Five on Friday

I'm joining in with Amy at Love Made My Home and others for Five on Friday.  I'm a bit late, I know, but I had a doctor's appointment this morning to get the dressing on my nose changed.  They said it looked good.  Did I look at it?  No, 'cause what looks good to a doctor might not look so good to me (still having those Frankenstein visions).  They got rid of the big bandage, put some Vaseline on it and put a small bandaid (that's encouraging) and told me I could wash my hair now  (they'd told me not to in case I got the big bandage wet).
So I came home and worked out in the yard, we'd gotten more than 3 inches of rain Wednesday and the weeds have been growing like, well, weeds.  While I was doing that Mac took some pictures for me of all the critters that are visiting our bee trees.  I can't get too near them as I had an allergic reaction to a wasp sting and have to carry an Epi pen when I'm outside.

So first is a view of the trees, they're really outdoing themselves this year.  They're one plant that has really enjoyed all the rain.

Second is a close up and it shows one of the butterflies visiting the tree and I think Mac told me, 'cause Lord knows I'd have no idea, that it is a Buckeye Butterfly (I wrote that it was a Hairstreak and Mac told me to get it straight).

The third is, I'm cheating here,  is a couple of  Swallowtails.

I believe the one on the right is a female.

The fourth is a honey bee.  When we first moved here there were few honey bees, now the garden is full of them.  He's a little out of focus, but that's because he's working hard.  Below him is a Bumble Bee.

The fifth picture is me weeding.  Back view only, no nose shots.  I'm trying to clean out the spider plant bed so they can keep spreading.  I like plants that can take over a bed. 

Now go visit some of the other Five on Friday Bloggers.

There Will Be No Pictures

I went, they shot me, cut me, biopsied, stitched me up and covered the side of my nose in bandages.
Did it hurt?  Is the Pope Catholic?  Yes it hurt.  Did I cry, no, but I sure wanted to.  Have to go back on Friday to have my dressings checked and then the following Friday to have my stitches out.
Don't know how many stitches are under the skin, they dissolve on their own, but there are 5 to be taken out on top of the skin. It felt weird when he was putting them in, not painful, but the tugging was definitely uncomfortable.
They say there will be little or no scaring, that it was done in the crease on the left side of my nose, but I worry.  Visions of Frankenstein's monster wander through my head.
And worse of all I'm on antibiotics again.  The doctor said that because the "wound" was near my nose there was a greater risk of infection.  No telling what the antibiotics will do to me, the last bunch made a mess.
Grumble, grumble.  But the cancer is all gone and they only had to take one layer more off to find clear skin.  So I am grateful, but sore.

April

Another month gone, they do fly by.  Lots of rain here this weekend.  It rained Saturday morning and we thought we were through and then it started again Saturday night. Thunder and lightning all around, but not too close, lots of rain though, nearly an inch and a half and then the electricity went out for about 2 hours.  We were lucky, no trees down and over in the other areas there were trees down, electric lines down, 80 mph winds.  Spring is so volatile here.
I've managed to clean all the baseboards and blinds on the first floor of our house.  Need only do the floor in our bedroom and I've kind of been putting that off, big, big room.
I managed to finish the basket I was crocheting, first time I've crocheted with 2 strands.
The bug man came today.  It's a sad fact of life that if you live in the south you have to have your house sprayed on a regular basis to keep the creepy, crawlies at bay.
Tomorrow I'm off to the dermatologist.  The place on my nose was biopsied and came back as a basel cell cancer, not one of the bad ones, but it has to go.  So they'll be taking more parts off to make sure it's gone.  That means shots in my nose.  If you've never had a shot in your nose I have only one recommendation----DON'T.  So I'm not looking forward to that.  Plus the fact we're in for more storms, particularly tomorrow morning.
Oh May, I'm ready for you, flowers instead of rain.
My new header is a painting of Mac's that hangs in our bedroom.  I asked for a cow picture and this is the one he did.

Rainy Saturday

Rainy day here in the swamp, the lawn and garden are enjoying it.  The boat, which recently got flipped over, is now full of water, who knows who or what will move into it.
Yesterday it was beautiful and Mac snapped some photos of the Bee trees in bloom.  Don't know its real name, but it definitely attracts the bees.
The rose bush started life as a miniature rose bush from Walmart.  It blooms its little head off every year.  The blooms are single and don't have a lot of smell, but you have to appreciate their vigor.
Today it was dark and gloomy so more housework was in line.  Got the floor in the family room waxed, that just leaves the entryway and our bedroom.  The dining room has a wood floor too, but no one ever goes in there so all it needs is to be Swiffered from time to time.  I swear, in our next house if it has a formal dining room I'm going to turn it into a library, then we'll use it.  The tv room upstairs, and it's a huge room, has a wood floor too

Livingroom

Livingroom

Livingrooom

, but we haven't been up there in awhile so all it needs is a good Swiffering too.
In the living room yesterday I ended up, sad to say, doing a bunch of dusting and polishing of furniture.  Didn't want to, but health and sanity concerns made me do it.  I foolishly read up online about household dust, what it consists of (dried food particles, mold spores, pollen, fabric fibers, animal dander, insect parts including dust mites ----a real allergy source) and of course mildew is always a problem living in a swamp as we do.  So much time was spent cleaning baseboards and the wood furniture.
I need to go and find something fun to do.

