Oh dear, oh dear....

  Something wonderful today would be waking up and finding all the fruit flies GONE!!!!  What is the deal? I have never had such a problem...I clean things up immediately, I have poured bleach down the drain, I have made a vinegar trap...and even have a flypaper strip (YUCK!)   and still--there are a gazillion fruit flies buzzing around in this house. ENOUGH ALREADY !!!!!!

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   I didn't take any garden pictures today. I was out there too, wallowing in the wonder of the beauty and remarkable growth...and kept getting busy doing things and saying oh--I'll do that in a minute. And as the sun set and I walked out to shut up my chickens in the coop...I realized that I never did photograph the garden.

  Sigh....

  I  did do laundry and hang it out to dry. Which it didn't. I hung the last load up at 12:30. When I went out back at 8 PM to take it down, it was still a little damp and tacky. WTH ??  That should have been plenty of time.  It wasn't hot here today, maybe 80, but it was sunny and breezy and how does the laundry NOT dry in almost 8 hours???

  I did thoroughly clean the new (to us--a freebie on the road) bird cage with a soapy bleachy water and then hosed it off completely. After letting it dry in the sun for a few hours, I brought it in and started the relocation process for ol' Chico. He wasn't happy about it at first, but I convinced him it would be a good move and finally he was ensconced in his new condo.  It's a LOT bigger than his old cage.  He climbed up by the roof and hung out for the longest time, then finally started exploring. I put a lot of old familiar stuff in there and eventually he was climbing down to the food bowls. He is, however, sleeping on HIS old perch....lol...which I had to put across a corner because it's too short for the new cage.

  I also managed to get the chick pen out of the spare room all by myself. It was an ordeal...it's about 6 ft long by 4 ft wide  by 3 ft high. I scooted it out into the hallway and then the rest of the way through the house and out into the yard. Then I brought my little flat-bed garden wagon and wrestled it up on there and pulled it around back. Tomorrow I will start cleaning that room, which is full of chick dust and dander and baby feathers.  It will be an all day job...

 One of my filters on the fish tank stopped working. I have about 3 or 4 other filter units in the fish storage place...so I pulled them out and started trying to find one that worked. 2 wound up in the recycle and one is back in storage and the small one that worked best is now on the aquarium.  It's small, but I have another filter unit on there too...it's a 30 gallon aquarium.  That was another hour or more....

  While I had the hose out for the bird cage,  I pulled all the chicken waterers out and cleaned and refilled them too. I need to clean that coop again too, but it didn't happen today, and might not happen tomorrow.

  My big agenda for tomorrow includes cleaning up that guest room and finishing mowing the grass...and at some point I'll have to take down all that laundry too...

 Lord, it's after 1 o'clock!!!   I have got to get to bed....

Have a good night, y'all...

Namaste.

Muddling through a Monday...

 For all you have and all you don't....

  It's been an interesting Monday to muddle through. First, the Irishman had to call in sick to work because he has been sick since before supper last night. A stomach bug.  Hurting and vomiting and laying around all day. Bless his heart...I brought him Ginger Ale and Pepto Bismol, offered him dandelion and violet leaves, and waited on him a lot.  He's been really tired all day and on the sofa, between icky bouts. I had a moment of nausea, but ate some dandelion leaves and it pretty much went away.

  Made a healthy version of sweet and sour chicken to take to my friends house since I couldn't bake a pot pie.  No--the oven hasn't healed itself yet.  But I fixed the dish, cooked some Jasmine rice and took it all over where we sat and laughed our fool heads off for about 3 hours. Then I headed home.

  I made a funky version of  garlic naan with some of the bread dough. and it turned out really good. I could have rolled it a lot thinner, that would have made it even better. As it was, it came out more like a flatbread.  I'd do it again...it was that good.

  I am so tired. I probably didn't get 3 hours of sleep last night...and as soon as I finish this, I am headed for the bed.

  My son's truck is not running right, so he's going to take my car for the rest of the week to go to work. That means I'll be firmly ensconced at Honeysuckle Hill....maybe I can get something done. I may be sitting with my neighbors husband on Friday and then that night we have a graduation to go to and a pizza party afterwards that I organized for my friend.  She's graduated from a technical school and i am so proud of her!

  We finally got rain today...and got quite a bit. Thank goodness--it has been so dry. After the rain, the peas exploded into blooms!!  It was an amazing sight...

  Alright...I have to go to bed....I hurt everywhere.  lol

  Sweet dreams, muchachas !!

A Lazy Sunday Morning...

