Is it a coincidence that what I empty from the vacuum cleaner is the exact same shade of my dog’s hair coloring and texture? And does this mean that someday, when she is gone, I will rarely, ever have to vacuum again?
Sandy had not had a grooming for a veeeeeeery long time, due in part to her “starring” role in Annie in the spring, where looking like a raggamuffin was desirable. But yikes! She was simply out of control!
Wrex shaved her for me a few days ago, with the sheep shearers.
Stormie thinks she looks sad, but I am not having to empty the vacuum cannister every 2 minutes. I like! *clapping and cheering!
And, Wrex and Stef made THIS for me for Mother’s Day, this adorable basket.
Look closer.
No – look even closer!
That’s right: zip strips, or cable ties or whatever you prefer to call them. About 300 of them! Oh yes! LOVING it!
Gentle rain falling throughout the night left these sparkling diamonds for me in the early morning walk through the green garden.
The daylilies will soon be bountiful with blossoms.
I’m RICH!
Have you ever had a thought and even though you knew down deep inside it wasn’t true, you also had a lot of evidence to support the fact that it is true? Sometimes an enemy lie or a loss or a self-defeating prophecy echoes through your head. It’s funny to us on the SNL movie “Stuart Saves His Family,” when he has to repeat the mantra “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and doggonnit, people like me, ” because we know that in reality he is hearing, “I’m going to die penniless and homeless. I am still 25 pounds overweight. No one will ever love me.” Stinkin; thinkin’.
And it is all pathetically untrue, for Stuart and for us. But we have those accusations that pierce.
Mine today was: everyone leaves you eventually. Nobody stays.
Then, playing a CD Tara gave me as one of my Mother’s Day presents (Hidden in My Heart ~ A Lullaby Journey Through Scripture, www.scripture-lullabies.com), this song broke through, and it is lovely and it is true. I know this.
I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU
“…For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you,’ so we may boldly say: ‘The LORD is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?…'” Hebrews 13.5 NKJV
When your sky is cold and lonely and your heart is filled with fear
I will wrap my arms around you, know that I am here
And I will keep you safe and sound through the darkness that surrounds
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I will never leave you
Nor forsake you
Know that I am with you
You will never be alone.
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When your way is bright and glowing and your soul knows no despair
Can you hear Me singing with you? In your triumph I will share
For I am watching over you and I rejoice in all you do
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So remember, never doubt this
Hold it tightly to your heart
I’m forever always with you
I will be right where you are
But my question is, which is it? Lava from a volcano, as I was led to believe as a child, or is it pumice-powered – which I thought was some kind of thing from the ocean – hnaging out around the coral reef? Are these one and the same? Have I spent my life in the dark?
The old packaging I remember…except I don’t remember it being creamy white (only in the loosest sense of the word perhaps), and what I assume is current packaging telling me it is pumice-powered. What?!!? Is ground molten lava not powerful enough? What gives, I ask you?
GARDENING TIP #1: Must buy very bright, very cute gardening gloves at WalMart for $1.99. A really beautiful pair of garden gloves, meant to protect your hands, are an absolute necessity when facing garden chores. Why? Well, not to wear, because it is so much more fun to touch the hot, black soil with your bare hands and get a little dirty while gardening. But won’t they look cute and just make you so happy when you toss them on your gardening clogs in favor of going barefoot and you look at them and think, “Wow. I have gardening shoes AND gloves. I am such anamazing gardener!”? Oh, they will make you happy.
GARDENING TIP #2: For real. Scrape your nails over a cake of soap (but probably NOT lava or pumice-powered soap) before you place your bare hands in the black soil and when you are done and wash your hands – VOILA! No dirt under your nails. You can be seen in public!
GARDENING TIP #3: But if you forget step #2, please DO use the scrubby-soap pictured above. My Grandma Baker always had this in her bathroom (where she also apparently snuck cigarettes and I had no idea until I was grown) and using this soap is kind of like getting a hand massage. I washed my hands a lot at her house. A lot.
“If I had a day I could give to you, I’d give to you a day just like today. And if I had a song that I could sing for you, I’d sing a song to make you feel this way.” John Denver, Sunshine on My Shoulders
It IS that kind of day!… Jeanie
UPDATE 5/14: So-pumice, apparently, is more of a textural term for volcanic lava mixed with water. I must have been absent from school that day.
See what I mean? Happy!
NOTE TO SELF: Go see “Oceans” tonight with Stormie and catch up on my sea world/pumice education.
