Oh My Poor Neighbor!

We had very  few  problems with Beryl,  only about a 1/2 inch of rain, a few leaves, a few small branches, nothing much to talk about.  A bit more rain today, but oh my poor neighbor!  They have a tree service out there today, guess with the holiday yesterday they couldn't get anyone out here sooner.

Memorial Day

A very quiet Memorial Day here, drizzly rain left over from the storm, lots of leaves and small branches, but one poor neighbor has about a 30 foot tree laying across the hood of their car.
No decorating of graves for us, all our families are buried in California or Oklahoma.  Brought flowers to Mac's family's graves when we were there in March and will do the same for my family the next time we're in Oklahoma.
To all the Veterans, including my own, I wish a safe Memorial Day.

Isn't She Lovely

Last week it was Alberto, this week it's Beryl, another subtropical storm and we haven't even reached hurricane season, that starts June 1st.
Beryl is just off our coast, the center should make landfall in Jacksonville, Florida tonight, linger over the Okefenokee Swamp for a day or so, then turn north as a tropical depression and come right through here.
No one knows how much rain we'll get, perhaps 1-2 inches tonight and a bit less Tuesday when she comes back through.  Flood warnings have been issued and they say we'll probably have a tornado watch this afternoon.
She has strengthened a bit, sustained winds at 60 miles an hour, but shouldn't get any stronger, she's too close to shore.
It's going to be a long summer.

May in Georgia

It's so pretty this time of year in Georgia, before the sun bakes everything to a crisp.  It's been warm, had a bit of rain and everything is growing and blooming.  We had no luck  with Hydrangeas when we first moved here, we planted them, they died, but then a couple of years ago they just took off.  Now whenever Mac wants to start a new one he just snips a stalk off an old one, slips it into some potting soil and voila´, we have a new plant.











My shady side garden is doing well too, I've put Impatiens and Caladiums in to go with my Asparagus ferns.

Side Garden

Around the pool the Gardenias are about finished but the Buddleia are getting started.

Buddleia

Mac's garden has green beans and cucumbers coming up and all around the edge are Chrysanthemums and Snapdragons.
















The Confederate Rose, a southern type of Hibiscus, is looking beautiful.

Confederate Rose

The bear on the swing thinks everything looks great, perhaps we should take the boat out and see what's going on in our neighbor's gardens.

Bear

Boat

Finally!!!

I started the cover for my breadmaker so long ago I can't even remember when.  Took me forever to find a pattern, then fabric I liked, and in fact I didn't get quite enough fabric and had to patch in some other fabric on the inside.  Without measuring my breadmaker (and you know right away there's going to be problems ahead) I used the pattern and cut the 4 pieces out, 3 times, middle, 2 sides. wide band, lining and quilting.  I sewed the wide band to each piece and then I started quilting each piece, ran out of red thread, got distracted by other projects, finally got more thread, finished quilting it all, lost interest in it, went back to it and decided to pin it together and get it sewn.
Now I'd be the first to tell you that I'm spatially challenged, I couldn't, even knowing the long piece was the middle and the 2 round ones were the sides, figure out how to put it together.  I looked around the room, figured my sewing machine was roughly the size of the breadmaker and laid the long piece on it.  Duh!  The lights came on and I knew how to pin it together, sewing was a breeze and I ran downstairs, which I should have done months ago, and tried it on.  It was too long and a it snug, it didn't need the wide red band, I could cut it off and move it up, but Mac liked it better without it so I cut it off, trimmed the seams and finished the cover with red bias tape.

A project that should have taken a long afternoon took about 5 months, I've got to get better organized.

