It must be so nice to have a cook in the house! I'm going cold, easy foods right now. My poor DD will probably starve. The doctor told my DD she was really deficit in B12 thus her sore mouth. That cake looked good enough to eat Will be glad to come help you eat it. Still no blackberrys here.
Laughing For Joy #8
I did it again, lol what is with my brain today
This message was edited Apr 28, 2012 4:51 PM
Cooking gets me out of much of the heavy work. ;-) There has been a lot of rain lately so the gnats are so bad I don’t like being outside right now. I’ve been pricing the insect protective clothing. There are these mosquito netting pants you can wear over shorts and a net blouse you can wear over your tank top with an attached hood and veil. I would wear it! It is no stranger looking than bee hive tending gear. (PJ is talking about using a scrap of mosquito netting we have to make himself some “ear nets.” If he follows through with that there will very definitely be photos. lol.
Fenny stepped into one of the wet concrete slabs MK was making for the outside of the ramp walls. I pulled out the marbles and paint and had some fun with it. It will still work as an inner wall for my “hobbit house.” (Yes, I’m still working on my underground hideout. Lol. )
Are you trying to catch hobbits, or just make them comfy while they're visiting?
Just making sure they have a safe shelter during hurricanes and tornadoes. ~N~
Gotcha.
Do Hobbits bring gold or other goodies with them?
I have received the most wonderful news. Kay has been wrestling with the loss of the final little bit of her vision. She has been “spiritwalking” as she calls it. Reading the Bible and praying and taking time out for the truly important things. She has accepted Christ wholeheartedly. A Calm and smiling Kay may take some getting used to though. Lol.
Mr. And Mrs. Cardinal are parents. Nadine is still picking blackberries. Lettuce is coming up in a hanging basket in the kitchen window. It will be nice to still have sweet lettuce when heat has made the lettuce outside grow bitter. (Jim)
P.S.--I have heard that they have harry feet those hobbits do.
Wow, lettuce coming up in a hanging basket! That's something!
Our sympathy is with Kay. I don't know the right words. She is one of my heroes.
Thank you Carrie
Kay is on sabbatical recovering we hope she will be back on-line soon.
Till then I may be spotty getting posts on here but I will strive to flower in adversity as they say.
God Bless yall. (Jim)
I Pray God and your Spirit will envelope you in celestial light along the trail of your life.
love you, Vickie
Happy Birthday, Sheri, if you're out there! (Hello, hello, hello, hello hello...) (Everyone heard the echoes?)
Thanks, Carrie. You are among my heroes too.
I’ll add my voice to the echo. Happy Birthday, Sheri! We are reminded it is your b’day when the Easter lilies bloom. They are putting on quite a show this year.
I think I got a visit from one of your angels, Vickie. I’ve accepted the new reality and am adjusting. Working through some practical problems now such as Braille labels falling off plant markers and the like. I think I’ve come up with a pretty and fun solution to the problem. Photos and details later.
Came home to find many of the daylilies in bloom, tiny grapes forming and a new crop of snow peas. The latter was a real surprise. The tall, narrow plastic drum I turned into a planter had not done well in past years. It became too hot and dried out very fast. I couldn’t even get artichokes to grow in it. This year we put a wire cage around it and put a tire planter at the base. The wire and the plants climbing up and down it give enough shade to keep it cool. Not sure yet what I will plant in it once the peas have done their thing, but now I know the idea will work. k*
#1: white Asiatic lilies
#2: Experiment to keep a tall, narrow planter cooler is working.
#3: ‘Mama’s cherry pie’ daylily
#4: Baby grapes
#5: ‘October Fest’ daylily.
A week of inactivity was all Kay could stand she is up and going LOL.
Nadine says the Cardinals have grown and the parents have gone to the second nest for there new kids the old nest has been acquired by a wren to use maybe more little chirpers to come :-).
As for me I am getting ready to start the living room floor on the better paint we love the way the kitchen came out. (JIM)
pictures
#1: Zinnias and a marigold in my front bed but I need to get busy getting the grass out again lol
#2: Gardenia flowers ohh! the beautiful smell.