One morning each spring, early, just as the sun has broken above the rooftops and is blazing through the windows and doors of the back of the house, you see it. You walk in to the dancing shadows of the freshly, fully-leafed Aspens, which have turned the kitchen into a happy stage of gentle movement playing tag with light. You hold out your hand so the show can alight and tickle your fancy for just a moment and then let it run unabashedly around the room.
Oh, hello, summer shade! You have returned – you’re back! So great to see you. I have missed you so much.
Every year, without fail, I once again forgive the deciduous for breaking my heart and leaving me in the autumn. I am like that.
Pond garden weeded, re-arranged, added to and mulched. Pretty. Now it is time for Dave to get the fountains running and fish fat and happy. And for Rocky to replace all the lily pads he threw out which he found distracting and bothersome, but which I’d spent 4 years cultivating! Tsk.
I’ve got pieces of April, I keep ’em in a memory bouquet
I’ve got pieces of April, but it’s a morning in May**
May Day memory:
As kids in Des Moines in the 1960s, we’d create “baskets” from paper: usually a cone-shaped affair with a “handle” attached. We’d fill the containers with candy or lilacs, which happily bordered the yard, and hang them on neighbor’s doors, ring the bell and then run. May Day was the most sunny, delightful holiday of them all. No pressure, no rules – just try to be sweet to people annonymously. Shouldn’t we be doing more of that?
Pictured: google images. The ones we did as kids had spring flowers like these on the left, but were paper cones like on the right. I like the idea of the paper flowers with the Rolo glued to the center shown here. Hmmmm…..hope some one does this for me today! Chocolate + caramel = Rolos YUM
A great website to visit on May Day~www.MayDae.com
CLICK HERE: www.maydae.com Two of my super-cool daughters’ website using their middle names. What have they got up their sleeves today, I wonder? Read all the posts you have missed and I promise you’ll be smarter and way more hip by the time you have finished!
“April gave us springtime, and the promise of the flowers…”**
The Kelley Kids: Gavin-the-Great, Guini-my flower girl, and GemGem the delightful!
Hunter-Magoo at a video shoot doing the Heaven Fest dance!
Planning for May fun. Bright and cheery. Weddings and graduations, showers and celebrations galore!
April hair: mine is brown-black (on purpose this time) and Dave’s is growing back. Left: what he looked like at the end of March having just finished 2 months of keeping it shaved for the ANNIE performances. Right: this is now.
**LYRICS: From [possibly] my favorite Three Dog Night song, Pieces of April, written by Dave Loggins. He explains: “I wrote [Pieces of April] at a very special time of my life. Special, because I met the ‘love of my life’ and had recently lost her. By chance, we were together for three consecutive Aprils and then she left me for good. Today, I don’t know where she is or how her life turned out. May is symbolic of the present, April was, and still remains a sweet yesterday. I have never really gotten over ‘April’ and the ‘pieces’ still remain. Those sweet Aprils… It’s my favorite song, too.” -Dave Loggins
‘Cause we were all so young and foolish, now we are mature.
And those were the days of roses, poetry and prose
And Martha all I had was you and all you had was me.
There was no tomorrows, we’d packed away our sorrows
And we saved them for a rainy day.
Do you have to let it linger? Do you have to, do you have to,
Do you have to let it linger?
And there’s no misery ooooooh oooh like the misery
I feel in me, gotta find me an angel in my life
I left my tender seedlings out last night and some frost bit them. *sigh
Two large, colorful, beautiful Monarch butterflies just flew about the backyard, diving and swooping, flirtatiously fluttering for full effect.
I, in turn, thanked them wholeheartedly for stopping by (clapping and cheering at their arrival) and have given them full use of the yard at their discretion. “Bring friends,” I encouraged. For until I have filled the pots with annuals (we mustn’t let temptation for color coax us into doing this earlier than Mother’s Day here in Zone 5), the Monarchs shall be the kaleidescope of wonder.
The birds seem ever-so-slightly put out at my response to the lovlies, having provided song and sweetness for months now. But they will get over it when they see what I have in mind for them…
To be continued….
Post Script ~ The conflict with the interloping garlic chives continues this year. As if I did not not win some of the battles last season? They are as fat and invasive as ever.
Mr 3-pound Toad had still been in hiding as of yet this spring. But major construction development and rehabilitation of his neighborhood (trying desperately to remove the hollyhocks from the pond area and move them waaaaaay back by the fence) exposed his fat-winter self. Interestingly, it also revealed my reading glasses, missing now for three days.
Coincidence? I think not. It was him or the big, juicy worm.
