Dreaming of April

 

This morning, I went out before the sun was over the mountains. The sky was that pinkish-gray color of the doves that are flying every where searching for a suitable place to call home. The grass is filled with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. The greens of the new lacy leaves on the trees, keep my eyes mesmerized by the movement as just a tiny breeze causes the dancing to infuse light into sparkles and the reflections of the golden light that fills the air. As I walked, I thought April is standing off waiting to show us her lovely finery that she wears in the spring.

 

It dawned on me that I always wait for spring to begin in April. March I believe is too flighty to be taken seriously. March, can bring cold winds that blow away the new fruit and flowers too early. But not April.
She brings her gentle rain that quiets the ground so the seeds can have a easier time of coming up because the earth is warming and bringing the smell of spring. Which as I tried to figure out what that wonderful smell is and it just has to be the perfume of blossoms and warming earth and sunshine.

 

Dreaming of April, makes me take stock of my life and how thankful I am to have married in this lovely month. I took my books this morning, even though it is still a bit cold outside to read my Bible and my devotionals. I let my chickens out so they could enjoy this perfect morning. As I sat with my hot coffee in my hand, I thought of that first April when in a few weeks, I would become a bride. Now, almost 36 years later, I can look over the course of my life and what a life it has been. As each decade comes and goes. Each is filled with joy, love, promises, pain and heartache, but all of it is such a lovely tapestry filled with color, vibrancy and always love. I feel so blessed to be given this life of mine. I saw Corrie Ten Boom speak when I was a teenager. As she spoke she said this poem.

    My life is but a weaving
    Between my God and me.I cannot choose the colors
    He weaveth steadily.

    Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
    And I in foolish pride
    Forget He sees the upper
    And I the underside.

    Not ’til the loom is silent
    And the shuttles cease to fly
    Will God unroll the canvas
    And reveal the reason why.

    The dark threads are as needful
    In the weaver’s skillful hand
    As the threads of gold and silver
    In the pattern He has planned

    He knows, He loves, He cares;
    Nothing this truth can dim.
    He gives the very best to those
    Who leave the choice to Him.

 

I can still remember sitting there looking at that embroidery, with the knots, the loose thread not really seeing how the design looked from the back. Then as she turned it over there was the bright colors of the golds, the silvers and the blues and of course the dark threads that gave the outline of the design. As I sat there as a teenager, already my life was full of dark threads, but for me that tapestry spoke of the good that God was allowing in my life even then. Now, with most of my life over now, I see how God has used those dark threads to define me and give me color and purpose. What I find is that because of those dark threads, each day I am given now becomes that more precious.

 

Dreaming of April, makes me dream of her finery that she wears and invites me to dance with her in the sun.
When we got married, Ron wrote a song to sing at our wedding. The words that are my favorite, are, " Who knows how deep in love we fell... Thirty-Six years later, I find the word love to be too small to define what we have now. Living with someone who has seen me at every stage of my body. Who has been with me at every gift God has given, at every joy, every triumph. Not to mention this unexplained part of my life known as menopause.
Of all of the things we have accomplished in our life, the thing I find what I am most proud of is that we never gave up. Even those days we couldn't stand to be in the same room with each other. This part of life as the poem by Robert Browning says it best. "
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!”

I didn't start out to write this, but as you know sometimes blogs write themselves. I dedicate this blog today to our children who have lots of life ahead of them. Lots of challenges and tests. I want them to know that no matter what, never give up because the best is yet to be. You will make it through this trial. I promise.


I love you,
Mom


   

Going Out Like A Lion.

 

I hope you had a delightful Easter. Ours was just a perfect day. Perfect weather, food and family. A day full of laughter. I always want to catch the whole day and save it and keep it forever. I wanted to show you my lovely flowerbed, before the winds this week beat everything all up. Last fall I separated my iris bulbs. I really didn't expect them to go crazy this year. I thought it might be next year. I started the first year we moved here with 10 bulbs. I can't believe how they continue to multiply. My tulips still are lovely. I think I will be planting more tulips in the fall.

 The roses are perfect too. They really do enjoy this weather. I think this color is so pretty too.

Yesterday, William and Makenzie brought Ron and I a wonderful gift. She had a wedding picture framed for us. Since I am so framed challenged they take pity on me. This is from the wedding.

