In this video I share clips of the garden over the last couple of weeks. I also chat about first harvests and a few visitors to the garden.
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Once upon a time I subscribed to The Perpetual Page-Turner blog and she had a post titled "If we were having coffee together." I thought to myself "What a clever idea." This type of blog post is for when I have a lot of little things I want to share. She still has a blog. Amazing!
So, grab your coffee/beverage of your choice and join me.
If we were having coffee ... I'd ask, in all seriousness, what the heck happened to June? I feel like all I did was blink and here we are at the start of July.
I think I know what caused it. I took a lot of vacation time in June. The work schedule was conducive to it, and my hubby was able to take time off for similar reasons. So we had nearly two weeks of free time to do what our little hearts desired.
All in all, June has been a pretty nice month.
I was looking through my phone's camera and realized I didn't take as many photos as I thought I did. Also, I was pretty boring this month, when I get right down to it. 😆 I puttered in the garden, I knit, I cross stitched. I fretted about the weather and if we were ever going to get rain. (Spoiler alert: It did. Then it turned humid and gross for a while)
If we were having coffee ... I'd let you know that after 25 days (I was told) I got my beloved Rav back. Oh my gosh, I missed having *my* vehicle so much.
I got the call earlier this week letting me know that the parts arrived and the techs were working on it. Then about an hour later I received a call lettting me know everything was done and I could come get it.
I went up to the dealership the next morning, signed the necessary papers and very happily gave them the keys to the loaner.
I was so excited to see my Rav that I didn't even ask where it was parked.
I meandered around the parking lot a bit before spotting her.
If I could have, I would have run over there.
Instead, I clicked my fob and unlocked the vehicle, to make sure it was mine.
Then I opened the door, slide into the seat, relished the familiarity I felt, and sighed contentedly.
A quick selfie was taken and sent to my husband, with the message "Did you hear that sigh of contentment?"
If we were having coffee ... I'd tell you that I had a very nice birthday. It was quiet on the day, and I sort of reveled in it.
Jessica over at Lumistitch gave me a copy of her "Cherries" chart, and gave me three copies for a giveaway. I decided it would be perfect for a SAL. I started a cross stitch stitch-along/start-along for my birthday.
Here's a photo of my start.
It's a fun, quick stitch and sort of potato-chip-y and I don't really want to stop working on it. My friend Milka is already done with it!
My husband made me my traditional birthday steak dinner. Yum!
If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about Amazon Prime Days and how we managed to mostly abstain from shopping. Almost.
We decided to order a pressure washer. It arrived on this past Friday. Oh. My. Gosh. It is a beast!
The first project we used it for was to power wash the deck so we could re-stain the deck and rearrange the furniture a little bit.
After power washing the deck. I cleaned so much old stain and grime off the deck.
The next morning we stained. But first ... we opened the can of stain I bought and immediately declared it wasn't the right one. Bah! So it meant a trip to Menard's so we could exchange and get the right color.
With the correct color in hand, we went back home and started the project.
Looks great, right? We decided it was maybe a little *too* red, so we we got another color and used that for a second coating.
We are so happy with the end results. And this new set up.
I took this photo right after it rained.
If we were having coffee ... I'd chat real quick about some of the other crafting I've been doing.
I worked a little bit on my Porcupine Island shawl.
It's slow and steady progress on this shawl. Despite how careful I'm being, I'm winding up with extra stitches. It's so weird.
Squares for the Battenberg blanket have been worked on.
I haven't touch my Battenberg blanket, or my Maeve crochet square project in ages. I'm trying to get those projects back in to the rotation.
If we were having coffee ... I'd give a sneak peek at the garden.
Oh! I just remembered something. We have caterpillars on the milkweed. At least we did this past weekend. I haven't checked to see if they are still there. And all the photos we took are on my hubby's phone. Shoot!
