that kind of negativity...

hello july and hello my lovely friends, 

i find it shocking how it is already july.  i know i said that yesterday, but still... it really is a shock to my system that we are in the tail end of summer (well, in my world anyway).  

last week i was completely off my routines due to nephew visit and this week and next i'm off due to wimbledon.  the tv will be on as well as the laptop so i can watch as many matches as possible.  it is one of the only sports i enjoy watching anymore. and as someone who grew up watching all the sports it is sad to have lost my love for so many.

i'm still in the cleanup stage from the nephew visit.  i've managed, i think, to corral all the fur from the furniture/sheets/comforters and now need to start on the clothes i wore while he was here.  this past sunday my brother and s-i-l brought nephew over and he came running in with a bag tied to his leash.  he came right to me and gave me hugs and kisses. (ick on the kisses!) they said he wanted to give me a present for taking such good care of him while they were gone.  they gave me a bag of the new lay's bacon grilled cheese potato chips!  i'd mentioned the day before i was wanting to try them.  haha!  i can't wait to try them.

this week i'll be getting back to work on the cleaning/clearing/decluttering thing around here.  i saw a meme the other day that was a picture of marie kondo saying keep no more than 30 books and at the bottom a drawing of a man with his hand up saying no one needs that kind of negativity.  haha!  yea i don't think marie and i would get along.  :-)

well... i need to get back to today's quests and see if i can get some things completed.  i always like marking things as done on my lists.  it's a weird little dopamine hit. 

hope you are having a great day and have a great week ahead.

what's going on in your world?

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

ps... here's today's mfta post link if you want to take a look.

i'm melting...

greetings and salutations, my lovelies...

it is so... freaking... hot.

at 9am it was 85f with a heat index of 96f.  

it is currently 92f with hi of 102f.

i'm staying in the house as much as possible.  in fact, i only go out to walk pup in the am/pm and to water/check on the garden.  since the pup only 'goes' twice a day, it's really not too bad as i can stay in the a/c all day.

as an aside, i can't get over this 'goes' twice a day.  my beastie boy would 'go' 7, 8, 9+ times a day.  of course, he was diabetic and that makes a big difference.  but i'm having trouble getting used to this.

anyhoo, this morning when we came back from our outing, i went out to the garden to water and found green beans!!

i picked the good-sized ones from the bush beans and have a good amount for a dinner or two.  the pole beans are not producing yet, though they are flowering.  and looking through the cucumbers {that have tons of flowers} that i have to train up the trellis every day, i found two nice looking cukes that are almost ready!  yay!!!

i really don't think i'll plant bush beans again.  they aren't like a bush at all and mostly just lie on the ground. i'll definitely plant more to use up the seeds i have, but i'll be using poles from now on.

i was outside for about 15-20 minutes, watering, weeding a bit and picking beans and flowers and i was so hot i drank down two cups of water when i came in. ugh...this, this is why i don't really like summer.  i love the fresh fruit and veggies and all the beautiful flowers and the birds (especially the hummingbirds) but i just do not tolerate the heat very well.

after the beans and watering i picked a few flowers to bring in. 

some for the ancestors...

and some for me...

in migrainelandia news, i really think these vyepti infusions are helping.  i'm on day 9 of not having the pain go over a 7.  after coming in from the garden, i could feel it starting to build a bit so i took out my ice pack and put it on my neck (now on my head) to try to keep the pain level from rising.  i'm really hoping it helps.

well...i'm off to turn off the news and read a book.  the news is just raising my blood pressure and pissing me off.  hope you are having a good day.

