slothful Saturday....

Mtn Plains Park windmill at sunrise

Good morning, all my festive friends! I hope everyone had a fabulous Friday!  It’s so nice to finally get to the weekend!  It’s going to be an incredible one here and I can hardly wait for Rob to get up so we can get out and start enjoying it.  Yesterday it got up to almost 80 here and I think it’s supposed to stay that way all weekend!

People around here are getting really antsy with the weather to start doing things in the garden but it’s really too early. I’m afraid Mother Nature still has a few surprises up her sleeve for us, she’s just lulling us into a false sense of security.  I have yet to see a spring around here where it didn’t snow at some point in May and early June! You sure couldn’t tell by my front yard, though.  My lilac hedges are sprouting leaves like crazy, I think this is the earliest I’ve ever seen that happen.  I sure hope the poor little tender buds don’t get frosted by some bizarre weather!  My lilac hedge is the crowning glory of our yard every spring and it usually bursts into bloom around the end of May.  It is so intoxicating to walk outside when it’s in bloom! The hedge wraps around three of the four sides of our property and when it’s blooming, you smell lilacs all through the house for weeks!

Yesterday, I was so busy, I hardly had time to think!  We had a really nice Chamber Coffee meeting early in the morning which Rob and I had to escape early from as we had a workshop at the Hampton on water wise planting of perennials and weed control that started before the coffee was over.  It was a great workshop and we learned a lot of great stuff about planting.  Because of our extremes in temperature here and our “microclimate”, it can be tough to get things to grow, even things that are supposed to come back every year.  This workshop focused on planting things that are native to this kind of weather.  I came away armed with all kinds of great information, including a nice list of plants that will survive our harsh environment here. Now, I really have the “bug” to start planting!  They did solve one of my biggest mysteries and made just that one tidbit of information worth the whole morning.  Our state flower is the Indian Paintbrush and it’s a beautiful flower.  I’ve been trying to grow it for years now and it always dies.  I found out yesterday that it’s a “sucker” plant, which means it likes to have another plant to latch onto to grow!  So, you are supposed to buy one that is growing alongside something else!  I’ve been trying all these years to grow it from seed, which I found out is almost impossible! So, maybe this year, I’ll finally have some success.

After the workshop, we had a nice lunch with Zack and Carol Ann at the local Chinese restaurant.  It seems everyone else in town had the same idea yesterday!  It was packed when we got there.  I’m so glad to see the restaurant doing well.  The new owners are really nice and their food is so much better than the last owner’s.  Tommy, the owner now, is a sweet chatterbox, although at times, he talks so fast with his Asian accent, I only catch half of what he’s saying.

Rob dropped me back at the house after lunch so I could spend some quality time with Miss Thistle. The poor dear was stuck in her kennel all morning because we were gone and she was not real happy about that. I made sure we got in a nice little walk around the neighborhood before I set to making my appetizers for happy hour. Of course, Thistle was more than happy to stay right with me while I was doing that!  She’s my chief pre-washer before things go in the dishwasher, you know. I’ve always wanted to name a dog Prewash but Rob won’t let me.

Thistle directing my cooking from the greatroom

I managed to finally get through to my GYN’s office and get scheduled for a biopsy, too. I had a bad pap result a couple of weeks ago and now we have to see what it means.  I’m a little worried as I had cervical cancer back in 1990.  Back then, they did a conization, where they try to remove the cancerous area, but at the time there were no clear borders so they ended up giving me a partial hysterectomy.  I haven’t had any further problems in 22 years until just now.  One of the big things they are finding with AIDS patients recently is that we are way more susceptible to all forms of cancer. You can probably see why I’m a little concerned.  Unfortunately, they are unable to do the procedure until after I get back from vacation. I was really hoping to be able to go off with this already resolved, but what are you going to do? I’m not panicking or anything, it’s just an uneasy feeling, if you know what I mean. I told Rob, I’ve fought off bigger, meaner cancer in the past, this little thing isn’t going to rattle me too much.

Happy hour last night was a whole lot of fun!  We had quite a nice crowd, including a few people that rarely get to join us.  Ray and Becca managed to find a babysitter so they came out for a bit and Jim and Breean’s mom was in town so they got their first “date night” since they’ve moved here and joined us for a bit before heading out for dinner.  If we didn’t solve all the world’s problem’s last night, I think we came pretty darn close.  Dawn showed us this magnificent body art she did on one of her pregnant friends that was just awesome.  Gosh, that woman is talented! One of these days, I’m going to hire her to do something on me, I think, if I can talk Rob into letting me do it.  I’d love to be a canvas, I think that’d be wild!  Dawn travels all over the country to do her work.

Well, not much else is happening at the moment.  Today is going to be an easy day of just puttering around and going on a little drive to see what we can photograph, I think. The meadowlarks are finally back so I imagine we’ll take a drive over to that little pond near the lake to see if any other birds have come back for the spring. I can’t wait for the pelicans and all the big birds to hit the pond.  The geese are sure back in full force, honking everywhere!

Have a wonderful weekend, folks!!