I’m surrounded by green this weekend. We’ve celebrated St. Patrick’s Day with friends from church at the annual Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner, and today we’ve been out in the glorious weather that is such a surprise at this time of year, with grass and chives greening up, and an array of flowers and shrubs in bloom.
The “green” memory that has been floating through my head is one of my parents on a trip to Biloxi and the Gulf Coast that must have taken place during the 60s or 70s. They had decided to travel south along the Mississippi by car leaving about the second week of March. Dad wasn’t interested in spending his time in a motor home, so they drove and stopped at Holiday Inns along the way.
Dad was always big on breakfast, so they started each day early. As they got into southern Illinois grits began appearing on his plates. The next day he’d tell the waitress that she could leave the grits off the plate, but the cooks couldn’t imagine anyone going without grits, so Dad got them whether he wanted them or not.
By the time they arrived in Biloxi, St. Paddy’s Day was just around the corner. Dad went to breakfast hoping against hope that they would leave the grits off his plate. The waitress proudly set the plate before him, and lo and behold….there were GREEN GRITS!
I wish I could tell you what he did. He may have just resigned himself to the grits, or perhaps he sent the plate back. I can’t recall. Mom and Dad told us about the green grits when they got home, and it’s always been one of those family stories that has amused me.
I know….I’m easily amused. *G* But I’m with Dad…..no grits for me, green or otherwise!
Fullblown Spring
Usually by the middle of March we are seeing daffodil and tulip greens, with blooms expected in early to mid April. This evening I saw Ice Follies daffodils, forsythia, star magnolia, and squill in bloom. The crocus have fainted from the heat!
We’ve had a week of temps from the upper sixties to the upper seventies. I was talking with Dear Husband today, while standing in the kitchen. I looked out the window and saw a gray squirrel flattened out in the grass in the shade of the house, trying to cool his belly. He looked more like a flying squirrel who had come in for a landing than one of our regular visitors.
I had two golden delicious apples that were on the wrinkled side. I cut them each into 16 pieces and dropped them under the bird feeder during the middle of the week when I filled the feeders. One of the ground squirrels discovered the bounty. He filled his cheeks with seeds and then crammed an apple between his teeth and took off running up the herb garden walkway with his tail straight up in the air. He jumped over the timbers at the end, ran across the lawn and under Dear Husband’s truck to the rough area east of the driveway. I watched him do the same routine twice more before I had to go back to work. Half an hour later, the apples had disappeared! *G* I wonder if he was going to have the family over to share the feast or if he was planning on canning apple pie filling….
Tomorrow, when I go out to take pictures of all the blooms, I’ll check to see if the May apples are in bloom in the grove.
I love spring, but could be go back to the fifty and sixty degree temps and sneak up on it? Please!
Oh, Joy!
I have been blessed today! First of all, we went to the Corned Beef and Cabbage dinner at church, so I got to celebrate with the Irish and didn’t have to cook or clean up. But, there was something even better about our night out.
Each year there is an auction following the dinner. One of my friends, Mary Rinn, passed away at the end of last year. She had been instrumental in creating Scraps on a Mission. I had been making a wonderful, bright baby quilt to show her when we met again, and then she was gone. So, when I was asked if I would contribute a baby quilt to the auction, I said yes. I added a name tag to the quilt saying that it was in memory of Mary Rinn.
I was concerned, in these tight economic times, that no one would want to bid on the quilt. Dear Husband and I discussed it, and came to an amount we could afford to bid. I was actually expecting to win back the quilt I had made.
The crowd was difficult and noisy. The bids were small and slow in coming, despite the fact that the money went to support an excellent cause. I didn’t realize it, but the auctioneer saved my quilt for last. The very first bid blew me out of the water. I never had the chance to bid and sat back and watched the bids increase until it fetched two and a half times what would have been my top bid!
The quilt has gone to a very good home. The woman who won it, remembers Mary fondly, and felt she needed the ties it provided to Mary. When she asked her husband what she could bid, he said, “Whatever it takes.”
Mary, your big heart and generosity have helped others one more time. Thanks!
Green Stuff
My garden seems to be persevering despite the odd weather we’ve had the past few weeks. The daffodils showed up in February which is really early for our Zone 5 temperatures. The warm weather was followed by a blast of cold and snow. I thought I might loose the blooms for this year, but everything is still pushing up out of the ground and greening (or in the case of the tulips bronzing) up. Our temps the past two days have been in the 60s, so I’d guess the plants are really confused.
