Relief at last

Last evening, the temperature during the 6:00 news was still at 100 degrees. Thankfully, during the night a weather front moved into the area and pushed out the 8-day heatwave like a freight train. Of course, that produced a thunderstorm with lots of noise and lightning but a wonderful, soaking rain.

This morning when I went out onto the patio with the cats, the temperature was a lovely 70 degrees.The brown grass had miraculously greened up, the sky had lost its heavy haze and was washed a bright blue and the air was crisp and clean. Ahhhh!

                      (Borrowed image--this is not my backyard!)

This might be my 400th posting--or not

I decided not to think about my 400th posting and just get on with it. The crabapple tree off of my patio is in full bloom--a full three weeks early. This seems to be the case nationwide.

A friend who recently returned from her annual trip to Maui said that everything was three weeks early there as well. She saw flowers blooming that she had never seen before.

To delight the eye

Time to rejoice in the season!

 

A few fun pictures

Some stuff I picked up online and saved to share.

                                            By Natalie Chalmers

I get a kick out of stuff like this...

I got a call from my oldest granddaughter yesterday. She wanted to know what kind of oil was used in an old-fashioned "rain lamp". She and her hubby had rescued my parent's old lamp from storage and cleaned it up. To everyone's surprise, it worked perfectly.

I asked her to post a picture on Facebook. So far, the posting has received eight comments from people who said their grandparents or parents had a lamp like that. Who'd have thought?

Another Mother's Day

Every year my kids come over for Mother's Day dinner. I really look forward to feeding them just like when they were young. They always appreciate the meal too.

Each year daughter number 2 brings me a Mandevilla plant. They are always so heathy and bloom beautifully (see above). My son always brings me a hanging plant for the patio, and daughter number 3 gives me money to buy whatever else I need.

Daughter number 1 bought me an electric can opener. With my hands getting stiff and painful off and on, I thought it would be a big help. She told me that she has never had good luck with electric can openers lasting very long or working really well.

What has been your experience with electric can openers?

Anticipating the glorious green

From a letter to the editor in today's Minneapolis StarTribune, Sandy Stryker writes about driving down a quiet residential street:

"The atmosphere was charged. The branches of elm and oak seemed to tremble with anticipation. I felt sure that, inches underground, albino seedlings were pushing up, starving for sun, desperate to commit photosynthesis."

Don't you just love it? Even though there's not a sign of any plants popping up yet and piles of dirty snow still exist by parking lots, Spring is in the air! So, let's have a shout-out for photosynthesis!

Niceties

There are still a lot of Christmas lights on at night around my neighborhood. I really appreciate it a lot.

All the soft snowy vistas are gone and we are left with big piles of dirty, clumpy snow. This ugliness will be around for months yet, so we need the bright cheeriness of those lights. Since it adds a lot to the electric bill of those folks, I'm sure they do it purposely--whether to lift their own spirits or that of others, it's a darn nice thing to do.

So, here's my quiet salute to all the good-hearted people who light up my world!

Plant problems

A neighbor gave me a tiny plant when she moved away a year ago. I put it out on the patio to fend for itself over the summer and when I brought it in, it happily began producing buds. In December, it finally bloomed with lovely salmon-tinged yellow petals. It looks good and healthy in this picture.

Since then, the plant has become covered with a white fungus and is dying back. It's still producing a few blossoms but it looks awful. I don't know what kind of plant it is or if this is typical behavior. Does anybody know what's going on with it?

I don't have much of a green thumb but I'm nowhere near as bad as my mother was. It was always a family joke that if we gave her a plant for Easter it would be dead by Mother's Day.

Mom just loved Gloxinias. They had big showy pink or purple blossoms and sometimes she'd buy one for herself at the grocery store. Now the thing she loved about Gloxinias is that after they blossom, the plant dies back. But, if you put it away to "rest", you can restart it to grow and bloom again. As a result, she would store them in her basement but then, forget all about them. There were dried up husks of old Gloxinias in colorful foil-wrapped pots scattered everywhere. She always meant well...

I once gave her a paperback book called, "The Power of Prayer over Plants". She was not amused. We still chuckle over those loving memories of her.

Thinking and thanking

I'm thankful for all the wonderful photos and illustrations available online. (I find this one particularly appealing.) I love to browse through Google Images or Yahoo Image Search and all the other sites that offer pictures of every description.

So, even though I'll never travel to Ireland, I can still enjoy its beauty.

Bowling ball ladybugs

I got this picture off the Birds and Blooms website. These darling ladybugs are just old painted bowling balls. The directions are shown on their webpage online.

It seems like these lawn decorations would last for many years, unlike the plastic stuff you find almost everywhere.

(Of course, if you've been tortured by the nasty, biting Asian Beetles that look like ladybugs, you probably wouldn't look on them very fondly.)

Unexpected art in Valiant Tomatoes

I brought in three ripened tomatoes from the patio yesterday and dropped them in a bowl on the table. I walked by the bowl today and happened to have the camera in hand so I snapped this picture on a whim.

After I looked at the picture, I thought it looked pretty good. If I tried harder, I'll bet I could make it really artsy. Of course, Art is in the eye of the beholder and those are our very own tomatoes grown from seeds and lovingly tended since the beginning of the year--so, naturally I think they're just gorgeous.

We have been through a lot together, those tomatoes and I--from little seed cups under UV lights, to transplanting into bigger containers plus mfore frequent feeding and watering. And then the day in May when they finally went outside into their big pots in the sunshine! We pampered them with more feedings and waterings. We bought them cages to support their stems and kept them pruned. There were the long, harsh days of the drought and sunshine followed by the rainy spell with all the cloudy, rainy days. Unseasonably cool nights slowed their progress but they struggled on.

(Now, the 20 cent package of tomato seeds was a bargain. But the special lights, all the pots and potting soil, plant food, tomato cages, etc. have added up to a tidy sum. It doesn't appear we will wind up with more than 20 tomatoes, but that will be enough to share.)

Despite it all, these few valiant tomatoes now grace my table with their bright colors and their tempting, home-grown juicy goodness.

Now, excuse me while I go eat a $5 tomato...

Ignore the woman behind the flowers

Every year for Mother's Day, my daughter gives me a potted mandevilla. They always do very well out on my tiny patio. This is me with last summer's plant in full bloom. I stood behind it so I wouldn't detract from its beauty.

The sad-looking plant next to it is a cherry tomato. My housemate puts out patio tomatoes and various herbs each summer. The herbs do well but the tomatoes never thrive. The leaves turn yellow and drop off. This plant produced a fair number of cherry tomatoes, but they weren't very tasty. Much as she has tried, the plants bearing bigger tomatoes haven't done well in past years either-not even when she bought expensive started plants. So, this year she got some Minnesota-specific tomato seeds and started the whole packet in plastic tubs on the dining room table (which made for much finagling when we had guests). They are outside now, scrunched together on the patio behind all the herbs. Time will tell if they produce-- but I'm not getting my hopes up.

The really odd thing about all of this is--she doesn't even like fresh tomatoes! Go figure.

Cock-eyed rainbows

We had a light rain last evening. I was watching TV when a neighbor rang the doorbell and said, "You have to come outside and see the double rainbow!"

It was spectacular. I ran back inside to get the camera (the one I'm such a putz at using). I snapped some pictures landscape but couldn't get both rainbows in the picture, so I did this one portrait but captured only half of it.

I was all enthused about showing it to you on my blog today. It took me an hour just to get the picture off my camera and into My Pictures. There was no way I would ever be able to figure out how to rotate the picture.

I hope you can enjoy it anyway.