Forget-Me-Not Thoughts

Forget-me-not blues. 

These have dotted my garden in years past, but they 

always seem to die out. Not in an ugly 

way--just not there when you look for them

in the spring. 

When I browsed hopeful rows of perennials this year, the 

sky blue and yellow color combination caught my eye. 

The plant name struck my heart and sealed the deal. 

"You're coming home with me." 

Do you ever whisper to your plants? 

Maybe we shouldn't admit such things.

The blooms are intricately crafted dainties, clustered 

in small bouquets. This would have been enough, 

but my macro lens revealed an extra bit of shareable beauty.

 Tiny yellow hearts ring the center, 

one heart for each petal.

In a season of home-goings, this plant spoke the 

exact language I needed to express a deluge 

of thoughts, emotions, and grief.

A backyard garden often reflects its keeper in this way. 

The gardener walks the rows and remembers--

these were Grandma's favorite flowers.

She spreads protective mulch and ponders--

I want to be tenacious like the tiger lilies.

In hottest July, she waters dry ground and nods along 

with the Master Gardener, whose plan is continually unfolding--

even to include a hydrangea blooming through a fence.

What reminders do the plants in your garden offer? 

What memories do they whisper at nightfall?

Do its citizens inspire any lofty ambitions? 

I'd love to know. 

A New Beauty

All dried up 

and beautiful in a new way.

The hard work of nodding in spring breezes complete,

sun-dried daffodils decorate a rusty toolbox. 

Parchment paper lily of the valley in blue glass 

bottles recall wedding bells and ivory veils.

Last year's weathered hydrangeas reveal an 

inner framework strong enough to make it through 

a long winter.

I signed a contract back in 2019 with Familius Publishers for a 

project about dogs and reading. The product has made a few twists and 

turns over the course of three years. Recently, I was notified that 

the final copy went to print. 

Teach Your Dog to Read will release this November! 

 

Almost-Fall Words to Share

It's pink diamond hydrangea season on our Kentucky acre. 

Piled in this old silver-plated stand, their rural elegance shines.

TIp: If you cut these after the petals feel papery-dry, 

they'll stay lovely through the fall, until you throw them 

out and deck the halls for Christmas.

And they pair so well with ghostly-white pumpkins. 

Small ball gourds--scrubbed, polished, and ready for purchase. 

This one with the twig wreath opening is a favorite.

Lots of time to ponder while scrubbing gourds ... 

And one of four tiny hooligan pumpkins that the deer missed, grown 

from last year's seeds. 

Who does not enjoy saying hooligan pumpkin?

I'll be repeating that the rest of the day.

This from a person who chooses paint 

colors based on the chip titles ... 

It's why September Fog is on the walls in our guest room. 

Words, my friends, make all the difference. 

All.

Bare Bushes

It's time to call it quits in the garden. 

Here on my one Kentucky acre, we've had drought conditions until just 

about two weeks ago. My container plants got just too shabby 

in the dry heat...so I fixed them. 

"Look at this," I said to my patient husband. "I fixed the container plants."

"You sure did," he agreed and took a few steps back.

Because, friends, I pulled them all up and threw their spindly stems

and crispy blooms in the firepit. What a relief! 

I plopped gourds and pumpkins in the empty containers—no watering needed. 

When we finally got a little rain, all the garden plants went back to work, 

creating new leaves and blooms. 

Look at this cypress vine, so cheerful in the summer-like heat.

Then this week on Monday, fall arrived. 

We've had a one-week color change with all the wonder of a true fall compressed 

into just a few days. Yesterday's wind and rain moved the color party to the ground.

Last night we swerved around another seasonal corner as temperatures dropped below freezing. 

I had time to save these beautiful blues, and a few zinnias, 

from the first killing frost.

The bushes are bare, but my windowsills are filled with vases of color. 

Closing Gardens and Verse Two

Have you already blazed past me in memorizing Psalm 100 for Thanksgiving?

I get it. 

But if not, here's verse two.

We closed the gardens this weekend. 

Meaning: my husband used the weedeater on everything that grew this spring and summer

 while I stood by cheering. Now the flower beds and container gardens are 

peacefully blank, resting until spring flings open the door to a new growing season.

One of the winter arrangements I made from the leftovers to keep things looking cheerful -

Some of the hydrangeas heads still had a little bit of color—so pretty!

Leaving the stems in wet dirt for the winter months sometimes results in 

a nicely rooted new hydrangea in the spring.

(fingers crossed)

Hymn Browsing

I'm working on a special order tie-tack for a music teacher. 

My Etsy customer wants a tiny Scrabble tile to display a bit of sacred music

under a dome of diamond glaze.