 I am going to need a bigger wall. My wall of fame keeps growing. I am so very blessed and so thankful for each and everyone one of them. I constantly want to pinch myself because I am still me and this is the life God gave us. Not to mention they all still like to come hang out. I still am amazed and in awe.

I also have to really watch what I say. At the flower-shop where Emilie works, they had these beautiful teapots for sale. I meant to go in there and buy one before they were all gone. On Wednesdays, I have the sweet, almost perfect girls that God has graciously given me to do a Bible study with and I asked Emilie if they had any left. I of course was too busy last week to go back.

Yesterday, sweet Emilie brought one in for me.

Isn't lovely? So I have to be very careful what I say. Thank you so much Emilie and Makenzie!

 

 See these weeds? Prettiest weed ever. I wish I could dry them and use them for flower arrangements.
I like to watch them when the wind blows because they just move so bewitchingly. 

 I couldn't get the deep purple with my camera. They really are deep dark purple.

Just some things I thought I would share today. I hope your Monday is a wonderful day. Thank you so much for visiting today.

~Kim~

Can you believe the Hydrangeas? They are bigger than I ever dreamed.

"Ever since I could remember anything, flowers have been like dear friends to me, comforters, inspirers, powers to uplift and to cheer."
Celia Thaxter

Making Hay While The Sun Shines

Happy Good Friday.  I hope all is fine in your place in the world. March has been up to her old tricks. Though not so much in years past. We have had wind, I was so happy when the kites used to show up in the stores this time of year. I love flying kites. Do you remember, next would come yo-yo season

 and then my favorite, marble season. Of course baseball season would start and I loved baseball season. I still have my mitt someplace.

 Do you have time for a story? This is a tiny one?

 Baseball season had started. I had never played baseball before. I had never held a bat before either and had no idea how to hit a ball. So the next time teams were picked at school, no one wanted me on their team. I was so heartbroken, because nothing had ever happened like that before,  I have always been pretty good at all things sports.

I went home heartbroken and poured my heart out to my Mom. She called my Dad at work and told him. He came home early from work with baseball mitts, bats and balls. He took me out in the yard, and until it was too dark to see, he had me hit balls, and catch balls and that night he showed me how to put linseed oil on my mitt and rub it in really good and sleep with it under my mattress to break it in.

The next time it came time to pick teams, I kept quiet and yes, I was picked last. I sort of smirked to myself. When it came time to swing at that pitch, I knocked it out in center field and made it to third base. Needless to say, I was never picked last again. That is a good thing about spring, kite flying, yo-yo's, marbles and of course, baseball. Don't you think?

This week I have worked on weeds. I feel like I am unearthing treasures. I got my berry vines trimmed and ready to go. I only have one more flowerbed to get cleaned. I did manage to dye some wool a couple times this week.

I have a rug I made last year. I have a lady who wants that rug. ( It has sold.)  It was sort of a by the seat of my pants rug. I dyed the wool using hot water and red and blue wool. The rug I called Faded Glory. I finally had to tell her, I can't even remember how I got those colors. So this week, I have been experimenting trying to get the colors I made. It was a rug that I drew out on a leftover piece of linen and just hooked it. Trying to recreate it has been so hard. Because it was a year ago, and I just don't remember.

The other day, I went out to the mail box and there was a little package. Have you ever visited the blog,
Gumbo-Lilly?  She is one of my friends and I love her blog. I love her stories of living on the prairie. Of being a house-wife and gardener and herbalist. She also has sheep and cows and that always speaks to my heart.

She mailed me one of her lovely hand embroidered tea towels.

I just love them.

She also mailed some of her seeds. One thing I love is exchanging seeds and growing them in my garden. I hope to grow them because they are some of my favorites.

Camomile is one of my favorite herbal teas  and growing your own and harvesting it for tea, is the best I have ever tasted. It is so fragrant and sweet. Boxed herbal teas just can't offer that kind of freshness.

 I finished this rug, not my favorite at all. I just can't ever move on until I finish what I started. I started this one last year. Since doing all of this yard work, I am too tired to start new projects and this just needed the background. So when Ron was working on the tractor or the lawnmower, I would hook this background. But it is done and after I get it bound it will go in front of my front door.

