May23

Some more movie magic

Posted on by
Standard

There’s a really nice slideshow here

The Local Paper put this up. Bri also brought home the printed newspaper, but this is much better. The snow looks so funny-they even added it to the trees. I’m glad to see Owen looking so good now considering he had a rough time last year. This town reminds me of a larger version of both Kennett Square (nearby) and my hometown.

Not much new on the home front. Got to mulch a few gardens, but so chilly and windy to do so. I have one more garden to do.

Sean has rented a few movies-‘Blades of Glory’ (I like ice skating, though this was a bit silly, though funny) and ‘National Treasure-2’ (liked the first one better). Been watching some finales of the shows. Seems they just started airing new ones!

Did a nice thing yesterday-the mailman delivered a package here that was meant for a Diane a few roads away. There are about 4 Diane/Diannes (that I know of now) within a 1/2 mile radius. The package was sent to this Diane from my hometown, so I felt obligated to get it to it’s true owner. I was a little nervous when I saw ‘Beware of Dog’ signs, but the mailbox is across the road from the long drive. I did write a note to the mailman. I guess I’m the Dianne who gets most of the packages!

May22

Pretty things

Posted on by
Standard

I had my Mother’s Day gifts in for a few nights when it was really chilly. It’s in the 50s tonight, so hopefully they’ll be fine. The red one is being shy about blooming, but the yellow one seems to have two plants in one pot-yellow and peach and the flowers are different too! I thought they were pretty enough to share.

I had some chicken tender strips defrosted and was looking for a quick recipe. I wasn’t really in the mood to look as the food photos made my tummy hurt (I’m getting better), but I improvised (green pepper instead of yellow, mandarin oranges instead of navel, bagged salad instead of Arugula) and the guys really liked it! It’s so easy to broil the tenders. I would change the spices a bit, but I do think they tasted better broiled. What a cinch to broil peppers too. I should do it more often.

Got outside between raindrops to plant yellow flowers in the Yucca bed next to the road; Victoria Blue salvia in the woodland garden; and the long looked for Pineapple sage in the pond area. Still some planting to do, but lots more mulching!

Trivia-well-sort of-I saw in my pal Barbara’s blog that her son was doing a walk and the one Dutch word had ‘Avon’ in it. Now not sure if I ever looked this up, but I live in Avondale-Avon meaning ‘river’ and ‘dale’ meaning valley dweller. So this is true as we live in a valley not far from the Brandywine River. : )

May21

Marley & Me

Posted on by
Standard

A new movie starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson is being filmed in West Chester, PA not that far from here. The recent scenes required fake snow in May! Sean and I were just in the downtown area on Saturday on the way to the Chester Co. Hospital fair. We noticed more than the usual amount of demonstrators in our county seat. I was born in that hospital and also had my surgery there last year (my college, Bri’s too and my Uncle Don live there too!). I found this video clip from a local Fox channel.

There’s a new M. Night Shyamalan coming out in June called ‘The Happening’ that was partly filmed even closer, near Sean’s high school’s rival h.s. in Unionville. Here’s a blog about that.

May20

What to do when it feels like March

Posted on by
Standard

That’s right folks! It crept up to about 60 today and rained until 4 pm. I had started a few ATCs yesterday and did a few more tonight (see Flickr). Sean started a writing course tonight down at the annex campus at PSU.

Here’s what I did :


I printed out some images on vellum paper and made this card for a friend. She gave me the neat backing paper with the ‘language of flowers’. I liked the way it turned out. The vellum makes the paper curl up though.

Over at ‘Facebook’, there is an application called ‘Sketch Me’, so I did it with a newer photo of me kneeling with my flowers. This is my new calling card!
Hope to get outside tomorrow. I walked around tonight and things look ok, but I need to do so much more weeding, planting and mulching. Hope my tummy is better too. I had to take some prescription medicine today, which is my last resort.

May19

Magical Flowers

Posted on by
Standard

Thanks to Gary over at tribe.net for animating this for me! He’s a wonderful photographer in California and good at animation too. It’s not working unless you click on the picture-grrrr!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Today it reached 60 and was so chilly. I went outside and ‘high tailed’ it back in again! I do have things to do inside, no problem. My allergies were in a tailspin and I saw Bri looking for Claritin. Sean cut the grass around the house for the first time in a while and Bri finished off the long part. We’re still trying to get the yard work under control. If you could see the pile of debris you would wonder where it all came from!
Tomorrow seems like it’s going to be a repeat of today. Oh, more clutter control will be under way!
Reached my ‘half’ birthday today-oh joy!

