Away From Flowers!

The header picture butterfly has one wing out of focus...shame on me.  I'd say my knees were creaking from being in a low crouch trying to catch him being STILL for pity sake.  I mean the minute I would focus in on him...off he goes to the next flower.  I just gave up and chose you the better of the probably 10 or so pics I took of him.

It's been sunny all out but 1 day for close to two weeks.  That is a miracle around here.  I've had to water the new plants twice now.  And I have managed to get a walk a day in for those almost two weeks.  My knees are creaking some but they are finally getting used to it.  I sent a recording from my iPhone to a dear friend, of bird song I heard as I walked along and told her I was taking her with me on the walk in a manner of speaking,. So she could hear her walk with me...and as it turns out, she listened also to my footfalls.  She said I was a fast walker.  When I got home, I listened and she was right.  You could hear the footfalls as I went along.  I said I felt it was my little short leggies in a hamster wheel that made it sound like that.  Little feets and short legs struggling tp keep up, even if it is with oneself.

Reminded me of when our whole squad would go out after midnights say,   (I was, we were...CC) and run on a high school track before we went home to sleep the day before the next shift.  We'd go up there...head around the track (we have to qualify with a fast mile run every year ...so ya gotta practice) and when walking for a rest round the track, everyone (mostly all men,   I was one of two women) was much much taller than 5'1" me.  They  made fun of me because it took me  1 1/2 steps to equal 1 of theirs.  Seriously.  I always have to work harder keeping up with anyone.  But I always do.

Good days.  Good friends and colleagues, and lots of hard hard work; but lots of laughter too and jokes and tricks played.  Remind me to tell you the incident about me when I had a patrol and what happened when I got out of the vehicle for any reason for several hours.  I'm smiling right this second with the memory.

XX

These two ladies were at the civic center and asked to take a selfie.  I handed over the iPhone.

Tulip Magnolia I think

Double Daffodil

Pansies Are Growing Taller

Guys, there was a gentle almost drizzling rain most of the day yesterday and the pansies and camellia got a terrific drink.  Better than what my hose delivered.  I'm going to bore you with more pictures again if my little family up there.

Taker now and more pansy faces are showing.

Love when they show off

Gorgeous red

Salmon

Gold...and red-gold.

Keep growing, children.  Mama is here to see you fed and watered.

Oh What a Beautiful Sunny WEEK!

Not just the usual day or two at the most but a WEEK!  SUN!

sun sun sun shinin' in my front door! 

My pansies are still bravely standing tall with their beautiful faces looking up at me.  My tulips are starting to bloom but they as well as the daffodils are smaller because of the freezing weather.  It has gotten to the high 50's in the sunny days but 30 at night...29 a few times this past week.  I have my first ever camellia!  I had the lawn cutter come and plant it for me.  I have hard clay soil.  He had post hole thingy to break through to make a big enough hole for the root ball.  This is a Yuletide camellia. Blooms in the Fall, hence the name.  I burn up my DSLR taking pictures of my son's camellia every time I go over the mountains in the fall and his is in bloom.

I managed to get several decent weeks of walking in.  FAB.  No rain on my parade! I recorded the birds singing this morning as I walked.  Sent the voice recording to a woman friend and a relative.  You just smile all over your head with the joy of birdies, sun, some bulbs and some leaves open on the trees.  All my forest out back of oaks and maples and hickories are still bare limbed.

Just checking by to see you all and not whining about the incessant rain and floods this time.  Oh, I love going to antique stores and there is one here in town I love that has two kittens in it during the time their mom is there.  I LOVE it.

Gonna drop the subject now and head into the kitchen and do the dishes.  I wash, you dry???

XX

Alas, More Pictures..but different ones.

Guys, my daughter-in-law made me supremely happy yesterday. I had asked her if she knew anyone who would do a couple of gardening chores for me for a fee of course.  My knees are shot from weapons qualifications through the years...and my back is apparently made of china or something.  It hurts all the time, but I ignored it until I  was out there trying to garden.  Then, knees and back= too much.

So, she offered to do it.  I needed the small upper flower bed totally pulled up i.e.  weeded.  It was full of grass and weeds.  Then, some pansies planted and fertilized.  She got here, did the weeding/pulling bare handed...said she preferred that to gloves, and eschewed my knee pads...ah, to be young and have working knees again!  Hour and a half later...a spic and span little garden.  Since she and my son married, and even before that time,  I have loved her as the daughter I never had.  Always remembering she has a loving mom, but I am her second one.  What a privilege!  Seriously.  She is a blessing to all of us in the family and certainly to my son and their child, my grandson.

Those are the three remaining bulbs that bloomed.  Squirrels killed all the rest.

We headed off to the nursery and bought some premium colors pansies.  I LOVE them.  I have salmon colored ones, yellow, red, purple, blue, blue and white, and white.

Just wait a few weeks and they will be up, larger and looking wonderful.

LOOK at the length of one of the many worms she dug up.  She left her hand there for a comparison. The worm, Herman, had already buried is head back in the earth several inches.  He must have truly been 10 inches long!

These guys survived the neglect too.  Bless them. 

I'll show you the pansies when they are up and at 'em.

Progress

We had 2 days of sun...a day predicted to be sunny, and it rained  instead (yesterday) and today I see sun.  Gotta take what I can get when I get it.  We sometimes do get 2 days of sun in a week.

I got my Progress report from Fitbit this morning for last weeks activity I accomplished.  Because I was able to get out there 4 out of seven days, my steps were up close to 40,000 more.  I am aiming for my usual 84,000.  Got up to 59,000 which beats the hound out of what I had the last weeks. what with all the rain and well below freezing temps. .  If it's not torrential rain as usual, I think I'll walk in the rain too.  Maybe.  I don't  like it one bit so I tend not to.  Walking rapidly and holding an umbrella  for several miles is a pain in the neck and you cannot see ahead of you very well.

