Spring Rambling

 Today is a lovely April day. A bit cool when the wind blows, but the sun shining all day. We drove to Fort Wayne today. Pear trees, red buds, new-spring-green leaves, green grass presented a pretty scene.

The pear trees on our block peaked about a week ago. I see a few tulips blooming. My daffodils are spent, the blooms drying up, but some others are still blooming. It looks and feels like SPRING!

In the perimeter of the daffodils are some Veronica plants which surprisedly already have some bloom shoots though they haven't changed from green to mauve yet. The Asian lilies have also broken through the soil but it will be awhile until they even have buds let alone flowers. Promises of good things to come.

           

                         

The cheddar pinks have 3 little blossoms that opened today.

 Wednesday was my turn to hostess at Winona Literary Club. I used the decorations and plates and napkins I bought in spring 2020. Just 3 days before I would have used them, Grace Village closed its facilities to "outsiders", including use of the community center where our club meets. We did not meet again until September. Luckily, I was able to find at Dollar Tree a few weeks ago another centerpiece like the 5 I had stored all year. We are setting up 6 tables instead of 5 so people can sit a bit apart (distance). 

I think these decorations are meant to be balloon holders as they have weighted bases.

I put them on books about gardening or plants with a pair of garden gloves. The gloves were "door prizes". The person at each table whose jelly bean cup had a smiley face on the bottom won the gloves.

I bought some Jelly Belly candy at Costco about a month ago. The plastic cups remind me of communion cups LOL but the packaging said shot (as in alcohol I guess) cups.

It was fun to munch on interesting flavors during the meeting.

The napkins (28) and plates (36) I would not have been able to duplicate this year. We ended up with 23 attendees so everything worked out fine number-wise.

Originally I was going to make up chocolate pudding cups with chocolate graham cracker crumbs (dirt) topped with a gummy worm to tie into the gardening theme. However, the meeting before we were served vanilla pudding cups. I wanted something different. I decided I also didn't want the work of making up individual cups. Instead I bought some cheesecake samplers (12 slices per container with a variety of flavors). I told the ladies at my table that we were having a flavorama refreshment experience with all of the cheesecake choices and the 49 different flavors of jelly beans. 

The worms looked a bit odd I guess and mostly went uneaten, but at least they added interest to the plate.

While going through the blog photos I located on Google because of the phone learning fiasco, I saw my bright multi-colored Skechers shoes I had shared when new. At least 5 years ago. They are starting to look pretty old. The "knobs" on the bottom are eroding away. They are really comfortable so I searched online for another GoWalk pair of shoes. I looked at several web sites until I found a pair I liked and that were also available in my size.

I ordered them from Penneys not only because they had them in my size, but I knew I would be going to Fort Wayne soon and could return them to the store rather than pay return shipping. (Zappos did not have my size.) They fit fine though and I am keeping them. They feel about the same, but you can see the pattern of "knobs" has been changed from my old pair. They are more subtle in color.

I wore them to Costco today. Our main purpose in going to Costco was to return some items. One of those was ink cartridges for my Canon printer. For some time now, the printer would put out an alert that the paper tray lid was closed when it wasn't. We would close and open and hit "OK" to get things to print, but now we have to do that 4-6 times. Time to look for a new printer; but I don't think we will find a printer to buy that uses the same cartridges. In fact, we stopped at Best Buy today and it turns out the trend now is to have tanks to fill with ink. Need to do some research.

Almost time for supper. We had nice pasta lunches and side salads at Casa Grill. We will just nibble on the Costco rotisserie chicken (drumsticks and wings) and add a croissant and some carrot sticks. The main work on the chicken will be tomorrow night. I will need to freeze some of the croissants. Per usual, Costco sells big packages of things.

Wood shavings. The sign of a happy busy woodworker. Hope you are busy and happy, too. 

Pretty Summer Day

This has been a fairly relaxed happy day. I slipped my shoes off while typing up this post after walking around the neighborhood. The air conditioner is off; we have windows and doors open and ceiling fans turning instead. 

It has been a picturesque day with blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

The flags that were installed around the Grace Village campus for Memorial Day have remained up for Flag Day and I assume for Independence Day.

I decided to walk down the grassy slope after taking the flag picture rather than back around to the paved sidewalk to get to the main campus. I saw these little flowers scattered around; certainly not purposely planted.

We have 3 residents with Covid-19 now. Though the employees were all tested last week, there doesn't seem to be much testing of the residents. The comment made to us was that the state does not mandate it. I certainly don't know all of the details, but if my loved one was living in a facility with residents with Covid-19 I think I would want everybody tested to isolate those that are contagious.

 My Stella d'Oro lilies are just now getting spikes with buds. Lots of  plants already are blooming. I don't know why mine are so slow as they have plenty of sun.

 This tree at the front of the campus looks like something you would see in autumn.

 The neighborhood has lots of pretty landscaping. We could use a bit more rain to green things up though. There is some forecasted over the weekend.

I saw my family doctor yesterday for the deferred check-up from April 2nd. It is time for a colonoscopy according to my schedule. Ugh. The general surgeon's office called today. I will have the consult July 7th. At first the scheduler said she had an appointment on June 30th at 4 p.m. I told her I wasn't in a hurry. She just laughed. I do feel a bit anxious about being in a hospital out-patient facility during a time of pandemic, but things could get worse the way the cases are mounting so I may as well get it over with sooner than later.

Our new CEO starts July 20th. He will work with the current one, though the current one will go to part-time August 31st and phase out much of his involvement until the end of the year. I suspect he will be relieved to see an end in sight for a very stressful winding down of his career.

Fantastic Friday

I started my Friday with visits to 2 garage sales. One of these was out on a country road north of me, but since I wanted to go to North Webster it wasn’t a wasted drive.  Highway 13 is closed in the area I needed to travel which meant finding an alternate route anyway.

More hangers. LOL.

In North Webster, I bought nothing at Heart of the Lakes Antiques, but the newer consignment shop across the road had a wall mirror I decided to buy after much mulling over the decision. The last time I was in this store, I saw a mirror that interested me, but I wanted to bring my husband to look at it. When we returned a few days later, that mirror was sold. So I decided to plunge ahead with this purchase.

Now that I have it home, I wonder if maybe it is a little fancy for my décor. We will have to put in a work order to get Grace Village maintenance staff to hang it. Much too heavy for us to do. It wasn’t expensive; if I decide it doesn’t fit, I can try selling it later.

 

After lunch, I went to Carson’s which was having a big sale. I wanted some peds (what we called them growing up) to fit in my Skechers I bought at the end of July.

Since they were next to the lingerie department, I browsed there. I found a nightgown by one of my favorite brands marked down 70% plus I had a coupon for an additional discount. $16 for what was originally marked as $68. At that price, I couldn’t pass it by.

I had received a phone call Thursday evening that the new carpeting was installed in the Grace Village Library. Friday afternoon I drove over to the main campus. I was pleasantly surprised to find the computers had been hooked back up. A few pieces of furniture weren’t quite in place; I did a bit of shifting. The book return box was full (my assistant had emptied it Wednesday). I did some shelving and headed home.

 We had some tasty chicken fajitas for supper along with Indiana musk melon. This morning I went to the farmers’ market for sweet corn and small tomatoes. Grilling marinated pork chops tonight. Enjoying the pretty day which is a repeat of yesterday’s lovely weather. Isn’t late August grand?