#3: Chinese Chariot
#4: Wild prickly Pear
Everyone that contributes to this thread is my hero. When you keep on smiling and laughing despite what the world throws at you, that is an act of heroism.
A belated Happy Birthday, Sheri. Hope you had a wonderful day.
Discovered we have a Summer Tanager in addition to the cardinals. They look like cardinals at a casual glance. Year by year, as the land becomes lusher, it seems a wider variety of birds are showing up. Or, maybe, I’m just paying more attention so I’m seeing more. There is a useful website called What Bird that makes feathered friends easier to identify.
I read a funny story on one of the bird sites. Cardinals will use whatever is at hand to build their nest. A cardinal nest was found in an urban area that had a piece of a Sun Chip bag work into the outside of the nest. The part of the bag that was used read: “made with completely biodegradable materials.” Lol. ~N!
Thanks, Nadine! Hello,Armagia folks. Welcome back, Kay! Good to see you back.
This is scary, guys...we applied for Medicaid in Texas. I mean I did. I insured the cars in Texas. This half and half part is hard. I wasn't online for days and days!
We bought a blue pot, though, and a hibiscus that would die in Boston in our yard.
HOWDY Carrie,Big Welcome! Kay, Are you being haved?
My cats discourage birds this year. Even my woodpecker has deserted me. I have yellow and red asiatic lillys blooming. A pink hydrangia, petunias,marigolds, still no daylillys.
I'm going outside for a little campfire everynight. DD and hubby caught some fish today and want me to cook them outside tomorrow. Should be fun.
I walked down our lane and picked up some little firewood in a wheelbarrow. The dogs and cats went along. We made a good parade. Cricket led the parade and 2 of the cats brought up the rear. None would pick up wood. Maybe i ought to work on that.
Being HAVED?
I am being haves, but it isn't very fun!
DUH!!!! Did i goof or did i GOOF! Thats what i always asked the girls in fun when I was really asking Are you behaving yourself.LOL SORRY ABOUT THAT.
My Momma has used that ever since long ago my little brother answered, "Yes, Mommy, I am being haved"
OH! Well, in general, I would say, NO, I am not behaving myself. But that's normal for me.
It is a rainy afternoon. I’ve had to find indoor mischief to get into. (I had a week in the hospital with people seeing to it I behaved. It was boring and expensive! Since I was behaved perfectly for 7 days, I should be able just to rest on my laurels for awhile. Don’t you think?
Today’s mad scheme is to make plant labels out of beads strung in patterns like the Braille code. Round beads standing for dots in the Braille code, tubular beads for blank spots and spacer beads to mark each six-bead cell. The dots in a Braille cell have corresponding numbers 1 thru 6. Like, the letter “A” is dot 1. The 2-3-4-5 and 6 spaces are blank. So, in my system, “A” would be one round bead followed by 5 tubular beads and a spacer bead to mark off the 6 bead cell It may sound complicated, but, I would rather string beads than work with super glue. I have a super glue horror story. (I suspect most people do whether they ~fess up about it or not.) Super glue is what it takes to get Braille tape labels to stick to plant markers in our humid conditions. My bead “labels” have the advantage that the dogs don’t pull them up for chew toys the way they do wood and plastic labels. Jim foresees a problem, however. He thinks swaying strands of beads strung on fishing line tied to the end of a bamboo stake is the equivalent of fishing for cats. Lol.
We’ve been working on the sitting area of the CanDo Container Garden. Jim thought having mondo grass mark the edge of beds, in addition to their being marked by the concrete of patio and walkways, was “like wearing a belt in addition to suspenders.” lol. We are moving the mondo to beside the irrigation trench to reduce weeding under the shrubs there. I think I’m going to like the neater, minimized look of the sitting area and will love not having to weed so much along the irrigation trench. We put our whole iris collection in one large bed. The jury is still out on whether or not that was a good idea.
