So many of my blogging friends discuss weighty issues, or serious matters. I frequently feel like a butterfly flitting among you. But, one of my Red Hat Lady friends has said that my blog reminds her of Samuel Pepys…..a daily journal. I stopped fretting once she gave me my niche. *S*
So….today, it’s windy and in the 60s, on the cool side for many of you, but heavenly to me. The apple trees have bloomed, and the wind is scattering white petals over the lawn. It looks a bit like snow in spring. Elegante Mother says that the flowering trees and shrubs seem to be blooming more densely this year. They look drenched in color.
I need to get out the book on shrubs and trees and do a little studying. I’m having trouble identifying some of the blooms that I see. There are four or five shades of pink, and white blooms, plus the lavender/purple of the redbud. Crab apples, apples, cherries…what else is blooming out there!?
Yesterday, we made our first trip to the nursery. I’m happy to say that Elegante Mother outspent me! She was buying plants for the containers at the front door. I was buying herbs, and a few things for the sidewalk gardens. I still have some cleanup to do in the herb garden. Dear Husband has two long areas of the outer arms that need understructure or support of some kind, but that won’t keep me from planting.
I need lots more basil, salad burnet, two taller rosemaries. I probably bought enough thyme and lavender. I have two tiny lemon verbena plants, which we grow as an annual, but I’d like to find two bigger plants. I may check out several other nurseries, and stop by the big discount stores for some annuals. I was surprised that my favorite nursery didn’t have Victoria Blue Salvia on their racks.
I think a chipmunk and his extended family have made a home under the thyme. The ground is mounded where it used to be flat, and some of the thyme plants have died off. I’m going to take the opportunity to dig up that stretch of the bed and add some compost to the dirt. That’ll freak out the rodents! *G*
One of the chores each spring is to empty the containers and throw away spent plants. Most of the containers are planted with annuals, but I have sage, mint, iris and a rose in containers. I set up a garden sieve over the wheelbarrow last night, and ran the soil through the sieve. I’ll mix in fresh potting soil, some of that stuff that holds moisture, and some compost, and refill the pots. Then, I can set the plants near the containers, and Elegante Mother can decide what goes where. I’d like to get that chore done before Friday, when the Quilting Bee meets here.
Our lilacs are in bloom. I brought a handful in for Elegante Mother’s sitting room.
I pruned the shrubs back near the veggie beds. I have to turn the dirt in the veggie boxes, and add a lot of compost. I want to use the walk-behind mower back there, too. I’M RECLAIMING THE VEGGIE BEDS THIS YEAR! Wish me luck.
Now ends the writing of the gardening info for this week! *G*

It’s Monday morning, and I have just 15 minutes or so to let you know what we’ve been doing before I start my week.
Friday, April 27th was my youngest sister’s birthday. You know her as Nan, from Just My Opinion, although she has been too busy to blog for some time.
Elegante Mother, Dear Husband, My-Sister-The-Nurse and I drove down to the wilds of Indiana for the weekend to help Nan and her family celebrate. It was a WONDERFUL weekend!
We left the Chicago area early in the morning on Friday and rolled into their driveway about 4:00 in the afternoon. We ambled through the fields rather than taking the tollway system (which in my opinion, needs to be blasted off the face of the earth where 294 & 80 join and pass south of Lake Michigan!) When we arrived, I realized that she’d figured out we were coming. It was supposed to be a surprise, but the girls cleaning their rooms must have given it away. *G*
Nan’s hubby, The Major, was an outstanding host. He went grocery shopping Friday afternoon, and bought enough food to feed the homeless in Indiana. While we were there he served smoked pork chops, salmon, and rib eye steaks, all cooked on his new outdoor grill. The only thing I was requested to do meal-wise was to put together salads, a real hardship! *G*
We chatted Friday evening. Saturday, we had a lazy morning, and then the ladies drove to the most wonderful nursery to buy plants for Nan’s container garden on the deck. We spend the afternoon outside rocking in the deck chairs, sitting in the sun, or shade, as one wished. That afternoon, one of the girls came flying home from a baseball game to get ready to go to the Jr.-Sr. Prom. Wow…..that’s an experience to live through. I hope Nan will post a picture of the couple. Nan had to hem the dress which was perhaps an inch too long, and do her daughter’s manicure and pedicure. A friend helped her with her makeup, and she wore her very long, curly hair piled up on her head.
After dinner, we chatted, and waited for the prom-goers to return home. Nan’s oldest daughter and her boyfriend watched movies. It was the most bone-less weekend. We just eased through the day and enjoyed each other’s company.
Sunday morning The Major put on the most amazing breakfast! Bacon, waffles, scrambled eggs and juice. It really hit the spot. We had time to gather on the deck once more, to sit and chat before it was time to pack up and hit the road. Dear Husband was facing a payroll with a new version of Quick Books, and we were a bit concerned about having adequate time to wade through the new program. It was really hard to pull ourselves away.
Pictures….we took a last gathering of pictures on the lawn….piled into the car, and we were off!
I’m SO glad My-Sister-The-Nurse was able to join us, and SO glad that we got to help Nan celebrate. It was just an exceptional weekend!
Happy Birthday, sis!

