The Marcels - Blue Moon

Thought that because tonight we're going to have a blue moon (2 full moons in one month) that I'd share this Golden Oldies with you.

Things I Should Know and Don't

Among the many things I should know, but don't are where the routing number and account number are on our checks.  Oh I know they're among the numbers at the bottom
 of the check, but I'm never sure which number is which.  So I was making a payment by phone this morning using an automated system, and because I wasn't sure which number was which, I also went online to find a picture that would show me.  I looked at the picture complete with labels,input my numbers and told it to pay.  Then I took a closer look at the picture and my check and realized that my checking account number and my check number were reversed.  ARGGH!  I had to call the company up, admit I was an idiot and work with a human to get it straight.  I need to write this information down and save myself from future embarrassment.

I'm Not Obsessive!

Ok, so I color coded my closet, and Mac's closet and the two linen closets and I know exactly where everything is in the pantry.  That does not make me obsessive, it just makes me organized.
So when the electricity goes out I know where the flashlight (in the cupboard under the wine table) and the batteries are (in the refrigerator door).
If you need canned mushrooms they're in the back left-hand corner of the eye level shelf.  Tomato sauce and tomato products in front of that. Next to the mushrooms are canned olives, beans of all kinds and then soups.  Coming forward you'll find tuna, chile and beef stock, the chicken stock is next to the beans.   I don't mix can goods with boxes and condiments are on the shelf above.  All organized.
The scissors are in a drawer under the wine table with a bunch of fiddlely little things like rubber bands, paper clips, pens, pencils, screws, nail files, junk.
See, I'm organized, now tell me why I can never find anything!

New Header

Mac said it was time for a new header on our Blog and I thought in homage to the weather we've been having, almost 3 inches of rain on Thursday, that I'd put up the Laundry Day painting Mac painted for me.  For the last month there have been a number of days when we had to run out and get the laundry off the line.  Good thing Mac has fixed up a spot under the eaves where we can hang  laundry on rainy days.
Mac had painted a smaller version of this  for our Etsy shop and I liked it so much I asked him to paint a larger one for us.
It's beginning to look like we're going to have an early Autumn around here and that makes me very happy.  Now if we can just get through the end of hurricane season.

In the Garden Thoughts and Butterflies

Absolutely beautiful day here today so  worked in the garden for an hour or so, finally got one bed cleared and started on the herb bed.  We had  nearly 3 inches of rain on Thursday so pulling weeds was easy and very satisfying.
Heard that a colleague we worked with in California passed away this last week,  she was only 48, and our daughter says that she's heard that someone she went to high school with has died, making her feel very old.  I told that the only answer is to go forth and be joyful, to celebrate each day.  It doesn't have to be anything spectacular, just savor the moments because that's what life is made of, moments.
Gardening is so therapeutic,  watching things grow and knowing you've been part of it.
Usually our Lantana bush is covered with flowers all summer, but the first part of the summer was very dry and it scarcely had a bloom.  But after the last week or so of heavy showers it's covered with flowers and better yet butterflies.  Today it was mostly Gulf Fritillaries and one very old looking Swallowtail.  It always brings a smile to my face to see them.

Where I Live, Sort Of

This is my little corner of the world where I spend a bit of my time.  This room is supposed to be a bedroom, it even has an ensuite bathroom and it's set up by the backdoor.  I have no doubt that in the blueprints of this house it was listed as the maid's room-----LOL---well I'm the maid around here so that works for me.
It is the 4th bedroom in this house and seeing as we don't need a 4th bedroom it has become our computer room.  Mac has his desk and computer in the right side corner and I'm on the left.
My desk, though I do try, tends to be a bit of a mess.  This is where I open and sort mail, and just before I took the picture I carried off several books that had come in from Amazon recently, a magazine that came today and some junk for the trash.
I pay bills here, either using snail mail or online.  The little carousel on the left holds pens, markers, scissors, stamps, address stickers and a million little bits of this and that.  Also on the left is the phone and a couple of magnifying glasses because I'm blind or at least people sending me mail are shrinking their printing to save on paper. There's also a digital picture frame that I don't ever remember to turn on.  Up above are various address books and manuals, an English mailbox bank and a picture of Mac and me.
Next to the desk on the left is my printer/scanner, Godzilla guards it against all invaders.
The desk on the right has my computer--my big screen Mac--the router and the modem and some more of my junk stuff.  By the modem are writer's books, dictionaries and a thesaurus.  Up above there's a picture of Mac as a little boy, a fairy on a horse, several bears, including one in shining armor and a Silver Jubilee cup from 1937 for George VI and Mary.
Down below each desk is paper for the printer, envelopes, some albums, boxes of cards (I save every card we get), and just general junk.
On the walls around my desk are paintings that Mac has done for me.
What's in your corner of the world?

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary How Does Your Garden Grow?

With nearly 700 less weeds than it had before, that's for sure.  I count them as I pull them and enjoy every minute of it.  My garden has been very neglected this summer, it has been too hot and humid to go out and fight with it.  So the weeds have seen that as an opportunity to just run riot.
I must say though that it's easier to pull them when they're taller.  But my sister is coming to visit and I need to get things looking a little spiffier around here.

My Clematis is blooming, it and the Zinnias are about the only things that do in August.

An Apple a Day

Ever since I made a  cover for my bread machine out of fabric covered in apples I've wanted to do some other craft projects with that fabric.  But alas I had no more and was too lazy to go looking for where I'd gotten it from.  Finally I got off my duff and found where I'd bought it on Etsy and ordered a couple more yards.

