Surpise!

It's not a big surprise, like we won the lottery, but enjoyable all the same. Yesterday, I saw my first bloom on a spider lily plant that a friend gave me last year. She brought them with her when she moved from California and decided that she had too many. They spent the winter in our garage because these lilies are not hearty in our cold weather. They've been outside for months now and I've been waiting and wondering when or if they were going to bloom. And yesterday, I turned around and there it was. The first interesting, delicate, beautiful bloom. When I went outside this morning to show Ward, there was another. All blooms are interesting, but it's fun to be surprised by a new-to-me one. And when I read up on them, they said they were deer resistant. A big plus.

And speaking of deer resistant plants, tomatoes do not qualify. For a while now, deer have been eating the top off of our tomato plants and have now included the tomatoes. You know, if they would just pick a couple of tomatoes and eat the whole thing, I wouldn't mind. It's the take one big bite out of several tomatoes that I don't like. Same goes for the zucchini and sunflowers. Oh, well. It's all part of the balance of nature, I guess.

Despite the fact that the deer enjoyed the tomatoes, we were able to harvest several. I spent yesterday afternoon working with them and plan to make sauce out of them today to freeze. Also, we've finally used up the last of the zucchini. We'll see if we get some more when the deer will hopefully decide they are tired of them. The cucumbers are slowly coming on, but we've been lucky that Uncle Billy has been sharing his abundant crop. We've also been blueberry picking in his patch a couple of times that have yielded some for the freezer and some for snacking. I love this time of year with fresh vegetables and fruits to be found in abundance.

Computer time is up, so until next time...

Tuesday 4, A Visit From the Future

I'm participating in the Tuesday 4 which this week has you examine yourself from the prospective of someone from the future. I've have done similar exercises to this in the past and always found them difficult. To me, everything around me seems normal, of course, so nothing seems special or worth mentioning. But each of us lives in a situation that is unique to us and has our stamp on it one way or another. So much more to say about this, but before I get too far into my thoughts, I will try to stop overthinking things and just answer. Here it goes. Play along if you'd like.

1.  Let's pretend that it is 50 years into the future, and explorers have just discovered your house, "frozen in time" exactly as it is today. Everything is preserved, even the food, but of course no one has lived there for fifty years.  What do you think would be their first reaction as they walk in the door of your house? I think they’d want to know why everything has a wire attached to it and why we have so much paper around. I don’t know where technology is going in the future, but if present trends continue, we will be in a wireless, paperless world.   2.  What would the things left in your house tell the explorers about you? First, I think they would see evidence of pets with our shredded furniture, fur balls, scratching posts, and cat food that abound. They would also see that we hold onto things if they still work even if they aren’t that attractive. That along with the primitive technology that they see, even for 50 years ago, would suggest that we do not part with our money easily.   3.  What kinds of books would they discover on your bookshelves or beside your chair/bed? They would discover many classic science fiction books since my husband still has the ones he got in high school and college. They would also find several “how to” books particularly in woodworking and gardening. Added to that would be some children’s classics, as well as popular fiction and nonfiction books-meaning books I read and liked that I found at used book sales.   4.  What things would they discover in your closets or cabinets that would make them wonder why on earth you were saving it? When we moved four years ago, we got rid of many things, so nothing really ridiculous comes to mind right now. However, they might wonder why we have so many empty coffee cans and empty cat food boxes. If I could talk to them, I would say that I’m saving the coffee cans for a children’s craft program at the library if we ever get to do programs in person again, and those cat food boxes are very sturdy and handy to use in many situations.

Aimless puttering

Today was my day off and I had several things that I wanted to get done around the house. However, it wasn't Ward's day off and he seemed to have an entire day of important meetings. What did that mean to me? Anything in the kitchen was too loud. Vacuuming - too loud. Computer work - hard to concentrate on my things while listening to his meetings. So what did I do? Played a few computer games and wandered around from shady spot to shady spot in the yard doing a bit of clean up. Along the way, I took a few pictures to share. 

We are seeing a lot of rabbits this year. This is one of the younger ones.

The day lily blooms are very pretty. However, the leaves all turn to brown as soon as it gets too hot. Ours are moving into the browning stage, but we still have some blooms.

Despite the fact that I pulled up all of the coneflowers two years ago because of disease, some of them have come back and the insects are enjoying them. If you look closely you'll see the bee's pollen covered legs as well as a busy proboscis.

Our little fig tree is growing. We may actually get a dozen or so figs from it this year. That's at least a 200% increase from previous years.

Little skipper butterflies are everwhere.

Some cicadas come out every 17 years and some of them come out every year like this green-eyed cousin to the red-eyed Brood X that invaded earlier this summer.

