Speed Blogging Check-in

 As I often do, I am doing my morning check-in of email, fitness app, Wordle, and blogs. And sometimes, I squeeze in time to write a post. And that's what I'm doing this morning - squeezing in a post by speed blogging with a timer. My timer happens to be set at 12 minutes. So here it goes. Twelve minutes of stream of consciousness. 

We recently celebrated my FIL's 91st birthday.
Ward's family likes to play music at family gatherings.

You may (or may not) remember back in January, we started a project of going through our house room by room and decluttering. It took a couple of weeks, but we successfully touched everything in our bedroom and bathroom, reorganized, and purged what was no longer needed. Next, we moved onto the office and started with all the paperwork. And I am thrilled to report that we finally finished last week. Yay!! Double Yay! We haven't worked steadily on it for the last few months, but I was determined to finish. We shredded several big bags of paper during the process. But papers are like dishes and laundry; there are always more being generated. 

We do many things online that we used to do with paper, but paper still abounds. Someday, when I'm feeling ambitious, I will tackle all of the files on my computer, including pictures and email. But next up are the rest of the things in the office. 

However, at this time of year, the outdoors are calling. We planted more pots this week, including four big ones for our porches. My attempts at making planters have never been that successful in the past. If I make a decent-looking one, it never holds up. The plants grow at different rates, and the whole thing looks lopsided in no time. However, this time, the people at the nursery showed me groupings that you just plop into a pot and water. It helped that there were examples they had been growing for a while that looked quite good. It was cheaper buying this grouping than buying individual plants. We'll see how they do.

This was my attempt to take a picture of the first tomatoes that are forming. They are hard to see, but if you squint, you can see one above the bloom on the right.

I also planted zucchini and basil this week. None of the basil came up from last year, so I bought some plants. The zucchini was hard to find. Lots of yellow squash out there, but not zucchini. I found two scraggly plants at Walmart after visiting several stores. I really have to get coordinated next year to start it from seeds. However, the beans are up from the seeds I saved from last year. 

I harvested the last of the spinach yesterday, and the peas are ready to be picked. I hope Ward will pick peas while I'm at work today.

There goes my timer. Time to get ready for work. I have to leave early today because I am feeding my sister's cat while she's on vacation.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and gets a chance to feel the sunshine.

Until next time...