This gallery contains 23 photos.
We went and brought my mom here to take her to Hershey Gardens which is a couple of hours from here. She hadn’t stayed with us since January! She had full charge of my brother’s old dog during the weekdays until the old fella was put down in July. I had taken my mom to […]
I few weeks back, maybe a month ago, Sean and I took my mom to Scott Arboretum Swarthmore College’s campus to see their renowned rose garden. We had been there a few years ago and the roses were perfect. We also went in May. By June and after a rainstorm, the roses were starting to fade. It was a bit warm also, so we didn’t stay long.
Mom isn’t fond of this photo, but I like it because Sean is in it too. He worries about her so much as she had two mini stroke incidents that required hospital stays. When we we can, we go down and take her to a store or place like this. Right after this stop, we ate in a restaurant in Media called Picasso and shared plated of shrimp kebabs, battered dipped asparagus and a few other things which she loved.
These are geraniums!
A bench with Dean Bond’s name on it. This is his rose garden. The graduates get a rose from the garden pinned to their gown.
Beautiful Clematis with one of the college buildings behind it.
Sean liked the Seafoam roses
The gate to the rose garden
Really love this one.
The summer is flying by!
This gallery contains 26 photos.
I am definitely behind in my posts. October has proven to be super busy with us getting back from our travels, going back to work, cleaning up the yard (not finished) and changing out my summer to winter clothes. And Sean got a job in his field! He will be starting his GIS job with […]
This gallery contains 27 photos.
I thought I’d better get my blog entry for our middle of the August trip to Avalon, Stone Harbor, Sea Isle City, Strathmere and Ocean City, NJ done to catch up! Just yesterday, Oprah Winfrey, her companion Stedman and her pal Gayle were in Stone Harbor! It’s really a nice, quiet resort area. Sean read […]
I hope you are catching this series (Who Do You Think You Are?) as it is now on the TLC cable channel. Last night featured singer/actress Zooey Deschanel who has local roots near where I live now! First she went to the Philadelphia public library, then Swarthmore, PA and finally Christiana, PA where she found out her great grandmom (times 4) was an abolitionist for the underground railroad around the time of the Civil War! Christiana is about 16 or so miles from here.
And get this, we have been to the Sadsbury Friends Meetinghouse cemetery where Zooey’s relative (or relatives) are buried.
We went there as a geocache was there (back in February)! I have one placed myself around the corner near a supermarket. I thought that was pretty neat. Zooey was far right to where this photo was taken. I think they had her walk from the back there to the front. That one part of the building wasn’t too attractive.
So I decided to look up some family stuff, but my paternal side, the Knowles family. My gr-grandfather was one of the first forest rangers in Oregon. His wife, Margie wrote a book called ‘Honeymoon on Horseback’ about their early marriage and his work as a forest ranger and how they lived in a primitive way out of a tent, etc. I have a copy of the book. Sean, my son has read it too.
So I found on my search where the campground named after Archie was closed down. Then I ran across a youtube video and the man took us on a tour of the area.
This man is into geocaching too! My mouth fell open when I started to watch this video as he nabbed a geocache there.
But this is a bittersweet video for me also. I never met most of the Knowles family as I grew up in Pennsylvania and my 3 brothers and me didn’t go out to Oregon. I correspond with my cousin Ann and I’ve met her sister Shirley and her husband Dwayne when I was a little girl. Ann and Shirley’s mom, Dessa was very nice to me and wrote to me when she was alive. She is the daughter of Archie and Margie. My parents were separated and then divorced and my father lived his days out in his home state. His ashes were scattered in the Knowles creek in 2008.
If you watched the video, you can see where this campground was probably closed down for good this year. I appreciate Kenny (I have a brother and nephew Ken/Kenny also!) for showing me this place. I hope to see it someday, but we’ll see if I am able to get to the west coast.
The back cover of ‘Honeymoon on Horseback’, great grandfather Archie and
Margie, his wife and author.
Again, the internet truly amazes me!
I heard that Valentine’s Day was an invented holiday, but so were Mother and Father’s Days. It is a nice distraction during the gloomy winter months. I love hearts, cupids and chocolate!
I made the kids at the preschool a little collage card too.
I need to thank my Flickr pal-here’s her page
There’s a new movie called ‘Safe Haven’ and the funny thing is, I was writing a little story back in 2011 about my Grandmom and growing up that I called ‘Sheltering Haven’. Here’s a portion of the little I did write.
My grandmother Ruth was a sheltering haven to me for most of my life and I didn’t even realize it until she passed away. When she died, something in my subconscious was brought up to the surface from my memory bank and what was old became quite new and fresh in my mind again. Perhaps these memories were meant to be buried all that time as when I remembered them, I felt new love and appreciation for my ‘mom-mom’. A few things; not everyone gets to live with their grandmother or will get a much older person’s point of view about things. But more than that, she was there not only to fill a void where a father should have been, but to be someone we could count on when we needed advice, a hot meal or maybe a ‘talking to’.
So:
“Shower the people you love with love, show them the way that you feel….. (JT)
Have a lovely day of love! ❤
Sean and I have had colds this week. He is sicker than me, but still is plugging away. I thought I’d be blowing my nose like crazy, well I have done that enough, but it’s the achiness that is getting to me. I wanted to do something distracting, so I pulled out my ‘Smash’ book. This is a book I bought over a year ago. A smash book is like a scrapbook, but you ‘jam’ more stuff into it. I tend to be a little more organized than that. Here is what I started out with:
That’s one of those fold up organizers I am using. The stuff in the top wants to fall out all the time.
