MARCH

Yes, I know March doesn't begin today but I'm so excited to see the end of February that I changed my calendar pages today. I like to choose my calendars for each year carefully because I'm going to have to look at them a lot.  This rabbit one hangs beside the phone and has birthdays marked as well as dots that remind me of things I have to do on those days.

This calendar dates back to 2005. I like it so much that I normally cut pages off a boring calendar and tape them over top of the current month.  Imagine my surprise when I realized that for the rest of this year the dates  and days are the same as 11 years ago.
Do you see the cute pouch at the bottom of the page? Neat idea.
This calendar hangs beside my rather messy desk.

I puttered outside a while and noticed that some of the mini Daffs that I planted out last year have made it through the winter and are blooming!  I hope the pots that I'm going to plant out this year will also thrive.

 

This being Monday I did the laundry. Also baked bread and scones. I didn't bother taking pictures

because you've seen them enough times. I'm sure.

Hope your week is off to a great start.

Granny Marigold

Thrifty Finds

I made a couple of trips to the thrift store this week. I found  a stack of those handy Ziplock containers for a dollar. That feathery purple thing on the left is actually a cute pen for a purple-loving GD.

This pad of colouring sheets appealed to me. There are quite a few really cute ones and some not my thing at all. Anyway, for .50....

This is the third Smashbook I've found at the thrift store. Since my first two are almost full I was thinking I'd look for another and sure enough I found one. If you're unfamiliar with Smashbooks just google it and you'll see countless examples.  Normally it would have a wide elastic band to hold it shut ( necessary once you've got it smashed full of stuff). I've found that those cute headbands for bald babies make a great substitute.

This lovely figurine was in the Christmas area but I intend to have it out all year round. Just have to decide where it would look best..
DH and I are re-watching the Lord of the Rings these days and his first thought when he saw this was that I had found a statue of Gandolf.  ( he was obviouly not wearing his glasses.)

This last picture is for my friend Mary whose kitty is named Primrose. I thought she'd like it.

BTW, Mary has just begun to blog and I think it would be encouraging for her to have some visitors.
Mary and I have been friends for years although we've never actually met.
Her blog is:  ilovesilverglitter.blogspot.com

Thanks for visiting .   Hope you are enjoying sunny days!!


Granny Marigold

Wordless Wednesday

Well....almost wordless. Just to say these pics are from my morning walk.

Thanks for visiting.     Granny Marigold

This Day

Finally we had a day of lovely sunshine. I spent the afternoon outside cleaning up flower beds and generally tidying up. There's still a lot to be done but at least a start has been made. 

I did more organizing in my garden shed. This picture is the "before" picture. Things helter-skelter sums it up.  DH ripped out those shelves on the right and built a wall just where the window ends so my shed is smaller but hopefully will stay neater because many things that were stored in it moved to another area.

             This is the East wall in the new shed.  Those tea cups are going to end up among my flowers. I'll post about those when I set them out.  The Santas in the left corner are some that I made from pieces of driftwood years ago .

              This is the West wall. Still needs some organizing....

.....and this is the wall straight ahead when you come in. The old picture frame just needed some paint and wires strung so I can pin stuff on.

                With the sunshine the Crocuses opened fully.

The forecast for tomorrow is much the same as today so I'm appreciating every minute of it.

Thanks for visiting once again. Hope the sun shone where you are too!

            Granny M.

Busy Day

I had a fairly productive day today. No pictures though. It was so dreary and wet all day I didn't even think of taking any. So, what did I do? I started moving stuff back into my garden shed, my newly painted and redone garden shed.  Then I came in and made what turned out to be a very delicious lentil,carrot and spinach soup ( sorry, no recipe because my soups have no such thing as a recipe)  and remember the failed Angel Food cake?  I made up a boxed mix for lemon pie filling and when it had cooled a bit I sort of tore the cake into pieces and stirred them in. . There was no way to actually cut this cake so pulling it apart had to work. Anyway, my DH (and I) rated both the soup and the dessert as successes. Plus there's leftovers of both for tomorrow.  Now if only the rain would stop and the sun would shine!!

In My Kitchen

We got to pick the littlest grand up from school this afternoon as his mom wasn't able to. I love how excited he is and how he runs towards us. He is so dear to us.
When we got back I decided to get busy in the kitchen. I made 3 jars of Blueberry jam.....

roasted some chick peas ( I confess I've already munched my way through a good third of them)

                     and made an Angel Food cake from a mix.

I am posting this picture for Henny Penny who has in the past wished she could bake like me.  Now you see what can happen because when I tried to turn it upside down ( as per directions on the box) the entire top fell off!!   Good thing this cake wasn't made for any special occasion .

With the oven nicely preheated I'll put supper in and my work for this day will be about done.

What did you do today?


Granny Marigold

Hellebores

Some years ago I saw such gorgeous Hellebores at the nursery that I bought several and put them in a shady area on the North side of the house where they've grown quite happily. What I didn't think of when I saw them on a raised table looking so lovely was that once they were at ground level their flowers would hang down and hard;y show at all. In addition to this drawback the blooms seem to be in bad shape. You can see this more clearly in the second photo.
Have any of you grown Hellebores and if so do you know why they have black spots? Is it some kind of fungus due to all the rain we get?   Any tips would be appreciated.

                              The Snowdrops are blooming.

 
                              and so are the Crocus.