The hydrangea bloomed very pink this year. Rare in this area where soil tends to be acidic. Jim, of course, thinks there was a soil pH altering conspiracy. The swamp lilies (native crinum) have started blooming also. Combined with gardenia and some late blooming mags in the woods, the scent-scape is heavenly. The wild orange daylilies are putting on their show. Even with all the named cultivars we have now, I still look forward to the “ditch lilies” doing their thing. The best thing about the cultivars is that they extend daylily season in both directions. k*
Oh, Kay, it sounds like it smells beautiful! Maybe you can advise me...what would be happy in a container in zone 7b (or higher)? It's not so much that it's hotter--it's a whole different type of climate. (Still in MA for May, though.) Lovely hydrangea. Nothing in Dallas smells good--I'm thinking hummingbird mint?
Kay, do you have any Carolina Allspice busk, AKA, Sweet Shrub,
SpiceBush, Sweet Bubby??? The fragrance is so heavenly. I have many volunteers that have been taken up today, or seeds.
Sheri,I'd love some seeds. Do you have Moneyplant seeds?
Carrie, Oriental lilys will grow there. I've got some growing in a large container. Some roses have a heavenly scent. I am not too fond of roses. They are (to me) the spoiled brats of the flower world. David Austin roses are antiques and seem to do well in ETEX.
yep my fingers have been glued together by super glue. Did you know some doctors are using superglue instead of stitching up a cut.
Yes, Sheri, we would appreciate a start of sweetshrub. Is that a N. Carolina native? Check out the list we are creating of Amargia’s plants and see if anything catches your interest. (Our actual trade list is sadly neglected.) Nadi recently tried to trade some of her swamp lilies for sweetshrub. But, we aren’t absolutely sure what we call swamp lilies are crinum americanum. They are possibly some other form of crinum and Nadi’s would-be trade partner was exclusively interested in Carolina natives. The crinum we have has been traveling with her family from place to place for generations. And her father’s family settled originally in the Georgetown area. That it is a crinum whose ancestors once grew in the S. C. low country is all the info we really have about it. I keep telling myself I’m going to put a picture in DG’s plant ID. Maybe, when it blooms again in Oct. and has recovered from its most recent move. It is blooming, but its appearance has suffered from the recent move. I can smell why someone would go to the effort of digging this up and taking it with them when they moved. The scent is strong, but not over-bearing. It is sweet and pure. It is a scent-scape favorite in May and October. . Proving you don’t have to botanically know a plant to appreciate it. Or, at least, I don’t. k*
Ooooh, twist my arm! I would love one of those Crinums if you have enough. Don't know where this multi named shrub started out, but many around here say their g'mas had them.
No money plant. had that at one time and if I remember correctly it spread to much for my little garden at that time.
BB
Strong, sweet and pure? Sounds delicious! My favorite smells are bridal veil (wreath) spirea (almost over), peony (about to start), and syringia ACK the species lilac from China or maybe Japan that's blooming right now. Egads, that is irritating, when I know something perfectly well, I just can't put my finger on the right word.
My two daughters are involved in a face-off tonight; the one (age 18) is a bridesmaid in a wedding this weekend and the other (age 21) is driving here from AZ, arriving tonight. There is a lot of friction between the two kids....has been for years, probably ever since 21 moved out in 8th grade. (She was flunking out of school so she moved in with grandma and went to school in her town instead.) But they just don't treat each other well. I am usually in the middle of it. 21 will be living in our house in MA while we're in TX and while 18 gets used to the fact that she goes to college now and is sort of homeless. She always has a home with us, of course, but she can't have a bedroom in our house in TX and in our house in MA and at Grandma's house and at college....that's four bedrooms, not including the one at her birth father's house which is more of a gueat room but still. She will feel more at home at school pretty soon but for now she feels like she's being kicked out.
LOL Carrie, Leaving home the first time must be tramatic. I was glad and never looked back at it as home. DD#1 almost went into shock when i turned her bedroom into a craft room the next day.DD#2 had it easier I did'nt need another room except when the grandsons spent the night.Her room was just fine for that.
It took DD#1 ALMOST 10 years to change her boys rooms. I think what changed her mind was one boy moved back in for several years and she said never again.LOL
Bless their hearts these kids have to learn to jump the nest and fly.then they can always come back.
Well, I did go to college for 2 years (but I came home for Thanksgiving and Christmas) and I moved from a tiny house where I lived for a few years to this house where I've lived for 19 years.