  This is all I've done all morning...harvest some lettuces and spinach and chard.  LOL

  I keep thinking any minute I'll jump up and accomplish something, but it might not happen.  Could it be that it's my day off ??  (One of the problems with being retired is that you don't get days off anymore...) lol

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  Had a hissy fit for a minute yesterday..  made a beautiful batch of bread dough, had it raising in the bread pans...and the oven wouldn't work. Yes...the oven is out. Again. I don't know f you recall that this happened to me before...and the gas guy said it's probably a tiny piece of rusted metal or something blocking the jet that the gas comes through, because the igniter is heating up just fine. It just won't light the burner. Sigh... So, I have a batch of dough in my fridge, and am trying to figure out what to do with it. I should be baking bread in the bread machine anyway, as it's too hot to be running the oven. So..this is already mixed up and ready to go...I'm thinking...fry bread??  A freaky version of naan??  sigh...The last time this happened I didn't have an oven for a while and then it suddenly repaired itself and started working again. I'm waiting for another miracle, as I really can't afford a new oven and am not sure I want to buy an old one, as it will have problems of its own, I'm betting.  I'll make sure and keep you in the loop....lol

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   We just finished a nice lunch of leftover salad fixins with some egg salad, some cheese tortellini, some pickled beets and crackers. Yum. Now the Irishman is heading out to mow. I am going to check into some recipes for the bread, then download some pinwheel directions and try my hand at that. I did buy a big garish plastic multi-colored pinwheel that I stuck in the edamame...I only bought one because it was 9 bucks..AT Big Lot's !!!! It has about a 3/4 inch thick dowel...a monster pinwheel. I want to make small ones...and they have to be made out of something that will hold up to the weather. hmmm....

   It's a beautiful breezy day out there, all sunny and hot. Maybe the winds will bring rain, we could surely use it, and they were saying  maybe Monday.  Fingers crossed.

  I am feeling so lazy this morning, and I am going to just go with it. Friday I took a lunch out to my friend who broke her hip and spent about 3 hours with her. She's doing her best, but I can see she really hurts. Tomorrow I am going to make something they can heat up for supper and spend time with her again. I was going to make chicken pot pie, but I guess that ain't gonna happen....lol (No oven).   Saturday I went to a meeting in the morning,. thought about stopping for some groceries and decided to wait and see how long I can go without buying any. I don't need a lot of stuff...it will be fun to see just how long I can go without buying anything more...I thought I needed onions...then I realized I have the walking onions out there to use. I make my own bread, so there's that. I have a stocked pantry, I have chickens for eggs. I make my own cereal and granola bars. I have plenty of lettuces and radishes for salads.  huh.  I don't need no stinking stores....lol

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  The green beans and the snow peas are both starting to flower. That means before I know it, I will have both of those. yippee!!

  Next weekend the Irishman and I are going to a graduation ceremony for a friend who just completed her medical assistant training, then we will all go to a local pizza joint for a little celebration.  Then Saturday morning I will be getting my coin for 22 years of sobriety at the 10 o'clock meeting.  My AA anniversary is actually Tuesday, as well as my wedding anniversary.  The Irishman and I are celebrating 20 years of welded bliss.   lol  And he has to leave Saturday night for an assembly up in Urbana and will be gone until Sunday evening. The following weekend, he will be going to Wisconsin for his family reunion and will be gone for 4 or 5 days.  SO--it's going to be a busy couple of weeks coming up.

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  Alrighty. I'm off to surf the web and see what I can do about my bread. And pinwheels. Oh yeah..I wanna make some art today...I have been seriously neglecting that side of my life lately.  So...have a happy Sunday all y'all....I'm sure going to!

Namaste.

Deep fried Friday...

 Separateness.  That means that when I think I can do anything I want, thinking  it doesn't affect anyone else, then I am living an illusion.  In other words,

When I hurt you, I hurt me. 

When I am not caring about you, I am not caring about me.

Until we are all free, none of us are free.

  Until we can all realize the interconnectedness of all living beings, we will never live in harmony and peace.  Until I can become a steward, a servant of life, then I cannot fully live in the world.  I believe this to be true of the way I love (or don't love) my neighbor and of the way I trod upon the planet.  Of the way I treat animals and the way I treat the people I don't agree with. Do I walk around with anger and fear in my heart, or do I try to take this life one minute at a time, seeing the beauty and awe in each and every thing ?  Can I be where my feet are? Or am I always living in tomorrow or next week or next year?

  Can I look at you, or him or her, and see myself? Can I see the beating heart  and feel the breaths you take as if they are my own?   Do I delight in Creation, or am I too busy trying to get more more more for myself...thus missing all the incredible beauty in the dew on the spider web outside my door?

  Can I have empathy and compassion for the person whose actions annoy me or whose behavior just pushes me over the edge? And what is that anyway but fear?  Am I so afraid that I cannot allow another to be who they are for this moment in time? So afraid that I cannot see that the fear which drives one to lash out, or grasp onto, or live in isolation and scarcity...should be cause for my compassion, and not my anger? And what is anger anyway? Fear turned outward.  If I am afraid I will not have enough, I become angry and dissident. Is this not what happens worldwide...am I not wired the same as  my brother in Angola, or my sister in London or anyone in the whole world who is hungry or cold or homeless or thirsty?  Or afraid...for their lives, their property, their family.