Languages

Languages have always fascinated me and I wish I could say I learn other languages easily, but I don't.  Our daughter has that honor in our family.  The first language I tried to learn, not counting a year of high school Spanish, was German.  Off and on we spent 10 years in Germany and I even took a couple of classes.  I never became truly proficient, at best I guess you could say I spoke kinder deutsch (kiddy talk).   Anyway  I could order in restaurants and stores, ask directions and speak very simple sentences.  I mean what can you say about a language that puts together a bunch of words Herzkreislaufwiederbelebung (heart-circle-run-again-enlivenment) just to say C.P.R.  you knew I was never going to sound like a native speaker.  But I can still remember how to ask how you are: Wie geht's?, ask for a beer: Eine bier bitte, and ask where the train station  is: Wo ist der bahn hof?.
My next attempt at learning a language was Turkish and what a hash I made of that!  Our daughter thoroughly outshined me in class.  The teacher taught auditorily and I'm an almost complete visual learner.  She would throw a ball at you, ask you a question and expect you to answer.    All I remember is how to count to five: bir, iki, uç, dort, bes and to say that's too expensive: çok pahali.
I finally learned another language when I went back to school to finish my college degree that I'd been working on for 20 years and  I decided to minor in Spanish, nice, easy Spanish.  Well I'll never sound like anything but a mid-western American speaking Spanish, couldn't roll an r to save my life, but I have a pretty good vocabulary, speak it fairly well and read and write it quite well.  I worked as a bilingual teacher in California and that helped a lot.
Which brings me to why I'm writing about this, in my Blog yesterday I talked about my aching knees and how I have been known to confuse the words for knees (rodillas) and squirrels (ardillas), and Fenny at cornercupboard asked where those Spanish words came from,  that  they didn't sound like they came from Latin, which Spanish is derived from  and she wondered if they came from Arabic.
Good question, but the answer is no, ardilla means like a flame, so that's what they called red squirrels and as for rodilla it does come from the Latin rotella which is derived from the Latin rota, meaning wheel.  So I guess they felt the knee was rounded like a wheel or some such.  Love languages.

Me Duelan las Rodillas

Not my knee but it could be

Just practicing my Spanish a little, but the message is my knees hurt.  The Spanish word for knees is rodillas which I frequently confuse with  ardilla which is the Spanish word for squirrel.  Makes for interesting conversations sometimes,  and though my knees can be quite painful, they're not particularly squirrely.
I don't abuse my knees much, took care of them through all the years, but they do have to do their part, you know, bend, move, relax.
I'll admit this has been a busy week for them, exercising every other day, walking every day, cleaning and waxing floors, dancing, pulling weeds, but they have to quit moaning all the time.  When my muscles complain I can slap on some liniment, but other than wearing a brace when we dance and taking aspirin I don't have much to give my knees.
I saw where morningsminion had taken her aching gardening shoulders to a chiropractor, I wonder if they do knees?
My knees have been weather forecasters for years, I always know when it's going to rain, I've often thought of hiring them out, they ought to do something besides complain all the time.

Now Isn't That Nice!

One of my favorite actors, Alan Rickman, is coming to Savannah to make a movie this summer. I love his voice, he'd sound good reading a telephone book.  Great actor too, steals every scene he's in.
He'll be playing Hilly Kristal the man who opened the legendary nightclub CBGB in New York City.  I'm curious if they'll use any of the clubs downtown for scenes.  They'll start shooting in June.
The movie The Drummer, the story of the Beach Boy's drummer Dennis Wilson was to start shooting this summer on Tybee Island but it has been pushed back till this fall.
Always something going on.

The Week After

The week after you get back from a trip is always a bit hectic.  I had about a ton of laundry to do, the kitchen floor looked like the cat had been having martini parties on it so it had to be scrubbed, my knees will tell you all about that,  then we had to grocery shop. Before the shopping though I had my quarterly check-up for my eyes to make sure my glaucoma medication was still  doing its job, it was, and my eyes are doing fine, which does not mean I can see well,  I'm  still as blind as a bat, always have been.
Friday night we went out dancing for the first time in forever and I hurt all over, my right knee,  who is still pouting about the floor scrubbing,  is threatening to leave home and take one of my feet with it.
Yesterday was our housing area's annual yard sale, we didn't take part, but when we did our morning walk I found rugs for sale at a neighbor's house and we bought them, a 5/7 to go under the couch in the family room and 2 runners.  We went back and picked the big rug up in the car, at that point I hadn't bought the runners, but after vacuuming,  steam cleaning and putting the rug under the couch we decided we needed the runners too.

