Flowerbeds

Here are a few pictures I took of my flowerbeds last weekend. These were all new beds last year so I am still waiting to see what comes back this year.


This is the 'blue butterfly' plant. I planted two of these and they are both coming back.


Potato vine - not supposed to come back, but I haven't planted any this year and I found this last weekend.

The lantana is coming back

on both sides of the porch. I am so glad to see these coming back. I have tried them once before in another flowerbed and they didn't make the summer - I'm glad I gave them another chance!

The hydrangea is coming back nicely too

There were nine of these last weekend! Now to see what color they bloom this year.

That is it for the flower pictures for now (although I guess they are just plant pictures at this point since there aren't any blooms yet!).

Things are drying out around here. No rain at all yesterday. They are keeping the CYA (cover your a**) 20% chance in the rain for the rest of the week but hopefully there won't be anymore before the ground has a chance to dry out a bit.

Have a great day!

When it rains, it pours.

Remember those rain clouds from yesterday? The opened up late afternoon.


It rained most of the night


and is still raining now (though not as heavy as earlier) and they are saying it may rain more later today. Fortunately where we are there isn't any flooding (yet), but many areas are flooded. Many schools are closed, roads are closed, houses are flooded. People are stranded. Some areas have had as much as a foot of rain in the last 24 hours. Wonder how far into summer we will get before there will be a drought and people will be begging for rain?

Me - I get to stay inside and wait for the UPS truck to come by. :)

Haven't forgot the pics of the flowerbeds - just thought I would share the rain today.

Views

Rue showed us the lovely views she has out her windows (and her lovely window too!) so I'm showing my views. (though I can't see it from the computer - it is behind me)


We are supposed to have some storms coming through this afternoon - looks possible. Thankfully, I have no reason to get out in it.


I have no lovely window to show. We have a sliding glass door with two plain windows on either side. One day I will show you how truly boring they are, but for now this is the tree that is in front of our building. There aren't any wonderful old houses around here - if you find something built before 1975 it would be really old - but there are a lot of trees! The rest of the apartment is just about as boring. It is beige - 'nuff said. Seems my poor blog is suffering from boredom too - I hope to still have at least a few readers when I get back to a normal life.

I do have plants coming out in the flowerbeds at home and I got a few pictures yesterday- I'll try to show those pictures tomorrow.

Well - think I'll fix me a diet DP and maybe stitch a bit while I wait on the last load of laundry to finish. I did finish stitching something last week - will get pics of that up soon. Have no idea what I am going to do with it now that I'm no longer working in a frame shop!

Shhh . . . don't tell

So - the other day when we were out driving around, we ended up pretty close to 3 stitches so of course we had to drop by. :)
I picked up a couple of charts - and what's that? A pair of scissors?


But not just any scissors - not only are they Dovos, but they are special Dovos!

Green handles and can you see the engraving on the blades? The 3 Stitches logo! I've actually resisted them the last couple of times I was in the shop, but I needed a little pick-me-up so I gave in this time.

Now, I have a question. As we all know, several magazines have folded of late so I have picked up a few new ones. Without naming names - it has always irritated me somewhat to start getting renewal notices when I'm only half-way through the subscription term but the latest one really got me. The FIRST ISSUE came with a renewal notice. I'm sorry, but no matter how much I like the magazine, I won't renew it. Does this bother anyone else? This falls right in line with the fourth, fifth - final notice of a subscription that has expired. I might have over looked it the first or second time, but by the third time, they ought to get the message that a person doesn't intend to renew! Sorry about the rant - just had to get that one off my chest.

Back to our regular schedule!

House hunting hiatus

I'm taking a break from serious house hunting. As long as this

is planted in front of our little yellow house, we really can't buy another one anyway. I would hate to find just the right house and then be disappointed because it got away before we sold ours. I'm also not willing to stick myself with two houses so . . . I'm trying not to get depressed about it yet. I'm stuck between not wanting to sell it and wondering why it hasn't sold. I know I'll shed more than a few tears when it does finally sell.