  Can I see that we are all on our own journeys, sometimes nearer and sometimes farther away, sometimes holding steady and sometimes faltering and stumbling...but always trying to make our way home ? Home to that place of love, where peace resides. Home to love...always a return to love.

  A place where fear is not the commonplace, where all is well.  Where everyone has enough and no one has to steal or kill or beg. When the world becomes a sanctuary...and we all sigh, contentedly, in the cradle of the Mothers arms. 

 A world where we care for one another as ourselves. Where there is no scarcity, no lack. A place where fear has no purpose, and does not give life to anger and war and all the bigotry and hurtfulness. Where those who cannot take care of themselves are loved and nurtured and those who can help others- do. A place where I feed you and you feed me.  A place where the hand of friendship is always extended.

 Quantum physics  tells us that all matter is comprised of Energy and the dance of this energy is constant....swirling, moving, creating, ...and I think of the Beatles song, I Am The Walrus..."I am you and you are me and we are all together..."  dancing particles of LOVE, swirling about the Universe. And I am one with everything. The same atoms that were in you minutes ago are in me and moving on to others...and so we are all connected in the river of life..

 And thinking and believing this, I find it vitally important to walk more softly and be more kind and live with all the love I can muster. For me as much as for you. And to continue to try to be a better person. I am so quick to judge sometimes...so quick with a sharp word or a heartless retort. My work here can only be to strive to be the most compassionate, caring Annie I can be. To learn to see past the masks and facades people carry with them.  To learn to see with my heart, as it were. To remember that forgiveness of anothers shortfalls applies to myself as well. I must forgive myself for being human, and stay the path towards a better tomorrow.

  It begins with me.  Peace begins with me.

Namaste. The Light in me, acknowledges the Light in you.

WWW.Gardens...

  I have to tell you this:  I was in my garden shed today, and found some garden stuff I wanted to put out (I was actually looking for a sprinkler, which I did not find). I tossed out onto the grass, a resin turtle, a statue of St. Francis and this guy...a grey metal garden gnome. Roxie was out with me and when it hit the ground, she yelped. For the next 2 hours, she would walk around it sniffing, backing away, and barking her fool head off...like it was some kind of monster she was protecting us from. It was hysterical....

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 The best part of doing this garden picture-rama is seeing how much things have grown in just a weeks time! If I was really inspired, I'd post then and now pictures, but that sound like an awful lot of work.  LOL  And face it, I'm basically a lazy woman...

  I want to start off with a picture of the Rose of Sharon that I dug up out of a ditch on our road last year and planted in the back yard. It has some flowers on it, and they are gorgeous. I didn't prune this one like I do my others...

Aren't these just gorgeous old fashioned flowers?  

 Then there are the big yellow lilies out front...

Hyssop..a beautiful medicinal herb

My yarrow bed

Red potatoes, flowering

Kennebecs and Irish cobblers, flowering (The tater plants are up to my hip...TALL!)

Those beloved butterbeans...growing up the teepees...

Snow peas...climbing string trellis

Lush green beans

Edamame !!!!

Flowering garlic chives--elegant!

My STILL unstaked  tomatoes...tomorrow...(I hope) lol

Uh...yes. I planted 2 more tomatoes today...Amish paste.  :)

Peppers (and Okra at the far end) -did weed this today...

2 little eggplants

My little experimental celery...a wascally wabbit ATE the other one...

Bronze Romaine, black Seeded Simpson lettuces--ready for munching.

Onyums. Lots of them.

 Beautiful Butternut Squashes

Georgia Jet sweet potatoes (jury's still out, though they are looking better)

Blackberries are loaded this year, but really needing rain...

Can you see how loaded this apple tree is? The deer are coming through nightly for snacks though, and eating fruit off the bottom b ranches...and we ran a racoon out of the tree one night.

Potted some new plants I got on sale today, starting with this little  begonia

2 pots of stonecrop, a sedum variety

A big planter of 4 pots of coleus' (on sale-4/10 bucks) I couldn't resist

And finally, some more petunias to fill in the hanging baskets on the front porch. Didn't get that done today though...

