Fleeting

My first "Eustacia Vye" bloom lasted a mere 24 hours, and then a heavy rainstorm shattered it. It was glorious for that one day, though. 

There are several more buds on the verge of opening, so there's more beauty to come. 

Baby's birthday

As hard as it it to believe, our little great-nephew, Joseph, turned one year old on Thursday! 

We wanted to send a gift for him, but had a hard time deciding. My go-to gift for little kids is books, but I knew that wouldn't mean much to such a young little guy. I wanted something fun.

With that in mind, this is what we decided on.

And for extra fun, we found a cool t-shirt to go with it...

Thursday afternoon, shortly after the gifts were delivered, Tyler (nephew and baby's dad) texted me this photo. Look how happy little Joey looks!

Needless to say, the bike and t-shirt were hits!

Leo XIV

The MAGA outrage over the new (American!) pope has been a real surprise and delight. With that in mind, I wanted to share the following great response to a Lara Loomer tweet I found last night.

Early May in my garden

We're still in the sweet spot, garden-wise, at this point in the year. Everything is growing and thriving, and the heat, bugs, diseases, and general malaise of high summer still seem far away. 

Here are a few pictures from my garden as of this afternoon. I'll start with my current obsession: my baby Eustacia Vye rose! Her first bloom is beginning to open, and I'm in love.

There are nine more flower buds now, too.  It's hard to believe this rose was planted as a bare root at the end of March. 

In other good (but somewhat less exciting) garden updates, here are a few more photos of things I'm growing, all taken this afternoon:

The five blueberry bushes are still fairly small but loaded with berries. The plant growth on all five has been very slow, but this year I've finally started fertilizing on a regular basis. I'm hoping they'll start to take off as a result. As it is, we'll probably get three or four cups of blueberries at the most....and that's if we feel like fighting with the birds and squirrels for them. (Probably not). At least the plants seem healthy, though!

Poppy is a great garden companion. She walks with me while I inspect everything, the tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn...

See the nest box in this next picture? There's currently a bluebird family taking up residence! Mom and Dad work tirelessly all day long bringing food to the babies, and it's a real joy to watch. The current brood are just about ready to fledge. 

After a very late start, my lettuce is finally starting to look like....lettuce! Haha. The carrots planted beside it are finally sprouting but they're not worth taking a picture of yet. Next year I need to get on the ball much, much, much sooner with the lettuce and carrots.

We built a tripod for the cucumbers to climb. They're looking good right now, too.

And finally, the corn. 

Lusty May

Happy May Day! I always think of the naughty rhyme about the First of May this time of year. Do you know it? :)

Speaking of naughty, yesterday I was chatting with John Gray and he happened to mention Marco. Since everyone loves a good Marco story, I thought I'd share a couple of snippets of our ensuing conversation. 

I'm sure I say this every year, but it seems to be taking Marco's spring hormones forever to subside. This nonsense has been going on since February!

Report Card

Well folks, as of yesterday, we survived the first 100 days of the Felon's second term. I'm trying not to think about how many days are still left...

The Daily Show shared their "report card" for the key players in this administration, and some of them made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my coffee this morning. I had to share.

Enjoy!

 

Budding

Just over a month after planting my bare root Eustacia Vye rose, I have 6 tiny rosebuds!! 

I think I squealed when I spotted the first one...I'm pretty excited. :)

Garden Tea

My newfound interest in growing roses and my very expanded vegetable garden have led me down some wild YouTube rabbit holes lately. One of the main topics I've been trying to learn about is composting and using natural, organic methods of building up soil. 

Can you guess what this is?

That, my friends, is a bucket of "tea" made of earthworm poop (!) that I mixed up and used in the garden a couple of weeks ago. I'd read lots of stuff online about how good it is for flowers (specifically roses) and also vegetable gardens. The only problem was I only had access to our city water, which has chemicals in it and isn't good for making the tea. So, I had an idea! I asked the young guy next door (Ms. Luella's grandson, who bought her house) if I could have a 5-gallon bucket of water from his outdoor spigot, because they still have well water. I told him why I wanted it, and of course he said, "Sure, take as much as you need" but I'll bet he thinks I'm kind of nutty! But in any case, I got my non-chlorinated, non-treated water and all the plants seemed to perk up a little when I gave them their first dose of "tea". 

Anyway, last night we finally got some much-needed rain, and I had a plan. I made a rain barrel out of a large, sturdy Rubbermaid trash can and positioned it in a spot where water runs off the roof. It got totally filled up with rainwater! There's a lid to keep out mosquitoes until I'm ready to use it. The next time I want to make Worm Poop Tea I won't have to go ask next door for the water!

The garden's looking good. Last night's rain made a big difference.

The Rattlesnake beans are really getting going now. In the foreground: squash seedlings. Behind and to the left and right of Poppy: the two tiny corn patches.

Tomatoes are looking good. 

I love sipping a Gin and Tonic on the porch after working in the garden. Thanks to Mistress Maddie for inspiring me to use borage flowers in them! 

So pretty. So refreshing.

Break, birthday, and a brat

It's Spring Break! I've been off since last Friday and don't go back to work until Monday. Easter was so late this year that it seemed like this break would never get here. For the teachers and kids, there's only about four weeks left in the school year. I work all summer (with the exception of a little over a week off around the 4th of July) but as soon as school's out I'll be on "summer hours" and I'm looking forward to that. District employees who work through the summer only have to work 9am-3pm, Monday through Thursday and Fridays off. How sweet is that?

Meanwhile, this week, it's vacation. A much-needed vacation.

Today is Administrative Professionals Day. Since we weren't going to be at school this week, the administration and staff surprised me, Robin (the receptionist) and Ms. Williamson (the data/records/attendance clerk) with all kinds of gifts on Thursday afternoon. We got flowers, chocolate covered strawberries, $50 Walmart gift cards, and a nice card signed by teachers and staff. It was all so thoughtful and lovely!