I am still looking now and then at the for sale postings around here, but I'm not obsessing about it any more. It was getting to be too much - I would spend all day on the computer making lists, then when hubby came home we would get out and drive around until dark. I need the break - and so does he.

We are in the process of trying to extend the lease on this apartment to give us some time. It is all in the paperwork stage at the moment. Once the current lease is up we will have to move some furniture here since almost everything here belongs to the leasing company. That should be fun. Have I mentioned that this place is upstairs? Yep, moving furniture should be lots of fun.

I think I need some chocolate.

Sunday drive

We stayed in Houston this weekend. This is only the second weekend we have not gone back 'home' since we came here in February (and the last time was because we had already been in twice that week) It is a good 2 1/2 -3 hour drive each way so it does get old after awhile. Anyway - since we didn't go home, we took a Sunday drive and ended up on Galveston Island. It was the first time I have been in about 7 years and the first time hubby has been since he was helping evacuate people prior to Rita. We just drove around the island to see how things looked. We did stop here - all the pictures I took were at this one point.



There were quite a few people on the beaches and in the water (although not at this point - they were fishing, but not in the water here) and there were some businesses open (it was Easter Sunday so I'm sure there are actually more things open than what we saw)


There is still a lot of work to be done. Some places it was hard to tell if they were repairing or just clearing debris. It is a pretty sad sight.

While we were standing there, we spotted this in the distance - of course you could tell it was a Carnival ship right away

so we waited to see which one it was

Look - it is the Conquest! Our one and only (so far) cruise was for our 25th anniversary and this is the ship we were on! (it was sailing out of New Orleans at that time)

I thought since we were staying here over the weekend I would get caught up on blog reading, but nope. I didn't even check email until last night and I am once again 200+ behind on blog posts. Oh well - I'll get there, eventually!

Hope you had a great weekend!

This 'n that

Hello blog friends!
I know I am doing a terrible job of posting lately but I do what I can. I've also not been responding to comments like I should. I read all and appreciate all of them but I get my comments at my aol account and the current internet connection I'm using won't give me a full connection to aol so I don't get pictures and it rarely connects when I click on a link. When I try responding to comments I usually end up with the computer locked up and have to restart. I hate that. I really need to change the email address on the account but I'm lazy. (as if you hadn't already figured that one out!)
I spent some time with Bertha last week. Managed to 'break' her, but I took her in and she is all fixed now. This is what I was working on when she 'broke'. I finished it up when I got her back home - er, here - whatever. This is as close as I am going to get with the picture. This was my first attempt at free-motion quilting and it looks like crap up close.

As for the fake flowers - they came with the apartment. :)

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Get-a-way weekend

This time last Friday I was getting myself all packed for a weekend get-a-way.
It seems that when you don't post very often you get out of practice - these pictures are not in the order I intended for them to be, but I'm not going to start moving them around so here goes.

We had three projects (I only got one stitched over the weekend - some people got two, I don't think anyone finished all three and if they did, I don't want to know about it!) Anywho - the theme this years was bees!

Our first project was a scissor pocket


This is one that someone not only finished stitching, but got the finish work done too.


I got everything on mine done except the backstitch, I finished that when I got home - I haven't pressed it yet or done the finishing work on it.


This is the back (told you I am out of practice) of a snippet pocket


Here is the front - cute, huh?

Needlebook front

and back

We had snacks

lots of snacks!

and here is the pile of stuff I came home with - including, but not limited to - 2 mother of pearl threadkeeps, scissors, several charts, honey, honey roasted peanuts, bee buttons, threads - 'Beehive' and 'Queen Bee'. (bee theme - remember!) Some of these were things I purchased, but most of it was either door prizes, gift exchange or some of the 'extras' Pam always hands out. I must say, I think Pam really out-did herself this year. Everything was great and we all had a wonderful time. Sandra, Sarah, Sherry and myself have already made our deposit for next year!

Have a great weekend!