A week ago today we saw our first heron and our first egret for the season. Oddly, they were almost sitting together. They couldn’t have been more than 15 feet apart in the same pond. That’s unusual behavior. Usually the herons are very solitary, and usually the birds are spread MUCH further apart when they are fishing.
I’m trying to make a mental note that they return around tax time in April.
The red bud is showing color, and the forsythia is just beginning to loose it’s blooms. I was happy to see buds on the last of the miniature lilac plants. I love watching spring unfold.

Yesterday, I had one of those days where everything takes ten times longer to accomplish than it should. I thought I’d be able to breeze through a stack of things at my desk, but it was more like slogging through a tar pit!
When my parents lived in southwest Missouri, they had wonderful gardens. The year I lived with them, I discovered that my mother is a plant/bulb impulse buyer. She’d see something in a magazine and shoot off an order. When the order came, she’d hand the box to my Dad, and he would get his trusty shovel, and head out. By the time I got to watch this little ritual, they’d lived there about twelve years. Everywhere Dad put his shovel into the ground, he brought up six or eight bulbs that were already there. I think every inch of garden had been planted by then. So, for every new bulb she wanted planted, there were six or eight to be given away, shared with friends, or ditched!
There was something else about the land they’d settled on . They lived in STONE County. I’ve never seen a place more aptly named. Other than where my father had arranged for soil to be trucked in, there was just three inches of soil on top of rock. If you picked up a rock, you’d find it was nesting on two more just waiting their turn to get to the surface, so we really tried not to disturb the rocks! So, Dad was limited to the built-up gardens for his planting forays.
I know…that was a bit off the subject, but yesterday reminded me of those frustrating planting days. I had my union report finished early. It sat on my desk for a couple of days before I got ready to print the check that was to accompany it. Two minutes, tops, right? Nuh uh!
The last thing I do before I cut the check is to be sure that the totals on my report match the totals in the computer ledgers. My heart sank when I realized I was way off. I pulled up the Union Dues Payable account, and scrolled through it, and discovered that we have had a new employee for a full month, and no one had told me. (sigh…)
The report was already filled out. There was no room to amend it. I pulled up an electronic version of the report, corrected it for current charges, and filled it out for just the one employee, checked the totals (which looked much better) and then I cut the check. I made copies for the accounting firm, copies for us, and copies for a union representative. When the accounting people can’t figure out that I’ve paid in full, using two report sheets, I want the union rep to be able to explain things to them. Finally, I addressed two envelopes, had Dear Husband sign everything, and gathered our copies together for filing.
This little chore should have taken two minutes. It took more like 90, and that put me behind on everything. I had to work in the office for a bit after dinner to be sure things that were needed today were done. I’ve had several chores turn out like this. It’s no wonder that I can never see the surface of my desk.
I’ve been bookkeeping for our company for 20 years. You could say that I’m an old hand at it. But, every now and then, a spate of things occur that simply take longer than you expect them to. In this case, communication about the new employee would have helped, but it’s not always this sort of problem. To work here, you have to be a self-starter. You have to be able to resolve things in a timely manner, and you have to be a mind reader! And, I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else!

