Pumpkin Sunrise

Summertime is in full effect this week.  Every day is hot and humid.  I am trying my best to not complain and to enjoy each day.  I am thankful for AC and for soft signs of the season to come.  Usually I am up around 5 a.m. and greeted by Holly the cat.  Lately the sunrise is an hour or so afterwards, so Miss Holly sleeps in a bit.  I eagerly await for her little meow 'hellos'. My mornings are restful and contemplative.  I usually journal about the previous day and do some religious readings and prayers while drinking my coffee.  I write a gratitude list daily which makes my day start with the best frame of mind. Acorns!!! In the beginning of the pandemic, I missed so much of my regular routines:  going to dinner at a restaurant a few times a week, aimlessly shopping and seeing my kids whenever I wanted to see them. Now I am content to not eat out, I have many recipes at my fingertips and ingredients in my fridge/freezer to pull off a dinner in a snap.  We do pick up a pizza ev

Isn't Holly so cute the way she stuffs herself into the top of the tower?  She is one happy cat.  How are you?  We are in the midst of a heat wave and phew! It's hot and humid.  Yesterday seemed a little less intense but I can tell how my hair goes everywhere on how humid the days are.   As quickly as the landscapers came and disrupted the silence, they have been gone for over a week, our seeded grass is growing and life goes on.  They might have to come back and re-seed in certain places because the downpours go running into the woods taking some of the straw with it. By now the cicadas and locusts should be making their symphony appearance,  each day I listen wondering where they are.  Same with the tree frogs!  They should me adding to the music. I've been reading Michelle Obama's autobiography, Becoming.  We are around the same age and I'm enjoying her thought processes on motherhood and juggling work.  I am over half way through the book on the brink of his pre

The boulder wall construction has begun!  The landscaper guys arrived on Wednesday and ripped out the old railroad tie retaining wall.  The plan is to move the wall away from the pool to the edge of the property before it slopes down the steep hill.  This will give my husband more area to move the riding lawn tractor around.  Also maybe just maybe the boulder wall will stop the earth from going away from the pool.  That is the plan. Yesterday they were dumping boulders which sounded like thunder to Frodo so I had to console him.  Lots of love and patience. Our zucchini plant is taking over the bed!  So far all of the plants are surviving and no one has nibbled on anything...yet.  Our gardening tends to be lax in that if a critter wants to nibble, we let them nibble.  It's much easier to not fight Mother Nature. My creative process has been ebbing on the low side these past few days. I am down to two knitting projects in my knitting bag and want to finish them before I start somethi

Around here I've been hiding inside my house while the humidity has slowly climbed to a somewhat sticky level.  The wild roses are finished blooming and at any moment the day lilies will bloom.  Every morning when I'm outside with Frodo we check the plants.  On our walks, I've seen bee balm blooming but mine is being kind of shy right now.  I've spotted some elderberry bushes blooming and they reminded me of my gram who would make elderberry pie when we were at her summer cottage.   The cement guy came and leveled all of the uneven pieces around the pool, sometime next week the landscaper is coming to do his thing.  We have some flowering plants that need to be relocated before he regrades the corner of our property or we'll lose them.  The new boulder retaining wall is supposed to take two days.  I'm excited. Around here I decadently read ALL day yesterday.  The memoir, Educated, is really good and I can't put it down.  It's funny because I was sure I w

What I'm grateful for this week: -mostly sunshine instead of cloudy days -starting a creativity tracker in my planner before the pandemic never knowing how much it would be a big help in my days and my motivation -hitting a fine rhythm with daily cooking and weekly menu planning -the start of sketching out our summer outings outdoors and many picnics to be -modern technology and how it weaves a thread of togetherness -all the knitting! -Air Conditioning(!) -a brand new frisbee for Frodo to put in the pool and then bark at it -the upcoming landscaping project around the pool and replacing a retaining wall -rediscovering our traveling county library and ALL the books I want and curbside pickup. (this is a game changer for many desired books) -clean kitchen floors for now -big salads  -new to me salad dressings -ideas of challenging myself in artwork, both sketching and watercoloring -you-tube and all the artists who post information regarding watercoloring and sketching -for all the

Hello!  I hope you all are doing fine this Friday morning, I sure am.  I'm loving the green on my walks and the warmer weather.  Of course a heat wave is coming so I'm soaking up the temperate temperatures while I can.  Once it's 85 degrees, I'll be hiding in my house again.  On our walk this week we saw a turkey vulture (above photo).  I was pleased I could get a photo of him/her with my iphone, usually when I zoom in I lose the integrity of the composition. I mentioned on Wednesday that I wanted to finish a cross stitch project within a week.  I have over half of it done already so my goal is attainable if I work on it daily instead of knitting all the time.  I'll keep you up to date on the progress.  I spent way too much time shopping for frames online.  It's so much easier to pop into a craft store and zip through an aisle and choose.  I hope they ship the frame soon! Holly's first sneak by Yesterday Holly insisted on slinking by the ot

How has your week been?  Did you find joy?  I hope so.  Thank you all for the lovely comments on my shawl, this tiny blogging world is wonderful!  This week started out with winter coats and today it will be nearly 80 degrees.  On our daily walks we've seen an oriole, an indigo bunting and a woodpecker.  To be honest, my husband sees them first then I'm trying to follow where he is pointing lagging behind in my birdwatching skills. I'm finding joy in the every day.  Sure these days seem to run together blurring lines and becoming a bit of a blob.  But then, I schedule myself out with some blocked time of purposeful creativity and then 'poof' the day feels different.  As I mentioned in my Weekends post, I read all day Saturday and that made Saturday feel like Saturday. gift from my daughter and son in law I'm finding joy in rearranging all my art supplies, rotating out watercolor paint sets and flipping through art journals.  It's been over a ye

Usually I write about how the month May reminds me of my grandmother and her garden.  I've written about her many times during this month and decided to expand my memories and write about other memories. I grew up going to Catholic schools and May was THE month when we all knew the school year was ending.  On warm days during high school,  the teachers would open the windows and I would struggle to focus on the lessons because my eyes would wonder to the windows and my mind would follow willingly to wishful thinking of being outdoors. Ordinarily I disliked gym class but in May we would play softball (outside!) and I would eagerly get into my gym uniform quickly so I could be outside as much as possible.  Every single class we attended, we would beg our teachers to have our class outside.  They nearly always said 'no' but I remember once a teacher said 'yes' much to our amazement. In Biology High School class we were allowed to walk the grounds looking