiana’s own Grand Canyon. At least that is what this looked like through the trees.

What it really was was a huge gravel pit right in the middle of nowhere.

At one time you could see this from this overlook, but the trees have grown up so tall, you cannot see anything.

We passed giant rocks jutting toward the road. This place has some history behind it.

This happened at this very spot.

At some points we were following the Ohio River.

Barges carrying coal and other things down the river.

We took a ride up to Buzzard’s Roost where there were several houses and an Inn or Bed and Breakfast, I’m not sure. This house had the most beautiful garden in front of it. My photography is horrible so it doesn’t do the garden justice, but it was gorgeous. My kind of garden.

This cabin was for sale. David and I dreamed about buying it and living in it part of the year and renting it out the rest, but when we saw how much it cost, we decided, maybe not! But it is beautiful and comes with three acres and a beautiful valley view so if you are interested…… I am not a realtor.

This house was up there, too. Can’t you imagine the view from the top? And it looks like its handicap accessible, too. Not sure whether this was someone’s home or a place for a Summer rental.

You see a lot of historic homes on the back roads of Indiana.

This once was a school.

This was once the town hall. We saw lots of one room school houses, many converted into family homes. Back long ago there must have been a schoolhouse every few miles as the children either had to walk to school or ride and horse drawn bus. There is an old school house not far from my family home where I grew up.

We drove over a couple of one lane bridges. I sure hope they keep these bridges up. They have so few people going over them they may not think they are important enough to check on, but they’d better before someone ends up in the river! I was glad when we got across.

We see a lot of wildlife while driving the back roads. We saw lots of these birds.

These are such beautiful birds. There didn’t use to be so many back when more pesticides and poisons were used along the fence lines, but they have made a come back and I hope there is enough food for them in the wild. I caught one one time sitting in a tree above my chickens and I scared him or her off.

We pass log cabins. Some restored like this one is and some that aren’t.

We had tornadoes rip through southern Indiana recently and we came upon a forest that had been completely ripped down by the winds.

And then, we saw this……

Someone’s beautiful home, completely destroyed by a tornado. I bet that family got up that morning, never thinking that by evening their home would be gone. I hope and pray no one was hurt and they got out in time. This was out in the middle of nowhere and it was the only building we saw that was hit by the tornado.

Then we continued on and saw this…..

A beautiful, majestic home, untouched by the winds.

And its barn was beautiful, too. I wondered who lived there and if they knew how close they had come to being hit by a tornado. That is just how fickly tornado winds are. They can hit one house and jump over all the rest. I hope I never see one in my lifetime.

We drove and drove and looked and looked and then we came upon this……

Hmmmm. A very tiny tunnel underneath a railroad track. And I was wondering if our Jeep would fit through it!!! But David is like a bulldozer with his cars and pushes right on through.

Oh, please, God, don’t let us scrape the sides!!!!

Here we are in the center of the tunnel. Graffiti artists sure had a heyday with this little tunnel. A bunch of teen-agers, I bet, having the timesof their lives, making their mark on the world in this simple way. I rather liked it.

I wonder how many cans of spray paint it took to cover the walls of this tunnel? And we liked driving through it so much, David turned around and we went through two more times making the farmers who were watching us in a field right next to the tunnel wonder what kind of crazy people want to drive through that tunnel so many times??? We do!!! That’s who!

David has taken a whole week and a half off for our anniversary and we have had a good time, got some things done and just enjoyed being together. I could write lots more because we saw lots more, but I will end this right now. I have more to tell you about what David built this week and about the meadow we are creating in our back yard and all the flowers that are blooming around our house, but I will have to wait until later. Tomorrow I get another shot in my right eye. The doctor said the histoplasmosis had flared up again my last visit so here I go, again. Send up a little prayer for me, if you will because I really want to keep my eyesight. I don’t know how many more shots I have to get, but if it saves my eyesight, I really don’t mind. And getting a shot in the eye is really not as bad as it sounds if you have the right doctor doing it and my doctor is an ace. So bye, for now.

Oh where do I start. June is flying by just like all the months of this crazy year have. David and I always seem to be busy, but we did take a little jaunt to the country again, but this time we were looking for home based shops selling antiques, birdhouses, lights made from unique things, and much, much more. It was Country Neighbor’s Springtime tour where you drive from house to house or shop to shop to find things you cannot possibly live without.

