New Flowers

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I love days like today. The high was 74 degrees or something, a slight breeze, a cloudless sunny sky - beautiful!

Steve went to work. Simon was gallivanting around town, doing car stuff - what else? I cleaned the garage, something I've been looking forward to all week, honestly. Earlier this week we bought one of these Rubbermaid Vertical Storage Sheds at Lowe's. We'll store some of my craft show display pieces in there so da boys don't have to haul them up and down the stairs to the basement. Steve is ecstatic, believe me. So I put that together too - very easy.

I love this Rubbermaid stuff. It's more expensive than I would like but it goes together easily and lasts a long time. We paid about $300 for this thing, with tax and all. We rented the Lowe's truck for $19.95 to get it home. We've done that before at Home Depot - to bring home the riding lawn mower we bought last year. Those truck rentals are a great deal, good price, easy to drive. And you don't have to rely on your dear old dad and his pick-up truck, which probably wouldn't have been big enough either time anyway. (Yep, Dad, you've been replaced.)

I Freecycled our old lawnmower. The recipient came within a couple of hours - I love those quick transactions. The mower runs fine but the handle was broken, sheared right off last year. We took that as a sign it was time for a riding mower. It's cut the amount of time it takes Steve to mow the lawn from something like 3 hours to 1 hour. Heck, I might even do it sometime. I said might. I used to love to mow Mom & Dad's corner lot on their riding lawnmower when I was about 15. I couldn't drive yet and that was the next best thing. I'd tool around with my transistor radio on my lap. Those were the days, eh?

Then I did one of my favorite activities that starts every summer. I went to Country Way for my hanging baskets for the deck. (They don't have a website unfortunately, but if any one's interested they are located at 2755 Penfield Road in Fairport, though it seems like Penfield to me.) The ones I bought this year weren't quite as spectacular as the ones I bought last year but I love them, just the same. Maybe I just bought them later in the season last year so they were fuller. I bet that's it. I love combination baskets - the more colors and varieties crammed in there, the better. I used to think I should be making my own but I love theirs and I get to come home, hang 'em, water 'em and enjoy 'em right away.

The owners are a young couple who hire very nice, helpful employees. One of the owners told me they are just starting to get their annuals in so I'll go back next weekend and pick up some for the window boxes you can see on the deck railing in the picture below. I also have 2 big pots on the deck that used to hold trees that had formerly been indoor plants until they got too tall for the ceilings. For those I actually think I will try buying a bunch of colorful annuals of all colors and cram them in willy nilly. Then there's the black speckled canning pot that always gets 2 sweet potato vines, 1 green, 1 red with a spike in the center.

Steve gave me these petunias for Mother's Day last weekend. I thought that was awfully nice considering I'm not his mother. Simon's taking me to dinner tomorrow night for Mother's Day since I was busy with the craft show last weekend.

Then I filled all the bird feeders. This was taken from the deck - it's way across the yard but I wanted to see how well the zoom does on my new camera. I'm impressed. This is the feeder I can see outside my studio window. Last year I hung a fern on the other hook and that worked out well so I'll do that again. I set up a bird bath underneath. That little scene in the shade makes me smile every time I see it.

Speaking of the bird feeders, as I sit in the living room typing this, I'm watching Verona spy on goldfinches on a feeder right outside the window. She's a little too big to sit in the window so she hovers around, tail all twitchy. We call it Bird TV.

After all that I was beat and my dogs were barkin' so I settled in here, propping my feet up on another chair. I stitched some designs while listening to artist interviews/podcasts on my Shuffle. Life is good.

At this point Steve was inside watching hockey - he's a big Buffalo Sabres fan. What I don't get is how this quiet, mild-mannered man can be so freakin' boisterous when it comes to sports. He shouts, he jumps up out of his chair, he yells at the players, telling them what to do. Sometimes I'm in the same room, on my laptop or stitching, just because I want to be with him, but man, it hurts my ears. Seriously. So most times I find someplace else to go, far away. If dogs can hear 5 times as well as humans, I can only imagine how poor Reggi is coping. She must think he's lost his mind.

What a nice day.
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