A weedy trip through the gardens.

Soon enough, I'll be trippin' through the gardens with the gloves and weed bucket.  In the meantime, we have things growing!  Just look!

A volunteer lavender that will be moved soon.  Volunteers are my favorite kind of surprise!

A parsley volunteer.

A yarrow volunteer.  

My soon-to-be rotating compost bin.  I bought it last week for $15 at the Earth Day celebration at Hubs' work.  For Mother's Day, I want him to build a rack for it and get it rolling. 

It came from Greece!  :)

Two tulips.

A lovely daffodil.  The daffodils at the driveway aren't blooming.  I don't know why.  They didn't last year, either.  Maybe they need split.

Another lovely tulip.

A sea of Lily of the Valley.

An ocean of periwinkle.

Lamb's Ear that I transplanted last year right before the out of doors started the permanent state of fever.

Coreopsis.

Columbine.  I've found bits of Columbine all over the bed.  I'm good with it.  It can live where God planted it.

Cup Flower-- a plant that I bought from the native plants sale at the Wilderness Center.

I have no idea what this is, but I purposely planted it since it is three plants neat and tidy all in a row.  I'll figure it out soon enough.  

The bee balm made it through the winter!  Not all of the bee balm is up yet, but this one seems very happy!

A carrot from what I planted last year. A surprise carrot.

The dratted ivy I have to clear away from the house.  It is like a highway straight into the house for all of the little ants.

Grape Hyacinth.

I put the rain barrel out a few weeks ago.  I can't tell you how much I love it.  

My vine arbor needs a bit of a reconstruction.  The carpenter ants got to the legs and ate the living tar out of it.  It was leaning and I had K and E help me to move it to the picnic table area right behind it.  Hubs has promised to give it some love.  Never mind that it was labeled critter resistant.  Crud. 

An update on my seedlings.  Well, they aren't seedlings anymore.  The tallest tomato plant (from bottom of the cup to the top of the plant) measures 19 1/2".  They've been getting fresh rain water and a lot of sun.  I'll be replanting some in party cups with handmade tags for K to take to school for Teacher Appreciation Week.  I think that it is grand to give a teacher something that will feed them all summer long.  :)  K loves the idea, too.

Have a great weekend!

Some of this and bits of that.

This was 2 hours and 45 minutes of our evening tonight.  This spelling list was torture, particularly since this week was standardized testing week.  Maybe it is just me and Hubs, but we thought that this spelling list was a bit insane for a 3rd grader.  

Speaking of, we had OAA (Ohio Achievement Test) or as I think of it Oh-AA week.  K felt pretty good about her testing and the teachers have been (I hate to say it) teaching to test since the kids returned in January.  No kidding.  Her teacher did a skit with the one tutor and it seemed to help K and many of the other kids.  It was something about flipping the snake off their shoulder.  Whatever it was, I told Mrs. H that it seemed to really work and keep up the good work.

Hubs has a man cold.  THE man cold.  I slept in bed a few nights ago, but he woke me up 4 different times because I snored or something.  The next night I slept on the couch to keep from bothering him and woke up 4 different times with him sitting on the couch next to me because HE COULDN'T SLEEP.  I asked what I could do, what I could get . . . Nope.  He just couldn't sleep.  He has come home early the last two days.  He has a program with 800+ expected on Saturday.  He was out at Earth Day on Saturday in high winds and cold.  He had a bit of something underlying, but that basically sealed the deal.  I do feel bad for him and have volunteered my services.  K and I will be helping on Saturday, requiring us to haul out at about 7 AM to get everything underhand with him, get almost everything handled on clean-up of details and press on to swim lessons 30 minutes away, then off to lunch with Grandma and Grandpa after.  I offered to pick things up, but since they are donations from businesses near and far, he'd like to do it personally so that they are thanked from him and the park.  I get it.

K has the same cold.  She coughed and coughed the last night that I stayed in bed that I've been giving her Children's Mucinex every night.  I won't give it to her in the morning since I don't want her going to school drugged.  Even her art teacher commented on her cough.  Yup.  I know.

We have a show at work this weekend.  I was busting my butt to get displays done despite the items that I needed not coming in.  Somebody scheduled a large bus tour to come by, but it seemed like a crazy idea with show prep going on.  We had to have everything all tidy for the tour only to find out that the crowd we expected were not who we got.  Not much money was exchanged, but I got to be the bathroom attendant, so not all was lost!

I had a lady come to the counter with an armload of things and announce, "I only have $52.00."  That would be okay, but she obviously over ran that $52 just on a quick visual run.  It reminded me of last week with the children with the book fair.  At least then I got to the point of saying, "Darlin', how much money do you have with you today?"  I can't do that with the customers.  I have never had anyone else do that.

The lady who decided to stay shopping after closed had her credit card decline.  Good times.  I hate having to ask for another.  "Do you have another flavor?"  That's my standard line.  Oy.

While helping K with her spelling extravaganza this evening, I washed and folded laundry.  At least I got decent things done.

I scored on an overrun of Turkey Kielbasa at the grocery.  It was marked down by half.  It doesn't have  a sell by date for another week, they just had too much.  We had that cooked with red peppers and mushrooms, K ate the remainder of her fruit salad from this morning and I cooked cabbage with some butter, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar.  I could have eaten the whole pan, but I knew that would be no good for anyone involved.  I exercised restraint.  ;)

With a yawn, I have laundry to put away.  I must snuggle up and get ready for another day.

Have a great night!

ETA:  After all of that work, K got every single one of her spelling words right and for that week, she was THE only one who was Spelling Smartie.  She was thrilled!  Now, don't make me tell you about that reading test she flubbed on the same day . . .

The deadeye darlin'.

K came home from school today, the craziness of the OAA last day prep and announced to Hubs that they needed to get out.  She needed to go somewhere and do something.

They went to the archery range.

I got texts from Hubs reporting where they were at, what they were doing and he even sent me a video.  Then he texted me later.  "Three bullseye in a row."  Later was, "She is on fire and got more bullseye.  I tried and I shot the arrow into the woods."

She shot for about an hour at 10 yards.  She was not shooting at 10 yards in the indoor range AND kiddo forgot her glasses AND she is nearsighted.

In the house, she now has the title of Deadeye.  Spanked the pants off of her dad.  ;)

I told him she took lessons and he didn't.  His response?  "Yea."