End of May Flowers

This time of the year the flowers are at their loveliest. My  Oriental Poppies in the front garden are salmon-coloured. In this photo they look more red than they actually are.

                                  These in the back yard are my red ones.

Iris and Foxgloves are in bloom while the Clematis and Honeysuckle growing on the trellis are huge!
You can just see a few of the first red Honeysuckle blooms ( which a Hummingbird has already visited).

            I tried my hand at making a few glass flowers. Can you spot the two in this picture?

          
          Peonies bloom for such a short time so every year I bring in bouquets to enjoy close-up.

 

Our weather has turned cool and mostly cloudy again, I find I wear a cardigan for most of the day
( and put an extra blanket on the bed at night).  Hopefully June will bring more sunshine and the first local strawberries.

Thanks for stopping by.

        Granny M.

Rhubarb and Roses

My Roses are making me so happy these days. They're not the gorgeous Tea Roses which I don't seem to have any luck with, but rather they're shrub Roses, Bonica to be exact. For some reason
the last one I bought bore that same name but as you see in the third picture it is far lighter pink, shorter too. The blooms fade as they age ( don't we all).

The rhubarb I had forgotten to post about until my sister asked me today if we'd ever gone to get some. Yes, we did, and we froze 6 Ziplock bags, made 3 small Rhubarb/apple crisps, and 3 small jars of Rhubarb/Orange jam.  Thanks to my DH's brother and his dear wife. who grow quite a row of Rhubarb and generously share.

Wishing you all a great weekend!!


               Granny Marigold

What to do with a Cloche

I've received some lovely ideas on how to use my new cloche. My stack of tea cups looks like it might fall over, don't you think?

Here's a cloche that's really a marble base with the glass cover ( I think it's meant to keep cheese under). I've had this one for years.  It holds a nest with House Sparrow eggs in it.

 

                  This is my smallest cloche ( it REALLY needs a good cleaning!)

                        I found some great ideas on Pinterest too!

... and on a blog that Dianna kindly sent me a link for. This person really has quite a collection!!

I like the finials she's stuck on hers. I can't do that because mine has a glass knob otherwise I just might have tried that.

I hope you're having a lovely week. Thanks for coming by.


             Granny Marigold

The Mighty Fraser River

We took a drive this morning to the little village of Matqui which is close to the Fraser River. Only the dike protects the village and all the farms and homes from the river which is rising now as it does every Spring causing anxiety to all who would be affected should the dike not hold.
As you can see the water has already risen a lot. There's still a lot of snow to melt up-country and flow into the river as well as to the north there's been heavy rain.
I took these photos from on the dike.

On May 31, 1948 a fifty foot section of the dike gave out and the result was a massive flood.
It was the 20th century's largest Fraser Valley flood.  The picture below was Matqui's main street.

The dike  has been improved since that devastating time 70 years ago but still there's always the possibility that something could go wrong. One can only hope for the best.


Thanks for visiting, 

           Granny Marigold

Tea Cups

If you are not particularly interested in tea cups please don't feel you need to read any further because that's my post today. My older daughter and youngest son gave me 7 lovely tea cups ( and saucers) for Mothers Day. The large cloche was a gift from my other daughter. Isn't it huge? Any suggestions what I could put in it?

This morning we went to a few garage sales. At one of them there was a lot of china and I chose 4 tea cups ( no saucers)  and another tea cup that still had its saucer.

I thought I might already have this beauty (I don't) but for three dollars I didn't hesitate. It's made by Royal Grafton.

I hope you're enjoying a pleasant weekend.

Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment ( even a short one is fine) so I'll know you were here.


Granny Marigold

A Small Project

Last week's hot sunshine was threatening to burn the shade- loving Hostas and Ferns in the area in the back of the house.  As well we were noticing how shabby the old wood lattice was looking. We needed to find a quick and easy way to solve both these issues and plastic lattice was the answer.

I like how the little corner has been brightened up.  It took three-and-a-half  4X8 panels and we were able to get 3 of them marked down because they were slightly damaged.

Thanks for stopping by,

             Granny Marigold

Corn Bread

I've never bought a Pioneer Woman magazine because I thought her recipes would be complicated and I'm not one to attempt any such. We went to a few garage sales this morning and I found a little stack of magazines marked at a dime each so of course I bought them. Later, sitting on the porch swing I had a look at this one and found I really liked what I saw.  There's a lot more in it than just recipes but one recipe I wanted to make right away was Corn Bread.

     Here's the magazine page showing the Corn Bread....

... and here's mine! I'm amazed how easy it was and how good it tastes.  Being me I had to change the recipe a bit. I added grated cheese and also some chopped hot peppers. The peppers were from an experiment I did last week. I had seen on some blog ( I can't remember whose)  someone had made pickled peppers that didn't require any processing  and that were ready in a very short time. 
 

We had another sunny day ( we don't take those for granted around here). I got some much needed weeding done. With the sunshine the hoed weeds were soon dead.

Thanks for visiting.  Please leave a comment so I know you were here.

  Granny Marigold

A Garden Journal

The Spring Clematis is blooming as it faithfully does every May. This year another Clematis which has never grown much has decided to try to take over the trellis they share. That one has pure white flowers and blooms in Summer.  In the background you can see the very tall old Lilac.

 Marilyn@Mountaintop Spice showed her lovely garden journal in her last post and she inspired me to make my own. I have 2 very full binders with all kinds of notes and garden information but what I really need to do is keep an organized account of what I plant/seeds I sow when and whether they did well etc. Also I want to include photos so I have the date stamp back on my pictures. That seems to be the only way I can remember when a pic was taken.

I covered a rather unattractive notebook with scrapbooking paper and stuck a couple of stickers on.
I did the inside of the cover and a first page. Now I need to be faithful to write things down!

Thanks for stopping by. Have a lovely Saturday and a very Happy Mother's Day!!

                               Granny Marigold

This and That

When I tried starting my computer today it wouldn't do anything except inform me "Your computer will not start". As if I didn't realize. Called my DD and with her encouragement I pressed a few keys and was "told" it was now repairing itself. It worked fine yesterday so how could anything go wrong overnight!!  Anyway, now it's working fine again.

Here's my morning visitor, grandson M. He visits most mornings before school.
He's hiding his face or I wouldn't be able to post the pic of him.

               One of my bigger Teddy bears wearing her new thrift store dress ( .50)

When I woke up this morning it was cloudy and looked like rain so I decided today was the day to wash the living room windows and lace curtains. 
I have a mix of real and artificial plants in front of the windows to block the view from cars as they drive by. I used to have  full-length sheer curtains but I changed to these little "toppers". It's nice to have that job done for another year.

More Lilacs, these are from my very tall lilac 'tree'. My son climbed on the playhouse roof and used a long cutter to reach them. I know I could cut the tree down and hope it would regrow but I'm afraid I'd kill it. By now it has a trunk like a man's leg and no low branches at all.

     I finished my day's work by mixing up a batch of cheese biscuits and one of pear muffins.
     

I hope I haven't bored you with my rather mixed-up post but that's the way life is some days. A bit of everything.

Thanks for stopping by. Have a lovely evening.


Granny Marigold