My family is so funny.
Sunday I came down with laryngitis. I’ve been without a voice for four full days. This morning you can hear me, but for the past four days we’ve had to use every means at hand to communicate.
I was trying to talk to Dear Husband about something that he would have to do in my stead because I couldn’t use the phone. I was seated at the computer, trying to dash off a hand-written note to him, when I had one of those “DUH!” moments. I turned to the computer, brought up Word, and changed the font to 14 or 16, and typed like a mad woman. He could read over my shoulder as I typed, and it made “conversation” a lot easier.
I found that rather than try to make sound, if I whispered they could understand me. Well, Dear Husband and his son could hear me. Elegante Mother is more than a bit hard of hearing these days, so we did a lot of lip reading, and the guys would fill in what she missed.
I needed to gather information for a personal financial report. I had to call two banks to ask for account amounts. The secretary at the main bank and I are friends, so I called, got her answering machine, and squeeked a request that she send me her fax number. I faxed her an explanation of what I needed, and we conversed on and off through the day via fax.
I didn’t know anyone at the second bank, but I went online to their website, and managed to find an e-mail address. I typed out the problem, and my request. They called me and asked me to tell them the last four digits of my Social Security Number, and then she gave me the info over the phone. Two out of two! Not bad at all. It takes some creativity, but you can get around a lot of problems in this electronic age.
What struck me so funny about my family was that as I struggled to communicate with them, their hearing got better! Dear Husband has been saying “What?!” a lot this past year. I discovered that when he is focused on me, he can hear me whisper across the room. If I have EM’s attention, and she is watching me as I speak, she must lip read to get some of what I’m saying, and she’s more likely to be up front about what she’s missed now than she was a few years ago.
To resolve this situation, I have to be sure their attention is fully engaged! Dropping a plate behind their backs, standing on the cat’s tail, “accidently” spraying them with the hose at the sink, touching them when they don’t know I’m there……what else could I do???
I’m so very lucky that they were supportive. My voice is coming back, and the sinus stuff is abating. It’s nice to know that I could have gone to bed, and they would have taken over for me, but it’s even nicer to know that they were willing to work with me to mitigate the problems.
I’m sending a big THANK YOU! to my family, and to everyone who has helped make this week easier.

Dear Husband is an officer in a masonry corporation. He’s risen through the ranks from a laborer to a bricklayer, learning how each job is done by doing it. He has 40 years of experience at laying bricks.
This evening we have been sitting in the living room. He has the remote for the TV and is switching between two equally detestable shows. One of them is a do-it-yourself show on how to create your own patio kitchen. He’s been fairly quiet, but as each segment ends, he points out the key piece of information that was omitted. I really hope that nobody who watches this program gets the idea that they can do this project without professional assistance. It’s a project that is WAY over the average person’s capability, and the cost to clean up the errors or starting fresh would be significant.
We were rather surprised to see them working with a saw that didn’t have a blade guard. I’d think that OSHA would require them to adhere to the current safety rules.
The “pro” didn’t mention that when you lay brick, you have to figure out how many brick will fit the space horizontally. If you blithely go about laying bricks on that first row, you are likely to get to the last two spaces and find that you can’t squeeze in both bricks. You need to know that spacing so that you keep your mortar joints the correct width as you run the row.
The “pro” also didn’t know how to “butter” the brick properly. There wasn’t enough mortar on the second brick.
When they showed the finished fire pit, they commented that they had put saw marks on a corner brick to make it look as though the pattern of laid bricks went all the way to the end of the row. What they didn’t mention was that they needed a different kind of brick to be able to create that touch.
“How-To” shows are great for getting fresh ideas, but perhaps not great when it comes to carrying out more complicated ideas. You’d think they’d want their watching audience to have success at their projects, so they’d continue to watch the shows. Maybe people are smarter than I give them credit for being. I suppose I can stop shouting “Don’t try this at home!” when I watch these things.
By the way….the other show that was disgusting was one of those nature shows that let you see all the babies being eaten by sharks and crocodiles and piranha and snakes. I know the world is a dangerous place, and that survival of the fittest is the law of the land, but I’m not watching any show that focuses on predators. I’m not watching another merkat take a hit!

My entire extended family loves flowers. They all know that I love to have fresh flowers on the tables or the island in the kitchen when they come to visit. This year they brought pots and pots of flowers with them.
We have four of the largest Easter lilies I’ve ever seen. Mother and I bought two of them, and then we lost our minds and bought a golden yellow petite lily, a fuchsia azalea, a tiny pot of something called “Get Mee,” which is a form of campanula, and two new orchids.
My oldest sister sent us the most beautiful cut flower basket that I’ve ever seen. My second sister brought us a wonderful, bright, pot of yellow tulips.
And, I have a 15 inch cobalt blue vase that is filled with fuchsia carnations, purple, lavender, pink and white chrysanthemums, eucalyptus, and heather.
We have blooms everywhere! It’s a joy to have the house filled with flowers at a time when flowers are sparse outside. We’re supposed to have warmer weather this week, so we should see plants beginning to bud, soon. I noticed that our new little red bud tree is beginning to purple up. YEA!!!