I hope you have a lovely Good Friday and Easter Sunday. We will have our family here. It should be a wonderful day with wonderful people.
Blessings from my heart to you,
~Kim~

He isn't here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

 

I hope your Saint Patrick's Day is off to a good day. I have my corned beef in the crockpot. It will be warm enough today I can open all of the doors and windows. I fix normally what is in the cookbooks is New England Boiled Dinner. I just don't like the smell. So today will be a win win.

Isn't this rose pretty? It is the bush that in the spring I love the most. Its color is the color of the ones I carried in my bridal bouquet. So when it blooms early in the spring I always call it my Brides Rose Bush.

 

Life continues to move at a breath taking pace. Last weekend Ron worked on the tractor, and by the end of the day on Saturday it was ready to go. We try not to work on Sundays and this last Sunday we had a notice that PG&E was  going to turn off our power at 5:00 A.M. and it was going to be off until 6:00 P.M. so they could turn on the new poles they put in earlier in January.  On the time change day. Guess what? They never turned it off. It didn't even blip. We waited all day!! We should have gone someplace. We still cooked outside so it wasn't a complete waste. I am glad that the things I like to do require no electricity.
I imagine that we will get another notice and they will turn it off this time as long as they said.

 

My tulips are still just wonderful. Every day I have some kind of surprise waiting for me. This red and white one was really a nice surprise. I should keep better records because I don't remember buying this kind.
I am getting that feeling in my fingers to start wanting to plan a garden. I don't know what the water situation will be like this year, so I have to keep my fingers crossed. Here is a article about what is really going on in California, don't believe the propaganda about our water woes. It is political. http://www.agalert.com/story
/?id=9443

I will try and keep my opinions quiet but sometimes I grow tired of so much of the propaganda that we hear day in and day out. What a bust El Nino was/is. We are green right now and we are not New England. We are the desert. We are brown nine months a year. Most of my life, we have had droughts that last 10 years. It is just the way it goes. I wish people studied history.

Okay back to flowers. This will forever be Emilie's Lilac. We finally put it in the ground this year. She bought it when she was about 17 and she was going to have her gardens. She was afraid to take it to her apartment so now it will live here. We were shopping the other day, and she mentioned she wants a poisonous garden someday. I had been thinking about it and wondering about making one. You know plants like Oleander, and Foxglove. They are pretty, you just don't eat them.

I just had to show you Ron's Japanese maples in the front.  They are just magnificent. It gets so hot on them in the summer, but right now with all of the rain and the cool weather this is how they should look.
Ron fertilized our lawn a week and half ago. We now have the amazon growing in the year to go with the weeds everywhere else. Every thing is so green and pretty.

I wish you a wonderful day today,

~Kim~

 Christ beside me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me. ---Saint Patric

10 Things I Love about Today.

Do you feel spring around you today? Every where I look, I see the new green leaves on the trees. Things are waking up and it looks like every morning, that new lace in all different shade of green has been painted on the trees. There is still the pink, and white interspersed among the green. Walking out in the morning, is that smell of spring that does make me go a tad crazy.

Here is my list of 10 things I love about today.

 

 1. The sky looks like someone was finger painting with blue and white.

 

2. After the rain, after the storms, life is really a beautiful place. The lawn is covered in diamonds.
The flowers all have drops with tiny rainbows to go with the heavenly smells.

 

3. Every day it is fun to go outside and listen to the cooing of the happy doves, to see the little flock
of finches that follow me around, and the blue jay that things I am so entertaining. Listening to my hens,
complaining about having to lay yet another egg.

 

4. Spring time lists. I like making lists in the spring time. Knowing that things that need a coat of paint, or
flowerbeds that need to get cleaned will get cleaned. There are just so many nice things to dream and think about especially today.

 

5. Daffodils. Need I say more?

 

6. Sorry, I just had to add a picture of a minion. They just make me so happy.

 

7. New roses.

 

8. The  incredible red of the Japanese Maples.

 

 9. Spring is like this, full of surprises at every turn.

10.  This month, for the first time, Nine years ago,  I became a grand mother. We had our oldest three grandsons born. Three days apart.