So while walking today we stopped by our neighbors, bought the 2 runners and carried them home.  They are now vacuumed, steamed and waiting to dry.  That might take awhile because the first tropical storm up the season, Alfredo, coming 2 weeks before the season begins, is making everything damp and drying anything difficult.

Earlier this morning I  donned my housemaid's outfit to do a bit of ironing, then there's a roast to go in the oven and that will finish the day.
Well that was the week that was.

Trilobites

Thought I'd give you a look at some of the trilobites we brought back from Utah.  Trilobites are an extinct marine arthropod from the Paleozoic era.  When I was trying to describe them to my sister I told her they looked like Egyptian scarabs, Mac says they were like prehistoric cockroaches.

Anyway, here they are.

Been Away

 We don't have an official  bucket list, perhaps a bouquet (spelled bucket) list, that includes places we'd like to go and things we'd like to do before we get too senile to enjoy them.  Our trip this last week was one of those.  We went to Utah, to dig for fossils and to see Zion National Park.
Mac has always wanted to find fossils out in the wild so he did some research and found a place in the middle of nowhere, in Utah, where you could break up slate and find trilobites.  Having found that he asked me what I'd like to do in Utah and I immediately thought of their gorgeous National Parks and said I'd like to see Zion.  So that's what we did.
We flew into Salt Lake City, drove about a 100 miles south and 50 miles west to a small town called Delta that we were going to use as our base while hunting down trilobites.  The next morning we drove to U Dig Fossils, passing an antelope foraging on rocks, certainly wasn't much grass around and a small herd of wild horses,  on our way to the site where  we met the owner who looked like a character out of an old western movie.  He gave us hammers, buckets,  a quick lesson on how to chip the trilobites out of the slate  and left us to play.  It was great, what a thrill tapping apart a stone and finding a fossil inside.  We spent the day there having brought our lunch with us.  At the end we sorted through what we'd found, kept the best and headed back to Delta.  I found the biggest trilobite, but Mac was better at popping them out of the stone.

The next morning we drove south to Zion, what an incredible place.  Our hotel backed up to the park, you leave your car at your hotel in town, take a free shuttle to the park where you pick up a free shuttle that takes you through the park with 9 stops.   You hop off and on as you like.  Before they started the shuttle service they say the park was overrun with cars and it was a mess.  Well we loved the shuttle service  and think other parks ought to do the same.
The canyon itself was spectacular, I took loads of pictures, but none of them really do justice to the park.

Court of the Patriarchs, Zion National Park

At certain times of day the rock formations were red and looked too beautiful to be real.  We hiked, Mac fished, I painted, it was wonderful.  In the evening we'd sit on a balcony at the hotel, sip a drink and watch the sun work its way across the rocks behind us.

The View From our Hotel Balcony

View From Hotel Lobby

What Were They Thinking?

Every year I order Avon's Skin So Soft insect repellant and sun screen.  It really works well and it's SPF 30 which I need.  So I placed my usual order and waited for it to arrive, using Mac's DEET spray to keep the mosquitoes off in the interim.  When it came I noticed it was in a blue bottle, but didn't really pay a lot of attention because in the past it had come in white or green bottles.  The first time I used it I couldn't believe it, the lotion was blue, bright blue!  I went back online and looked at the description and sure enough it said it would be blue, their new "cool and fabulous" disappearing colored lotion.  I also noticed that it is now listed for less than half its original price.  Well that's because it isn't cool and it doesn't disappear, not completely, it leaves my skin with a blueish tinge, isn't that nice.  So I had to go back online and search the original one I've always used, finally found it.  It'll be nice to not be blue.

