Sunday Morning Walk

It's a lovely sunny day. The temperature was just 3 degrees above freezing this morning but now, just past lunchtime, it's quite comfortable out there with short sleeves.
It's been a strange week. DH overdid the digging in the garden and managed to get a wry neck. It was so painful he ended up in the ER but really nothing could be done about it so they sent him home with pain meds. Which are not terribly effective.
The pain in the neck doesn't prevent him from walking and we've kept up with our morning walks as usual. I thought I'd take my camera along this morning and just take pictures as we walked around the lake and home again.

Did you see the turtles on a log in the picture above?  If not below is a closer view. We watched another turtle s l o w l y make his way onto a log one millimeter at a time. We didn't stick around long enough to see him actually get to the top.

We walk past this Monkey Puzzle tree on our way back. I can't imagine how old this one must be.
Monkey Puzzle trees are extremely long-lived and grow about 30 to 40m tall  (60-70 ft.) in their natural state which is in South America.

Now I am going to take a nap then go outside and do a bit of light gardening before heading off to youngest son's to play Dominoes.

Thanks for visiting today,

Granny M.

Tuesday's Tea Mugs

When I was at the thrift store I saw one of these lovely mugs. It was marked at 3.99 and I'm eligible for the 30% senior discount. When I came to the cashier she told me there were 2 of them and the price was for both. She even ran to the china dept and got it for me. I think that was so sweet of her.
I have a weakness for china with violets or pansies so I was very happy to find these. Below you can see that the underside shows that they are made in Canada. I've never heard of the Bluebird brand but now I'll watch for it.

Once I came home and unpacked my treasures I assembled some of my violet/pansy china and changed this little cupboard ( which my DH made a few years ago)  around to display them.
(That's me in the mirror concentrating on getting the photo right).

 This is what I put on the top of that cupboard. Before I had a white jug with silk roses. That's put away now.

I also found this curious cup and "saucer" for a very reasonable price. I suppose most people wouldn't want anything so weird but I like its weirdness as well as  the butterflies in the pattern.

Needless to say I had to do some rearranging to accommodate these new pieces. I've been having fun!

Thanks for stopping by,
I love to read your comments so don't be shy!


Granny Marigold

Sunday Walk

            We drove to a nearby wetlands hoping that the paths would not be too wet.

              The first path we took ended in a giant puddle...

             So we went back and took this one....

       which also ended up being  impassable.

As did the third path.  By then we figured we'd walked enough and we came home.

I brought in a bouquet of Tulips yesterday. They were lovely at first but then they opened overly much and now look like this. Does anyone know why they do this?   Florists sell bunches of Tulips and those must be treated to not do this. Any ideas?

Thanks for coming by today. I hope you are having a happy Easter!!!


Granny M.

New Houses

        A number of very big houses have been built in our neighbourhood recently.
       The style of this one doesn't do anything for me. It looks a bit like an institution.

                  I like this one more.  Notice how it dwarfs the house next door.

              This one is just around the corner from our house. No lawn to cut here!

This is the one being built right next to us ( that's our house to the left).
I think the end result will be very much like the first picture. Too bad since we'll be looking at it every time we go outside.

 In an effort to distract my eyes from the view I've hung a number of Christmas ornament type balls over my desk in the sunroom.

The neighbourhood is changing. Many of the people who lived on our street have moved into townhouses or assisted living type places. The closeness that existed is gone.  People leave for work early and are gone all day. I suppose it was inevitable that things would change, after all it has been over 40 years since my DH built this place.

Thanks for coming by today.
An answer to a comment that Rose left about how I'm doing after my fall.   I'm almost totally healed, just a bit of tenderness on one leg. Thanks for asking.

Granny Marigold

Bunnies

I was visiting Dianna's lovely blog (Forgiven) and she had posted about bunnies around her house. I liked the idea so much I'm copying her.
This family of Bunnies comes out every April/May then they go back into my garden shed for 10 months.

                       One of the concrete bunnies on the sun porch.

            This big Mama rabbit is the one I tripped over 3 weeks ago and went sprawling.

Some just live amid the plants in the sunroom.  They get moved around a lot.

I'll end with some pictures of my real live Cinnamon Bun. In order to get her to stay still I had to give her one of her favourite treats, a piece of bread crust.  I know bread is probably not a good thing to feed her but it's a rare treat.