 I still had four at home whom I was homeschooling. My youngest then was 11. Every year, I am so thankful that God gave me this life. In March, when we celebrate their birthdays, I am reminded that no matter how deep the water, how hot the fires, things can happen that are so out of control, you can with the mercy of God, survive. "  You can rise from the ashes again, and what looked like your hearts demise, turns out to be a blessing in disguise..

Its a lovely day to be alive. I hope your have a wonderful day today.
Thank you so much for the gift of YOU!!

~Kim~

 "The word 'March' comes from the Roman 'Martius'. This was originally the first month of the Roman calendar and was named after Mars, the god of war.  March was the beginning of our calendar year. We changed to the 'New Style' or 'Gregorian calendar in 1752, and it is only since then when we the year began on 1st January. The Anglo-Saxons called the month Hlyd monath which means Stormy month, or Hraed monath which means Rugged month. All through Lent the traditional games played are marbles and skipping. The games were stopped on the stroke of twelve noon on Good Friday, which in some places was called Marble Day or Long Rope Day.  The game of marbles has been played for hundreds of years and some historians say that it might have been started by rolling eggs. In the past, round stones, hazelnuts, round balls of baked clay and even cherry stones have been used."
-  Facts About March

Minions And Stuff

I really need to get back on a regular blogging system. I feel like I just neglect my blog so much this year.
We had a bit of rain and wind last night. Every thing is pretty and clean and the sun sparkles in the rain drops on all of the flowers and in the lawn. Everything is green and oh so pretty. Meadowlarks are singing and the mockingbirds are fighting everything that tries to build a nest in the yard. The blue jays are such a bright blue and the nosy blue jays are keeping their beady black eyes on all the goings on around here.

How about a before and after picture today.

This was earlier this week.

 This is this morning. We worked on it yesterday. I can still walk. So I am making progress in the spring training program.

The trees are all starting to get their leaves over here. We lost two trees this last summer. Ron will transplant some of his pines  here. The pine trees that he grows seem to be more drought tolerant than some of the other trees we have tried  here.

Our youngest grandson turned four last week. When they get to have sleep overs at grandma and grandpas house they always bring a Despicable Me one and two. My favorite part about having them over is letting them make their own pizza and then we watch movies. Ron and I both have fallen in love with those movies. One thing though I have a hang up on is minions. They just make me laugh. This last week, I bought the boys some and I just loved them so much.

On Friday I was grocery shopping and Ron was getting chicken feed and stuff for the lawn. He got home before I did and he helped me carry in groceries and I went in to my room to take off my coat and what should meet my eyes.

Here is some close ups:

I have that shelf and I change out the things on it all of the time. Right now it has my sewing things I am collecting on it. I looked up and there was all of these adorable minions watching me. I said, " Hey!!! Where did these guys come from!!," I started laughing and Ron was laughing too, he of course got lots of kisses!
It was such a surprise! Such a nice surprise. He said,"  that every time, I give the kids minions I get so wistful, he thought I should have my own."  So he found me some. I still laugh every time I walk by.  Best surprise ever!!

My first tulip is beginning to open. Isn't it pretty? I am so glad I planted bulbs in the fall. I am sure enjoying them this spring.

I finished my spotted hare rug, last week. Somehow. I don't know when I found time, but I did. I really love how it turned out.

Pattern by Cammie Bruce.

I ordered some wool so I am happily anticipating some days of dyeing wool. That is why I need to get this weeding done. Rug hooking right now feels like a guilty pleasure.

Ron's Japanese Maples that he grafted are coming out and waking up. They are just so pretty and red.

I just love it when he is working with his trees. It is such a nice thing in my mind when he is working with trees.

I hope you have a lovely day. I am still holding out of rain today. I think it is snowing in the mountains as it is getting cooler down in the valley.

Thank you so much for stopping by today,
~Kim~

Freesias

Despite March's windy reputation, winter isn't really blown away; it is washed away. It flows down all the hills, goes swirling down the valleys and spills out to sea. Like so many of this earth's elements, winter itself is soluble in water.... It is a wet world, winter's harsh grip beginning to relax.... An outcropping ledge on the hillside sheds its beard of icicles and becomes a seep spring that drips into a shallow pool that feeds a growing runlet. ~"Washing Winter Away," The New York Times, 1964 March 17th