Was at Target yesterday picking up a few things when I did a doubletake as I walked by some of the scrapbooking items. Check it out! The Spice of Life collection by Autumn Leaves is finally here :) And notice all the other incredible collections created by my uber taleneted peers. I felt a bit like a goofball having Robert take my picture in Target, but he insisted, and I didn't argue to hard. It felt really cool seeing my designs on display.
Is like a 30 year old version of Taladega Nights. After the boys played golf at Royal Meadows yesterday, they came home last night with dinner (yeah) and watched the golf channel which happened to be showing "Caddyshack". Kevin, by far, thought it was the funniest. Me, I sat on the deck with the nice evening breeze and read.
Today I cut a fresh bouquet of flowers from the gardens and they smell HEAVENLY sitting on my desk. It makes it much easier to work when you have this to look at while working :)
Kevin still has his learning permit and we let him do the driving whenever he is tagging along with us. I am finally getting more comfortable in not being a spaz when he's driving. Really it's not his driving because he's quite a good driver. It's just that he's the 4th kid we've trained and my nerves are a bit more shot at this point in the game. I'm glad Robert has taken charge of being the lead teacher in this area. But I ran across this quote the other day and thought how appropriate it was.
"The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers." ~Dave Barry
I think that accurately sums it up!
Yesterday I took Kevin to the guitar store to buy a Crybaby, which is a foot pedal that makes the electric guitar sounds last longer and very cool I admit. However, the last 2 nights I've had to get out of bed at midnight to tell him he can't play after I go to bed. I'm thrilled he's practicing again and taking back up lessons, but really can't we do this before 10pm?
Gas was $4.16 here yesterday, gulp. When will it end, or will it.
Things that always make me smile.
Taking it easy today. On photography, I find red to be one of the hardest colors to photograph, especially with flowers. So it means I keep practicing :) Don't you just love the bright little centers?
Well we are back from NY and DC and had a fabulous time. So much to share on what we saw and did. Today I'm working to catch up on laundry, detoxing the refrigerator from all the uneaten food we left, getting groceries, opening a weeks worth of junk mail, petting our starved for attention kitties, and checking out what bloomed (or got eaten) in the gardens while we were gone. So in the coming days I'll hopefully have time to upload some vacation shots. In the meantime here are a few snapshots I took before we left.
When I was helping the kids through English, I distinctly remember that Latin was a "dead language" meaning it isn't used by any nation or by any people as a primary language. I do realize that all flowers have a Latin name and quite frankly I'm cool with that. What I do get frustrated with is the garden centers who insist on using ONLY Latin names for their flowers instead of including the common name on the tags too. Why do I care? Well believe it or not I try to educate myself on the flowers I buy so I'll know how to take care of them so they don't die. If I'm lucky I'll figure it out so they thrive (more like survive).
Sometimes I feel like they are just trying to show off and wag their green thumbs at me bragging about how much smarter they are than me...and they'd be right, so why brag? So to show you I'm not a complete nincompoop, here are my Latin flowers (thanks to Google who knows everything for helping me with this exercise). Want to educate yourself, just click on the plant name for loads of Wikipedia info.
PS: Unbelievably nincompoop is in the dictionary and didn't pop up in spell check! More incredible is that I knew how to spell it :)
I first came across this flower (aka Galliardia) when traveling in Texas, growing along the interstate like a weed. Well for Texas they probably do consider it a weed. Just like we think of thistle as a weed (albeit a noxious weed at that), and yet lo and behold I'll see it for sale at the garden centers. Anyone eyeballing it I want to tell them they can have all they want if they just bring their shovel to the ditch beside my house!
As the saying goes, one man's trash is another man's treasure. Or in this case one man's weed is another man's prized specimen. I mean, let's face it, who would have ever thought that it would have been cool to pay for and eat, dare I say, dandelion greens!
So here's my tribute to the colorful Texas weed specimen that beats the dandelion and thistle hands down. Ironically I notice my Galliardia doesn't spread quite as fast as the thistle and dandelions either. (Be sure to notice the ant in the center of the flower on the 2nd picture...cool huh!)
Like most things, beauty is majestic, powerful and fleeting. Somehow even all shriveled up, wrinkled, withered and falling apart, I find it very beautiful. I'm sure somewhere in this is a moral or metaphor, but my brain is already a little wrinkled and faded so I can't come up with anything savvy and smart at the moment :) Who'd think I'd be short on words!