This is my ‘Abbey Road on the River’ spread from when we went to the Beatles tribute event in Aug./Sept. 2011 and 2012. We saw the guitar that George Harrison is posing with in this photo. I got a catalog in the mail and lo and behold, George was on the cover. I really liked the shot, so I used it in my Smash book.
I have a paper I hand wrote near George that tells about the Beatles tribute event. The pocket has the programs from the two years that we attended plus a postcard and bookmark The little ‘Peeps’ picture is because they are a sponsor. We probably won’t go again for a while as we weren’t happy with the way it was run last year.
It’s hard to believe our New York trip was almost a year ago! I wish I felt like I did back then. The left side has a bumper sticker from the 9-11 Memorial store-seeing that was a big thing. There’s a receipt from the store and the little envelope holds a card describing the purchase of a metal cast leaf I bought (the tree will grow at the sight). The next page is a happier one-Sean holding an umbrella next to Radio City Music Hall (we had a bit of gloomy visit the first night and day and then it got chilly and windy); a card from Tinsel Trading Company-a store I wanted to see that sold millinery and crafty things; and the description of the caramels I bought from Dylan’s candy bar. Oh…the mustache is from the Lorax movie! He was visiting at Dylan’s.
Brian took me to see the Van Gogh exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum around April 1st. We weren’t allowed to take photos of the exhibit, but I took plenty of shots around the museum. The one on the right is from the mailer and that’s the the pamphlet of from show. When you open the pamphet, A Rembrandt card (shaped like him) is there-see his foot? We saw a few of his works of art, plus I bought this in the gift shop.
In June, we had our Delmarva trip. I met up with a internet pal Rachael and we headed over to the art museum to see the Andy Warhol exhibit. It was great to meet her. I bought the Andy card in the gift shop (the Rembrandt one looks like this) and some postcards of his most famous works.
The last page I worked on yesterday was about the November election we went to see both the First Lady Michelle Obama (in August) and then President Bill Clinton a few days before the 2012 election. I have the email about picking up the tickets, the tickets in the holder, stickers and some ballot ends.
So on the health front, I’m still fighting these body aches and fatigue. I seem worse since I have had the cold. I missed work, but heard a bunch of others called out sick on Wednesday too. My cold wasn’t what made me feel blah-it was the body aches! I got an appointment at a rheumatologist office at the beginning of March. I googled about menopause and arthritis and didn’t something come up! Seems there is a parallel. I am looking into going to another doctor specializing in hormonal issues. At this point, I can’t hardly do anything without having to sit down in half an hour. I’ll probably call the doctor near my hometown later. I want to be able to add more pages to my smash book!
Keep my mom and brother in your thoughts and prayers as my brother’s Dalmation Baxter appears to be at the end of his life. Mom thinks he’s at least 13 or 14 (maybe older). He is in a lot of pain, it takes him 5 minutes to lay down and he has hardly any bowel control at this point. He is on medicine, but yesterday he was just so miserable. Such a sad time.
I scanned an old photo of my older and younger brother and me today. Mom’s nickname for me is Diadsie (dyed-see) and Brian calls me little Diads sometimes. So this is from 1961 and in bad shape. I was trying to photo shop it using my laptop. I’m not saying I’m finished with it, but I think I resemble my own son at about 1.5 here. He also had straight hair in the front and curls in the back. We both had those chubby cheeks.
I like how I’m holding my brother’s ear-lol.
It’s also not too exciting around here because of the blasted cold. We had a bit of cabin fever and went down to the local stores. Big Lots had a customer appreciation day Saturday (if you have their Buzz card), and Brian and I went and save over $20!
I decided to clean up my African violets. I had 16 of them and lost 2. Many are special varieties from a seller at the Philadelphia Flower show. I do have to clean up the rest of the plants and the windows they are in.
I went through dozens of cross stitch books as a friend in the Philippines is a beautiful stitcher and has trouble finding patterns. I’ve stitched at night more lately and I did find some for her (she wants landscapes) and me (I like ornaments especially). I found a pattern to make as a 1st birthday gift for a sweet girl.
I hope the weather holds out so I can see my mom soon!
I need to live up to my blog name. I have worked on these for a week or so. Some aren’t even finished, but I thought I’d share. I like the lady with guitar a lot.
I’m trying to utilize rubber stamps that I have a ton of too.
Photo Hunt–Seasonal
This was taken last year at Longwood Gardens in mid November-
Look at all the leaves on the tree then!
My father-in-law got his power back after 4 long days. On Tuesday we had called PECO and they said it would be until 11 pm Friday. We found a hotel room for him right away and Brian went over to take him to the room. He wouldn’t budge out of the house. 4 people and two policeman could not make him move out of his cold, dark house, so there he stayed with a dying cellphone. Talk about stubborn. Brian will have to make him promise if something like this happens again, he will heed to his wishes of being safe in a warm room. The man is 89 years old and a bit frail. This made us all stressed out and tense all that time. I would never do that to Sean.
Halloween owl and witch shoes, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.
It’s a cool, damp day here. We don’t get trick or treaters as we live on a busy road with no sidewalks.
It’s a rather low key holiday, though I enjoy decorating for it. Enjoy my ‘flashback’ post!
Sean, age 2-a magician
Tori, age 8. We both love The Wizard of Oz, or at least I think she still does.
Kenny age 3 trying on Sean’s last Halloween costume hat of a Titanic sailor and as a teen
My mom and 1.5 yr old Tori as Tinkerbelle
Sean as Dracula (photoshopped)
Collages & Creative Goodness 