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

ps... here's a link to today's mfta post.

pps... does anyone know what the deal is with the different bold of the font?  i didn't use bold at all and i can't figure out why it is so different. any tips appreciated. :-)

little sparkles of happy...

good evening, my lovelies.

i'm just popping in for a little show and tell today.  i'd planned to spend a couple of hours in the garden, but the migraine gods had other plans for me.  i just went out long enough to water and pick these:

after watering i took a few pictures of other things in the garden.

my radishes are coming up but i see the seeds i planted somehow migrated during the rain or watering or something.  so i'll add a few more to fill out the pot tomorrow.  

my neighbor gave me a couple of her orchids that need some help.  i've been watching tons of videos about how to take care or revive lackluster orchids. so, i have these to work on and see if i can get them happy again.  if i do, she's gonna have to give me one since i did all the work. :-)

that's pretty much what i did today other than finish up making my first batch of homemade spaghetti sauce.  oh my word...it's delicious!

this is a recipe that came with my mum's electric skillet a long time ago.  she didn't make it often because she thought it took too long.  i've always loved it though it uses canned mushrooms and tomatoes.  now that i've got it and learned i can cook it in a stock pot/dutch oven, i may try my next batch with fresh tomatoes and mushrooms, just to see how it changes it.  hopefully it will be even better.

well...that's all for now.

thanks for being here, 

love & kisses & magical wishes...

~*~

and that's what's happening...

happy thursday, my lovelies.  i thought i'd come to you today with a small bit of gardening fun.  i'd hoped to get back to the ever-onward task of removing the beautiful yet invasive blackberry hedge that some lovely critter gifted me years ago in my flower bed.  but bad head days have kept me inside for most of the week.  i have been making a point to keep things watered and check on progress of what's been planted.  

my plan is to get ALL the blackberry vines out of the garden, but that will be a difficult task as it is a runner and sends out shoots so quickly and dig roots so deep it is hard to get them all.  i expect i'll be pulling these up for the rest of my time living here as i refuse to use herbicides.

i'd really like to dig some up and plant in the woods behind our property.  then i could just let them do their thing and also have the benefit of getting to pick blackberries in the summers.  oh well...

here are some images from my garden as of today...

the first peony bloomed and is lovely.  just before they bloom there is a hint of light pink on the outside of the petals that lead one to think it might be a pink bloom, then they open, and it is a lovely white.  i love peonies, they are such an old-fashioned flower.

the foxgloves are starting to bloom and have started spreading.  these two self-seeded from last year or maybe the year before.  as you can see the blackberries are really close, so i'll have to be careful when i work on them as i don't want to lose any of the flowers.

when i first saw this bloom (from a different angle) i thought my love-in-a-mist was starting to bloom. but no...it's just the first bloom of the the damn blackberry. ugh...

the only thing in the veg bed yet, is these two rows of more lettuce and two rows of celery.  i've really got to get my seeds in.  

there is a plant sale on sunday that i'm going to and will try to find a long list of things i want to grow.  i don't know where i'll put them, but i feel i need them.  so i'm hoping saturday is a good planting day as i need to get stuff planted and potted before bringing home too much more. 😎

i love this spiderwort, despite it growing in a spot that i don't want.  my neighbor dug it up a couple years ago and was going to toss it so i took it.  i just plopped it down as i was going to plant it somewhere else but was in a hurry and of course never got to it and it just rooted right there.  i plan to move at least some of it down to the new flower bed next spring as it starts coming up.  it will be much easier to deal with when small. one of the reasons i love it is because these plants were from some that were split from my Great Aunt Vera's home when she passed.  i like that i was able to bring some of her and my Great Uncle Milam home with me.  

will you look at how beautiful my David Austin Lady of Shallot is doing?!?  i've never seen so many blooms at one time.  i love it so much and the blooms have such a lovely scent.  it has at least 5 open blooms, 3 buds almost ready to open and a bunch more buds that are just starting to get big.  oh...my heart!!

oh those colors!!! i so wish i could send you the scent through the screen.  it is so fantastically lovely.

well...that's what's happening in my garden today.  it's just started raining and we may have a bit more tomorrow which is wonderful for the garden.

tomorrow i'm learning to make my mum's delicious spaghetti sauce after i run some errands in the am.  i'll try to take good pictures so i can share.  it's a recipe she's used longer than i've been alive and is my absolute favorite sauce for pasta, on buttered bread and even on rice or baked potatoes. 

i hope you are having a good week.  how are things in your neck of the garden of planet earth?

love & kisses & magical wishes, 

~*~