...Then After The Storm.

 

One thing that I like after a storm, is the beauty that comes in the afterward. The wind blew and blew and then the storm was past and all was quiet and the sky was so filled with color. I love sunsets and sunrises in January.

We spent the morning cleaning up from the wind. After the lawn gets mowed and all of the broken tumbleweeds picked up it will look back to normal.

Here are some before and after photos.

Our poor little avocado tree has had a horrible winter. He always manages to come out of it, but I don't think we will ever get a crop from it.

 

 All nice and clean. You can really see the damage that the cold weather has done this year.

 

All clean again. Ron always has projects going on, he has decided his next one is to finish getting the bug restored. He was driving it around so it is out now in the driveway. I think once he gets it all fixed up it will be fun to go do errands in like go to the library. I have always enjoyed manual transmissions.

 

I wanted you to see how big the tumbleweeds are and how you have to grab them by the stem to haul them away. Ron was taking my picture and there were all of these cars almost stopped on the road with people staring. I was laughing saying,"  hurry up we are causing a traffic jam."

 

Here is one of our first world problems. See the mud in the swimming pool. The pool  is clean now but this was how the bottom looked. Not to mention the leaves. It is like a pool of ice water.

 

This was how pretty the sky looked this morning. The haze is gone and the sky is blue and so pretty again.
There are so many, many things in the world to be thankful for, like the change in a weather pattern.

Have a lovely Saturday, thank you for stopping by today.

~Kim~

 " I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
(Philippians 3:14)

Finally, Weather!

 

We finally have some weather. Wind, blowing dust, tumbleweeds. At least during the night, the wind must have shifted and blew the some of the tumbleweeds away from the house. The wind is blowing from the east and from the four corners area. Which means it is from the desert. This morning at 6:30 it was already 70 degrees. It always feels so unnatural. The sound of the wind blowing around the house sounds like a radio just off the station.

 

The old palm trees at my sister-in-laws are roaring and sound like the ocean in a storm. The sky is such a strange color and when I took this the dust hadn't started blowing yet but now like a cloud of brown it is coming toward us. We have another day and night of this but no rain yet in the forecast.

Do you know what I am happy about? No Wedding!! I can sit and watch the wind and not panic.

 

The mountains in the background cannot be seen now, as the dust is blowing so hard now. The taste and smell of the dust and the burning in my throat is always my least favorite thing about east winds.

Earlier this week when I was wishing for color and flowers, I dug out my favorite silk flowers and put them in my workman's tool box. It makes me happy to see some kind of color.

 

Now that Emilie works in a flower shop, I always cringe at my ability to arrange flowers. I need to have her teach me how to make it look very nice. She has learned so much about flower arranging now.

Here is a picture of my finally finished whale rug. Three years later. I am so glad it is finished. I got it steamed but don't have the right color to bind the edges. I need to go buy some soon.

 

I think I am finished now with all of my old projects. That is a nice feeling. My son Elliot, asked if he could have this rug for his room. I was so happy to oblige. He told me he had his eye on this for a long time. He never said a word to me or I might have finished it faster.

I hope you have a lovely day. I have to get off now, Ron is working from home as there is no power at his office and we have power here. My computer for some reason takes his bandwidth.
~Kim~

 

  "There's a lot of hope and a lot of faith and love mixed up in a miracle."
---Journey from Peppermint Street,---Meindert DeJong.                                  

Yet Another Eye Exam

 

Are you getting sick of my stories of my eyes? This one, I thought was funny. I don't know why it tickles me but it does. It is just better to laugh right?  I am so blessed really, to live in 2014. Today was more testing.
I have had my eyes looked at, and bright lights shined into them and today had them poked with a sharp stick with a red light. 