….if I can remember them all.
I saw a rufous-sided towhee yesterday. It was working it’s way down the bare branches of a shrub near the big bird feeder. We get one or two birds from several varieties as they make their way north and south. We rarely see the Rose-breasted grosbeaks which seem to be fairly common here, but we’ve seen the gold and taupe and black Evening grosbeaks, and apparently, the towhee is part of that larger family. The thrush can’t be too far behind.
Goldfinches and house finches and red-winged blackbirds are back, and we have plenty of robins. We’re still waiting on the herons and egrets, and it’s just as well, because the water is REALLY cold yet. Dear Husband said that he saw something very large flying past the house but he couldn’t tell me if it was one of the sand hill cranes or a heron.
On another subject, I hope that my sister, Nan, will blog about her experiences over Spring break. She and her two daughters went on a church-organized mission trip to help people in New Orleans who are STILL trying to put their homes in order. The story sounds fascinating. She became very fond of the homeowner, who sounds like a testament to determination. Write, on, Nan!
Our Red Hat Lady group met for lunch yesterday. The ladies are a hoot to chat with, and it was fun to see the smiles on the faces of the other patrons of the restaurant as they walked by our group. I’m always reminded of the song from The Music Man with the line “Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep, cheep, cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more…” but I’m happy to say the conversation does not include gossip. It was cute to see heads bent together as they chatted, and bobbing in agreement. The woman sitting next to me has been to China, and we talked about her trip part-way up the Yangtze. Her husband is from Scotland and as a retiree he is learning to play bagpipes. The two of them have been to the Tattoo in Edinburgh, and I’m green with envy. A woman across the table worked in Iran in the days of the Shah. It’s fascinating to hear about that period of my life from her point of view. A number of our ladies are either getting ready for surgery or are recovering. There’s been talk about re-naming us the Walking Wounded, but I doubt anything will come of it. I know a lot of people think the Red Hatters are a frivolous waste of time, but they’re wrong. This group has the most amazing experiences to call on. I learn something new every time we meet, and they are incredibly civic minded. Way to go, LADIES!
I’ve come down with the putrid throat again. In fact, I can’t make any sound. I had to hand a note to my mother about the cinnamon bread that was waiting for her breakfast, and you should have been there when I tried to pantomime that the cat had come in the kitchen window. (Sigh) She’s deaf and I can’t talk. What a pair.
Dear Husband has been working on the renovation of the timbers in the Herb Garden. I’m going to do a bigger entry on this later, complete with a couple of pictures, but I wanted to describe what took place yesterday. DH doesn’t realize that the upper branch of the garden has perennials in it, that haven’t begun to show their new growth. I saw him walk over the bed, and thought….”That’s okay, there are plenty of feverfew plants there. No problem.” Then I saw him drop a ten or twelve foot cedar timber the length of the bed. Poor feverfew. In all fairness, this is not an easy job, and he’s carrying those cedar timbers around all by himself. If I could have afforded it, I would have hired a landscaping company to do this work for me, but it would have been thousands of dollars.
We came home from luncheon yesterday, and I walked out just to touch base with DH, and let him know I was home. As I looked around, I saw the lavender (that I had been babying) lying on the ground north of the herb garden. He must have seen the dismay on my face, and he said, “It’s dead……..isn’t it?” I really tried not to look dismayed about that lavender, but I must not have been able to mask it. This is the deal. My gardens need repair and renovation. I HOPE that DH is careful as he works, but if something gets killed off, I will either replace it, or look on it as a chance to create a new garden. I am NOT nagging him, given that he is doing all the work on this on his own, when he could have been playing with his boat.
So…..does anyone have suggestions for plants for my herb garden??
I’ve missed you all. It seems that we have all taken some time off around Easter, whether to clean house or determine the direction of our lives, and the blog world has been rather quiet. I hope that we’ll find things of interest once again, and be able to find time in our busy lives to share them. Happy Spring to you all. You have my hopes for warm sunshine, bird song, and the joy of another day.