I LOVED browsing antique hymnbooks this weekend, humming through 

familiar old hymn-friends. Although I can't say my family enjoyed my 

impromptu, off-key concert ...

My favorite is probably the closest tile, "Amazing Grace" on letter A.

But the last one, "Take My Life and Let It Be", is close to my own heart's cry right now. 

An inspiring hymn of dedication, this one has a sweet history. 

Oh, to spend an hour with Frances!

  I'm pretty partial to this pendant. 

My grandparents had one Nikko blue bush on their farm, and it was ENORMOUS.

This hydrangea bloom is from my own bush, which is a start from theirs. 

It's a tiny piece of the old farm preserved and even wearable.

Frowzy

This is the time of year when the Annabelle blooms 

I dried and displayed in the fall start to get all ...

frowzy. 

Covered with a thin sheen of dust and quite faded, 

there's just no way to fix these problems. 

Soon they'll be decorating the garbage can. 

New blooms are just around the corner, though ...

More on Annabelles here, here and here. 

*****

Is it strange that those hydrangea heads inspired a 
story snapshot? 

Frowzy

     Doris flipped the visor mirror of her 1995 Toyota Camry back into place. She gripped the steering wheel and pressed her forehead into her knuckles. Behind the front door of her home, shrill terrier yips beat a methodical cadence loud enough to reach inside her driveway-parked car. She had to face it: this wasn't going to get any better.

    The unfamiliar feeling of cool air against her neck surprised her again—just as  it had when she left the hair salon this afternoon. Stepping out of her car, she shook her head, scattering waves of chemical fragrance, then shut the car door and locked it. Her Saturday trip to the Anita Cut Salon on 2nd Street for a "new leaf" transformation turned out to be a lesson on the danger of spontaneity. She'd felt the warning twitch in her right eyelid but gave it no heed as Jack-Qua-Lyn rushed her toward a chartreuse plastic chair. Five hours later and fifty dollars poorer, a wiser Doris climbed the steps to her front door.

     Twinkie's nose brushed her foot when she stepped inside; her husband's dog was always glad to see her. Doris pocketed her car keys and bent to greet the suddenly silent pet. Confusion twisted Twinkie's wiry brow, and he backed away instead of jumping into her arms for kisses. With loud whimpers, he turned tail and fled to his favorite hiding place under the dining room table. 

      Doris stood under the bewildered gaze of her husband. "Well? What do you think of my hair?" 

     His eyebrows floated toward his hairline. "Ummmm ... " He blinked hard once, no, twice—there—three times. "Well ... do you like it?" He swallowed and blinked again. "I mean, is that what you ... wanted?" Twinkie slunk forward to cautiously re-investigate her shoe and identify this frowzy impostor. 

     "Yes," she squeaked in a voice that even she didn't recognize. Giving her now-damp foot a sharp flick, she choked, "It's exactly what I wanted."

* Wordless Wednesday

Seasonal

The air here is clear and crisp. 

It's lost the weight of high summer heat and while the rays are still hot, 

they feel oddly light on the skin. 

It's  fall air, that's all. 

***

If you need more evidence of the change of season ... 

CANDY CORN is on the shelves.

And you need some.

GIft Shot

This butterfly just flew into the frame as I was taking this shot of a 

pink diamond hydrangea spray, 

Completely by surprise and without any stalking on my part, 

I had my favorite photo of the summer!  

Here, Fishy, Fishy!

Only a few hydrangeas had any blooms here this season, due to the incredibly harsh winter just past.

The only traditional hydrangea of mine that had any blooms was a single Blue Billows bush. 

Not usually one of my favorites, but I appreciated the blue when it was so scarce in my garden this spring.

* This morning I saw that one of my Nikko bushes has added a whole new 

layer of small blooms!  It's going to do a fall bloom!  Whoo-hoo!

Super short stems make Blue Billows work best in a very small vase.

My fish is interested in anything that happens in his windowsill. 

I tell you, this fish is more like a dog in a bowl than a regular pet fish.

He (it?) rests on the bottom of his vase until someone comes to the sink for a drink 

or to wash dishes. Then he flutters at the edge, watching the water stream and wanting attention. 
Or food, whichever. 

His wife is in the background - a solar hula dancer from the Dollar Tree.

He is, after all, a 'fighting fish', so it took them a while to make their relationship work, 

but now they are inseparable. 

Garden Notes 6/19/14

 Last year's dead hydrangea canes have made some nice mini-teepee poles -

the perfect size for a container. Gotta get SOMEthing good out of all those 

frozen canes!