Guess I'll have to be happy for the flowers that do well and hope for the best with the others!!
 ( I actually considered trying to build some kind of plexiglass cover for the Hellebores to protect them from rain but plexiglass is expensive and I'm not sure how I'd keep it over them. Too late for this year in any case.)

Thanks for visiting.   Granny Marigold

Flowers

I needed a few things from Walmart this morning and outside the store there was a display of Spring flowers in pots marked down from 9.99 to three dollars. Since I didn't get flowers yesterday I thought I'd treat myself to a couple of these. The bonus is that once they're done I'll harden them off on the porch then plant them out so hopefully I'll enjoy them for years to come.

Happy beginning of the week!  Have a great one.



    Thanks for dropping by.    Granny Marigold

Two Small projects

As I'm sure you have realized if you've been reading my blog, I don't do many crafts.  So when I actually make something and if that something is useful I'm rather happy about myself. In this case what I made was super easy. I used old pot holders and sewed the two sides together so I can slip one over the handle of the frying pan.  The only frying pan I use is cast iron ( and (I have 3 of them). I love using them but I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten that the handle stays hot and burned my hand, Now I slip the cover onto the handle before I even heat it up.
This yellow one is the first one I made and I sewed the end shut but then realized there's no need to do that.

 And... another thing I accomplished today was a scrapbook page of my older grandson's graduation.
Actual grad will be in June but the photos have been taken . No doubt I'll scrapbook pics from the prom later when it takes place in June.

This last pic is just my Primroses blooming in the South window and the Hyacinths ever so slowly developing their blooms. One is pink amd the other purple.

Outside the rain just keeps on falling. It makes being inside so cozy. I think it's time to get into PJs.
Hope you all had a great day.   Thanks for visiting today.



         Granny Marigold

Thoughts for a Thursday

Valentine's Day is almost here. Do you do anything to mark the day?  Since one of my sons was born on Feb. 14, around here it's been more of a birthday celebration with a nod to all things heart-ish.  Like heart shaped cakes or the heart shaped cookies that I used to bake. Notice I say USED to because I don't bother with rolled out cookies any more.

I went on my walk this morning and carried an umbrella because the clouds looked ominous. As it was I got a few sprinkles but didn't even open my umbrella.  The two best bird sightings were of an Eagle flying quite close to the lake and of a Hummingbird. Probably an Anna's because they are the ones most apt to stick around in spite of the chilly weather. Oh yes, and I heard the first Red-Winged Blackbird singing his Oh-ka-lee song. A sure sign of Spring.

Thanks for visiting.         Granny Marigold

Wordless Wednesday

         I hope you've enjoyed these old photos.

                  Granny Marigold

This and That

I had a lovely walk this morning. Although I carried an umbrella just in case I didn't open it. In fact later in the day the sun even came out for a while. Earlier this week while on my walk I saw a Raccoon hurrying home. Don't see them during the day very often. Wonder what delayed this one.

While I was out walking I was wondering what I should do today and I decided I'd bake a pie or two when I got back home. I had some  pie dough in the freezer that I wanted to use up. For some reason it was very hard to roll out. DH is the pie dough maker around here and this time he used the food processor instead of the old pastry cutter to work in the Tenderflake. Could that be the reason?
Anyway, I managed to get one deep dish pie plate crust made and a small 8" one. Got out the last can of Pumpkin ( bought on sale around last October) and whipped up one deep dish Pumpkin and two of the "Impossible Pumpkin pies" that are crustless.  The little 8" one I filled with Cherry Pie filling and made a crumb topping.

   Since Valentine's Day is fast approaching I hung my little wreath on the storm door.

Time to go decide what's for supper. Dessert is going to be pie, obviously.

Thanks for visiting.     Granny Marigold

Garden Shed

I haven't been posting often lately mainly because I have been feeling less than great. Nevertheless, life goes on, and my DH has been working on re-doing my garden shed. It will be smaller than before but the big garden 'tools' like the hedge clipper, even spades and rakes etc.. will not be inside any more. They will hang on the outside, under the overhang on the right of the picture. The door will now be where the small window was before.

And the door was found just today at Habitat for Humanity. They had a lot of glass doors and they were priced at $75.  Not in MY budget. I noticed some had small cracks and encouraged DH to go see if they would sell one for cheap. Yes, this one went for $25.   The fact that it is an interior door doesn't matter because it won't get rained on and the crack doesn't matter to me either.

Next on the list was trying to find a mistint paint in a turquoise or aqua colour. I had my heart set on painting the inside a nice bright aqua. I thought we'd have to wait a long time to find it but no... found it at the lumber yard today and instead of costing $42  it cost me a mere nine dollars.  On this pic the colour looks more green than aqua but it really is more to the aqua or even turquoise.

This is what my garden shed looked like last year... obviously it must have been Spring because that Clematis blooms in Spring.  Having the door on this side will be a lot handier because the door was near the part of the building that is DH's workshop and he tends to have piles of wood there.
The metal gate on the left was also a pain because I had to make sure I closed it every time I went through because of a certain Black Lab that would sneak into the flower beds. Probably looking for Slug bait which he would cheerfully eat. and get very sick.

I can hardly wait until the yard looks like this again. It's plus 7 C. today ( 44 F.) so perennials are starting to grow and also Daffodils and Crocus.  I have several small clumps of Snowdrops. They haven't spread as much as I would want but they appear each year so that's good.

Thanks for coming by. I love comments so don't hesitate to leave one. Although I don't answer each one like some faithful bloggers do, I read and enjoy each one that is left.


Granny Marigold