Pretty pink hydrangea plant!

The strawberries were absolutely delicious! 

Today is also St. George's day, which I picked as our George's birthday the first year we had him. He's 12 years old now! He's come a long, long way from the wild, slightly traumatized shelter pup we adopted back in 2013. He's mellowed into a gentle, sweet, loveable old fellow who's always happy. He's also really active and healthy for 12 years old which I'm so thankful for. 

Gregg has a special thing he does with George occasionally, just the two of them. He gets up very early and the two of them tiptoe out of the house, jump in the van, and go to the park down the road for an early morning ramble. This morning I woke up at daybreak when I heard George's harness click into place, and I knew they were headed to the park. It made me smile (then Poppy and I went back to sleep).

Later in the morning I went to Sam's, and I found some large, good quality dog beds on sale for a really good price. So Georgie got a new bed for his birthday! He's already taken a nap on it, so I guess he likes it.

We love him to bits. He's a very good boy!

Speaking of George and life with our pets, I'll leave you with one other thing that happened this week. 

Guess what I caught Marco doing a couple of days ago?

Creeping around on the floor eating dog food out of George's bowl!! That's what! 

Little a**hole. He drives me crazy.

The bright side

 Happy Easter!

 Here's some good advice for us all on this holiday morning.

The 2025 garden

The vegetable garden is finally all planted! This year I have more things planted in it than ever before, and it's a combination of the older raised bed, a new raised bed, and several containers, including a small plastic kiddie pool where I'm growing Bibb lettuce and baby carrots. As an experiment, we're even growing a little bit of corn! Gregg's been pestering me to try growing corn for a while now, ever since he found out a friend of his grows a few small patches of it in his backyard garden and has success. After homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn is his favorite summer garden treat. When we saw some 6-packs of corn seedlings ("Peaches and Cream" variety) at Lowe's the other day, I thought what the heck. They were $5.99 and Gregg was excited by the idea. Since it was an impulse buy we hadn't planned where to put it, though. Our solution made me laugh: we used the large empty spaces on either side of my new rose! *

Anyway, here's the list of what's growing in my garden this year:

Tomatoes:

Nine heirlooms started from seed: 3 Eva Purple Ball, 3 Hillbilly Potato Leaf, 2 Berkeley Tie Dye, 1 Mexico Midget Cherry.

Five hybrid determinates bought as seedlings: 1 Heatmaster, 2 Bush Goliath, 1 Better Bush, 1 Roma.

Peppers:

One each of Serrano, Jalapeno, Mammoth Jalapeno, Tabasco, Cowhorn, Giant Marconi, and Sheepnose Pimento.

Cucumbers: two Boston Pickling and one Armenian, all planted in large containers.  

Also:

Rattlesnake beans (thanks Mary!), Yellow Crookneck squash, Aunt Mae's Bibb lettuce, and Paris Market carrots. Peaches and Cream corn. 

I mixed together three different varieties/packets of marigold seeds and planted them down the center of the two raised beds to go along with the Marietta marigolds that have reseeded themselves from last year. I like using a living mulch of marigolds around my tomatoes to deter pests and attract pollinators. I've got parsley and basil started from seed that's close to ready to put in the ground, too. 

Here's a few pictures of the garden along with a chart I drew to keep the placement of everything straight. 

* We made a bed for Eustacia Vye that will be big enough to accommodate her plus two more English shrub roses next year. I haven't even seen the first flower yet and I'm already obsessing over what the next two roses will be. I can see how the madness begins!

She's leafing out! 

Three years!

Three years ago today, we brought this little girl home:

She was so little!

It's hard to believe it's been three years!! Poppy's grown into a sweet, good dog. She's a little bit stubborn and sassy, but I like that in a dog. We all love her so much!

Happy Gotcha Day, SweetPop!

Spring crud

A few days ago, I started sneezing at work over and over again. Although I'm not allergic to most spring pollen (with the exception of grass) I decided it was probably my allergies acting up, even though they've been well under control for a while now thanks to allergy shots. Well, I woke up the next morning feeling terrible, with a runny nose, cough, and body aches. I've since decided that I've caught either a cold or a mild version of Covid. Ugh!

Thursday and Friday at work were rough. I felt awful and just wanted to come home and lie down, and the hours seemed to drag. I would have used some sick time, but last week was crunch time as far as closing out this year's federal and state budget with a Friday afternoon deadline to get everything done. There was also a Friday night event at the school that I was taking payments for up until the last minute, so I just didn't feel like I could justify staying home for just a cold. When it was finally time to leave yesterday afternoon, it was a huge relief. Hopefully I'll be back up to par by the time Monday morning rolls around.

And what is it about warm weather that makes a cold feel ten times worse? At least it's still a bit chilly here at night, because nothing is more miserable than a summer cold when it's 90 degrees outside and humid. Just mild springtime mid-day warmth is unpleasant at the moment. 

I really wanted to spend the weekend working in the garden, but I just don't feel up to it at all. At least it's early enough in the season that nothing is terribly pressing at the moment. 

A few spring photos

Spring is rushing by, and I realized the other day that I haven't shared any pictures of it with you. Here are some pretty things that have been growing and blooming in my world over the past few weeks:

Isn't that beautiful? Our young crabapple tree has shot up to over 7' tall and two weeks ago it was covered with these pink flowers. 

Speaking of beautiful..

Two borage plants from last summer started growing back late in the winter. I moved them from the zinnia bed over to the corners of the new raised bed. They've since burst into bloom, and I just love the color! 

Next, some neighborhood photos with the wisteria and azaleas blooming. I just love this time of year.