I couldn’t wait to get away from the farm when I turned 16. Then, 30 years later, I bought the farm. (A small part of it anyway.) ROFL. It took a long time for me to come to appreciate the beauty of my corner of the world. The pastor of my church comes from coastal Mississippi and I heard an interesting statistic on that state just today. While it ranks near the bottom when it comes to per capita income (49th, if I remember correctly), it ranks #6 among the states when it comes to sharing a percentage of that income. I’ve seen enough in my years to believe that makes Mississippi a rich state. When you return to Massachusetts in 3 years, Carrie, you will probably have a list of things you love about the state. Lol.
Today my middle daughter made a “comment” about sisters on her Facebook page. She wrote: “I love my sisters, but…bahahahaha!.” It was followed by the picture of a toddler holding the doggie door open for his baby sister with one hand and shoving her diapered bottom with the other. Can’t wait to see her sisters' responses on their own Facebook pages. Thanks to FB, they can now take digs at one another from opposite sides of the continent. Lol.
Despite being in our 60-‘s and 70’s, my 5 sisters and I still have our sibling spats. The same ones we’ve been having for decades. “You were always Mom’s favorite.” “You were such a Daddy’s girl.”, “You had it easy compared to me.”, etc. You might be encouraged to know that the arguments have gotten more civilized as we’ve grown older. There hasn’t been any hair pulling in years. ;-) Funny thing about sisters is there is no collation between loyalty and being nice to one another. Woe to anyone who calls my sister a name, even if I called her that very name 10 minutes ago. lol. I think there is some truth to the saying that no two siblings have the same parents.
Jim lost his Dad last week so we celebrated Memorial Day with him in mind. He fought at the battle of Okinawa in WWII so we made a point of watching a history channel documentary on that battle. I never knew it was such a nightmare. Bought a couple of VFW Buddy Poppies in remembrance. James Smith, Sr. always wore a Buddy Poppy on Memorial Day. k*
Where do you buy the buddy poppies? I have'nt seen one in years.
My brother-in-law Earl was in the Philapenes (SP)during WW2. He went AWOL there for a month, built a Still and was welcomed back with open arms. All three of the brothers were great soldiers but all three did something completely dumb at one time and got away with it. They were still heros.Of course we love the antic stories.Must be the southern rebel in us. LOL
Debra, one of the DL you gave me bloomed today. A beautiful maroon almost black. I love it.
My sympathy to Jim. Will be praying for him.
My fairy bells are blooming their hearts out.
Fairy Bells??
Oh, Jim, I'm sorry about your father. It's difficult to have it happen close to Memorial Day. Please accept my sympathy.
DD#2 is having a hard time and acting like a baby. I think, given the person she is, it's inevitable, but not fun to live through. DD#1 is SO self-righteous, too. Glad DH and I will be mostly alone in DFW.
Fairy Bells AKA pink oxalis ours has gone dormant now till the fall.
Here is a picture of our oxalis river.
Oh yed, you sent me ssome and they bloomed wonderfully this spring. I really enjoy them.
Sheri, we’ve kept your address in our package labels file just in case. Can I assume it hasn’t changed? We will leave our address in your Dmail. Swamp lily will bloom in sun or shade, but is more aromatic with some sun. The leaves are strappy and a bit lax so a large container or somewhere their leaves can drape is best. Despite their name, they do okay with an average amount of water in normal garden conditions.
There is an upside to having things flower later in the season, Vickie. I bet you can have a wider variety of things blooming in late summer. If it were not for crepe myrtle, sunflowers and lantana the August garden would be dreary here. I consider adding more lantana varieties for August even though I’m mildly allergic to them. Lantanas keep going even in 3-digit heat. Oh, there you go, Carrie. Another candidate for containers in the Texas heat. Lantana! Oddly, I like the sharp edged scent of lantana and marigolds in high summer.
Nadi likes her independence, but Fenny refuses to move out. Officially, she is Nadi’s dog and should go with her. But, in Fenny-dogs world view, we are all members of HER pack and she has delusions of being the alpha. k*
Yes my address is the same. thanks for remembering me. with high med bills lately, not sure I will be renewing on 7/4. If not i sure have enjoyed all and each of you friends over the past few years..