The Leaves Burst Out, The Flowers Burst Out

Every Spring, Trent and I look back and laugh about how much we dreaded the day we would have to work in the yard.  Now we bicker about mulch and the proper green/brown/wet/dry ratios of compost.  How many little oak trees growing from the abundance of acorns can we leave in the front bushes (me: all of them) and how many should we pull out (Trent:  most, but he gave in to leaving them all.)  My plan is to eventually pull the biggest few into pots, then the biggest and strongest from the pots into the backyard. 

We have two thriving, little avocado trees, started from avocado pits.  The process of getting them to grow, including failures, took a year.  I hope they make it.

Trent made two bird houses out of gourds, which, to prevent nauseating swinging in the wind, have been tied more closely to the branches since this photo was taken. 

We were excited to see the first ever buds on the grapefruit tree, which turned into flowers.  Bees visited, and now very tiny grapefruits are starting to grow.

The same process is occurring for our newly planted Satsuma.  

My brother gave us a bag of daffodil bulbs for Christmas, and I quickly planted them all one day in between Christmas and New Year’s.  Each one grew into one beautiful flower.  That was it, so I guess that’s the way bulbs work.  But next year they will come back and multiply…?

That is either a palm tree starting to grow from a seed that fell from one of our trees, or it’s a weed.  We moved it to a pot to see what happens.

You Are What You Eat

I didn’t think we had any bleach in the house and I thought that all our cleaning products were locked up securely.  But one day during what I thought was naptime, due to the quietness that followed book reading and tucking in, there was an Episode involving two children and some bathroom cleaner that evidently contained bleach.  Among other casualties was an orange waffle knit shirt of Trent’s that was minding its own business in a laundry basket.

Slight damage to Trent’s clothes is a bummer for Trent, but an opportunity for a big piece of often interesting fabric.  Sometimes it doesn’t work out, like the holes in the supposedly 100% wool black sweater that I unsuccessfully tried to turn into felted black cats.  Misleading label Gap, because although I’ve made unusable any number of wool items accidently by getting hot water near them, that sweater would not shrink. 

So after being frustrated/annoyed that bleach was sprayed on a basket of clean, folded laundry, I immediately though about making carrots.  But who wants a stuffed carrot?  Maybe a baby rabbit?  Rabbits like carrots and if you are what you eat, I could make a rabbit that looks like a carrot.

I made a vague pattern for the body, head, and ears with newspaper and wax paper, but made the arms and legs sock monkey style.  We had recently seem lop eared rabbits at both the zoo and the rodeo, so these two bunnies needed floppy ears. 

As it turns out, and this is not new information, I’m terrible at sewing on faces and embroidery in general.  So the night before Easter I was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching Austin Powers –which really stands the test of time- on VHS and cutting out embroidery floss while trying not to cut the rabbit faces open.  Of all the bits and pieces in my craft supply, the bag of felt scraps gets pulled out most often and it helped create the faces.

A few weeks ago, I was in a friend’s garage looking at a piece of furniture she was painting.  She said it didn’t look the way she imagined when she started, but it looked like her style to me.  Maybe because I don’t always start with a crystal clear picture in my head, my projects don’t end up exactly the way I imagine them at the beginning either, but at least at the end –for better or worse- I can tell that I made it.

Alleluia, Alleluia

Thank God for Easter morning.  I just wanted to sit and cry through the whole service, in part because I was so relieved that Lent was over.  The Israelites in the desert for 40 years, Jesus tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, prayer and fasting, yes, but can’t we just start every morning of the year with the Halleluiah chorus?  

My theological friends are mentally pulling out copies of sermons to send me:  How Fasting Brings You Closer to God or How Burying the Alleluia Makes Easter Even More Glorious or Living Every Moment Like Easter Morning!  Great. But the Penitential Order just doesn’t encourage me through the everyday as well as a rousing hymn of Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks to the Risen Lord does. 

I’m now realizing that I should be spending the other 325 non-Lent days of the year much more joyfully, much more Alleluia-y, much less grouchily. 

So Alleluia, Alleluia, the Lord is Risen Indeed!

Untimely

Getting photos from the camera to the computer is 75% of the battle and I’m never on time for that battle.  Please enjoy these photos from Valentine’s Day.  Happy Easter, Alleluia, Alleluia.

BOOK SALE

Last weekend was the –do dodo dodo do- book sale!  (I hope that came across as a peppy, d0o-wop song, because that’s how I sang it as I typed it.)

$10 for all the books you can cram into a brown paper bag on Sunday:  my grand total for 2013 was either 36 or 37.  There was also the Saturday haul, resulting in a number of choice reads.  They also had some grab-bag type boxes filled with children’s paperback books for $10 on Saturday.  Amber and I decided to split one of those, and when we opened it on Saturday night it contained over two hundred books.  Amber, Kellaura, and I spend at least an hour going through them.  After we split them up, so for us, some for friends, some to donate somewhere, I gave the boys a few to read, because everyone gets a book sale treat.  The rest are stashed away in my closet, to be doled out throughout the year.

It always feels like the best book sale ever.  This year, there were more books than ever, even a “treasure hunt” section full of boxes of books that I’m assuming the volunteers just didn’t have time to sort.  After our final sorting and packing of bags on Sunday, we met up with our families for the big reveal at the park across from the convention center.  I wait all year for the sorting, packing, and revealing.  It wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful of a weekend if I didn’t get to share the excitement with my friends and see their finds.

Ah, the glorious finds of the book sale!  After I pick through the books for a few days in the kitchen, I’m going back to my plan from last year of keeping my brown bag next to my bed for a few months.  I think last year was the year I read the most book sale books.  But one of the beautiful things about the book sale is the timing.  It’s okay if a book sits on the shelf for years until it’s the right time to read it.  Example:

Years ago, when Trent and I lived in our apartment, I picked up a (non-fiction) book from the library about a writer who had a giant pig named Christopher Hogwood.  The author, Sy Montgomery, had also written a book called Walking with the Great Apes, about three woman who, guess it, studied apes.  She talks about writing the ape book in the pig book, which I read shortly before the first book sale we ever went to, seven years ago.  I picked up a copy of Walking with the Great Apes at the first book sale and it’s sat on the bookshelf ever since.  I’ve never been in the mood to read it, but I knew one day I would be.  Recently I read one of Jane Goodall’s books, and after watching YouTube videos of chimps, went straight to the bookshelf for Montgomery’s book, which I am currently reading.

I also picked up a big, glossy photo book of apes on bag day this year.  And thus we are all connected in the great book sale circle of life.