May18

A wave of irises

Posted on by
Standard

A wave of irises, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

Taken today, after a mostly wet day. I am sad to see these bloom and take a beating from the weather, but they seem pretty much ok. I’m waiting on a really dark purple one. My little kiwi color one either didn’t bloom or died back. I see where most of these will have to have their rhizomes separated and replanted in the fall.
I like the way Flickr resizes the photos. When I do it, they always look blurry. I— D.N.T. W.W.-drastically need to weed whack (around the Chestnut tree) and trim the little box hedges.

Oh my, I just heard some thunder! More rain!!

The fellows went over to Pop-pop’s house and I stayed home to catch up on some mail to send out and wanted to tidy up my paper stuff, which I haven’t done yet. It’s really getting dark out too. I plan to make dinner when the guys get home since they had a big lunch.

May18

Bloomin’ Saturday

Posted on by
Standard

Yellow Calendula, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.

I plan to plant these around the edge of my Yucca bed near the road. When I spied them at the nursery, they all looked this gorgeous, but the container they are in was bone dry. I figured if they could take that abuse, I want to see what they look like with some TLC.
Sean took me to a hospital fair Saturday which turned out to have moved to another location. We were told they did that as they had planned to do renovations at the hospital, which they hadn’t started yet. There was no white elephant table or vendors, two places we love to roam through. We ended up buying raffle tickets for a car and other goodies (crossing fingers) and homemade donuts-I’m feeling the affects of those today.
Last night, our parish gave our priest a new Chrysler Sebring as a gift for 20 years of service to the community. He said he was speechless!

May15

Mrs. Green Thumbs

Posted on by
Standard

I swore I wasn’t going to buy anymore flowers…then Sean said he needed more for his garden and we stopped at Richardson’s. Got some pretty things there. BUT, we headed down to the mall and the Boscov’s store had there gardening area set up this year! I guess they wanted to utilize their big metal fence. They actually had decent and different (and inexpensive) plants, one of which was the salvia I looked in about 5 different places for. It’s pink, but I was happy. I was a gardening happy lady today and after dinner. I’m almost finished. Here are some shots as I feel some of these plants or shrubs won’t look this pretty after the rain that is forecast tomorrow:


A peachy keen Azalea in the front of the house. Sean and I were standing in front of this on Mother’s Day

A close up of a delicately scented Azalea blossom


Some of my various irises, some in bloom

A close up of a gorgeous iris bloom


A begonia I bought yesterday-only $12.99! It took two plant stands to hold it up.


The red hibiscus Sean gave me


The yellow hibiscus


Lettuce growing in the tire garden


Still have a few more flowers to plant! There’s the pink salvia on the left


This was just to perfect not to photograph-although Dandelions drive me crazy, it looked so unusual and fuzzy next to the fuzzy Lamb’s ears.

Worked on-potting up geraniums and newly bought flowers.

Gardens -gnome garden-polka dots plants (burgundy and dark green and green and white-new colors from Boscov’s), mini Gem Marigolds and white alyssum

Herb Bed-Fennel, Basil, Dill, Dianthus, Marigolds, Roma tomato. Need to plant up to 8 more things-might be a squeeze there.

I was left a comment above about ‘the real’ Mrs. Greenthumbs aka Cassandra Danz who passed away in 2002. I was just thinking of a funny name for my post and that name came to mind. I do remember the real lady when she appeared on the ‘Live with Regis and Kelly Show’. Thanks for pointing that out.

May14

Art by lantern light

Posted on by
Standard

A few of these I did on Monday with the use of a lantern (we have a mini Coleman that is a flashlight/lantern combo). It wasn’t really dark, but enough that I needed some light. My eyes aren’t that young anymore. : (

First two by lantern, finished Tuesday night:

Paradise-made with gardening catalog for the background, bluebird from old bird handbook and stickers

Want to Play?- tore up a few different colors of green handmade paper found at Dollar Tree and used Mod Podge to apply. Real looking flowers are from the gardening catalog. The rest are stickers.

This one was made before the power outage:

Blooms-background is my photo from Longwood Gardens, ‘Blooms’ is from the brochure from LG, and moth is freebie from Dover Publications. One side is a sticker and the other is paper.

And this one made Tuesday night as I got a big order of papers from Creative Papers online and wanted to dig in to my new stash:

Cardinal Song-flocked paper, Dover freebie gramophone, sheet music and awesome Marjolein Bastin bird stickers (gotta love stickers!). I colored the gramophone.