Walmart, Oh Walmart

Mac and I went to Walmart today and he said that he thought that we didn't weigh enough to shop there, he was worried that the automatic door might not open for us and perhaps we should enter together.  And I said that we each needed a tattoo  in order to blendin.
I hate to make personal comments about people's appearances, and I know that how much you weigh is not always your fault, medications and medical conditions can certainly  be a factor, but if you're like me and carrying more weight than you should,  don't wear tight clothes, don't wear stretch pants, and please, please don't wear a mini skirt.  And if you have to have a tattoo, and I'll never understand why anyone would ever let someone use needles to draw pictures on them, and it's in a place that shouldn't be seen in public, then don't let it be.
I could post a dozen pictures I found online when I typed in "fat people at Walmart", but I won't, I'll just ask you to look one last time in the mirror before you go out the door.

Glad Yesterday is Over

Mud Dauber Who Stung Me Yesterday

After semi-messing up our shopping trip yesterday I was glad to get home and have some lunch.  Mac was already settled on the couch with his plate,  yes that's where we eat, when I came over with my plate.  I sat down on my side and immediately jumped up again.  Something had bit me, stung me or poked me, Mac saw something fly up and that was not good news.
A couple of years ago I'd been stung by a wasp on my neck and had an allergic reaction bad enough that I now have to carry an EPI pen with me at all times.  Mac tracked what he'd seen fly off and it was a mud dauber , considerably different from the wasp that had stung me before.  But we were worried, we didn't know what my reaction would be, but we were  hopeful that I'd wouldn't react too badly and that I wouldn't have to use the pen.
So I stayed as calm as I could and I was ok, I didn't react, the initial sting didn't stay itchy and soon the tiny bit of swelling went down.

Wasp Who Got Me Last Time

Perhaps it was the location of the sting, bottom as opposed to neck, the layers of clothing I was stung through difference in type of wasp or a combination of all three, but I had virtually no reaction.  Needless to say we were relieved, but I'm definitely glad yesterday is over.

Oh A Shopping We Will Go....

Like I'd Remember Why
I Tied a String on
My Finger

Or not.  Had a million errands to run, first to bank to break in new debit card, cash a check, deposit a check  and put some stuff in the safe deposit box, then Bass Pro Shop to buy Mac a fly fishing pole, and while at the mall a stop at A.C. Moores and Target, then on to CVS to pick up a prescription, to ACE to fill a propane tank and finally a stop at the grocery store.
Lots to get done, but plenty of time to do it, in theory.
The first break down was that neither of us could remember where the key to the safety deposit box was.  Then I remembered, sort of, and stumbled on to it.  That's the good news, but the bad news is that for everything I remember I'm required to forget something.  And what did I forget you ask?  Well I forgot my wallet, but I didn't discover that until we got to town.  Nor had I remembered to bring the check we were depositing, so the bank part of the trip got pushed off till Friday.  We could still go shopping, but Mac would have to pay for everything and he said he was feeling very cheap and it might not be as much fun. I told him he'd get over it and I wouldn't let him see prices so he did ok and only cringed a bit .
Other than a few words with the miserable old poo who fills the propane tanks at ACE it was not a bad trip.
And of course when we got home we remembered all the things we'd forgotten to buy.  If I were smart I'd start a new list right now, but knowing me I'd just lose it.

It's May

Tis' May Day which always reminds of this song from Camelot, my absolute favorite musical play.  Would have loved to have seen the original broadway production with Richard Burton (Lerner/Lowe wrote Arthur's songs for him), Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet.  Did finally get to see a production of if in Chicago with Michael York and loved it.
I see where anarchists, who trashed parts of San Francisco last night,   have decided that May Day belongs to them now, how sad, let's ban them and bring back May Poles.