Feline Friday: Hiding in Plain Sight

Conversation (in my head) with Lily:

 Yes, Lily, I know you are trying to hide.  

Shhhh, Mom!

But I can still see you!

Shhhh, I'm being very quiet!

 Now, Mom? When I look down, can you see me now? 

Yes, Lily, I can still see you!

Oh, well...I give up! Hey, I'm very high up! Will you help me down, Mom?

Sure, Lily!

Garden=Not A Salad Bar

 A few days ago, I took some photos of my front flower bed, admiring how nicely my three large hostas had filled out. We have lots of hostas in the yard but these are the largest and prettiest of the bunch.

Turns out I'm glad I took these pictures, because THE FUN IS OVER! Three naughty deer ate my beautiful hostas down to the stems!

The funny (not funny) thing is that I got up in the night with Tinsel and discovered the three culprits standing in this very garden. They looked in the window and we watched each other innocently for quite awhile. IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME THAT THEY HAD BEEN UP TO NO GOOD! In the 21 years we've lived in this house, we've NEVER had deer eat any of our plants. 

We see deer in our yard several times each month, and I've always welcomed them! But now, I am not so pleased! I'm off to buy Liquid Fence, I guess. :(

Succulents: Cooked :(

Well, ladies and gentlemen...

The Great Succulent Experiment which was going so well (okay, going SO SO) has now taken a nose dive.

Three days ago, I put my dish of succulents outside on the step to get some sunshine. I brought them inside when it threatened rain. Yesterday they looked great.

Today, they were COOKED.

According to Google, this is what SUNBURNED succulents look like. Apparently the direct sun on our patio was too intense for them. :(

This seriously makes me want to cry. I do not know if the poor little guys will recover from this. I'd say that the prognosis looks poor.

Waaaa.....

Feline Friday: Stare Down!

A few days ago, I found Lily and Tinsel engaged in a stare down. A REAL STARE DOWN. At first there was no flinching.

Then it became hilarious. As soon as Tinsel looked one way or the other, Lily mirrored it. 

You look to the side? Okay, I'll look to the side!

You look out the window? Okay, I'll look out the window!

I still don't know what that was all about, but it sure was cute while it lasted! :)

Selling More of My Childhood

Over the past year, I've been slowly (very slowly) selling a few items on ebay and at a local antique store. Progress has been painfully slow but I have moved a few items out of the house. I am hoping to pick up the pace this summer.

It has been particularly hard for me to part with items from my own childhood. I know this is about more than the objects themselves. They represent connections to the life I had with my parents growing up, so there's a part of me that likes to hold on to those physical reminders. Taking pictures helps me "process" the memories and let go. 

Reminder to self: I don't need to keep the object to keep the memory.

My Busy Bee pull toy...

 This Fisher Price radio...

 

This Playskool record player...

 

 

This bronzed baby shoe needs a new home. I had no trouble saying goodbye to it as I have no memory of it.

Someone must have made me these fancy booties.

I am releasing all of these treasures so they can now go to new homes and new adventures. 

Whew.

Succulents: Two Months Later...

A couple of months ago, I planted several succulents and hoped to keep them alive. This is what they looked like at that time...

  After a few weeks, I've had mixed results. The three I planted in these small white pots are looking pretty weak. They're still alive but look at the one on the left! It looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book!

And look at the dead parts on the bottom of this one. Not too attractive!

The jade plant, however, is doing great and has quite a bit of new growth. I think this might be my favorite.

And the three plants I put in other pots are also doing fine, with new growth on each of them. 

 I especially like this one! He will eventually need a larger pot.

 

So as much as I like the small white pots, I decided to move those wimpy succulents into a larger dish with a couple of new ones. My logic: Disguise their sickly appearance while giving them a bit more space!

I couldn't find quite the dish I envisioned but settled on this one because it has holes in the bottom and a nice little tray. It's designed for succulents so maybe that will give these guys a fighting chance!

I put a couple of shards (love that word!) in the bottom to lightly cover the holes and keep all the dirt from washing out.

Lily helped!

 As it turned out, I could only fit two of the wimpy plants in with the two new ones. I moved the Dr. Seuss plant to a slightly larger pot. Hopefully he will start to fill out.

 Awhile back, I found these decent-looking fake succulents at Target. If all else fails, I might have to buy a few more!

Change is good for everyone, including succulents, right? Cross your fingers!

jp

Feline Friday: Tiny Box, Big Bottom

Lily's prescription low-cal urinary happiness cat food comes in tiny cans stacked in tiny boxes. Shortly after bringing the box of food home, I found THIS:

How could this possibly be comfortable?

 And yes, Lily...this box does make your bottom look big! For a slimmer appearance, choose the bigger box! :)

Patio & Porch Flowers: Better Late than Never!

As I mentioned in my last post, being gone a lot over the past month set me behind in a number of areas (OK, in ALL areas!), one of which is my gardening. I didn't want to have my cat sitter fuss with watering patio pots while we were gone, so I waited until we finished our traveling to plant them. Of course, the down side to waiting is that some nurseries were picked over, but I still managed to find quite a few very nice flowers. 

BUT...due to my tardiness getting purchasing plants, I had to violate not one but THREE of my own rules for patio pots this year!