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  There you have it, todays tour of the bloomin' idiots little paradise. lol

  I made a trip to town this morning, kept the Irishman's truck so that I could haul the burning barrel I got down to my friends house. Spent a lovely morning with her, sitting among her flower beds and chatting. She's done a great job on her little yard...and I saw all kinds of flowers that I want now..lol...so the flower buying was all her fault !!!  lol

  Then I made a couple of stops in the forbidden zone (lol) ..Home Depot and The Farm Home store...ostensibly looking for whirligigs to scare critters out of my garden...but instead found 40% off sales, which forced me to buy flowers. lol  I did find the Amish Paste Tomatoes tho--I got seeds for those from Baker Creek, and none of them germinated, so I was pretty psyched at finding those. And they were 40% off. WINNER !!!!  lol

  Finally winding my way home, I stopped and bought 4 huge bales of straw...to finish mulching AND for the chicken coop. They loaded them for me, so I only had to unload them once I got home. Not that heavy, just awkward. But I got my little garden wagon out and put the sides down and hauled 2 at a time to the back. I put 3 of them into the storage area under the coop and one over in the aisle by the sweet potatoes. Which are ready to be strawed. But did not get done.  I did finally plant my 2 lemon grass plants, a sage and a rosemary too...sheesh !!

sigh...oh well...there's always tomorrow....

Namaste.

Monday...after the big weekend....

 The beginning...people just starting to arrive, shortly before noon.  

  It 's a really nice place that we hold our family reunion every year...a state park, where we have this pavilion that's just steps away from the lake and the playground (and the bathrooms) lol. it's got a huge bbq grill set up over to the side of it too. There are about 8 banquet sized tables under there, and everyone brings their lawn chairs and scatter all over the perimeters.  I am guesstimating that we had about 80-90 people this year.  Not a bad turnout.

The guy with the camera is my brother who came in from Georgia, and his motley crew. AND--looks like there's one kid missing, now that I'm looking closely.  A grandson. Jake. lol 

lol..the beautiful mommy-to-be...my niece, Kelly Ann...wanted a good picture of her mommy tiara. Here's a better photo of this beauty

Holding her cousin, baby Rowan.

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  It was a good time and everyone had a ball. We had new cousins for everyone to meet and lots of really great food and perfect weather. A Trifecta!

Got home last night at about 8:30 and fell into an exhausted reverie, thinking about how it use to be and how many of the old aunts and uncles we've lost. One of the cousins (whose mom just died this year) brought a couple of boxes of old photos he found while cleaning out her house, so there was lots of that too.

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 I just wanted to stop in this morning and say hi...got to meet my cousin for coffee in about an hour, so I need to get going here. Then I'll come home and clean house and do some cooking and take it down a notch. I'm still riding the family high, lol.  My sister from Florida, her husband and one of her sons with his girlfriend came too, so all of my siblings made it this year, which was very cool. Although my brother from Georgia came and brought his wife, we didn't see much of her, I'm afraid. She's an only child who can't handle the crowds (I guess).  But it was good to see him and her for the one minute I did.

  Have a grand day everyone. You can imagine my house and the dog hair quotient, since I was gone from here 2 days and didn't vacuum. I have my work cut out for me today...

(BTW--while I was gone my butterbeans grew another 2 inches!!!!! )

Namaste.

Fridays Foibles

(I just love that word...)

  Here's some of what I did today...

Jungle Babies...

So you can see the back material...

 Since we don't know if it's a boy or a girl yet, I made it gender neutral.  lol  I also got 2 short baby bottles, a bottle brush, a package of travelling baby wipes, and some baby oil and lavender baby bath soap. Put it all in a big giant gift bag and I am ready for the shower.  lol

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  I also baked a big peach pie for the reunion Sunday. It came out like this:

 I am taking all the stuff to make a big relish tray...pickled beets, pickled peppers, dilly green beans and pickled okra.  I am taking a jar each of sweet red pepper jelly and jalapeno jelly, and I will put it on a tray with cream cheese and a couple of boxes of store bought crackers, Ritz or something. And once there, I will buy fried chicken and that will be that.

 I have a list of the last minute stuff to pack that I have to use in the morning, plus stuff like camera, phone and charger, etc. I packed my bag already, I cleaned the bejeezus out of my little car--even cleaned the Roxie slobber off the windows. I have my clothes I will wear tomorrow laid out.  I gassed up the car. I am ready to roll out of here at 9:30 AM, because....

  I am picking up my son at 10, and he and I are making the trip together. Pat can't go, his wife can't go, and I get him all to myself.  We haven't done this in years...taken a trip just the two of us. The last time (I figured this out earlier today) was in 1995, when he came to visit me in California, and we took a trip and went up to Crater Lake in Oregon.

I am so excited about this I can barely stand myself, lol.  He really needs to get away and I really need to spend some time with him. It's gonna be awesome. I got a motel in Mt. Vernon, which is about 20 minutes from Rend Lake, where the gathering is.  We're going to hook up with the cousins and go out to dinner Saturday night...he's going to spend some time fishing Saturday afternoon...and I am going to relax like nobody's watching!! lol

Okay--I have to hit the hay...it's late and I am really tired.  Just wanted to stop in and say hey to you all before I leave, since I won't be back til Monday or Sunday night...

  Have a grand weekend, kids!!

Namaste.