This was my favorite shop. We have come here several times and she always has something I would love to have. This time it was a framed piece of an old quilt in a very nice frame that I thought it would look good in my workshop.

This lady has lots of unique birdhouses and she makes jewelry out of found things and wind chimes from old colanders and metal utensils. We found a birdhouse we liked there.

This was a new shop on the tour the man who runs this makes the neatest flag wallhangers for different branches of the military. We got one for D avid to put in his office. I bought a rolling pin that makes designs on the crust of a pie when you roll it out.

We visited four or five shops, but the real reason we were out was to drive through the country once again. By now you know David and I love to drive down country roads we have never been before.

Where we find things Like this building. I had no idea this was a place.

An airport built to memoralize Virgil “Gus” Grissom, an astronaut who flew in space. Sadly, he lost his life in a fiery fire onboard one of the ships being readied to launch. We were proud of him here in Indiana. I’ve seen the space capsule he landed in at a state park. He was a hero who died too soon, but made space travel something Indiana youth could dream about.

Of course there are always the winding, wooded roads we drive along. We are always kind of sad when we get back into civilization.

David is getting ready to repair the door on a shed we have in the back yard. We bought that shed at the Home Show in Indianapolis the year we stopped running our store. The man we bought it from came to our house and built it and he told me he has been building them for years, but people don’t take care of theirs so they fall in disrepair. He told me people didn’t paint their new sheds and that is why. I told him he didn’t have to worry about our shed not getting painted because I love to paint. It’s been painted two or three times since we bought it. Anyway, back to the door. David needed some green pieces of lumber and I volunteered to paint them because, “I love to paint.” So Sunday after church and brunch at our IHOP, which, by the way has the best french toast, we came home and I started to paint. I could see right away that these boards were going to need more than one coat of paint so I set them in the sunshine to dry faster and gave them all two coats. Down through the years David has made fun of me when I paint. I do a great job, if I do say so myself, but I tend to wear the paint. I have several sets of painting clothes I wear that I don’t mind getting paint on. So just let these pictures tell the story.

Not attractive pictures at all. Accccckkkk! It’s not easy being green, but it shows you just how into my work I can get. So glad for those gloves, too. And we did end up with some fine painted boards. David could nail me up and no one would ever know! I’d fade right in.

So, I was sitting in a chair that evening, watching Escape to the Chateau, when I noticed a spider on my leg and jumped and yelped, but on a closer look I realized I had scared myself with a splotch of paint on my leg that looked like a spider! We had a good laugh about that, but there is another, even better st

A few weeks ago I noticed a tile had come loose in the bathroom. These tiles are only about an inch or less in size so they are pretty tiny. I carefully put the tile where I could show it to David in hopes he could replace it. Then a few days ago David told me he had put the tile in a drawer in our bathroom so we wouldn’t lose it. We went to the store this week and David bought special adhesive to fasten the tile back where it came from. Well, today David got the adhesive and the tile out and proceeded to replace the tile where I had shown it was missing. He tried and tried to fit that tile in the hole until it broke apart. That is when he noticed we had been saving a piece of soap! And he could not fit it into the hole because there actually wasn’t a hole there and the tile we in it. I am still laughing about this. I could hardly write this without bursting into laughter. This proved two things to me. The power of suggestion is very strong. When I suggested a tile was gone, David saw that it was gone and he saw a tile when I told him a piece of soap was one. And sometimes I wonder if David and I should be left alone to our own devices.

Not to say we have good imaginations, but on one our drives we saw this up ahead….

We were sure this was a giant Emu that was living wild on the backroads of Indiana.

As we got closer we saw that what we were looking at with awe, was a piece of driftwood shaped like a giant Emu. You won’t see this on the well traveled roads! And David and my motto should be “what happens on a country road, stays on a country road!”

As fast as June is going, I probably won’t see you here until July so Happy June, Happy Summer and may God bless all who read this. Bye.

I love the Spring months, March, April and May and they all seem to go so fast every year. This year has been no exception. This May has been so cool and downright cold at times. I waited and waited to plant my flower seeds. We are making our back yard into a sanctuary of sorts by letting the grasses grow wild and planting other grasses and wildflowers. It takes a few years to establish a meadow, but we are well on our way. It just takes patience. I keep telling David, every time he wants to mow the back yard to just wait. He will be so glad he did. It’s wonderful seeing the grasses actually reseeding themselves and I love watching the dogs play in what looks like a field instead of the bare ground that was once where they played and lay down. To many people, this would not be their cup of tea. Our children haven’t seen it yet and will probably think Mom and Dad are getting senile in their old age and forgetting to mow, but that is not the case!

