breakfast.....

I was way overdue for routine blood tests.  If i slept all night i think it would be easier to keep up with it but being up half the night just makes it difficult to not eat or drink anything for 14 hours.

I finally decided to get it over with.  14 hour fast here i come!  It started out well.  Iwent to bed at 8:30 and slept through till 3.  clutter control, wash, keeping focused on not eating or drinking anything
else to throw me off task. with a few hours to go.. i kept busy with banking and writing up the last few bills. Still time to kill..  i decided just to go back to bed.

when i finally returned to the land of the living, i had near the required 14 hours fasting accomplished.
had a glass of water, walked and fed the dogs.. and finally i was ready to go.  20 minutes to get to the lab with a stop at the post office to mail the bills, fourteen hours. then the wait for my turn. another half hour... i was covered.    While waiting, i decided to treat myself to breakfast. it would be way over 14 hours.  no matter how long it takes to order food and for that food to arrive in front of me, orange juice comes right away!

Blood drawn and i was finally on my way.

I had a hankering for a Greek omelet. what i got was a spinach omelet with feta cheese and hollandaise sauce.  It was to die for!  I don;t recall ever having anything with hollandaise sauce on it but it was GOOD! 

Later that same day. chatting with a friend. we discussed the breakfast, was it really that good, or was i just starved and cardbard would have tasted good??  i will have to go back and see if a second omelet is as good, but i have found that being hungry always makes food taste better.

late night visitors

No matter how careful i am with lights after dark or keeping doors and windows carefully closed, we always seem to get some flying visitors that find their way in and end up fluttering around the computer screen.  Last night was no exception.  a small mothish flying creature landed on the screen. just a little bitty thing, about half an inch, maybe less, from wing tip to wing tip. what was so unusual was the color.   This little guy was gold in color. i mean it was gold. i watched it for a few minutes and finally left to find the camera. it  disappeared by the time i returned.  no fluttering, fluffing,  poking or pushing could unearth the little guy.

I do not recall every seeing, or being aware of a tiny moth that was such a striking gold color, not yellow but  gold.

I hope i see it again.

baby birds

You can usually tell the difference between the adult birds and their offspring by the wing fluttering and open mouth gestures... feed me!  other that that... the offspring are the size of the adults once they leave the nest.

i always find it interesting to watch the parent bird lead the young to the food source..trying to make those almost adults  self sufficient and fend for themselves.  does it work? well as the parent flies off the offspring usually follow! 

Monday, as i was watching an adult cardinal feed his almost adult offspring, i realized that the adult birds leading the young off into the world were male birds.  now while i cannot swear that it is always the male.. i definitely can identify the adult male cardinal and even the adult male house finch as being the one to shepherd the near adults into the world, away from the nest.

and just where is mom??   sitting on the next clutch of eggs???  I wonder.

hanging baskets of flowers

Every year, since we have been here, i get a few hanging baskets by memorial day.  This brightens up the yard and marks the beginning of warmer weather.   I have tried many different varieties of plants in those baskets from making my own mix of flowers, to buying already planted & growing.  while my mom loved petunias, i have had little luck with them and after many years started to look at other planted baskets to buy.  with varying success,  i still charge forward!  It seems I either have too much sun or too much shade regardless of what i buy and where i put it.  and of course there is the need to water daily and feed weekly which i quickly forget to do.   This year... against my better judgment it was petunias in those baskets.  well they were on sale and still looked nice.  i am constantly picking spent flowers and have added plant food sticks to help with the continual feeding.  So far so good!

I had no idea they have a wonderful scent too .  Will have to see how well they fair.. how well i keep up with them.. and consider them again for next year.

I always find it interesting to read about the newly developed types of flowers available for the first time.  This year, the growers have developed an almost black petunia (like the almost black iris).  I happened across one and picked it up. very interesting color and judging from my fingers you could use the flowers as a natural dye! 

Here is the beauty after a good picking and watering.

is it a garden?

