Wooo back again.

Getting ready for the UPs.  Food is bought.  Camp kitchen packed...80% of the clothes are in the suitcase. Books are ready.  Not to much more to do but wait!  Been walking at the Y.  Good thing to do after eating bread.  It's a horrible thing for my body to have with being diabetic.  Grrrrr.  So off to the Y.  It was FULL tonight.  Mornings are so much better.  All the jocks are there in the evening...Female and Male!  So I just walk walk with my ear buds.  Flowers and veg. are doing great.  Water coming at the right time.  I'm sure while we are gone the tomatoes will be here...cantalope..black berries and squash for sure. We've had lettuce and kale.   Tomorrow it's lunch with Doris, Rosie and Kathy.  Then a haircut!  Wed. and Thurs is full as well so it's good that I'm ready for vac.  Friday we'll pack the van and Andrew and Noah will be here for the day.  We're out of here Sat.  Yahoo.

Back for now but who knows how long.

Summer has come to Carmel.  Nice and warm today and love having the windows open and NO airconditioning.  Just lots of fans and one is suppose to slow down at some point in the year!  Up to 90 today so they way.  Not to hot.   The birds are singing in my room...the real birds for that matter.  I'm checking the gardens ever morning and evening.  Such fun.  Flowers are beautiful with the right around of rain.  Not watering much at all.  But the veg. garden.  Fighting with the deer again and hopefully have everything blocked off by now.  That deer loves bean plants, tomato plants and flower buds.  Oops...forgot the tops of the sunflowers as well.  That seems to take care of the sunflowers for sure.  So...just trying to keep ahead of the huge critter. Japanese Beatles  are prolific.   Raccoons have climbed the hummingbird pole so those feeders come in every night.  And we live in the city of Carmel!  Well, sort of country but not the country that Jared has.  Busy thinking about camping.  Hard to wait and looking forward to the boring stretch of 35 miles outside of Crystal Falls.  Due north with lots of trees and nothing else.  Due north.   Looking forward to!!!  Crazy.  Way to much to think about here.  Had a hard weekend and Monday with another funeral for another dear choir friend.  It's an other  of many who have died of cancer in the choir.  Marilyn worked at Butler in the PE department, a tiny little friend who ran marathons.  Such a sweetheart and I think 56 years of age.  She ran her final race.  Election stuff has kept me well entertained this summer.  How crazy can it get?  Fun, fun.  The rest of the week looks a bit tame.  Woo, woo.  Soup kitchen still on Thursday and Andrew and Noah come to play with me on Fri.  Such fun.  So...now you know maybe something you didn't know.  Maybe not.

September 2nd.

New season coming this month.  Movin' along.  Warmer days are here but just in the low 90's.  Not bad.  We've had a wonderful summer of great temps and rain at the right time..  Nothing to high.  Today I looked around the garden again.  I haven't done that for a while with some sewing and knitting getting my attention.  Today was an outside day.  Decided to UTube gathering zinnia seeds.  So out to the garden to find the best zinnia heads to gather.  There were many, many.  Most of the large zinnia plants came from collected seeds so I'll continue the process.  I have a basket full that are drying out on the picnic table.  Zinnias love to grow up until the frost if the bad blooms are taken off.  Such fun to be working where the butterflies kept me entertained.

 Did some baking this afternoon with Colendula orange cookies. Another herb. One actually pulls the peddles from the flower and adds them to the cookie dough.  Adds a bit of color to the cookie.  Then another Michigan wild blueberry scone.  Half is in the freezer.  Half in our stomachs.  Then it was Pesto with wonderful Basil from the garden.  That's also in the freezer.  It seems to keep better where we can't eat it.  And lastly...icemint tea.  Woo, woo.  It's been a fun day.  Tomorrow Daughter-in-law Kat will have a hernia repaired.  She cleans in her apartment complex.  Tuesday morning I helped her clean 13 entrances.  Woo...the sweeper is heavy and that was my job.  Not a good idea for her to lift things.  She worked part of the stuff and I worked the rest.  And we gother done!   I have a lot of respect for what she does.  I'll be helping her after surgery.

Tomorrow is bread and bowl and choir practice starts in the evening.  Then Friday we're off to Michigan to learn about honey harvesting.  THAT should be fun.