Wednesday in the Swamp

Swamp Milkweed

And it's only fitting that I begin with my  White Swmap Milkweed, it's starting to bloom and will soon be covered in pretty purple flowers.  Yes I realize it's name says it's white, but trust me the flowers are purple.  I love blue and purple flowers.  Behind it you can see some pink Vincas    that I just put in.
The roses are doing exceptionally well this year, love this dark orange one.
The beans are all up and Mac put a trellis in for them to climb, the peas on the other side get string to hold onto.
Wish I could remember what the purple plant in the potatoes is.   Mac thought it had died, stuck it in with the potatoes that are getting ready to flower, and it just took off.
In the greenhouse Mac has started thinning the tomatoes and and transferring them to bigger pots.
In the garage this morning Mac saw a small brown marsh crab, he wanted to catch him and put him back out near water, he'll die if he stays in the garage, but he took off before Mac could catch him.
And just before I came back in the house, 2 turtles came hustling up to see if I had brought them any food, I hadn't, so they left.
Inside the house I've managed to clean the plantation blinds in 8 windows and the baseboards (yes the Brits call them skirting boards) in 3 rooms and put polish,wax on the computer room floor.
Surprise, surprise, nothing has been dusted.

Beans, Tellis on Right

Mystery Plant

Tomatoes

Brown Marsh Crab

Part of Mac's Turtle Flotilla

Monday Round-Up

Lots of rain here, big thunderstorm yesterday that knocked out the electricity for 3 hours.  Thank goodness the rain had cooled things off or it would have been unbearable.  The humidity is awful and it's really early in the year for that.

I'm almost through with a crochet project, will show it soon.  And as always I've been reading.

Just for fun I read Dashiell Hammett's Maltese Falcon.  Quick, fun read, kept picturing Humphrey Bogart through the whole thing.  It was originally published in 1930 and considering that it's a little gem.  We've never seen the whole movie, just parts of it, now I want to see the whole thing.
A really great book I just finished is Station Eleven  by Emily St. John Mandel and I almost gave it a miss because of all the hype about it.  But it lives up to the hype and even surpasses it.  Called a apocalyptic fantasy it's so much more.  It opens with a presentation of King Lear in Toronto where the leading actor dies of a heart attack and  it's witnessed by a little girl in the play who had been friends with him.  Then the world is devastated by  the Georgian flu.  But this book isn't into the science of that it's into the people who survived and how they both look backwards to the world that was and to the future.
We meet the young girl 20 years later and she has become part of the Traveling Symphony that performs concerts and Shakespearean plays for the small surviving communities.
Why symphonies and Shakespeare?  Because they had adopted as their motto "Survival is Insufficient", taken from an old Star Trek episode.
Really enjoyed this one, I'm sure it will show up on my best reads of the year.

And now for something completely different, have you seen the picture of the rare Black flamingo that was spotted in Cyprus?  Another one was spotted in Israel a couple of years ago, but because flamingoes can migrate long distances they think it might have been the same bird. This coloration is a genetic mutation and is caused by excess pigmentation in the feathers.  Really strange to see.

A Rat Killing

No, it's not what it sounds like.  Let me see if I can explain.  When we first moved here we went out dancing a lot  and met a lot of bands.  Some of them have become good friends.  One of them, J.R. a bass player,  works for a company whose owner is a wanna be drum player.  Because he never got a chance to play in a band once a year he throws a party at his company, provides food and drink and invites all the people who make music to come and play. I heard the keyboard player say he worked on a cruise ship, one of the guitar players is from the 70's group Kansas and lots  of the others were from local bands.
We'd been invited to go before, but this was the first time we'd actually made it there and it was incredible, much better than Bob Dylan.  With a heavy emphasis on southern rock the music was outstanding.  Whoever wanted to play just plugged in and joined in, during one song there were 5 guitars, 2 drummers and a keyboard.
Our friend J.R.'s granddaughter is learning to play guitar, she's 8, and she joined in for a couple of songs too.
Still don't know why it's called a rat killing unless it's because sometimes the music is so loud it kills all the rats in the neighborhood.
What a wonderful afternoon we had.  Can't wait till next year.

Five on Friday

Joining in with Amy, and others,  at Love Made My Home for Five on Friday.  My choice this week is for the 5 household jobs I absolutely hate.  I'm not a big fan of housework to begin with, but some jobs just send me up the wall.

1.  I hate dusting, I'd rather clean 10 toilets than dust one room.  When our daughter was young and still living at home it was the first job I paid her to do.  If it weren't for allergies I'd probable never do it.

2.  Cleaning the plantation blinds we have in nearly every window in  this house and we have about 23 windows is another job I postpone as long as I can.   It takes forever to get them done and I generally do one room at a time, wheezing as I go.