"Garden ":  noun: a plot of land for the purpose of growing flowers, herbs and  vegetables.
"Gardening":  verb. to work in a garden".

I suppose i have a garden as i will eventually grow flowers instead of just weeds... and the working in the garden for now is the prep work for the future of those flowers. 

I spent almost four hours outside this Saturday morning.  Mostly in the shade but sometimes in the sun. I had 11 plants to plant.  Seems simple and straight forward....not!  First i decided to build a little wall of  rocks from the dry creek to stabilize the slope of the bank and use the soil to broaden the bed. Wish it took only as long as the speaking of the job.   Then the plants..  i had some of what i purchased, so beside deciding where i wanted what to go, i had to dig up a few previously owned plants to transplant into this new bed.  Then i have noted... that no matter how much time i spend trying to site the plants so they face the sun the way they were growing... i generally have to dig them up and replant them. Back and forth, sun and shade, four hours.  had lunch. did some wash.  rested for an hour. Now back outside. 

Hubby has decided to mow.......

 It is june 18th and this is the first time he is mowing in june.  did i mention that he hates mowing? Only mows once a month if he can get away with it.  His mowing is akin to the indy 500. back and forth at a terrific rate of speed. Pushing the tall grass and weeds down instead of cutting.  when he is finished you wonder why he bothered.  The lawn area looks like it did before he started.... maybe worse because there will be areas of flattened grass and areas of standing grass which he did not bother to drive over.  It is embarrassing.   i have to cut the same area again when he is not around. Almost three acres cut in under 1/2 an hour.
you can imagine....

more stuff i did not need....

and did i mention i had to pick up a few used rules and other quilt making supplies??

Is it a bargain even if you did not need it?

I rarely go to yard sales.  Even with a whole community yard sale, there is hardly a thing i don't already have.  In truth, i love ''stuff'' enough to know the value of not adding more stuff to the stuff i already have too much of.  Being almost summer, it is time to garden, not collect more stuff.

So when the e-mail arrived from guild president reporting a yard sale with loads of fabric, it was easy to say ...'have more than enough. don;t need more'.  That was Friday.

Saturday afternoon, another e-mail arrived reporting on a trek to the home and the result..... tons of fabric, bolts of fabric... and cheap prices.  still.... how much fabric can you store??

Sunday morning, i realized the home was only a few miles from mine..i decided to take a trip over to check it out.  Yes, a mistake i knew.  I actually checked to see what sort of money i had to play with (mistake #2).

The deceased had a mini fabric store in her well appointed basement, and a nice sewing studio too.  The kindly daughter, Denise, drive down from NYC to try and sell off some of the overflow from her mom's house.  cotton fabric, now going for between $7 to $10 a yard was being sold for about 3 yards for $1.   ok... so how could you pass that up?! 

There were two guild members there, both with armloads of bolts of fabric. This was the second trip for one who brought the other along.  I started to wonder what had been there, if the reports of what had been purchsed were true.  (One member reported 150 yards of fabric for $50)

Plan, plan... i needed a plan.... i decided to look for medium/light colors and yardage to use as backings for projects.  as i started to pull stuff from the shelves, another guild member arrived and we laughed at our inability to pass up a bargain, fabric, and more stuff we really did not need. (did i mention this was all before 9a.m.??) once i had an arm load, i paid for my purchases and headed to the car.  Two more guild members arrived.

I did not measure and wash (it smells of cigarettes). will definitely want to see what my $30 brought.

for now.. here is a photo of my bargains...

night visitor

Late night dog walking duty necessitates out door lighting, both the hand held and stationary varieties.  Collecting dogs, leashes and finding outside shoes creates quite a cacophony on the porch.  when i was finally about to open the porch door i spied a huge moth attracted to the outside lights, no doubt, beating itself against the side of the house.  It was large enough to be of interest to the dogs, and to me too. it was a luna moth probably roused from slumber by all the activity. 

I have seen these during the day. they are large enough to be mistaken for a parakeet (well that was what i thought it was at first sighting years ago.) luna moth... by the light of the moon....