Who has a groomer come to the house for their animal?  (Not that Katie is an animal.  She's a furred human) I don't like hauling Katie out just to get her nails cut every 5 weeks so I have a groomer come here in the past few months.  For whatever reason, the vet tech who always came here for several years upped and quit with no word, no reason told and just shut down as though I had done something unspeakable or other.  *shrugs shoulders*.  Since I cannot pill her if she needs it, I paid a handsome sum for her to come and pill the cat  the usual daily 2 weeks if needed.  Now I'll have to haul her in for that.   I asked who had a groomer come to the house for their dog or cat for a reason though.  Am I supposed to tip them?  They are the owners, and the fee is fairly stiff as it is.  I don't know the etiquette of it at all.   Can you help?

I'm busting to get out and walk but have to wait on the groomer  I just sent a text asking about when.

Meanwhile, I'll quit and spare you all the natter.
XX

right after the usual flooding rains

water level is supposed to be a good 8 feet farther down under the walkway.

same here.  The path was flooded so I walked in the grass with the geese honking at me.

The Little Things

Someone on our  CB blogs I believe it was, wrote a superb one on the little things that can make you happy.  I believe it was for "Thankful Thursday".  

For many years now, a day or night does not go by that I am not thankful for little things.  For a smile from strangers and I get many.   I am very grateful always for the privilege of being alive, enjoying the sun when it occasionally shows itself 😊 and even the rain.  I find something to enjoy for every day even if it is being able to stay here in the house and be cozy in bad weather.  I am grateful for the beauty of the night.  The little things like the sounds of frogs and insects.  Night birds.  The scent of damp air. The night sky.   I will sit on the deck with my face pointed toward the breeze if there is one, and stay still and silent, counting the planets I can see, just reveling in the stars and lightening bugs. Oh!  What a pleasure hearing them.  I will stay several hours enjoying crickets, lightening bugs, faint breeze, just the insects and occasional animals rusting through my woods.  Clouds, sun, wind. Bird song in the day time...double the joy.

When I wake up, I am grateful I did, and look out to see what type of day we are gifted with.   If an opportunity to walk seems possible..I am out of  the door early.  That may be a little thing as well.  Just to me it is a joy.

 I am smiling on my way to where I chose to walk. When I get to whichever park I go to...the little things like the cold air going into my lungs as I hurry around adding the miles.  The swiftness of my steps.  I  might smell some cut grass, and that makes me wish there was a perfume made with grass molecules.   No sweetness..just cut grass.  That is such a heavenly scent.  Or the scent of freshly turned earth when you pass yards and lawns where a garden is in the making.  The little things of scent.  The little things of feeling  warmth on your skin from the sun.  Even when it is a scorcher, there is a beauty in it.  The silence except sounds from Nature  when no other people are there. Just the sounds of animals- and my footfalls.

I learned as a little girl to  love the smell of fresh tar in road making, as we passed by road construction.  Today it brings me straight back to the age of 5 as my cousin and I stood and watched a road being made and paved.

The smell of the green woods.  Leaves, old in the Fall,  and new ones, the wet earth, smelling wildflowers.  Seeing the wildflowers makes me giddy with happiness and if I have my camera, all the better.  My total day is made then.  After I take their pictures, I go home and upload them...smiling every second with anticipation.

Little things like seeing and hearing bees and staying to watch them visit their flowers...their legs and bodies coated thickly with pollen.  The sound of their wings as they go from flower to flower.  I am not afraid of them.  You can see many of my macro  pictures have bees visiting, and I am within a few inches of them. It's a joy to be there with them.  I stay as long as I can until I move on to the next insects and flowers.  Little things. That's what I'm grateful for.  I've spoken mostly of nature and senses, but the simple pleasure of reading in the evening in a comfortable chair with you-know-who assisting me.  The pleasure of the scent of coffee brewing in the morning and the first sip.

Here's a friend I met and showed you before...

I'm just doing as the name of my blog is....  Rambling on.  Maybe I should have entitled tonight's blog "Grateful".  Thats what it really is.  Grateful.

More From the Museum.

And guys, there was a leather hearse!  Well, the carriage was very hardened leather...including the draperies inside.  These were the best shots of the hearse I could get.  Imagine being carried in State in this.  Not bad!

Front of the hearse

Back of the hearse

side view of the hearse. Look thru the window..you can see the coffin..narrow and larger at one end 

Wow.

A real glass eye that was used.  Biggafy to read. 

This was the cat table because cats used it for a log time to sharpen their claws on the legs! 

A general store.  Red thinon the right is a coffee mill. I have a better pic. 

THIS was interesting! 

Hoped you'd enjoy these.  You might want to biggafy here and there to red. 

Fun For a Day

We went to the Museum of Appalachia the first and next to the last sunny day the beginning of the week.

It's renowned and well visited.  I am so glad I got to go.  It has real authentic things from Appalachia in pioneer and civil war days.  There are lots of animals too.  The place was covered in peacocks and grouchy looking peahens.  LOVED it.  There are tiny real cabins all over the property that one can go in.  Almost as small as these jail cells just below. An old general store.  When you come to the doctor instruments, check out the GULLET FORCEPS!  Lawsey ME!!!

Look at the jail cells.  Real one brought there from another County.  8x8 cells...4 bunks.   Times were tough back then.

Here's some old pioneer doctor instruments.  *shudder*

Glad things have advance since then.  😱

Look at one of the cabins and what it was like inside.   I'll stop. Too many pictures and you may not be interested.  At least I'm not blogging about the rain. Which it IS doing.