I received an adorable little pillow from Barbara over at Mainly Stitching on the right there. It was a ‘pay if forward prize’ in my opinion. I love the colors of Barbara’s own choosing and the designer (The Prairie Schooler). I love how she finished it off too. Thanks so much!
The next few photos are of my JoAnn finds, the blue urn which I would like to get a couple more of, and some bells which I see need to be varnished.
Sometimes you read a passage and it touches you. You need others to read it as it needs their attention. Thus was the case with the bio of little Celeste, one of the featured kids on the Make A Child Smile (this link is always in my sidebar) website for July. This dear child has a rare degenerative disease. She is in a wheelchair and her mom says she is the sweetest girl, especially to her little sister Amira. Amira climbs up on Celeste’s lap to be close to her. From Celeste’s mom- Despite her many limitations, Celeste lives life to its fullest. She has a wonderful sense of humor and has a smile like sunshine. She loves the simple things like sitting outside on a summer day and feeling the breeze in her hair. She loves to go for walks, listen to the birds outside, swing at the park. Celeste will be 8 on the 19th. If you want, I’m sure a card will be greatly received by her. Here’s an Art card I made for her and included with my own card:
Her name means heavenly or something to that effect.
Also did one to remind me of the friendly catbirds. The background is paper that looks like it is embedded with grass plus a little yellow tissue paper. The bird picture is from an old magazine.
And these are Stargazer lilies that I had planted in a pot last summer and nothing came up. I was surprised to see them appear in the spring and then bloom this week.
I saw two ‘firsts’ of the summer- a Monarch butterfly and a hummingbird! It’s about time for the hummer. I have flowers that they love-salvia, nicotiana and the butterfly bush, which the hummer was checking out. The Monarch was just zipping around looking happy to spread it’s wings. A funny sight to me was seeing a bumblebee taking a nap on the middle part of one of the cosmos. I could really get a good look at his furry body, beady black eyes and cool little antenna.
It’s going to be a hot one again this week. Take it easy.
We had a wild thunderstorm pass through right after I caught this groundhog munching on the fallen apples from our tree out back. I took this through the dining room window with the zoom lens. I won’t eat apples off the ground because of all the critters that roam by. Isn’t he funny?
Apparently it rained right over our house and not a mile down the road where Sean was at the video store. He said about two drops came down! As long as I don’t have to drag around the watering can tonight!
And here is one of the friendly catbirds that kept me company and poo all over my outdoor chairs! I just found an illustration of one in my ATC stuff, so I think a card in honor of them is appropriate.
And finally, just my one pal and I are doing an ATC exchange on tribe.net this month as our other two pals are busy. I thought of the theme this month-‘Patriotic’ or red, white and blue. This is what I made for her…
Take a look at these gorgeous flowers:
I thank Brian for taking this photo of my neighbor’s gorgeous watermelon red flowers. I could not tell from way across the road what they were. The easy thing would be to ask my neighbor, but she doesn’t even look at us cross-eyed these days. So we went out to the side yard with the zoom lens-ha! After he uploaded the shots (and the camera software zoomed in nicely) I could tell these were bee balm flowers. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what they are. Yeah. I’m gonna get me some red bee balm. ; )
Are you watching any of the Live Earth Concerts? We turned it on at 10 am and it’s on Bravo until 2 am this morning. Reminiscent of Live Aid back in 1985 (I watched almost the entire thing back then). A stand-out group was a group of British scientists called Nunatak (see my Vod:Pod) in Antarctica who performed on the barren snowy plains with penguins around them.
It was so nice today I decided to get out the weed whacker and get down to business. One of these days we’ll get a new one. This one is really broken as the string part won’t advance anymore when you tap it on the ground. I think I’ve had this one almost as long as we lived here and my mom has had about 3-4 since then. I have much more to clear away than she does.