 

Today the doctor that did the testing was a very nice man. When he came in, the first thing he said, was,
" What are you doing in here for cataracts, you are too young." Right off the bat I liked him.
 I put my eye up to the screen then he leaned around the machine, and looked at me with a shocked look on his face. He said, " Oh, My Gosh! Did you drive here yourself? How in the world do you do anything, you are blind, you are too young to have cataracts this bad."  After asking me tons of questions what he finally thought it was was radiation from being out in the garden without sunglasses or a hat and the glare out there has hurt my eyes really bad.

 

My eyes were so bad that he couldn't use that machine so he had to use a different one. He had to get more readings. The nurses were so kind and every time I had a question they would explain to me what things meant and they showed me the lens that they will  put in my eye. They showed me how the surgery works,  as I was a bit rattled. You know like, I know my eyes were bad but I manage to get every thing done. I was kind of jumpy driving home.

 

  I got home I had so many things I was thankful for, like living now when they can fix my eyes.
Having doctors who have machines that can give exact readings.
Being able to function in spite of being blind.
Having people who pray for me and give me verses just when I need them and I can feel the prayers.
Being happy that very, very soon I will be able to see again. I know this will sound odd, but I am so very, very thankful I am not crazy. You see, for so long I have thought I was crazy. I thought I whined too much and complained to myself when I couldn't do simple things anymore.
I am so thankful it isn't my imagination.

The biggest thing of all is, feeling so dumb because I would make so many mistakes doing counted cross stitch. Do you know how dumb I felt because I would spend more time ripping out? I did find today, I took a embroidery thing to work on in the doctors office. I can embroider so that helps with the needle withdrawal.
Apparently I shouldn't be able to do that either. That is what makes me tickled, even with the machines saying one thing, God has been so gracious to me not to take away these things I love. I think it is just one of those little things that maybe wouldn't mean much to most people but to me, I feel really special. I am very thankful for it all.

Thank you for listening to me and reading these silly posts. I really feel I have been given a gift. It makes me stop and count  my blessings one by one. . My eyes will be going from a old black and white T.V. set with rabbit ears to pick up stations to a flat screen 52 inch HDTV. That was how they explained it to me.

Have a lovely Wednesday,

~Kim~

 Rejoice always,  pray continually,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) 
(My Life verse)

Monday again.

 

I am feeling decidedly very boring. Everything around here is in black and white. I am having a flower famine.  I walked around with my camera. Nothing. Just some black birds. I could hear the meadowlarks.
So today, I have to go into my computer to find flowers.

Poor rose bush is now just sticks. I hacked it back to nothing. I love this little rose bush. I think it looks so pretty when it is covered in blooms.

Soon very soon I will have these. I can't wait. No wonder I stare at them by the time they start blooming.

 

I miss sunflowers. So do the finches. If I could understand bird speak, I would think as they follow me around the place from tree to tree, they are asking me where the sunflowers are. Sometimes I think I even hear a question mark at the end of the chatter.  They are very chatty birds. Now the Bluejays are a different story, they demand. They also complain when I am out walking around. I saw a flicker and a blue jay get into it the other day. The flicker was minding it's own business drilling holes in the ground getting some ants, and the blue jay very quietly flew from tree to tree until it hit the flicker. Then the fight was on, I think the flicker won, because I didn't see that blue jay the rest of the day and the flicker continued to drill holes.

 

I have a few lists of all of the things I will be doing in March. It is kind of like a bucket list of sorts.  To plant lots of flowers. I miss all of their smiling faces and seeing the sun as it first hits them in the morning.

I finished that snowman rug this weekend. What a fun project. It made me smile as I worked on it. This one is the biggest I have done so far. I got out my other big projects that I will start soon, and they don't feel as big as I first thought because of this snowman rug.

All I will have to do is bind the edges and it will be ready for the closet. :)


Have a great Monday,
~Kim~

 "I've many a cross to take up now,
And many left behind;
But present troubles move me not;
Nor shake my quiet mind.
And what may be to-morrow's cross
I never seek to find;
My Father says, "Leave that to me;"
And keep a quiet mind."
(Anonymous)