A is for April

 April is here, and time for Wally's birthday, Easter, Earth Day, and the A-Z Blogging Challenge, when I will attempt to publish a post every day in April except for Sundays. This conveniently comes out to 26 days-one for every letter of the alphabet.

I first participated in this challenge in 2015 and have continued every year except for 2017 and 2020. In 2017, I was involved with my elderly mother's care, and, well, we all know April 2020 was when COVID began terrorizing the world. Both years were stressful times, and I don't know if I even thought about the A-Z challenge. But the other years, I have usually made a last-minute decision, like this year, to participate. If you read here often, you know that I am not a prolific blogger, and halfway through April, I suffer from blogging fatigue big time during the challenge. Last year, I thought I might do better with a theme, so I chose fruits and vegetables. However, I still had problems coming up with content, even with a theme. But I like to finish things, so I have always battled through to the end. And the interesting thing is that some of my favorite posts were written during these challenges.

So here it goes. Join me if you like.

This and That

 It's been over a week since I checked in, so it's time, I guess. But I'm not feeling it. I have been having a general feeling of unease and tiredness recently and am not motivated to do much, including blogging. Part of the reason for this is construction fatigue, especially knowing that it will be at least 2 more months before we can begin to put the house back in order. And the other factor is that Ward is formally retiring this week. An event that is welcomed by both of us but is a major life change nonetheless. Changes invigorate some people. Not me. They fill me with anxiety even when I know they are good ones. But experience has taught me that change is desirable and necessary and will be worth whatever growing pains it causes.

In the meantime, we have joined a gym. Ward will be losing his gym at work and wants a place to take exercise classes. He thrives in classes and has better success with regular exercise when it is scheduled. I'm not a gym person, but I have joined him and am slowly dipping my toe in. The gym seems well run with a lot to offer. I have been trying different classes and finding all are challenging in one way or another. But Zumba and circuit training classes have been the favorites so far. Zumba because it is a very friendly atmosphere, and circuit training because it involves working all major muscle groups. 

The weather has been cold, rainy, and windy, so I haven't spent much time in the yard. There is more of that to come in the next few days, but spring is here, and we will slowly have more warm days than cold. The few vegetable plants I had planted survived a couple of hard freezes with protection, and I may plant some more things soon. Still deciding what that might be, but the top contenders are carrots and lettuce.

So I have told you about how I am unmotivated and tired these days, so I question my sanity when I say that I am considering doing the April A-Z challenge. I have no themes and feel like I don't have anything to say, but I do love a challenge. So I may start, and there's no penalty if I don't do it.

How are things in your neck of the woods?

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Okay. I've only sat down to do a post about spring at least 5x, but have never finished it. So now I'm going to publish it as is. I had more plans, but at the very least, there are some pictures of pretty flowers. Here it is.

Spring is here! It has been slowly revealing itself, but lately, it has been in a hurry to show its colors.   An exciting time to be sure.

One day I found the first daffodil beginning to bloom. I planted daffodils in various places in the yard a couple of years ago, and they're starting to flower. Yay!

The next day it looked like this after four inches of snow and frigid temperatures.

Another day, I found our first set of crocus blooming.

The next day, they looked like this after one of God's furry creatures had a midnight snack.

One day our trees looked like this, 

And the next day, they looked like this plum tree. 

Snowdrops. The earliest flowers to bloom in spring, and they are already gone.

The second wave of crocus.

The third wave of crocus. Depending on the location, they bloom at different times.

The same goes for the daffodils. These were the first to bloom.
They are the same ones as in the first picture.

These were the next to bloom. Some of the daffodils are still only leaves that are half up.

Hellebore 

Forsythia

So there you have it - for better or for worse. Now I'm out to get beds ready for some cruciferous vegetables. Until next time...

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today is a celebration of our Irish heritage. According to DNA analysis, I am about 40% Irish, and Ward is about 25% Irish. While I look the part with red hair and freckles, Ward doesn't with his black hair and olive skin. That's what is so interesting about genetics and our varied backgrounds. You're never sure what the almost infinite combination of genes will come up with. When I was younger and would lament to my mother, I wanted to be like one of my older sisters; my mother would always say how boring the world would be if we were all alike. She was right. 

Now to add a little more about St. Patrick's Day, I'm running an updated version of a post from three years ago.

