My Front Porch

Come sit awhile. The pillows are out on the wicker chairs for the summer. The end-of-school mum (yellow, naturally!) is watered and the Nelly Moser clematis is blooming. I have a note to tie up that extra long branch that is peeking over the chair. It would look really nice framing the porch instead. Somehow that's one garden chore that keep getting put off.

Just ignore the plastic bags. They're three bottles of radiator fluid from Erkie-pie's truck that need to be recycled. He hasn't taken them yet, so I suppose I'll have to find time next week. My porch will look nicer, of course, but better yet Mother Earth will be happier! We highly recommend earth911.com to find a location near you to recycle everything from auto fluids to CFL bulbs!

Why Meadowsweet?

You may be wondering why "Meadowsweet Cottage"?

• Meadowsweet sounds so pretty.


• I love cottage style; it's so unpretentious.


• I considered Columbine Cottage (my all-time favorite flower), Candytuft Cottage (it's everywhere around here), Coralbell Cottage (it's the first flower I learned the name of when I was little), and Lilypond Cottage (in honor of our pond and its inhabitants).


• I realized that I couldn't pick from among all my flowers. That would be like choosing a favorite child.


• So I chose a flower I don't have.

It makes perfect sense to me.

Anyway, here is the entrance to Meadowsweet Cottage--welcome to my own personal corner of heaven!

Trash Trellis

I found this trellis on the curb last summer on trash day. I thought the Queen Mother might find it useful for one of her many vines that were fast getting out of hand. Unfortunately, it's so big that it wouldn't fit in my Forester, so it stayed at my house throughout the winter.It had a few issues, the worst being that one of the verticals broke off near the top. And yes, it needed repainting.

So I scrapped off the flaky old paint and painted it a soft apple green. I solved the broken vertical problem by simply cutting off the matching vertical on the other side to make it symmetrical.
Then I nailed it up along my front walk and twined a few branches of the Jackmanii clematis through it. I just love the apple green color I used. It's so much more fun than plain white! The clematis is very happy to finally have a real trellis to climb and I can hardly wait for the buds to open into huge showy purple blossoms.

"Pink" Iris

What a year for iris! They are everywhere we look--whites, yellows, bicolors, purples, blues--it's a short-but-sweet blooming season.

This was supposed to be a pink iris. I guess this is as pink as bearded irises get. I like it even though it's not quite like I had pictured--especially in the morning sun right after a June rainshower. Yum! It looks good enough to eat.

Finito

Finally! Summer vacation is here (giant sigh of relief)!

My first summer activity was a walk with Kharma to the pasture, but we'd no sooner stepped out the door than our daily thunderstorm began. We made it all the way to the corner before turning back. We had some rainy-day fun revisiting rusty tricks and working on new behaviors in the garage instead.

So, if I couldn't enjoy a nice long dog-hike and I couldn't play in the garden without getting soaked...hmmmm, must be a craft day! I cut out my dinosaur vest and started sewing, then grabbed some of the sunflower-yellow fabric scraps and began cutting out circles for future yo-yos.

Tomorrow's goals: set up my traditional summer morning walks-with-the-neighbors and grab the batteries from the re-charger so I can start posting photos again.

I feel light-hearted and free. Anything is possible and I get to set my own schedule for the next couple months.

Countdown

I have not fallen off a cliff, thrown my keyboard into a swimming pool or been kidnapped by aliens. It's just that time of year when blogging for so many of us gets shoved onto the bottom of the priority list.

I have been surviving the last moments of the school year. It's a tough job. Last Friday, we had a picture perfect morning kindergarten graduation. Alas, forty-five minutes into the afternoon festivities (costume malfunctions, stage fright, battery failure), I began thinking about how very nice a frosty margarita would make me feel. And then I was too tired to even bother grabbing the Jose Cuervo when I finally dragged myself home.

One and a half more days. Which translates into Field Day (thunderstorms or sunburn, place your bets now) and Summer Birthdays.

Oh! and saying goodbye to my babies (and their parents) with a smile and a hug and, hopefully, no tears on my part. No guarantees there. Some years I can do it and then some years I get an unexpected hug and I lose it.

Why is it that I can't wait for summer and yet can hardly bear the thought of saying goodbye to the sweet little faces that have greeted me daily. Beginnings and endings, endings and beginnings.

Apocalypso

Hey, if the Apocalypse is here, let's rock it with a Caribbean beat!

I was reading an AARP thingie. (Disclaimer: this was not MY possession, it was something the Queen Mother brought along on Mother's Day saying that it had financial information we might find interesting. ) This thingie was not like a newspaper or a magazine, twas more like Parade in the Sunday paper. Anyway, before I knew it, I found myself nodding at an article and thinking how interesting it was.

"Interesting" and "AARP" at the same time in my brain. Is that not the scariest thing ever?

Because I've seen the magazine laying around in the Q.M.'s palace with the obligatory celebrity photo on the cover and wondered who exactly is being duped into believing AARP membership is now cool because Dolly Parton is on the cover. Then I begin wondering how much they had to pay Dolly to pose for an old-folks publication since there is not enough money in the world to coax me onto their cover. Okay, maybe when I'm around ninety-six and a half, demented, and it's either posing for AARP or selling my kidney to pay for the margarita I want to send to the cute guy at the end of the bar--I might consider it under those circumstances.

Or maybe just looking at AARP articles can cause significant loss of grey matter. That's possible, but shouldn't there be a warning label? 'Cause I cherish those little cells and want to keep them.

Caution: reading this magazine may cause wrinkles or grey hair. Other side effects can include intestinal bloating or fascination with suspenders and plaid slacks. Rarely occurring are polka dots or allergic reactions to sunscreen. Consult your physician before using.

And then there's that monthly tattletail article on who's turning five-oh. Seriously, do you think that's ethical? I mean, a person's age is such a personal thing, to publish it for all to see? Ouch! It makes paparazzi look genteel in comparison. All they do is take photos of hot males out on the town or gorgeous actresses without their makeup. No biggie. But to tell everybody that Hugh Laurie is at least, and possibly more than, half dead (in a statistical sense) with one foot in the grave? Yeah, I'd rather see a picture of him emerging from a VIP lounge at two a.m. and driving away in his Range Rover. If he has one.

Rant over.

I'd rather post about mowing our new sod for the very first time and the two bearded iris that bloomed on Monday. Or about the lilac bouquet that graced our table on Mother's Day. But somehow the shock of finding an AARP article interesting just highjacked the blog.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.