The idea was to make an oven mitt, a couple of place mats and some apple sachets.  Last Friday I started and though life kept intervening, yesterday I finished the mitt and the mats, though I ended up using 2 different colors and sizes of binding tape on the mats.  The sachets will have to wait for another day.

A Family Story With a Sad End

While working on my family history at  Ancestry.com   I ran across a relative who seems to have met  a rather desperate end.
My  Great, Great Uncle John Strader (he was my Great, Great Grandfather Martin Strader's brother) who was born in March 16, 1817 in Ross County Ohio and was the 6th of 15 children, oh they did have big families back then.  In 1846 his parents sold the rest of their farm land in Ohio  and settled in McDonough county in the Illinois area.  There John met Caroline Tracey and on March 8, 1849 they were married.
At first, as shown by the 1850 census,  they were still living with John's family on the farm.  Subsequently they got their own farm in Chalmers county Illinois where they had 7 children (Matilda Ann, Elizabeth Catherine, Margaret Jane, John McCoy, Ida Lovina, Mary Elda, and William Simeon).
Farming is a hard way of life and raising 7 children even harder, so perhaps it isn't surprising that  when John heard of a gold rush in Idaho that he joined a group of other men and headed west to seek his fortune and never returned.
Word finally reached the family that John had been killed by Indians in Missouri as he had been heading home.  There is a stone in the southeast section of the Gibson Cemetery in Illinios with this inscription on it: Killed By Indians On His Way Home  From Idaho 1860.  The stone is all they have, no body was ever recovered.
Caroline lived on to raise their 7 children alone.

A Year of Reading

A year ago I began keeping a Reading Journal for several reasons.  To track what I'm reading, to see how much I'm reading, to prevent me from buying books I've already read unless I want to reread them and to have a place to do short reviews.
Well it's been an interesting year.  Since last August 18 I have read 137 books, that's about .37 books a day.  I had no idea.  But I do read quickly and I read several books at the same time.
What have I discovered about my reading habits?  Well, I like mysteries, always had.  This year I read all of Tana French's books (In the Woods, The Likeness, Faithful Place and Broken Ground).  I'd read In the Woods before but decided to reread it after reading The Likeness because one of the characters is in both books.  Her books are spellbinding.  She writes about crime in Ireland and her characters are wonderfully, flawed people. She gets better with each book,  I wish she had written 40 books instead of only 4.  Well worth rereading because they're so much more than mysteries.

I'm also heavily into Charles Todd a mother/son writing team whose protagonist is a shell-shocked policeman who returns to Scotland Yard after World War I, carrying in his head Hamish, the Scotish soldier he had executed for refusing to lead his men into battle.   Some titles in this series are:
Search the Dark, A Fearsome Doubt, Legacy of the Dead


The books I'll remember long after this year?  There are a number.

11-22-63   By Stephan King a story of a man who travels back in time to try and prevent the assination of President Kennedy.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle  by Barbara Kingsolver  I blogged about this book before, a great book about being a locovore.

Money Ball  by Michael Lewis A must for all baseball fans

Fair Maiden  by Joyce Carol Oates  A very different story of love.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern    A story of magic and love and a circus I'd love to visit.

Every Last One by Anna Quinllen  The story of a family destroyed by obsessive love.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLean  A fictionalized account of the marriage of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley.  Made me want to read more about them.

During the year I also read some real duds!
Books I WOULDN'T  recommend include:

The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek  Chick Lit, which I don't read, my only excuse is that I've been considering reading The Great Gatsby and I thought this might give me some insight into the story.

Mrs. Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs  I like quirky stories but this one just wasn't well written.

Kiss Mommy Goodbye  by Joy Fielding  Boring and not particularly well written.


So what am I reading now, well I'm reading:

The Orlando Trilogy by  Isabel Colegate  I've read several of her books this year, including The Shooting Party and I like her very much.

The Time Baroness by Georgina Young-Ellis  I love time travel books even when they're "cheesy".

The Great Hunt by Robert Jordan  I'm rereading this whole series because the final book, # 14 or 15, is coming out in January.


And I'm waiting for A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway to come in.

It's been a good year for reading.

Storms

We had an awful thunderstorm yesterday afternoon.  It came up so suddenly, first the rain, then the thunder.  Usually it's the other way around and we hear thunder for awhile before the rain starts falling.  But anyway, I was in the pool trying to clean up some of the mess deposited by the storm the day before and suddenly it was pelting down.  Mac ran out and got the clothes off the clothes line and we both hurried into the house.  A few minutes later the thunder and lightning started adn the electricity went out.
That's a bad thing, a very bad thing, for without electricity we can't run fans and a house without fans in August in Georgia is horrible.  We put batteries in our radio and tried to get a weather report, but all we got was bad music.
Our phone was out, but surprisingly my iphone was working so I called the electric company to see if we could get an idea of how long they thought we'd be without power.  All I got were lots of recorded messages telling me they were aware of the problem and were working on it.
One hour passed, 1.66 inches of rain fell, the thunder and lightning were unabated.  Two hours passed, we were sweating cobs.  When the rain stopped we jumped in the pool to cool off.
Three hours passed, and then the electricity came back on, what a relief.
We had numerous branches down, one pretty good sized, but other than that things were fine.  Today we walked through out neighborhood to see how everyone else fared, and the first thing we saw was a huge tree down in our next door neighbor's yard.  It was easily 60 feet high and just snapped off about 20 feet up, missed her house thankfully.  Around the corner another neighbor had a huge hardwood that had split and partially fallen.
The storms can let up any time.