I saw the first of the crocus today. The chipmunks have replanted them in odd places, so I get lovely surprises. I saw one blooming amidst the mounds of oregano and another in the front garden, both some distance from where they have been planted.
When I was filling the bird feeders earlier this week, I noticed that the chives, the oregano, and the feverfew were greening up. They are truly hardy plants and don’t let a little snow bother them once they feel the time is right to grow. I noticed the catnip that has transplanted itself around the north end of the house was adding leaves, too.
In the chat covered walkway of the herb garden, I have an invasion of lamb’s ears. While I was working on the filing this week, I came across a card that was an advertisement for one of those gardening “books” that you buy as a series of over-sized cards. This particular card was talking about a low maintenance garden, and lamb’s ears were one of the plants that had been used to make a striking border garden. Perhaps I need to trim the lamb’s ears back, and get them planted in other parts of my gardens!
I love spring! I’m ready to be doing some work outside!
The Dreaded Filing
I’d so like to tell you that I am a perfect person….that as soon as a piece of paper crosses my desk, I act on it and file it. But the truth is……I hate filing!
I have been doing a lot of spring cleaning recently. I cleaned my bedroom closet, and you can even see the floor now! That went to my head, and I started working on the closet in the guest bedroom. I have a couple more closets to work on, and then I’m going to re-organize the pantries.
But, meanwhile, I decided that I need to tame the boxes of junk and papers in the office. God, I’ll be at this for WEEKS! I took a stack at a time from the desk, and sorted it into personal things, and office business. I got all the office business finished so that I could work on the rest. It seems that I am relatively good about the office, to the detriment of our personal papers.
Part of the problem is that it isn’t always easy to decide HOW or WHERE to file a paper. I’m going to have to overhaul the files so that we can find personal papers once they are filed. It appears that we need an automotive file, with subcategories of repair, titles, and licenses. That was an easy decision. Dear Husband is on Medicare, and knowing what to keep of those papers would be a big help. Right now I have an over-sized binder, and I’m filing it all.
Today, I opened four banker’s boxes, one at a time, and went through everything, sorting it for filing tomorrow. I found a box with electronic equipment, so at that point, I brought up the bag of electronics from my closet and dumped it on the table. I now know what works and what doesn’t. Things that didn’t work have either been pitched out or saved for the electronics pickup. I must have a dozen sets of headphones, and six or more things that probably convert players from battery power to electricity. There’s a headset with a microphone attached. (I bet I could use it as a back up for the computer, for Skype.) I have a complete set of accessories for my CD player for the car, but no CD player. (It died.)
When I finish all this reorganization, I hope to be able to do my taxes. My closets and the office will be infinitely cleaner, and will look airy, and I will be one with the world. Until then……leave sweets on my table and go hide!
Critters and Such
I’ve spent a lot of time in the past two weeks looking out the windows in the kitchen and the “green” room. We’ve had a love affair with the wildlife around us, and frequently spend time watching what they are doing.
We’ve been amazed at the numbers of birds and squirrels we’ve seen lately. Normally we have about four or five grey squirrels under the bird feeders at a time. Of course, they don’t wear little name tags, so there could obviously be a lot more than four squirrels in the area. I was astonished to see thirteen of them under the feeders at one time, all playing well with each other. I started counting them, and called Dear Husband to the window because it was so unusual.
Later that same day, I called him back to the windows to see what had to be the re-staging of the Hitchcock movie “The Birds.” I have NEVER seen so many birds land under the feeders at one time. This was a very large flock of red-winged blackbirds. Those birds are not uncommon visitors, but we’ve never seen them in such numbers before. They covered the ground in a ten-foot circle, so tightly packed that you could barely see the ground, and almost as many were under the second feeder. They were with us for about fifteen minutes before exhausting the seed and moving on.
Mother and I used to have a game we played in the spring, as we watched life return to our area. There was a race to be the first one to say “I saw a robin!” Usually Mother or Dear Husband won that race, but I was looking out the same windows last week and saw a robin on February 27th! “Wait…..there are two. No….Look….THREE. By damn, there are FIVE ROBINS in my back yard!!!” I won the race, Mom. Did you send them to me???