See how the grasses are reseeding themselves. Use to be they would be mowed down long before they reached this stage. I think they look so pretty. And the flowers among them really stand out.

The peonies have been so beautiful and they really show up in the grasses. David and I were talking one day and I was wondering just how many peonies I had and I thought there were probably about twenty in the back yard, but David disagreed and went out and counted them all and I have thirty peonies. I have them in all colors. White, pink, dark pink, reddish, pink and white and they are all lovely. My favorite flower, really. David picked me a big bouquet of them.

Reminds me of the paint by number painting I did a year ago.

I just think they make the perfect cut flower. If I were getting married again, and I’m not, I would have the church filled with peonies and my colors would be pink and white.

The Irises have been beautiful, too. You really cannot kill irises. We mow them down every Autumn and they keep coming back, bigger and more beautiful every year.

The old fashion Roses that we brought from David’s mother’s house when she sold it have had more blooms on them this year than ever. They smell like roses should. We have two of them in the side garden and they are just this year beginning to grow up the fence. We will fertilize them and dust them to keep off the bugs and that is all they really need besides water.

The front of my workshop has needed a good cleaning and set back to order for years and this week I finally got it done. I took everything off the table on the porch and cleaned the table and everything that was on it. David powerwashed everything else and took some of his junk back to his shed. I rearranged the table and it all looks so much better. I don’t know why it took me so long! Guess I had other things that seemed more important.

Ignore the boots I have drying on the watering can, but this is the table that has been organized. I still have one more thing to put on it that I will have to show you another time. You see, I went to this amazing garage sale of an antique business that is going out of business and I got these beautiful ladies that hold flowers, plus a couple more things. I just love that everything is clean, at least for a short time. It’s so dusty outside things don’t stay clean.

I bought some artificial flowers to brighten up the place.

The sunflower sign I got at the nursery we go to that is going out of business this year. She always has such cute things to put in the garden and such beautiful flowers. I sure am going to miss them next year. And yes, beware of dog. Ha. Well, I’m not so sure about Molly. She can either be fierce or act like she is in love with you if you are a stranger. We never know so we always warn people.

I painted this mailbox a few years ago. No, I am not an artist, but I still like to try.

This is my flower garden in front of my work shop. I’ve planted zinnias, cosmos, geraniums, cyprus, coreopsis and other flowers I can’t name at the moment. See that pink flamingo? Many years ago we drove up the west side of Florida clear to the panhandle and we found this wonderful antique store. They had two flamingos, but I could only afford one of them and brought him home and have taken care of him all these years, but I always wished we had gotten the other one. Years later, we passed that very same antique store, but it was closed so no more flamingos..

We have Coreopsis growing wild all over our driveway and I have been pulling it up and replanting it into pots to put in our meadow at some time. I haven’t planted Coreopsis in years and yet this year it is all over. I’m not complaining. I love it.

Once again I planted geraniums in an old grill I painted green. They haven’t filled in, yet, but they will and this will be so pretty.

Another view of my container garden. You may ask why don’t I plant more flowers in my back yard. Their names are Lucy and Sugar and I believe it’s mostly Sugar who loves to dig and she doesn’t always care where she digs. We were gone for a couple of days and just before we went away, I had bought some more flowers to fill in a little garden I have right beside our back porch. David put fencing and wire around all the flowers to protect them. Ha. When we got home I discovered one of the flowers had been completely dug up and some of the others didn’t looks so good. I scolded Sugar, but she didn’t have a clue why I was angry with her so today we made up and I loved on her a lot so we’re friends again. Until she digs us something else! I’m hoping the flowers will recover.

We took a road trip this past weekend. On backroads, of course. We hardly ever use interstate unless we need to get somewhere fast, but his was not that kind of journey. Originally, we planned to get up to Lake Erie. It’s really not that far from us. A day trip. So off we went.

The curvier and more secluded roads, the better. You would be surprised how many roads are like this all over the country. And you see things that nobody sees on the freeway or heavily traveled roads.

Things like this windmill and little millhouse some farmer had made.