Good Grief.  5 weeks since I wrote.  Well, there is alt to write about so here go the fingers.  We spent 2 wonderful weeks in Copper Harbor Mi. camping at Fort Wilkins with the Jared family just next door in a matching Alaskan Cabela Tent.  What fun to have the grandsons come for pancakes every morning. The weather was perfect.  Air conditioned outsides for 99% of the time.  Sunny, cloudy, partly both, rain, no rain, wind, thunder, lightening. We got everything but snow in small amounts at the right time.  What fun.  I read, slept, knitted, read, slept, knitted talked to Leslie on the porch and then did everything again.  Ate, pancakes, pasties, rice cakes with peanut butter, ice cream, soup, and then did it all over again.  Microwave came in handy, electric skillet was used and paper plates every day!  We took two days to get to CP and two days to get home.  Madison Wi, is a good halfway place to stop.  It's still a long 7 hr day no matter how we try to make it shorter.  And...home again to a wonderful garden gift all in full color with monarch butterflies greeting us.  What a wonderful surprise.  I'm inviting friends to come see.  It's the best flower garden and vegetable garden I have ever had.  The only thing that would make it better if the rabbit family had not arrived. And it would appear that something has happened to them now since I've not seen them since I arrived home.  They love red beet tops and carrot tops and broccoli leaves.  Our tomatoes are WONDERFUL  Doug and I just stand in the garden and eat Jasper tomatoes.  They are cherry tomatoes that are taller then me.  I'll need to get a ladder in the garden to get to some of them.  We also have wonderful tomatoes for BLT's.  Cabbage head is in the refrigerator and Egg Plant is ready to cut.  This week I did some cleaning up in both gardens.  Some of the zennia's are taller then me.  That's over 5 feet.  A lot of them are staked and I'll need to do more staking.  Black eyed Susans are blooming everywhere with lots of other interesting flowers doing their best.  What a wonderful sight to see outside the kitchen window.  I am blessed.  Well, that's all for now.  Signing off.  LR

Back again.

The break from blogging is about a year old now.  Just way to much to think about but I'll give this a try again.  We're healthy, kids are great...grandsons are great and life goes on at a good pace.  Gardening has been a wonderful diversion.  I'm loving that almost as much as the men in my life.  Great summer rains at the right time.  Not a whole lot of heat although I think the zinnias would like some of that at this point.  I told Doug to hide the shovel with the hope that I could stop transplanting things.  Well, that didn't happen and I'm one happy camper that it didn't.  I've been working some time on a Fellowship of Music and Worship Arts presentation that will happen on the 23rd of this month.  It's a wonderful national convention here in Indy for 4 days.  The last day folks interested in visuals will be coming to North for 2 hrs.  North's visuals will be on display supporting all of the church year.  Yes...all.  So...lots of banners among other things will be out and about the church.  Busy time but so happy to share our good fortune of banner ownership.  Took a short trip to Michigan to see Jared.  What a fun time.  Lots of sheep to count...learned how to spin wool into yarn...learned how to ply yarn, learned how to card wool.  And of course the Michigan grandsons were the extra special treat. Eric's two boys...Andrew and Noah come to see me every Fri.  We have such a good time.  They are so sweet and kind to each other.  Makes the day go so fast.  The next week will be such fun finishing up loose ends for the Fellowship week.  Then its a week to clean up and put away at church and then we're off to Lake Superior for two weeks of sitting and playing with our Michigan family.  Woo, woo.  Pancakes at grandma's tent every morning.  Life is good.

Happening

Way to much has happened.  Woo...This will be the short version.
We managed once again to vacation in Michigan the last week in July and the first week in Aug.
Jared and family were with us again.  What fun with all the little guys as well as their parents.  The first week was cold.  The second week was just perfect although the cold wasn't very bad.  No bugs, no rain and lots of time spent sewing, reading and sitting on the porch at the pottery shop visiting with friends from Sterling and Novi among other places.

On returning home found that one of our huge honey locust tress had blown down and that took a ton of money to get cleaned up.

Then we learned that brother Jim who had visited with us the week before vacation had fallen, receiving a concussion which led to complications and eventually his death in Richmond.  So, sad, so sad.  What an emotional roller coaster.  So...off to Richmond to attend his memorial service.  He is the first sibling to die.  My sister Mary K lives here in Carmel.  So fortunate for me.

Back home again and then Doug entered Saxony hospital for another heart cauterization adding another stint to his heart vessels.  The total is 4 currently.    I'm ready for some boring days.

We traded in my car and Doug's truck for a Honda Oddessy before vacation and for the 6 weeks we've had it there are 4,500 miles on it.  Woo...Yes...ready for some boring days.  I miss my little Civic.

Tomorrow our church organist and very, very good friend is playing for the last time at North.  He's off to Oregon Monday.  Another leaving.  His replacement's resume is wonderful but no one can fill Martin's shoes like he did.  A wonderful personality that really could role with the punches.  He also directed bells.

Garden looks good.  Gourds are growing, dug potatoes.  Tomatoes are coming on and a few squash actually survived.  The summer has been cooler than usual.  Some veg. want heat.

So that's the short version.  My heart and head are tired and I'm chilling out for a time.

A very sleepy Sunday.

Can't remember when I slept almost all of Sunday afternoon away.  Perfect weather to do that.  Garden continues to show off but now could use a little water.  Tomorrow evening neighbor Judy and I are going to a Herb Society meeting in Brownsburg.  Tues. supper Doug and I are visiting a church friends garden along with some friends.  Should be fun.  Not much more going on.  So...tend the garden and make some carry out dishes for Mon and Tues. and that should be it.  Still sleepy.