1) I bought geraniums. UGH. I'm not a fan of geraniums, but I know people swear by their hardiness so I thought I'd try them in a couple of pots this year. I had poor luck with the dahlias I planted in these heavy urns last year. I'm hoping for better luck with the geraniums.

 

 2) I bought petunias. I don't like petunias at all, but I found some lovely double petunia hanging baskets this year which really don't look like petunias. They are huge, heavy, and beautiful right now. I hope I can keep them alive!

 3) I bought pink flowers. Sheesh, there are a LOT of pink flowers in greenhouses this year. I am not a fan of pink (or red!) ANYTHING, but I had to buy a few pink flowers here and there for lack of other suitable colors. I added a lot of purple and white so hopefully the pink will be somewhat disguised!

 

I also planted five pots of herbs, including basil, cilantro, rosemary, and sorrel. I have no idea what sorrel is, but it's a beautiful plant. There's a recipe on the back of the tag so we'll be giving it a try!

 We got a ton of rain this weekend, which was good timing for my newly planted pots!

I'm sure I've mentioned this is previous posts, but I like to overfill my pots. I am not patient enough to wait for flowers to fill in the empty spaces. Just today I added the dusty miller sprigs to many of the pots to fill in some blank areas.

  Argh...there are PINK vincas in my front porch pots! NO! I could not find white vincas anywhere over the weekend when I was filling the pots. Of course when I stopped by a greenhouse today, there were plenty. :)

  Although I'm whining about the pink flowers, I really do enjoy gardening season. Regardless of the color, I love having flowers around the yard and snipping blooms for bouquets. Now that the pots are planted, I hope to turn my attention to other neglected gardening tasks!

jp

Feline Friday: Kitten Obsession!

Blogging friends: Once again, I find myself apologizing for my recent lack of posts. But this time, I have a better excuse than usual -- we have made three trips to Indiana in the past four weeks. We've had a great time visiting our daughter! Of course, when you are gone so many days, it's easy to fall behind on lots of things, including blogging.

But I could NEVER miss Feline Friday! Today I'm sharing a sweet picture of Lily watching the TinyKittens kitten cam on my phone. It was actually dark when Spouse took this photo from across the room on his phone, so the quality isn't good -- not to mention my appearance...yikes! But I love how Lily is watching the kittens so intently!

I've also downloaded a game for her to "play" on my phone. So far, she just watches while I play the game! She much prefers the kittens, as do I! :)

Happy Feline Friday!

Feline Friday: Breakfast with Lily

After the morning feeding frenzy, Lily plops herself on my lap while I read the paper and have a little breakfast. 

I don't think she's really all that interested in current events. She's just after my cereal milk. 

And ear scritches. She'll take all the scritches she can get. 

Love her to pieces.

jp

Brava to Our Girl!

 Before we had our daughter, I could not imagine what parenthood might be like. And although I knew that my parents loved me, I could not fathom the depth of that love until I became a parent myself. Sure, parenthood is hard (I feel like I'm STILL learning how to be a mom), but it also brings with it some pretty amazing moments. As it turns out, this girl -- this smart, talented, and very strong girl -- has brought me more joy as a parent than I ever thought possible.

 This past weekend, we celebrated with her as she graduated with High Distinction from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, with a Bachelor of Music Education - Percussion, the equivalent of a second major in choral music education, and minors in conducting and Spanish. IU's music curriculum is one of the most rigorous in the nation, yet she insists that this achievement was "no big deal" -- she says she just did what was asked of her. But her father and I know that she has worked extremely hard and prepared herself exceedingly well with support from the incredible music faculty. 

 Look back with me to August of 2010, when we left home with this girl sick with worry in the back seat of the SUV. I minimized it in that blog post, but trust me: She was incredibly apprehensive about being 8 hours from home and very fearful about how she would fare in such a big program. We knew she would be just fine, but she had to prove it to herself. And in very short order, she did.

If pride is a sin, I'm absolutely guilty. I could not be more proud of this girl. So it was a complete joy to participate in this milestone event, one that I could never have imagined 22 years ago.

 As luck would have it, the students from the college of music were accidentally seated in the front row -- out of 11,000 graduates in attendance.

 

And as luck would also have it, the rain which threatened to derail the event held off until the moment we left the stadium.

The commencement speaker was sports broadcaster and IU graduate Sage Steele, who asked the graduates, "How will you choose to live your life?" and challenged them to "choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong". Good advice for all of us.

The celebration continued with a ceremony at Jacobs, where each student was recognized and shook the hand of the dean.

Bailey was one of 350+ graduates of the music school, which included (I'm guessing) fewer than 20 from the percussion department. Here she is with her some of her fellow percussion graduates. (I knew she was short, but...!)

Now I don't have any hard and fast numbers, but I can tell you that for whatever reason, there are (in general) very few female percussionists. There are even fewer percussionists who pursue a music education degree. (The vast majority seek to play rather than teach.) So it follows that there are very, very few female band directors who specialize in percussion. Although she may not agree, I know that it is often harder to be one of few than one of many, and I applaud her for being a role model for others to follow. We know that Bailey's unique background and skills will help her become a great music educator.

 

So here's to our girl, with a grateful heart for all the joy she has given us over the years. And here's to all the joy that is yet to come. Her father and I can't wait to watch her future unfold!