Or beautiful little streams meandering through a woods. We didn’t think there were any houses around, but after I took this picture, we noticed a couple sitting in front of their house watching us. We waved and went on leaving them to wonder why anyone would want a picture of this stream. It was the only house on this road, by the way!

You go through towns where patriotic citizens have the flag on every post and in some of the towns they had pictures of their vets who have lost their lives on the posts, also.

You go through towns where painted, cement roosters are on every corner. In one town, they had painted pigs. To each, his own.

We drove through Geneva, where the author, Gene Stratton Porter has built this absolutely wonderful house. We toured it a few years ago. Miss Porter wrote books about the Limberlost which was the swamps of northern Indiana a long time ago. Girl of the Limberlost was one of my mother’s favorite books. She always talked about it, but for some reason I never read it. I must put that on my list.

Miss Porter had this one room built so that she and her guests could sit and watch animals and birds come and go in it without them getting into the house, but it was in the house. I think that sounds wonderful.

We drove past where the very best catsup is made and shipped. Right here in Indiana. Red Gold, never Heinz. Red Gold had a field of tomatoes planted just outside our city one year and I would ride my bicycle by it and look at all the tomatoes growing. Red Gold is really the best catsup in the world. It’s all I will use.

On back roads you drive through lots of towns with buildings this old and still in use. So much has been lost by tearing down these old buildings.

I love old barns. I took this picture just because it was nice to see one that is cared for. We passed so many old barns in disrepair, many already caving in and becoming a thing of the past. That is what happened to my family farm barn. It was not cared for and it is falling down. At one time it was a tomato factory in our little town, but all I remember is playing in the haymow and taking care of kittens and calves and playing with the baby pigs. Baby pigs are so darn cute. And they don’t smell. Do you know that pigs really are the cleanest of animals? The only reason they get in the mud is to cool themselves off.

We stopped to eat here in this park. We were the only people there until a man and woman met each other from two separate trucks and sat in one of them. David and I were wondering if it was a clandestine meeting! Ha. He told me not to stare! Anyway, it was windy and cold sitting here to eat so this is where I sat….

Here on this swing set where the sun was shining and I was warm. But it was still nice to eat outside. Our first real picnic of the season. We plan to have more.

This looks like a picture of David’s ducks on the dash. Ducks that people leave on our Jeep and say we’ve been ducked. I really love the army one given to David by our daughter-in-law. But that is not what I was taking a picture of. I was taking a picture of the Amish lady and her little girl. They won’t pose for a picture and I would never take their faces, but I did get them walking across the street. I have so many questions I would love to aske Amish ladies, but I will probably never get them answered. They live a very different life than most women do. We passed many Amish farms and the laundry was hung out at almost every one of them. Clothes in black, and blue and beige. No bright colors. We say Amish children outside playing. Do they ask questions about us? We passed so many Amish farms in northern Indiana.

You won’t see this on the interstate.

I would have loved to have learned more about Camp Woodsmoke, but isn’t that a great name for a camp?

I believe we Hoosiers are some of the most imaginative and talented people in the country. Lot’s of famous people have come from Indiana. David Letterman and Red Skelton to name just two. We have a sense of humor you don’t find in a lot of places. But this was just in someone’s front yard. I’m thinking a tree came down and someone didn’t have anything else to do that day so they carved them an Indian. How neat is that!!!

We stopped to have ice cream. Here’s my cone. It was very good and David had a large cherry sundae that was almost more than he could eat. I think he’s pretending he is licking my ice cream cone, but he knows better!!

We were heading for Lake Erie and we did end up beside water, but it was Grand Lake in Celina, Ohio. It took us all day to get here. A ride that would take normal people three hours at the most, but we take the long way because we like it like that. So we stopped here for the night. Found a very nice Best Western and then took a drive clear around the lake. It’s a big lake. We saw pelicans and seagulls, two birds I did not know lived in Indiana, but I’m glad to know it. The pelicans were different from the ones we see in Florida. There were four of them flying above us. They had black tipped wings.

We saw several of these birds. Some type of heron I believe.

We stopped to sit beside the lake, but it was very cold and all I had was a sweater.

This is a picture of my “sexy man.” Yes, that is what I call him. My kids would be so embarrassed knowing I am admitting this, but I have been calling him this for years. He is MY sexy man. Nobody elses’. Hey, if you get to our age and still like each other a lot, you should thank God and your lucky stars because that doesn’t happen for everyone. I just got blessed to meet my one true love when I was young and we have got to grow old together and it’s really a blessing. I pray for all marriages to be as happy.