  St. Patrick's Day This and That

Irish dancers in St. Patrick's Day Parade, Washington, D. C.

I usually don't do a lot to observe St. Patrick's Day except wear green--a habit that started in elementary school days to avoid being pinched. If you didn't wear green, you were fair game. I wondered how that crazy tradition got started and found out that, most likely, it was started by Irish immigrants in this country a couple hundred years ago. Supposedly, wearing green made you invisible to mischievous leprechauns who would pinch you if they could see you. A pinch from someone reminded you to be aware that a leprechaun could sneak up on you at any time.

However, it wasn't until last year that I learned about wearing orange on St. Patrick's Day. Apparently, you wear green if you are Catholic and orange if you are Protestant. A friend, whose mother is Irish, said she was always insistent that they wear orange instead of green on St. Patrick's Day. I think that detail was lost on most of us in this country, or at least me.

Shamrocks (white clover)

I learned another new thing this St. Patrick's Day--what a shamrock is. Sarah, my special buddy, gave me a shamrock plant for St. Patrick's Day. It was in a green pot from a store and labeled as a shamrock. However, it looked just like white clover to me and was not at all like my image of a shamrock. But I was surprised when I looked into it. While there is disagreement among the Irish about which clover variety is a shamrock, it is a clover plant. Yellow clover is what most agreed on, with white clover coming in second. I have a white clover plant. I'm not sure if I will let it join the rest of the clover in my yard or bring it inside. I may make it a house plant.

And while I usually don't do a lot on St. Patrick's Day (not green beer drinker or corned beef eater), I have been to a few parades. This was especially a big event when we lived in New Orleans. The fun part about a St. Patrick's Day parade was they threw vegetables from the floats to make an Irish stew. That means that they threw cabbages, carrots, potatoes, and onions along with the beads. We usually took them home and did just that--made a stew.

We've been to one parade here, and while it was enjoyable, it didn't quite live up to the vegetable throwing in New Orleans.

So as I go and figure out what green thing I'm going to wear today, I hope you have a Happy St. Patrick's Day, however big or small you choose to celebrate it.

Construction Update-We Have a Floor

 Construction continues with progress being made. However, most of it is still prep work for when the "real" stuff gets in, like cabinets and appliances. But we do have the new floor done, except for the threshold transitions. The floor took about a week with some additional inconveniences involved. First was, the washer and dryer were unhooked and in the garage. The next was that we couldn't walk on the floors during various parts of the process. That meant we had to go outside and around the house to enter the basement where our food and temporary kitchen are. While both of these were annoying, they were not really a problem. As I have said, I am lucky, blessed, and fortunate to have these kinds of issues.

Here are a few pictures of the floor being done. (Realize that these captions are from someone who doesn't really know how to install floors. I'm just describing what I saw.)

You can see the beginning steps of the prep here. First, they wetted the floor with water. Next, they spread mortar (thinset) on the floor. On top of that, they added an underlayment layer (Schluter Ditra) and pressed it down with the roller you see under the window. It took about two days to do the entire area with additional drying time (i.e., a time we couldn't walk on it.)

After the underlayment was securely dried in place, they added another layer of mortar to the top of it. This required another day of drying time.

Then they started laying the tile on top of another layer of thinset.

They had a complicated system of gadgets to space and level the tile that I didn't quite understand. I don't know if there is a difference in function between the red and blue pieces. It took about 2 days to lay the tile and another day or so to grout it.

The workman had the completed floor covered up with paper for protection before I got a picture of the finished job.

They have also been doing finish carpentry work in the pantry on the shelves. The picture makes the pantry look bigger than it is, but it is bigger than what we had before.

They were also doing finish work around the opening into the kitchen.
You can see the washer in the background. It's disconnected again
in anticipation of working on the floor molding in the laundry room.

This is an air filter that Ward built from 4 Hepa filters and a box fan. It works as well as or better than the commercial one we bought and costs about 1/2 as much. However, the commercial one is sleeker and takes up less space. Also, in this picture, you can see the displaced cleaning supplies which now live on the hearth.

Now for the disappointing news. The cabinets that were supposed to be done by the end of February are now slated for delivery at the end of April, which puts the completion time for the project at the end of May. But it is what it is. We're too far into the project to turn back now. So patience is the name of the game at this point.

Until next time...