Meanwhile, the shrubs around the feeder looked like Christmas. This winter we’ve had ten to twelve male cardinal visiting at one time plus a lot of lady cardinals. I’m sure they were watching the robins and red-winged blackbirds and felt they needed to get their numbers up. We did a fast count and figured we had seventeen or eighteen male cardinals that morning.
It’s been a wonderful winter, and it looks like spring is on it’s way to visit us. It’s been a joy to get to watch all our visitors.
Yet Livin’
I just can’t believe that it’s been more than a month since I last posted. Usually by now my youngest sister nags me to post, so that she can find out what I’ve been doing, but I saw her and her family just this past weekend and managed to avoid the nagging! lol
Frankie, her husband, her two college age daughters and two dogs came to visit last Saturday. They made the trip up on Saturday morning, thinking about the Portillo’s Italian beef that we planned to have when they arrived. I talked with my sister while they were en route, and took their orders, so that we could keep the delay to a minimum. As it was, I thought i might loose an arm to hungry people when they arrived. The dogs were pretty well behaved! *S*
The “girls” took a short shopping trip in the afternoon. We visited Sur La Table and picked up odds and ends. Dear Husband informed me that I needed to replace the pasta spoon that I’d thrown away. It was plastic, and it looked like we might have been eating little pieces of it as it shredded it’s layers.
From there we strolled through town, stopping at Adagio Teas, Penzy’s spices, and Starbucks. The weather was gorgeous! Not quite spring, but definitely not winter. i noticed that Frankie just declared that winter was over (on Facebook). I agree! My daffodils are about three, maybe four inches high, and they were covered with snow on Friday. I hope they didn’t mind the cold for a day.
We did Kitchen Sink Salad for dinner, and spent the evening chatting. Sunday, I tried to kill everyone with a groaning board of food. We did waffles, bacon, fruit, and an egg casserole for breakfast, and just before everyone had to make a dash for the car and the trip home, we made chicken fajitas. One of the best parts of the visit, well, after all the hugs, was the table conversation, although my youngest niece may want us to find more socially acceptable things to talk about at the table. (No more body function comments! lol)
The visit was just great! I SO miss spending time with them now that the girls have grown up. I suppose it’s an Empty Nester kind of thing, getting used to them beginning their own lives,
Sunday morning, between meals, my youngest niece asked to work with me on one of the tops for the Scraps on a Mission charity. We have been given a lovely run of red, white and black, and black and white fabrics, and I thought the material would make a striking quilt in 5-inch squares. We cut out the squares (the Olfa cutters were flashing!) and I let my niece design the top. I suggested diagonals of red, and then she echoed the red with the darker fabrics, and filled in the rest with the lighter fabrics. It’s a striking 40″ x 40″ quilt that I’m itching to quilt and bind. Thank you, sweetie, for the time spent with me, and for your generosity for my cause. I promise to post a picture when the quilt is finished!
And….by 2:30…they had to leave. Thank you all, right down to the littlest dog, for having visited. I loved having you here, and hope to visit with you soon. Love you!!
Charity
I have been incredibly busy with three charitable projects in the past couple of months. Let me tell you about them, briefly, I hope.
A dozen women in my exercise group wanted to sing for the vets at Hines VA hospital, and at a local nursing home. We met two times a week to learn the songs, and prepared a 20-25 minute program. I had a tiny solo in one song. The most difficult part of the rehearsal was learning simple movements. I tended to be the one going the wrong direction a good part of the time. The day of the performance at Hines, several of the men in class, and husbands of some of the performers drove us to Hines, and helped us with our presentation. We stayed to talk with the men, and that was the best part of our visit. We raised $205 in cash, and another $500 in personal products and books for the men. IT was a very satisfying experience. I’m so very glad I did it.
I also crocheted 50 six-inch squares for Share a Square. Shelly Tucker is working on assembling the last of 150 afghans for kids who are attending cancer care camps this summer. This will be the last season of this charity, and like many others, I’ll miss it. My crocheting knowledge grew this year. I’ve really enjoyed sitting with Dear Husband while I crochet in the evening. I’m looking forward to being able to see the delivery of the afghans to Camp Quality this summer. Thanks, Shelly, for providing such a lovely experience for us!