I’m going to have to finish this another day. I’ve been writing and putting up pictures for almost an hour and a half. Hope you enjoy them. We had a lot of fun and we are planning on doing another trip sometime this Summer. It seems two days is all we both can handle right now with all the pets we have to leave and also because we cannot sit in a car for hours like we use to and go thousands of miles away, but we can still have fun. I’ll be back with more of our trip later. Bye.

Every Spring our front garden is amass with pink blooms. One year I almost forgot to look out my front door and see it and it surprised me so much so that now I make sure I look at my front garden every year. Because we spend so much time outside in our back yard, our front garden gets forgotten at times.

But, not this year. I watched for the blooms.

This is the azalea that was full of blooms this year.

This is the crabapple that never disappoints. It just doesn’t last long enough. You can see this tree from about a mile away as we drive toward our house.

The redbuds in Indiana are always so pretty. They grow in the wild as well as in gardens, but this one is right by our front walk. I planted it from a tiny sprout that came up in our back yard one year.

We have two magnolias. These kinds bloom more than once a year, but they are at their prettiest in the Spring. When we were having our front porch built a few years ago, I made sure the contractor knew this tree was not to be harmed in any way, so they were very careful around it even though it stands right by the porch now.

The Weeping Cherry that looks like its blossoms are white in this picture, but they were really a very pretty pink.

We made a trip to our favorite nursery and bought these pansies. I seem to always drift toward plants with pink flowers. I do love the color pink. By the way, this nursery that has supplied us with so many beautiful flowers through the years will be closing for good after this season which makes me very sad. But the lady who runs it is going to be taking care of her father-in-law because of his health issues. I understand and believe she is doing the right thing, but I sure will miss her nursery. So we will have to look for a new nursery next year. Lowes did have a wonderful selection of flowers this year.

This is the view from our back door. I am trying to get our back yard filled with flowering trees and bushes We have a little cherry tree in the back that was planted there by the birds from a cherry tree in our neighbor’s yard. It has cherries on it every year that I feed to our chickens.

We have lilac bushes, but this is our neighbor’s bush just loaded with flowers from top to bottom. We could smell these while sitting on our back porch.

This was our two year old Amarylis(not sure I spelled that right) that had huge blossoms on it. We have another one that is starting to grow blooms. I didn’t know they bloom every year. I did nothing special to them. In fact, they weren’t watered for a few months before I noticed they were growing flowers again. Sometimes I think the more you don’t do to a plant the better it performs. We overwater our plants many times and don’t have them in the correct sunlight or shade that they need.

We did have a few lilac bouquets in our house. This is the first year our white lilac had so many flowers on it. Our neighbor cut down a tree by our property line last year which gave the lilac more sunlight, so I’m sure that’s why it did so well this year.

I’ve been preparing my annual beds for zinnias, cosmos, dame’s rocket and other flowers. I’m doing raised beds and pots again this year and a good friend made me a wonderful planter that I will use for the first time this year. I’ve already got the flowers I am going to plant in it. Our Spring has been so wet, windy and cold most days it looks like a late planting time this year. Our frost time supposedly ends May 10, but I’m going to be careful not to plant too early.

But it hasn’t been all flowers, flowers, flowers. I’ve been knitting a very long scarf and when I get it done I will knit a hat to match it. They will probably be Christmas gifts. I am loving knitting things other than socks although I will still knit socks on occasion. I sewed some new kitchen curtains I’ll try to show you next time. And…. I baked bread.

Forty some years ago when our sons were in grade school, the parents got together and made a recipe book. Everyone contributed a recipe or recipes. I found the book this week and made some delicious cinnamon bread and rolls from a recipe I used a lot in years past.

I went a little overboard on the icing although I got no complaints from David.

I’m not saying these were delicious, but they weren’t out of the oven long before two were eaten. And, yes, they are as good as they look. Wish you could smell them.

Here’s to pink flowers and warm, baked bread. May we all have a little of each. Bye.

As a Christian, I love celebrating Easter as the day Jesus rose from the dead. He was like some of us with our government. He didn’t think much of it and He was treated very badly by the church people of the day, also. He was born of a virgin, yet the son of God and lived thirty-three years on this earth teaching about God and Heaven and hell and making plans to one day come back for all those who trust in Him. He was treated cruelly by the people who were in charge which was the Roman government. People didn’t have a whole lot of freedom with this bunch in control, but Jesus was not scared to speak up for all the people and he spoke of the love God has for everyone. He even said God wanted the little children to come to Him.