Another skipper on comos.

The Black-eyed Susan bloomed this week. Something eats the petals of them as well as the cone flowers' petals. BTW, Black-eyed Susan is the state flower of Maryland.

Spirea

Caladium and vinca. These are planted in front of Ward's shop in a planter, made by his dad, from an old hot water heater .

A Patient Mother

 Today is my birthday, so it's time to rerun a birthday post from the past. 

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I am thankful that I had a patient mother.

Today is my birthday which has me thinking about when I was a baby. Of course, I don't remember anything about my first year, but I have the stories I've been told.

Apparently, I was late in arriving. Very late. My mother had to wait three weeks past her due date for me to be born.  My parents sent my older sisters to stay with my grandmother in the next town when the event was eminent or so they thought. My sisters were there so long that my parents visited them on the weekends. My mother had made them a box of surprises for their stay with ribbons attached to a trinket that they got to choose everyday. However, the box emptied before they were back home. During what must have been a very miserable extra three weeks, I am thankful for my mother's patience for my arrival.

Me at 4 months. True to form, I had a cold in
one eye for this appointment.

My mother said that before I came she had time to clean the entire house and she even waxed the kitchen floor. She thought things would go smoothly with me. The house was in order and this was her third child, so she knew what she was doing. But then I came. And I cried. And cried. And cried. For the first six months, I cried so much that I burst a tear duct and herniated my naval. The neighbors used to take me in the car with them while they were delivering groceries to try to calm me. I am thankful for my mother's patience during the very noisy, exhausting time of when I was trying to settle into the world.

Soon after there was finally some quiet in the house (as much as you can have with a baby and two small children), I got pneumonia and was in the hospital for two weeks. The hospital was in another town and my mother spent all of her time with me while the rest managed somehow at home. Once I was back home, my oldest sister remembers the extra care that I still required. For my mother's patience while taking care of a sick baby, I am thankful.

Throughout the years, I have heard various stories about when I was a baby, but never did the stories come with any guilt or resentment. Just another story from my mother like the one when they had to call the fire department to get my sister's foot out of a drain. So for having had a very patient mother who gave me a great start to life despite how hard I made it for her, I am very thankful.

Well, that's annoying.

 My life is good. I know that. I have lived through enough stressful times in the past to fully realize when times are good. But that doesn't mean that I don't get annoyed sometimes. It's just part of being human. Can you tell, I'm working up to some complaining?

Here it goes. My email wasn't working for about a week despite the fact that all of the settings were identical to my husband's. Most of my communication happens through email, so it was a problem. One that I could awkwardly work around, but annoying all the same. I am happy to report after many hours of trouble shooting, my email is working again. However, now Ward's has stopped working. Hopefully the fix we found for mine will work for his.

And even more annoying is the bill pay feature with my bank has stopped working. Every time we try to go in, it takes us back to the sign in screen. We were on the phone with their tech support for an hour the other night before they said they would have to escalate the case because they don't know what's going on. This is a problem. Some of our bills go straight to the site. Almost all of our bills get payed through here. Bills are due and I can't get to them. We do have an ipad mini that we could use, but it's old enough that the bank software doesn't work on it any more. Anyway, I'm gonna have to start figuring out other ways to pay things. Doable, but tedious--and annoying.

And another thing that annoyed me, even though it was partly my fault. We get our cat food delivered through Chewy (prescription food, good price), and usually they put it on our front porch. Well, on Friday, two cases of it got dropped off at the end of our driveway right in the middle. So while leaving to go feed Miss Lander's cat, I ran over it. I didn't see it in the backup camera or the mirrors. Anyway, what a mess! It took about an hour to clean it all up and to see if any of the cans were still usable. I managed to salvage a few and called Chewy. They were able to file a complaint with UPS for me and sent me a new order. I offered to pay for it because it wasn't their problem, but they said no. Chewy has the best customer service in the world and I'm not complaining about that.

And finally, this is not annoying, just disturbing, even though it was totally natural. I checked one of our bird boxes last week to see if the house wren eggs had hatched. Inside, I found a rat snake eating the babies, next to a dead mother. I know that its all part of nature and all of God's creatures have to eat, but I don't want to see it up close and personal. Ward kindly volunteered to clean out the box.

Neighborhood flowers

So as not to end with the bird image, here's some good news. The little girl who lives behind us, periodically has a flower stand where she sells flowers from her yard and her grandmother's yard. They are raising money to put a Little Free Library in the neighborhood. Ward and I bought three arrangements to support the cause. They were also giving away yellow squash. We have more zucchini that we can easily process, so we politely said no thanks.

Until next time...