And……I have been working on lap sized quilts for kids in cancer care, and for adults at a local nursing home. Unfortunately, the wonderful woman who started Scraps on a Mission passed away a week before Christmas. I miss her terribly. I know the ladies want to continue the work she started, so I’ve been making tops and getting ready for a season of quilting. There will be pictures to follow, probably in a month or so. When my heart is heavy, piecing is a comfort, so these past two years I’ve made a LOT of quilted items!
I believe we all need to pay back our good fortune. I’ve been blessed with a good life and feel that I need to use my talents to do something for those in need. How lucky I am to be able to help others! Yea!!
What a Great Day!
I got up this morning at 5:00 to help Dear Husband get things out to the garbage cans. It’s garbage day and I wanted to be sure that all the small wastebaskets were emptied.
Actually, I had other reasons for the early start. DH had a shot of cortisone yesterday for a pinched nerve in his back/hip, and I wanted to know how he felt. We were both restless and having trouble settling when we went to bed, so I was worried that he hadn’t slept well.
He seems to be doing fine. He says there is less pain today. Now we just have to hope the effect is lasting.
I had planed to quilt a small quilt today. I want to begin cutting back the number of lap quilts that didn’t get finished last year for Scraps on a Mission. But, first, I quilted a pad for DH to use to buffer his knees. I quilted two of these rectangular pads, one with quilting lines an inch apart, and one with quilting two inches apart. DH is going to try them tonight to see if they give his knees the protection they need. If they are too stiff, I may try quilting one more rectangle with a polyester batting.
That didn’t take me very long. It was still dark outside when I finished the pads, so I started working on clearing off the table to make room to quilt. I got distracted when I came to a stack of 50 blocks with bright kid’s fabrics, and thought I would sit down and divide them into “kits” for future assembly.
Then I saw the striped fabric that I planned to use for the binding on the large version of the kid’s fabric project, and thought I might as well make the binding. I had enough binding for the quilt, and still had half the fabric. I wondered if I could get enough binding out of what was left for two of the smaller projects. I cut the entire piece into bias strips, so that I could get the affect I wanted from the stripes. By the time I finished with the second half of the fabric I had more than 382 inches of binding, more than enough to bind two of the smaller quilts!.
Then my eye fell on the fabric I planned to use for the borders. My rotary cutter made quick work of the red, orange and yellow fabric. Unfortunately, I had four quilts that needed borders, and only three colors. I had one strip left of each color, so I added a purple strip to what was left, and one of the quilts will have a different colored border on each side. Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without! It will be really cute when I get it finished, and I’ll share it with you. Binding, borders, and labels went into the bags for each of the four little quilts.
Next I made a list of the kits to be sewn, quilt tops that needed batting and backing, pinned quilt sandwiches that need to be quilted, and finished quilts for Scraps on a Mission. I was astonished to find that we have 22 projects underway! I was hoping to get 24 quilts finished this season. Perhaps we will surpass that!
There was one kit from last year that kept getting overlooked because it was one of a kind, and possibly beyond the abilities of the ladies who were sewing. It’s a very cute pinwheel pattern, that has three dimensional pinwheels. I decided to start making the blocks for this little quilt. I know…..I was going to QUILT!!! But, I was so pleased to be clicking along, clearing things up, I decided to go for it, and work on these blocks.
I’m going to go sit and watch NCIS with DH and pin the two halves of the blocks together, so that I’m ready to sew tomorrow.
It was a GREAT DAY!!!
For My Sister
I have a lovely sister who keeps track of me through my blog. Yesterday she called to talk to me because she said I hadn’t been blogging enough. Sorry guys…..and sis!
Some times you get to a point where you aren’t doing anything interesting or new in your life, and there’s nothing to write about.
Or….you have the everlasting, continual chores to do.
Or…you’re coping with health problems that are very common to those your age.
Or…you’re working.
Sound familiar??? Tax season is beginning, so I have information to gather. I still have to take down the Christmas decorations, and find the dead lights on at least one Christmas tree. I’m working on some quilt tops for Scraps on a Mission. I’ve done the usual cleaning and laundry that we all have to do.
We’re mostly, sorta…..kinda, healthy. DH is working on some knee and back pain, and so am I to a lesser degree. We’re yet livin’ and working, just like all of you.
Thanks, Frankie, for checking up on me. I hope you and all yours are doing well, too!