So Jesus was crucified on the cross and put into a borrowed tomb where the Roman soldiers put a huge stone in front so that no one could take his body out. They even had guards at the tomb and for three days all was normal as it could be with a man in a tomb until the third day. And that day made all the difference to the world and to every one of us. Jesus rose from the dead. Angels greeted Him at the tomb’s entrance. The women who came to put ointment on his body were astonished that his body was gone. Roman soldiers hunted everywhere for Jesus, but He was not there. He had risen and spent the next days He was on earth talking to His disciples and preparing them for what was to come. We all should be prepared for what is to come. Each of us is appointed one day to die. Do you know where you will be spending your eternity? If you put your trust in Jesus, you will have nothing to fear. I know I don’t.

So that is why Easter is such an important day for we Christians. You aren’t a Christian if you go to a church. You aren’t a Christian just because you are good. The only way to be a Christian is to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. I talk to Him every single day and He always there for me.

So, David and I went to church where the choir sang a beautiful cantata and then the disciple, Peter, came and talked to us. Well, our pastor was dressed as Peter and told how Peter denied Jesus three times on the day he was crucified. The very man who was closest to Jesus, the man who vowed he would never deny Him, did so three times that day. It would be like your very best friend not sticking up for you when you are in trouble, but Peter feared the Roman soldiers and the crowds that surrounded him that day. Would I be like Peter and deny Jesus when the time comes? I’d like to say I wouldn’t, but I will never know unless it happens.

After church we went home and prepared a dinner of ham, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, potato salad, strawberry salad, rolls, cake and cupcakes. Every plate had a chocolate bunny on it. We had a guest, a friend of one of our grandsons who could not get home for Easter. We were delighted to have him. We had such a good time talking together and then we had an egg hunt. Every year David hides eggs and the grandchildren hunt them. All our grandchildren are getting so big so they don’t get candy. They get a dollar for every egg they find and one hundred and fifty were hidden. After the teens were done it was the adults’ time. We had hidden a few eggs with coupons in them for different restaurants. You should have seen all the adults having fun hunting for eggs! We all had a great time and a nice visit. A perfect Easter day.

The newlyweds, our granddaughter and her husband. They are so cute.

Two of our grandsons. They are so handsome.

Our daughter and her husband.

Every year someone tries to be the first person in our pool. The water was only fifty-nine degrees, but our youngest grandson stripped down and jumped in so he’s the winner this year!

His brother was too busy playing Dolly Parton. Years ago, I played Dolly Parton at a skit at our church and I bought this wig. I gave it to my grandson. Who knows what plans he has for it! Ha!

Our three dogs were absolutely basking in all the attention they were given. Here is Sugar getting the best belly rub of her life. She was in heaven.

Speaking of dogs, here is the paint by number picture I completed this week. I am very happy with it and it reminds me so much of all our Labs.

I’ve been doing lots of other things. I bought this book on Amazon a while back because I wanted to learn to knit something besides socks. There are several different styles of knitted hats in this book and I’ve knitted a couple already.

I really love this style and it will be so warm when Winter comes again.

This is what the top of it looks like. I really love it. It’s especially nice knitted in self striping yarn.

I forgot to show a card I gave to David this past Valentine’s Day. You have to special order it and they put a special date on it. This is our anniversary date when we will be married fifty-five years this year and our names “carved” into the tree. David liked it.

I hope your days are filled with love, joy and peace. Keep your eyes on the One who loves you so because He will never leave you. Happy Spring, Happy Easter, Happy Day. Bye.

My title contains things that I love. Sewing, Quilting, gardening and a lot of other stuff I love don’t start with a B so they wouldn’t have fit in my title! I love a lot of people, too, but this is not all about people today. It’s about my birthday week, how we have celebrated and how we continue to celebrate because I take a week for my birthday and a week is still not enough in my opinion. Everyone one should have a chance to celebrate their birth.

But, back to birthdays, I’ve had some really good ones and some not so good, but this year’s has been a good one. It started with birthday donuts.