If we were having coffee ... I'd mentioned that it's the Fourth of July holiday this weekend. I've been enjoying seeing all the patriotic stuff I've been seeing on social media. Am I doing anything special this weekend? I'm really not sure. It depends on the weather. We've had some rain this week. More rain is in the forecast.
Okay, well, I guess that is it for now. It's been quietish around the homestead. I've been in my own little world probably more often than I care to admit. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of stuff to write about, too.
Thanks so much for reading my nonsense. I appreciate it. ☺️❤️
Thank you for watching my video. I am so glad you stopped by! If you like what you see, please subscribe and click the notification bell to be notified of when I load new videos.
It has been a while since I recorded a garden journal. The garden is in! It seems I recorded the video just in time as the weather turned stormy and windy not long after I was out in the garden.
Thank you for watching my video. I am so glad you stopped by! If you like what you see, please subscribe and click the notification bell to be notified of when I load new videos.
It has been a while since I recorded a garden journal. The garden is in! It seems I recorded the video just in time as the weather turned stormy and windy not long after I was out in the garden.
Thank you for watching my video. I am so glad you stopped by! If you like what you see, please subscribe and click the notification bell to be notified of when I load new videos.
Thank you for watching my video. I am so glad you stopped by! If you like what you see, please subscribe and click the notification bell to be notified of when I load new videos.
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This past week was vacation for me and my husband. How does that work into selfies? Well, I'll get to that. Eventually.
The universe decided to give me a few things to stress and fret about before I went on vacation, too.
My son had an encounter with a bear. Yes. Early morning, as he was driving to work. He braked for deer that ran out in front of him, and before he knew it *BAM* a young-ish bear came slamming into his car. Surprisingly, there wasn't as much damage as you'd think. He's fine, the car's fine. The bear ran off.
After he called me and told me what happned, I drove out to where he was, to check things out and make sure he was okay. Then, on the way back home my car gave a message that was not good. Turns out there's a recall for that particular issue, and the part is back-ordered nationally. Lovely. I managed to find a dealership that had an appointment relatively soon. My car is currently "at the spa," I guess you'd call it, though I think if she was at a real spa, she'd have been taken care of already and be back in my driveway. I have a loaner vehicle for now. You'd think I'd be happy with a 2025 Toyota Tacoma. I am not. I'm so spoiled and use to *my* vehicle and everything is so different on this loaner.
Anywho ...
On Friday, May 29, I cast on a new sock.
I took this photo as we were driving out to the lake for some late evening fishing. By the end of the workday that day, I was D-O-N-E. Weekend, here I come!
I caught my first bass of the season. I did not keep it.
We did bring home some fish. When we got home the girls immediately circled my husband. They knew what he was about to do, and they love getting tidbits. I tried taking photos and videos.
They were hanging around him, waiting not-so-patiently.
We have one hen who is a bit more demanding then the others. She kept circling around and looking in the buckets.
Going to the other side, in case he was hiding something on the other side.
Time to go check the other side.
Staring at him until he makes the right choice and tosses them a few things.
Seriously, look at that stink eye!
Sunday was quiet. We did more fishing and I caught a really nice bass.
I was pretty proud of it, so I asked for my photo to be taken.
I was so proud of it, in fact, that I dared to touch the fish with no gloves. Yup, a pretty big deal.
Sunday I started putting in the rest of the garden. Or was that Saturday? At this point I don't remember.
The important thing is, I got the garden in! I had a lot of help, too.
"Oooo!" I bet you are thinking, "does that mean you have a garden journal?" I do not. Yet. Crazy, right? I had all of last week to film and I didn't. I wasn't ready, if that makes sense. Plus, the weather was a bit uncooperative on the days I thought I might shoot b-roll.
So, it's still on the to-do list to record a garden journal.
Well, I had to work Monday. It was publishing day and work life revolves around that. At least for now it does. (If you know, you know)
Once the day was done I was SO out of there. I signed off, closed everything up and set everything to DND.
Woo hoo, vacation!
The weather was nice, for the most part.
The grass and leaves burst out and now everything is so GREEN. Deer are everywhere.