3.  Cleaning baseboards is another bugger.  We have 6 inch baseboards and it takes forever to clean them.  Someone suggested cleaning them with dryer sheets and that does help, but it doesn't help my knees.  Even using my garden kneeler my knees have a fit.

4.  Putting dishes up is a pill.  I could just leave them in the dish drainer, but I like to keep my sink clean and empty so they have to be put up.  I have a friend who only uses paper plates because she hates doing dishes, but I don't like paper plates.

5.  Mopping the floor wears my back out.  There aren't a lot of floors that need mopping in our house , thank goodness, but using a mop makes my back ache.  I actually do the kitchen floor on my hands and knees most of the time,  my knees don't like it, but my back appreciates it.

So that's my 5, enough whining for awhile.

www.lovemademyhome.blogspot.com

Bob Dylan

We went to see Bob Dylan in concert last night.  We were so excited, we'd always wanted to see him. His discography was the song list of the 60's, Blowin' in the Wind, Just Like a Woman, Shelter From the Storm, Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Wagon Wheel, Rainy Day Woman, Mr. Tambourine Man, Positively 4th Street, Tangled Up in Blue, Subterranean Homesick Blues, The Times They Are a Changin' and so much more.
Of course he's been recording for 50 years nearly so we knew he'd be playing a lot of newer stuff we weren't as familiar with, but that was ok, it was Dylan after all.
Had great seats, front row of the balcony, no one in front of us and a wide ledge to lean on.  We looked down on the orchestra where the seats had been priced at $300, Mac was tempted, but I wasn't.
Their seats weren't nearly as comfortable as ours, no arms and they were below the level of the stage.
Concert started right on time, but we were surprised at how far back on the stage the band had set up, Dylan was standing where you'd normally expect the drummer to be and the rest of the band was even further back.  But that was ok, it was Dylan.
Didn't recognize the first song or the next or the next or the next or the next, come on Bob.  Now we knew Dylan is not known for his stage presence, we were prepared for that and he lived up to his reputation, he never addressed the audience, introduced his band or anything.  He didn't play his guitar at all, his harmonica only a little and the baby grand piano a lot.  Dylan playing a baby grand, not what we expected.
Finally he sang a song we recognized, Tangled Up In Blue, a favorite of mine.  Took a while to recognize it, he left off most of the beginning and mumbled his way through the middle and that was about it.
The band then took a 30 minute break, came back and played a bunch more songs no one had ever heard (I basing that on audience reaction) and threw us a bone, he sang A Simple Twist of Fate and it only took a quarter of the way through the song for me to recognize it.
Now I'm not going to complain about a singer/songwriter reinterpreting their own songs, they have the right, but make it better, not worse.
After about 45 minutes the band left the stage, everyone waited for an encore and finally they came back out with Dylan at the piano again and he opened with another unrecognizable song.
We left, got up and walked out on Bob Dylan, how sad.

The Jim-Ed Memorial Rose

My Father died a few months after we moved to Georgia.  In fact the last time I saw him was when we stopped in Oklahoma where he was living.  We were driving from California to Georgia.  He looked great for his age, he was 80.  We could only stay a little while, we were trying to catch up to our friend who was driving the moving truck full of our stuff.

He showed us around his house, talked about his garden and gave us a huge bag of tomatoes to take with us.  He loved gardening and was always growing something.

Early in September we talked on the phone and he seemed to be in good spirits, my sisters who lived in the same town said he could be quite grouchy, but I never heard that when we talked.

A week later my younger sister called and said he'd had a heart attack and died before the ambulance could get him to the hospital.

It was so unexpected and so sad.  After the funeral my sister said she'd found 3 roses he'd ordered for his garden and never got a chance to plant.  There were 3 of them and we each took one.  It was bare root and still wrapped up so I put it in my suitcase.

Mac planted it for me and I dubbed it the Jim-Ed Memorial Rose, my Dads' name was James Edward.   He struggled at first and wasn't really thriving,  so after a couple of years Mac dug him up, put him in a pot and moved him to the garden.  He seems very happy there and I smile each time I see him.  He would have loved being planted in a garden.

It's Saturday

And though the weekend doesn't give me the thrill it did when I was working, it's still nice.

My "Easter" Lilies

My Lilies are blooming, a week late, but I'm not complaining and they haven't complained about the fact that I've just gotten around to weeding their bed.
My peas are 2 inches high already, show-offs.
We've been watching The Masters, what a beautiful setting and a great tournament.  We went to it years ago when we lived in Augusta.  Now each year they send me an invite to get into the lottery to get tickets.  So far I haven't been lucky.  You can actually see it better on tv anyway or so I console myself.
Also enjoying the return of baseball.  Except for sports we watch very little tv, but we watch lots of sports.  Enjoying the Atlanta Braves.  They're in first place, it won't last, but it's fun while they're there.  They traded off most of their team in the off-season so we aren't expecting much from them.
Mac's been cleaning the pool, there have been times when I swam in April, but that's back when I didn't worry too much about the cold water giving me a heart attack.
Enjoy your weekend.

My Impatiens are doing well too, they're supposed to be
an annual, but Mac dug them up and kept them in
the old greenhouse all winter.  I'll replant them soon.