We went to Bloomington on my birthday to watch one of our grandsons play soccer. We got to sit up in a balcony on comfortable seats in a heated building to watch. That was so much better than sitting outside in the cold, watching from the sidelines in hard lawn chairs. Plus we could see the footwork that the boys used to pass the ball and get it into the goal. I really enjoyed it. Then we went to eat at Texas Roadhouse where we had the nicest young man as our waiter. David and I believe that Covid has helped weed out the poor waiters and waitresses because the ones working now really want to work and they do such a great job. We have had the best service in restaurants lately. After that, we went for ice cream. David and I have been wanting dipped ice cream for quite a while. There are no places where we live that has it so we were happy to get some good dipped ice cream.

Sunday, we went north and had brunch with more family members at a pancake house David and I like. We had a nice visit and I received a new planter that had been made for me by a special person. I got to see three more of my grandchildren which was nice. I’ve already got flowers ordered for the planter.

But my birthday was not done yet. Wednesday we took a ride to my hometown. My nephew’s wife had some books for me they had found in my brother’s library that were my mother’s or my aunt’s that they thought I’d like to have. I love old books so of course I had to go get them .

My mother was a voracious reader. My aunt told me one time that she would even be reading when she was ironing. I always loved looking at the books on the shelves at my grandfather’s house to see what books he had. Many of them belonged to my mother.

It may seem as if all we have done is eat this week. We went to one of our favorite restaurants while we were up north.

We enjoyed our meal, but it was time to head home to the dogs, who will be waiting for their dinner, but we did take the back roads home.

Less you think we didn’t eat enough junk for my birthday, we found a wonderful little town I had never heard of, Laurel, Indiana where we found another ice cream store. Well, if Ben and Erin Napier have Laurel, Mississippi in the home remodel show, Indiana has a town called Laurel with wonderful old homes that is a diamond in disguise. Anyway, the lady in the ice cream shop told us their dips of ice cream were so large we should probably order just one dip or half dips of two flavors. Well, if I were a drinker I would have said, “Hold my beer,” and I ordered a full two dip waffle cone and had not one problem eating it all. David did the same.That lady did not know us. Besides, we were travelers and tired and hungry from our travels. Ha. We drove around town just looking at all the beautiful houses. I’ve never seen so many wonderful places in such a small place.

Or not. This person was well ahead of his time. Now we are finding out that what his sign says is true! Oops, I got political again, but David and I got a good laugh at this sign as well as this one on a back road.

I just wanted to show you this picture of sugar cookies I baked this week to take to my grandsons. I thought I hadn’t talked about enough junk food this week. Next week it’s all vegetables I tell you!

This is the National Guard armory where David started his military career. It’s also the place where they held some pretty great dances that I would go to. My oldest brother was head of the shop here and would take me to the dances and sometimes stay unless I had a date. I loved going to the dances although at one some guys tried to start a fight with David which scared me so much I was afraid to go out to the car for fear they were waiting on him to beat him up. The Kingsmen were supposed to play there once, but were in a horrible accident on the way to get there. So we danced to records that night.

Going to my old stomping grounds brings up so many memories. I grew up in a tiny town where everyone did know everyone else and also all their business. It is still a well loved little town. There’s a facebook page for it where people give the news of the town.

I’ve got tons more pictures and could probably go on, but I will leave you with a picture of a bird town my husband made for me this week. My birthday week has been wonderful and it’s not done yet! Bye.

I read this quote somewhere this week, ” What if God were not Good?” and it set me to thinking about the God that I serve. First of all when I speak of God, I speak of the trinity God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They were all present when this world was created. At my age, I just learned this in the past few years. I did not realize that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were present at creation, but I should have known because they are all the same person. Something else my human mind can not get its brain around that God, the son and the spirit are all one and they all love us.

When God created the earth and all its inhabitants, He said every time He created something that it was good. God can only be good. His creation is only good. His love for us is the purest love of all the love there is. So, people say, “Why does God allow horrible things to happen?” That would be an easy question if you didn’t know more about God. You would just think that God really isn’t that good and he wants to see people hurt, but that is absolutely not the case. You see, when God created people, he gave them a choice. He gave the the ability to love Him and walk with Him in the garden and enjoy all His wonderful creation. But He did put a tree in that garden that gave Adam and Eve a choice. The tree of knowledge. If He hadn’t put it there, they would not have had a choice, but He gave it to them with a warning that should they eat of that tree they would no longer have eternal life here on earth, but that they would allow sin in and and would die eventually. Well, most of us know what happened then. Eve was tempted. She had everything else at her disposal. She could eat of anything else freely, but the serpent tempted her. Now that old serpent was satan in diguise. And exactly how and where did satan come from?

