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. 

Bouquets and beds

The bouquet the literary club hostess gave me a week ago Wednesday is still pretty. Maybe even prettier because the hot pink buds opened fully. What do you think looking at the two photos? I am enjoying them so much. I can't believe how long they have lasted.

My quince bush is full of blooms, too. The fothergilla bush has bottle-bush type of "blooms" which are turning from green to white.

I saw while driving last week a bush of lilacs and red bud trees flowering . The apple trees also have blooms about ready to burst into full color.

It has been rainy today. It poured when I drove to my Silver Sneakers class this morning. My umbrella wasn't much help because of the wind-blown slanty rain.

My Silver Sneakers instructor had surgery on her rotator cuff two weeks ago. Various people have been substituting, but we are doing hardly anything similar to what we did previously. After next week, I will have Mondays and Wednesdays free; I think I will attend the Enhance Fit class instead of the Tuesday/Thursday Silver Sneakers for a few months until the original teacher has recuperated and is back. She made the class interesting and fun. 

Last Saturday I bought a twin bed to replace my queen bed. It should arrive next week sometime. For the past 2 years I have been buying twin-sized bedding on sale in anticipation of this change. I took some discolored and worn queen sheets to the animal shelter. I have a few better sets I will take to Good Will, maybe tomorrow.

It has been a time of changes. My husband is having a tool sale Saturday. He is downsizing a bit. He already sold the drill press even before the sale. A few years ago he sold some kind of measuring tool my father had given him on our neighborhood garage sale. It was more for metal workers. (My father was a sheet metal machinist.) The man who bought it lives at the end of our block; he gave it to his grandson in Michigan. Now he has bought the drill press which also came from my father. My husband used it some, but again it is more for metal than wood workers. If the big saw also sells, we should have more room in the garage. My husband is keeping many hand tools though.

Yesterday I went to the Mother's Day Tea in the dining room at Grace Village. When I arrived home, my husband asked me what kind of tea they served. They didn't serve any! We had punch or water to drink. Little finger sandwiches and bon bons and fruit cup and lots of deviled eggs. People took 2 or 3 eggs, but even so when my table went through the buffet line (we were next to last), there were still beaucoup eggs on the trays. The program was a mother/daughter duo sharing about their fun of finding plants to make 15 gardens on their acreage. So, I guess you could call it a garden party rather than a tea party.