We even spotted the first fawns of the year.
Over the course of the week we spent a lot of time on the water. We hit a few different areas this year.
One of the usual spots.
Loons have been hanging around the lake. They decided my husband was safe and got pretty close to his kayak. Close enough to get decent photos, anyway.
A new-to-us spot. We've driven past it for years and always see other people fishing there.
Not as much current as we thought there would be. It was a beautiful, quiet morning.
Then we ran into a male Karen at this spot, which sort of spoiled the spot for us. Basically, he thought he owned the entire river. He soon found out that he can't try and throw his weight around without people matching energies.
A different body of water. This made for a lovely morning of fishing, too.
Hardly anyone else on the water. It was like we had the whole lake to ourselves.
On Friday, June 5, I posted update on my vanilla sock to my instagram. Look how much I got done in a week!
This was mainly when I was passenger when we were going somewhere.
In one week I managed to knit the leg of a sock. When I knit my socks on two circs, I definitely *zoom* through the project.
At some point during the week I went out to the she shed and pulled floss for two more cross stitch projects I'll be starting this month.
Wait, make that three more cross stitch projects. What's a few more projects, right? I just need to live forever. 🤣
Friday we brought my car to the dealership to have it diagnosed and see what, if anything, needed to be done. That ended up being a long day and I'm still sort of bitter and sus about how some things shook down. (Is that even a phrase?) Basically something happened and it was too weird of a coincidence to have happened when it did. That's about all I'm going to say on that. The people working at the dealership were very nice.
I brought my cross stitch with me to work on, and asked my husband to take a photo of me. Which felt really weird asking for. But, if I don't start asking for this, I'm never going to have action photos of me, right? 🤷♀️
I was the only person in the lounge who wasn't staring at their phone.
This past weekend we went for a bike ride. Which, now that I think about it, we only went out for one bike ride.
Oh and it was a doozy, of sorts.
I packed a picnic lunch and loaded up the basket.
The road we usually ride on to go to a nearby lake has some work being done to it. A large chunk of the road has been torn up and is gravel. No biggie. The part that was a doozy was when I left the gravel and my bike tire hit the edge of the asphalt. The bump was enough to make my phone bounce out of the phone carrier, fly up in the air and come smashing down on the asphalt. I was stunned to see my phone go flipping up in the air. The phone holder is the style where you pull it open, put your phone in, and let the hold draw back in and hold your phone. I guess if you hit something hard enough, the bottom drops out, so to speak, and it's enough to let the phone pop loose. Then when the spring brings the bottom back up, it was enough force to fling my phone up about 6 feet in the air. The screen protector on my phone is cracked, but otherwise fine.
The rest of the bike ride was uneventful.
We enjoyed our picnic lunch. You like my fancy storage containers?
I didn't feel comfortable taking photos of the water because people were down there. Instead, I took photos of the trees.
One more thing from Sunday. This heifer was spotted trying to figure out how to get in to the garden and eat all the tasty plants.
He saw my husband and causally sauntered off. We spotted him in the front yard, staring longingly at the garden. Today was back to work. Work was quiet and I was able to catch up on most things.
This evening I started a new cross stitch project, before sitting down to work on this blog post.
Hmmm, what could this be?
Okay, to bring it back to the selfies. ...
I'm not much on taking selfies. I'm trying to get more comfortable in my own skin, so to speak. Making flosstube videos helps.
One day when we were out on the water (I'm thinking it was early in the week) I thought I'd try taking a selfie while I was out on the water. No sunglasses and the sun was sort of in my eyes.
Very owly-looking, right? I have that resting face, if you know what I'm referring to.
I remembered seeing or reading somewhere that if you struggle with taking photos, to imagine you are looking at your husband or someone you love, and your features will soften. Or something.
Well, my husband was right there, so I looked over at him and felt my face break out in to a smile.
Maybe not the prettiest selfie. I think you can definitely see the love I have for him in my smile.
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