- The Don Juan rose is BACK!!! Thank goodness I was too lazy to dig up the entire bush and only cut it off! One nice red cane coming up from the heart of the root ball.
- I've been longing for cleome this year - planned it out last fall. A big patch right where some nasty black eyed susans had spread. Have sewn 3 x in various areas from last year's seed. Nothing. Then along a bed edge where I usually spray weed killer - a whole bunch of mid-sized seedlings!  I transplanted them to the spot where I originally wanted to grow them. Felt like the Lord gave me a sweet gift.
- A clicking/knocking sound in a certain area in the long bed, near neighbor's wisteria. What is it???
- The sun flowers are killing it! They might make 'mammoth' status this year.
- Different stem colors for different zinnia seeds - never noticed that before.
- Red coneflower - sigh!  :0)  Wonderful!
- Cut back the r. sage ready-to-flower growth. The similarly trimmed b. e. susans are frantically sprouting new bloom stems with much smaller leaves - interesting conservation of energy on the part of the plant in order to achieve bloom 'on time'.
- Datura is gone gone gone. (Guess I shouldn't have said "thank you"...)
- Very delicate columbine seedlings coming up around the two main plants. Going to try to keep these open to the sun, and see if I can establish some new plants.
- I think the potted blackberry hydrangea has a small side growth that could be separated to make a new plant. Separate them in the fall. How to make the more raspberry color darker blue blackberry again? Try the old rusty nails trick?

We spent a whole day of our vacation hobnobbing with people like this.

They all had alot to say and with such DRAMA!

 It was fascinating - every. single. minute.

Browning Blues

We closed the gardens on Saturday, since it was such a warm day. 

It's all hands on deck when that big job looms between me and the (real) Holidays.

But this year, all hands meant only 6 - Husband, My Youngest and myself.

One of us was less than enthusiastic about spending Saturday afternoon this way.

And it wasn't those of us over twenty years of age.

Now listen, I know it's way more effective to motivate an un-motivated teenager by 

praising positive effort and casting a vision of the many 

satisfactions of a job well done

 than it is to 

goad and fuss, or prompt and point.  

Encouragement is always better than prodding - that seems easy to agree with, doesn't it?

But when I want something to be done, I find it so, so hard to discipline myself to stay on the right side! 

And in a nutshell, that's what parenting is REALLY all about, isn't it? 

Yes, there are lots of hugs and warmth and blessing abound, 

but I don't think it's hard to admit that it's also the Refiner's fire at times. 

The poor kid probably thought I was having some sort of personality disorder eruption right there

in the middle of the lamb's ear patch. One moment pleasant and smiling, encouraging ---

then frowning, huffing and haranguing. It's a battle, people! 

*** Making a side note of the obvious - these photos! ***

One of the jobs on Saturday was removing old hydrangea blooms. The weight of a heavy snowfall(or ice)  can break the canes if the mopheads remain on the bush through the winter, so it's better to take them off as part of the fall clean-up. 

An easy, standing up sort of job! Clip and toss! It's freeing! They just blow away! 

What teenager wouldn't want that job, I ask you?

Look how the deep blue color fades top to bottom from this bloom - is that cool or what? You can see on some individual petals how the color is fading to brown - brown and sky blue on the same petals! Beauty in the most ordinary, disposable items!  The Father is certainly lavish in His displays of splendor!

Slacker

* "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.' "

I'm totally in with this verse - you probably are too, right? Who wouldn't like to see some of their personal 'bad guys' get a nice drippy dose of divine comeuppance? I know I would try to get a front row seat to that show! I might have to throw a few elbows, since we'd probably all be vying for the same plum position, but I'm up for that.

"To the contrary, 'if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.' "

Now, of course, I know this verse, however, I don't remember it being paired with the no vengeance for you verse. It's a much bigger task to not only LEAVE IT TO GOD, but to set out to INTENTIONALLY BLESS the bad guy!

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

And lastly, another verse often quoted in isolation, which truly summarizes the previous pair. This plan of the Lord's will require some serious pondering, for I have fallen far short of spending time blessing my enemy. It's much easier and far more rewarding to do good for those I love, to bless those who might bless me back, to go the extra mile for people who seem to 'deserve' it.

I've been a slacker, then. Lazing around on the JV, enjoying easy, sweat-free workouts. 

Hanging with Leslie Sansone instead of Billy Blanks.

*Romans 12:19-21 

also these.

Out With the Old

A big party is in the works over here. Our Middle Son is turning 18, and we're hoping the throw

a big party for him. We're in party prep mode, and somehow that includes getting the gardens

looking good, even though only a few visitors will really look at them. I should let the gardens go

in favor of cleaner ceiling fan blades, but I just can't do it. 

So I've been clipping last year's hydrangea blooms, and the wind sends them 

rolling away across the lush, green grass. Teamwork! 

Last year was a huge year for my hydrangea bushes - probably more blooms than I've ever seen

in the nineteen years we've lived here. That means there's A LOT of old blooms to clip.

