Discoveries this week 5-12-11

A Second Look around the yard this week found these new flowers blooming along with a few other things.

Pink azaleas

White azaleas

Siberian Iris

Star of Bethlehem--Some consider this a weed and some consider it a flower.  It spreads easily by both seeds and bulbs, so you have to be careful where you plant it.

Rhododendron

The blossoms are off of the peach tree and peaches are starting to form.

The cows are grazing in the field behind us. They get rotated among the different fields on the neighbor's farm, but usually spend the summer behind us.

A Day in the Life of Lucy

A Day in the Life of Lucy

  

Lucy started her day with a little breakfast.

Then she decided to join Wally who was still in bed.

After her nap with Wally, she joined the family in 
a game of Scrabble.

She soon became bored with Scrabble and decided 
to play cards instead.

All the game playing tired her out, so she took another 
nap with the rest of the cats.

After her rest, she tried her paws at some arts and crafts.

The tedium of the arts and crafts made her nervous, so she chewed on a box to calm herself before her next nap.

When she woke up, she was hungry and demanded to be fed.

After eating, she decided that she would watch some TV with me and Annie, but soon fell asleep.

With her last burst of energy for the day, she caught a "mouse."

And she fell asleep for the night beside Ward.

The end.

Happy Mother's Day

I come from hearty stock. Thank goodness, because raising babies in my family is not for the faint of heart. Just ask my mother.

She gave birth to my oldest sister, Daughter Number One, as young woman one year after she married my father. She said at that point she knew as much about taking care of a baby as she did about being a plumber (not much). My sister did all of the fun things babies do like cry a lot for no apparent reason and never sleep. But soon my sister learned to talk. And talk. My mothered yearned for quiet.

Two and a half years later, Daughter Number Two was born. She followed in the footsteps of Number One and cried a lot for no apparent reason and never slept. Then she learned to walk. And run. And climb. And to never be afraid. She climbed the banisters, moved the furniture, scared the neighbors, and had the fire department rescue her from a drain. She didn't talk much, but that didn't matter, because Number One talked enough for both of them.

Three years after Number Two, I was born. I just didn't cry for no apparent reason, I cried ALL of the time. I cried so much that I burst my tear ducts. I cried so much that the neighbors took me with them when they delivered groceries. They hoped to provide some relief for all involved. I consumed every minute of my mother's time. Meanwhile, Number One talked and Number Two was “busy.”

My mother was tired, but the kids were happy.

Then the miracle happened. Daughter Number Four was born four years after me. She only cried when she needed something. She slept regularly. My mother was afraid that something was wrong with her. She didn't understand this kind of baby. Meanwhile, Number One talked, Number Two was busy, and I cried easily, but we were manageable now—at least compared to before. For a little while, my mother could breathe and just be very busy raising four young girls. That was until my ailing grandmother moved in. But that's another story.

My husband has a theory that the number of kids in a family is equal to the number of easy babies plus one difficult one. Thank goodness my parents didn't subscribe to that formula or I wouldn't be here. I want to thank my mother, on this Mother's Day, for not giving up when I'm sure she wanted to and giving me a great start to life.

A Second Look, 5-5-11

A second look around the yard this week found these new flowers blooming.

Lily of the Valley

Cherry Laurel

Azalea--Last week the pink bushes were blooming. This week the red one joined them.

Wild Cherry

Violet--A favorite spring wildflower that is trying to take over the yard and beds.  

The Long and the Short of It

How long should my posts be? I've been pondering this since I decided to try my hand at blogging. I'll have to admit that I am behind the technology curve that has the trend of shortening everything. I don't regularly text. I tried to open a Twitter account, but kept having problems with my password. I usually use complete words in emails. In other words, it's easy to tell that I'm over thirty. I remember when I was in college, I was introduced to the book,  "CDB" by William Steig. I thought it was very clever. The entire book was just line-drawings and letters that sounded out words.( “CDB=See the bee.”) Who knew years later, that this style of writing would be commonplace.

I looked around a little* and found that different kinds of blogs, on average, have different lengths. Gossip blogs are usually the shortest (~100 words) and reference blogs are the longest (~1500 words.) Most blog entries are 100-500 words. Also, the average person spends about 1 ½ minutes reading a blog post. As an experiment, I asked Ward, Wally, and Theodore to read a well-written long blog post (not mine) for 1 ½ minutes and see how far they got. Theodore read 500 words, Ward read 371 words, and I read 411 words during our 90 second experiments. Wally said he was busy with an online meeting. It seems, from this totally nonscientific project, that bloggers have figured out how long they have an audience and write a length to match this.

What does this mean? I'm not sure except Theodore says that writing about your blog in a blog is odd. That's the short of it.

*How Long is the Ideal Blog Post?
  Post lenght-How Long Should a Blog Post Be?