Thanks for coming by today.

If you leave a comment I'll know you were here.

Granny Marigold

A Teacup, Flowers, and a Birthday

Another lovely teacup joined my collection. I love the dainty scalloped edge of both the cup and the saucer as well as the "elf ear" handle.

Here's that new teacup in the livingroom next to some pink Gerbera Daisies that I treated myself to.

The last of my Amaryllis are blooming; that's Minerva on the left and Red Lion on the right. All the others are growing and building up strength for next year. They do take up a lot of room!  Once the weather warms up I can move them all onto the porch.

           The birthday?  April 12th is Gladys Taber's birthday. In honour of her I reread Another Path, the book she wrote after her dear friend and companion of 30 some years died leaving her bereft.
Are you a Gladys Taber fan?  I hope so. She writes such down-to-earth books.

Thanks for visiting today,

Granny Marigold

In the Park

I'm glad I took some pictures of the Tulips in the park yesterday when the sun shone for a few hours.
I think the city must have ordered the same colours of Tulips for all the city parks because even in front of the arena the colours were white, orange, and yellow mixed.

This is our weather today. My DIL took this picture of the male Red-Winged Blackbird.

And, while we were walking I noticed the Swallows are back swooping gracefully over the lake.
Every year I watch for their return and note the date in my journal.  Now it really does seem like  spring is here!

Thanks for coming by,

Granny M.

Failed Project

It is a mystery to me that I do not seem able to do even simple crafts. This was shown to me again this morning. Let me explain.
I went to the Dollar store to buy something ( that they were out of) but I saw that they had a nice selection of summer bulbs.  I chose 2 bags and once I got home I thought I'd give them a headstart and pot them up inside. In order not to disturb them too much at planting time I planned on making newspaper "pots",

I went online and found this little video which seemed easy enough. I watched it twice then tried to follow along as the fellow made one. 

           This was what I ended up with. AND this is my second try, too!

I gave up and made my own version which hopefully won't fall apart when I come to transplanting time.  Meanwhile I had a good laugh and am carrying on with my day.

Thanks for coming by. I hope you had a chuckle at my expense!


Granny M

Tea Cups

I put up more tea cups today. I choose the ones I'm not so fond of  and my DH glues a wooden circle under the saucer, inserts a half-inch dowel which fits into a length of pipe ( or maybe it's electrical conduit). Either one works fine. I tried gluing the cups to the saucers but I prefer being able to take the cups off.  I take them into my garden shed for winter then bring them out around this time of the year. I don't use them for birdseed because when it rains the feed gets musty. Birds do come and perch on the edge of the cups though, often tipping them.
This area is the Lily bed although none are up yet. In one corner you can see white blooms. I believe that is Rock Cress.

It wouldn't be Tuesday if I didn't have a new tea cup to show you. This one joins my made-in-Japan collection.  The picture doesn't really show how pretty it is. I'm not much of a photographer I'm afraid.

This one came in a set of 2 one of which had a chipped saucer. That one went outside to be a garden tea cup. This one will go on the porch. The price for the sets was  less than four dollars.

Our stretch of warm sunny days is coming to an end and we will have rain. Time to get housework done I suppose.

Thanks for visiting,

             Granny Marigold

This and That

The weather has been so beautiful. Yesterday we took a drive out into the country. We stopped to take a picture of this split rail fence and gorgeous Daffodils.

The same yard had these old tractors that DH dearly would have wanted to look at more closely ( I discouraged him, thinking the people wouldn't be thrilled with strangers wandering about their yard).

              We stopped off at a roadside stand and bought lovely bunches of Daffs.

Today being Monday I did the laundry also baked Paska.  As you may know Paska is a Ukrainian Easter bread. A sweet eggy bread that my Mom always decorated with sprinkles over white icing. She made hers in Crisco tins ( in those days  Crisco tins were made of metal). I believe the round shapes are traditional. I don't know why I made one round loaf and one other but DH will be taking them along to Gleaners tomorrow when he goes to volunteer there.

Since I had no recipe for the Paska I just guessed. I did let my breadmaker do all the mixing and first rising.

Having finished that I went out and with DH's help set out my tea cups again. If you've been reading my blog for a while you'll remember those.

And now all that remains to be done is get supper on the table. I hope you had a great day.
Thanks for visiting,

Granny Marigold