They still have their own beauty, a sort of faded framework, the bloom's structural skeleton 

minus the color for which they're prized. But these are removed with hardly a backward 

glance in hopes of the very best from the bushes again this season. 

It's a gardening sort of faith, don't you think, that we trim what is left over from the last 

season in anticipation of what we hope might soon emerge. Gardeners don't leave the leftover

stalks, dried blooms or seed pods for the enjoyment of the current growing season. 

We trim off the old in anticipation of the new. 

*****

Lord, let me not settle for last season's blooms in my life. Help me keep my eye moving forward in 

anticipation of what You'll do next, trimming off the old as needed, to make room for Your new works.

Sunlit Pink

I'm not so much a pink girl. 

Not such a surprise with all men in this house, right? 

Pink is not my favorite color in clothes, although my husband likes me in pink, so I do have a couple of pink pieces of clothing. 

Pink paint on walls - no way, no how is that gonna happen. 

But it's hard to avoid pink in the garden. 

I got this hydrangea as a gift, and even though it was pink, it had such a fun name - the Blushing Bride. It starts out white, then matures to a sweet pink blush. In past years, she  has blushed blue, and I've re-named her as the Frigid Bride.

But this year --- it's all the way blush-y pink. 

I'm dealing pretty well with it, for a NOT PINK kinda girl.

And well, pink back-lit with golden spring sunshine - who can resist that?

Randoms:

- Happy First Day of Summer!

- We had friends out for dinner last night. They are older than us by about 15 years, I guess, so they speak with the voice of experience on so many levels. Saints in the church since their youth, they've been through much hardship and they love to tell of the faithfulness of the Lord on the path of life. We're thankful that He brings us companions to make the journey rich. 

- Today I get to enjoy the Day After Guests today! No cleaning, since it was all done yesterday in preparation for the friends. Truly, I love that 'all done' feeling. Maybe that's how people feel after the cleaning lady leaves? Well, I guess it's not exactly the same... 

It does last for more than fifteen minutes, too, now that the kids are older. 

- There were no takers for the hydrangea bouquets, but last night they found a purpose! The dinner friends volunteer at the local hospice every week, and mentioned that they would be stopping at Krogers to pick up their unsold flowers. They arrange them for the patients who don't receive any flowers and as a blessing for the nurses. The friends took the huge vaseful of blooms that were on the table - light blues, dark blues and purples - to use at the hospice today! We're hoping they return to cut flowers for the hospice every week. Is that cool or what? I'm so glad someone will be enjoying all that BLUE BEAUTY.

- I dragged the watering hose around the yard this morning early after MWH left for work at 7. I didn't bother to change out of my pajama pants, since WHO would see me so early anyway? It's awkward, the way I have to keep both pants legs pulled up to the knees (so they don't drag the ground and get all wet with dew) while dragging the long, heavy, loooonnnngggg hose. It's definitely an upper body work out, all done while holding your pants legs up with one hand. 

Are you getting a feeling for the awkwardness??? 

So did my neighbor. I think she was more embarrassed for me than I was. But her dog enjoyed it, barking and snarling at me for the first time ever. 

I didn't think I looked THAT bad in my PJs...

For Sale - Blue

Here's my facebook post for today. 

I hardly ever post - mostly I just lurk.

BLUE HYDRANGEA BOUQUET  -  $5

Do you need to take flowers to a friend, for a baby shower or just for your table?

 I have so many blooms this year - bring your own vase and enjoy!

(contact by email)

Even if we're not 'facebook friends', you could still come 

out for a nice bunch of beautiful blues!

We could sit in the swing a while and drink some sweet tea ...

That sounds like a nice way to spend a summer afternoon.

He's Early

I have a few Ruby Hydrangeas just outside our sunroom. 

Don't be fooled - they turn red in the fall, but their first bloom is NOT red, just a sort of half-hearted pink. You don't believe all those catalog blurbs, do you - not like I did, right?

ANYway, I was getting on the treadmill in the sunroom, and noticed a sunbeam falling just on the head of one of the bloom buds, just outside the window. 

All my hydrangeas are covered with blooms, even one sorry girl that has never bloomed in all its years here. This will be a banner year for hydrangeas, I think, due to the mild winter.

By the time I got my camera (anything to delay exercise) and worked on trying to capture a photo of that beam of light, this guy had landed drunkenly on the bloom head.

I'm probably wrong, but doesn't that look like a lightning bug???

He seemed stunned too!

Now, I know these come out in mid-June because they are my Youngest Son's birthday sign. 

Do you have birthday signs to watch for that indicate the soon-coming of your family birthdays?

So if that was a firefly, then he certainly is early! And it certainly has chilled down around here, so he might be asleep again - at least until late May.