I tend to overdo it and plugged in the heating pad for my sore back tonight. I did make a nice dinner with ham steak, red potatoes with Italian parsley and dill from my herb bed and green beans and peaches.
Zoey asked me if I had any King coleus-that’s the one I just purchased yesterday! Today I took off some of the bottom leaves plus the flower stalks. You don’t want coleus to flower-similar to basil. I don’t think it needs repotting. I think I have about 5 varieties now.
This is the time of year I start moving things around, even flowers that are coming up from seed. I dug up a few Mexican sunflowers and added them to the lily bed as the lilies will be gone before I know it and Mexican sunflowers are a gorgeous orange.
I have not seen one hummingbird this year! I have red salvia and other flowers I thought would attract them. In fact, I mainly see cat birds and a few cardinals.
I’m pretty sure my mom is coming tomorrow. Either Sean will get her if he goes to school to sell back his text book or she’ll drive herself. He is finished now at that branch of PSU. He’s almost a junior. He is short about 5 credits as he had dropped the Trig last semester and didn’t carry a full load one semester. We are going up to the main campus in a few weeks-it’s about 3 hours away. I can’t believe two years has gone by.
I love coleus for their watercolor-like ruffly leaves in a rainbow of colors. This year they are doing exceptionally well. I just pulled out the Sevin to combat the Japanese beetles that are munching on them and some of the other tender plants. So what’s this experiment? I am breaking off small pieces of my different plants and sticking them in a pot of wet soil. I did the first one by accident as some leaves had broken off when I was repotting the plant. It took root! I found a few baby coleus under the chestnut tree in old potting soil, so I potted them up too. I am hoping to start a bunch of them so I have them for the wintertime and next season-hopefully.
I did 3 hours of gardening yesterday-Bri trimmed the forsythia out front which were way overgrown and I raked up one side of the cut branches. The township also had just come along and ‘trimmed’ about 2 feet of our yard along the road away. They did this all over the place. I guess it makes it easier for the mail people to get to the boxes. I also tied up tomatoes and hoed around some of my gardens. Since I took an interest in the veggie patch, Bri has been more involved too. I had left it up to him the last few years as I was fed up with putting so much work in it and not getting much out of it anymore. He bought 5 more huge pepper varieties today at Walmart. I did buy more plants. I was hoping for better prices though. The plants that were discounted were clinging to life by a hair. Why do they wait so long to put them on sale? I bought a Paradise rose bush and a few plants for around the pond area and another coleus!
Our main reason for going to Walmart was to exchange my under the counter radio/CD player that was in the kitchen. The one we bought last year (thank goodness we saved the box!) had melted underneath in one spot. I do remember smelling plastic burning at one time. I was afraid to use it! They did give us another one-the same one, that’s all they sell.
We watched the concert for Diana tonight put on by her sons in honor of what would have been her 46th birthday (I am 18 months older). I was surprised it was only broadcast for an hour. I like Elton John and Rod Stewart’s ok, but they sing the same old songs all the time. It would have been nice to hear something new from Elton. The most enjoyable parts, seeing Princes William and Harry and seeing film footage from when Diana was a girl. She certainly looked like she lived a privilege life. I had read that she complained about being the third daughter of a mother and father who wanted a son. Also, her mother and father separated when she was 10 or so.
Anyway, it was a gorgeous day-no heat. I was trying to sit under the chestnut trees but they are dropping their ‘flowers’ for a better name of those messy things. At this stage, fireflies mate all around these trees. Nature overload!
I hope to get mom one day this week. And Sean got a A- in his night school class.
I’m almost finished packing, the nails are painted (rarity for me and my toes too!) and dinner is cooked as Sean’s evening class is at 6. I am feeling better. I did take a herbal sleep aid to see if it helped me and it did.
Here’s the photos I mentioned above:
First waterlily of the year
Astilbe
I just bought this yesterday-the burgundy are petunias and the yellow are million bells, amply named don’t you think?
Collages & Creative Goodness 