Up in Heaven, before the earth was even made, Heaven was a glorious place with angel choirs singing God’s praises all day and the director of those angels? Satan, himself. He wasn’t satan then, he was the most beautiful angel in Heaven. God’s right hand man, you might say.

But satan got cocky. He began to believe he was as great as God who created him. He started talking to the other angels and got many on his side can you believe it, and they decided to go to war.Just think, a devil that can talk angels out of heaven must be pretty persuasive. What a war it was, but God always wins in the end and satan and all his followers, that we now call demons, were sent from Heaven. And where were they to go? Someone suggested in a Sunday school class one day that God may of sent satan to earth as a test. This is not Biblical, so don’t set this in stone, but I could see God sending his fallen angel here and saying to him, “Let’s see if you can do a better job on earth than I have done in Heaven.” I don’t know if that was what actually happened, but satan did finally end up here on earth in that Garden of Eden one beautiful day and set the course of earth on a far different course than God had planned.

Satan walked with Eve in paradise and told her she would not die if she ate of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, but she and Adam could become like gods and know both good and evil. Satan never tells you the truth. Just know that now. He whispers in your ear and tells you things are okay that aren’t all the time.

Eve gave a good look at that tree and saw that it was pleasant to the eyes(it must have been a beautiful tree) and its fruit looked good and here was the serpent saying if she ate of the tree she would become wise.

So Eve ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. People say it was an apple, but the Bible just says fruit. It could have been a fruit we have never seen or eaten before. Then dear Eve took that fruit to Adam and Adam ate of it also and their eyes were open to both good and evil at that very moment. They knew in an instant that they had been changed. They noticed their nakedness because they sewed leaves together to cover themselves and when God came walking in the garden to commune with them, they hid. They knew then that they had gone against God. God already knew, also, but He wanted them to tell Him what they had done. The first sin. Sin separates us from God because God is so good. None of us can be good enough for God because of what Adam and Eve did in that garden. We all know the difference between good and evil. At least most of us do. And we have a choice to do good or do evil.

So now you are asking why God allows bad things to happen. This is why. There is a choice between good and evil on our planet. Some people choose good. Some people choose evil. Even the weather was messed up after the fall. That is why we now have earthquakes and floods and all manner of disasters. But there are people who show the love of God by helping others in their distress. God never wanted bad things to happen to his Creation but he had to give a choice or we would just be His robots, doing exactly what He wants us to do, but that is not why He created us. He loves us and wants us to love Him back, but He gives us a choice. He even sent His son, Jesus to die on the cross. When Jesus hung on that cross, He took every single sin in the would upon Himself and those who believe on Him will have their sins forgiven.

Why doesn’t God just forgive us all and be done with it some ask. Well, there’s that thing about choice again. If He forgave us all, His son would not have had to die and we would be back to being robots again. I’m glad God loves us enough to give us a choice. I would not love a god that made me love Him. But I do love a God who gave His only Son, just for me and just for you. God is love and He loves us and does not want a single person to to go hell. Yes, there is a hell. I sure don’t want to go there and I am happy Jesus died for me that day over two thousand years ago. He’s coming back one day to take his church(his followers) to Heaven to live with him for all eternity.

And then the next question. When is Jesus coming back and why is He taking so long? I have an answer for that, but that will have to be for another post because this one is getting rather lengthy. The Bible answers most of our questions if we study it with an open mind and a heart to learn.

So God is good. I’m glad He’s good because how horrible it would be if God were not good and did not love us. If you have stuck with me through this, thank you. Sometimes I get a call from God to do something and this is what He called for me to do today. I hope it gives some understanding to people as to why bad things happen on this earth despite a loving God watching over us. He loves you, just remember. Bye.

I don’t have much time to post anything much today. Just want you all to know you are loved and no one can take that love from you. Hope you are having a wonderful day and treating yourself well, because you are the only you in this whole universe and we need you and want you to be happy. I’ll be back with some interesting things to tell you. I’ve been reading some old diaries and I just might share some of the things I’ve read with you. If you want to read a long, happy blog go to Susan Branches’ blog. She illustrates all the books she writes and she’s written several besides cookbooks. She writes today about her and her husband’s long and happy marriage. Bye.