This past week blows...

Here's one of my peonies, down by the driveway...

Little red roses, in the same area...

Here are Shasta Daisies and lilacs and lilies....there's a birdbath in there somewhere...lol..in the backyard.

And here's a shot of the garden about a week ago, maybe  a little less. Beans, I think.





Good God.  It has been crazy around these parts. Tornadoes, severe thunderstorms, baseball sized hail and now it's cold. Getting down to 40 tonight. It barely made the mid fifties today...I was wearing sweats for crying out loud.     IT'S MAY!!!!!!  Not only May, but the tail end of May.

 The temperature on Wednesday dropped a whopping 20 degrees in one hours time. We had tornado warnings, funnel sightings, 55 mph winds and torrential rains. Trees splitting and branches cracking and limbs falling everywhere.  Last Sunday a big tornado hit Joplin, MO and it has been hysteria ever since. The local St Louis tv stations are preempting shows and running their Storm Center for hours on end. I want to go unplug them...I know they provide a service, but criminey...it feels like fear mongering. There was a huge line of storms advancing that COULD have the POSSIBILITY of rotation. And there was some, but only a little damage and for heavens sakes...dial it down a notch, guys.  When you live in the midwest, these storms this time of year are what it does here.

  Okay. That rant is over. And I really do appreciate that they are concerned. Really I am. But I had to laugh when they said something to the effect of using your computer to keep following them if you're in a tornado. The last thing I'm going to be thinking of is following the tv station during a tornado.


  I had a nice lunch at Olive Garden today with my niece and her mother. Two of my favorite women in the family. The weather was yucky, but we ate and then we went to the World Market, which is one of my favorite places to shop. I got some Thai Lotus candles on sale and a couple of other things. Then I went to Petco and bought some food for the Cichlids and some chemical that is supposed to clear the murky water. I picked up some compressed rawhide bones for the puplios. Then  I came home, grateful that I don't live down there in the city and can sit on my back deck and listen to the songs of the bullfrogs and the cardinals and the chickens singing hymns for me. And let out a long sigh of relief to be back on Honeysuckle Hill once more.


  In the morning I will go take some more pictures of the gardens. Miraculously, nothing was destroyed by the hail and winds and rain. And things look about 3x the size they were 4 days ago.

  Time for me to hit the hay, been up since 6 and am running on fumes. I am very emotional and hyper-sensitive and those are just a couple of the ways I can tell how exhausted I am...tomorrow will be busy, have a sponsling celebrating a year and a friend celebrating 26 years...we will take the former out to dinner and then go to the meeting where she'll get her coin, and then adjourn to the latters home, where we'll have coffee and dessert probably and catch up.

  Life is good. And bad. And everything in between.  That's what makes it so precious....


Namaste.