Yard cleanup on.... HOLD

Well, the yard cleanup is SUPPOSED to begin this morning at 8 a.m.    Yeah, right....It has been postponed now for so many days, I don't even remember WHEN it was supposed to start.   Oh, it was Monday.   Today is Thursday.   Apparently the guy we hired to do the job hasn't been able to find a trailer...LARGE ENOUGH to haul off all our dead tree branches!    His nana stopped by yesterday to talk to us (she and I talked) and that's his story anyway...so, we'll see.

I start jury duty Monday.   I had to go in yesterday and the judge let those of us (about 20 out of 100) go who didn't have EXTREME hardship sob stories.  He was going to hear everybody else's stories over the next 2 days.   And, yes, it is a LONG trial...sigh...

Temps are heating up here...triple digits by the weekend.   We HAD to turn on the air conditioner yesterday when it got to be 86 in the house.   SUMMER IS HERE!

That's about it for now.
~Cheryl Ann~

Yard cleanup

We had winds so bad last weekend that we lost a branch of our mesquite out front and about HALF of our Chinaberry in the back yard.   A crew is coming tomorrow to cut them and haul them away and do yard debris CLEANUP in the back yard.   We need help!   Hubby and I are both tool told to be cutting branches that size and we have no means of hauling them away.   So, there goes part of our tax refund.   BUT, the back yard will be cleaner and I'll be able to see the back fence again!

My hollyhocks survived all the winds, but they are looking, well...a little thrashed.   Poor things.   I keep watering them and they keep blooming, however.   I DID plant 2 curved rows of cosmos, zinnias, marigolds, and a light small sunflower out front, along with 2 mint plants and a Thompson seedless green grape vine!   And, it is in a semi-sunny area that will get afternoon shade, so they should do well.   Everything has sprouted.

I NEED to get up and visit the horses, but it won't happen today or tomorrow and I'm on jury duty "standby" for next week, so maybe next weekend I can get up to see them.   I let the ranch owner borrow our battery pack weed eater and I need to get it back.

So, things are moving along...slowly.   Life during retirement is sometimes slower, but I had to babysit 2 days last week, so I lost track of time!   Only 9 more days of school this year....YAY!   Then school starts up again about August 7th...right during the middle of our monsoon season when the humidity is... unbearable!

Have a great weekend!
~Cheryl Ann~

Hollyhocks and rainbow

I've been busy here.   I made a journal for a friend's birthday and that nearly did me in!   It turned out to be HUGE and I could barely shut it.   And, guess what?  Now I'm making another one to put in my ETSY shop:      https://www.etsy.com/shop/DesertsandBeyond?ref=pr_shop_more

It was a grimoire (grimoire "light")...I'm not into spells or stuff like that, but I did find a digital journal kit with herbs, so I included 20 pages of them.  AND, the most exciting part:    I found a video posted by a mixed media artist on a STUNNING journal cover: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7JUF_Dn-6M&t=543shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7JUF_Dn-6M&t=543s

I nearly passed out fron all the work for the cover, but it is absolutely GORGEOUS!   And, yes, I'm planning on doing one for this next journal.    You can see my YouTube flip through here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lXbUIre5dI&t=5shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lXbUIre5dI&t=5s
This journal was a real work of art! 

But, I digress...
My hollyhocks out front are just STUNNING!   They are 8 to 9 feet tall. They sway in the wind and they don't break off, like my sunflowers did.   The sunflowers were decimated by the winds which come from the west.   They broke, they dried out, but NOT the hollyhocks!   They are thriving.   I planted last year's seeds and I'm going to do that again next year and plant them ALL across the front of the yard.   They really do make a beautiful hedge.   I went out yesterday morning to feed the birds and I could smell rain and I looked up and there was a gorgeous rainbow.   OF COURSE I took 10,000 photos of it, but I'll only post a few here.

 Hollyhocks and rainbow and palms

 Hollyhocks by the mailbox

Hollyhocks and palms

I put in a seed order with Botanical Interests and I now have over a dozen packs of seeds to plant:   cosmos, zinnias, Mexican sunflower (although I collected last year's seeds also), and a couple of herb packets (rosemary & lavender).   I really LOVE lavender and rosemary!   My rosemary bush out back is thriving in its 3 year here.   One chilly morning I went out to water it and it was so cold that when I sprayed it with water, mist rose from it and the most delicious smell!    We have had a cooler than normal winter and spring here and we are ALL hoping that this summer will be cooler than normal, too.   I remember a couple of years when we didn't even have to consistently turn on our air conditioner until AFTER July 4th!!!!!!!    July is our hottest month here and August we usually have our monsoon season, but that seems to be changing and it now starts in June and lasts through September.

Our pup is doing just fine.   He has grown into a good looking young dog (he is now 18 months old).   He sleeps with us every night ON THE BED and he snores.   he still loves to chase the cat, however, but one swat will calm him down.   He slept on the bed with me yesterday afternoon when I watched "50 to 1" on Amazon (about Mine That Bird, who won the 2009 Kentucky Derby at 50 to 1 odds).  Good flick.   I LOVE horse movies, as long as the horse doesn't die.  My grandfather used to take my mom and aunt to Santa Anita to see Seabiscuit run there.   He told me stories about Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, and Citation. I, however, remember Native Diver, who also ran in Southern California.

But, I digress (again)...

So, eveerything is pretty normal.   I feed the birds in the mornings, do a little yard cleanup, take the kindergarten granddaughter to school, come back, eat breakfast, and work on my journals for the rest of the day.   I DO NOT watch the news (too depressing)...

Cheers!
Cheryl Ann

What DOES "organic" mean these days?

I'm really not sure what "organic" produce is these days.

Does that mean that NO pesticides were used?   What about neighboring fields?   Does the pesticide that they use drift over the organic fields?   And just HOW organic is organic?

I'm going to do some research on this.   If anybody has any, please let me know.

In the meantime, I'm buying some ORGANIC seeds from our local nursery:   yellow squash and beans.   They are from Botanical Interests.   Here's the link to their website:

https://www.botanicalinterests.com/

Rainbows, windmills, and wind...oh, my! SkyWatch Friday for March 8, 2019

It was another week of rain and wind here in our desert.  I'm not complaining, however, because by this time last year, we were up in the 80's and 90's, temperature wise.   So, on this morning I had grabbed my camera because I did see some rainbows and I wanted to capture at least one of them.

We have another storm moving in this weekend...

SkyWatch Friday for March 11, 2019.   To visit SWF, please go to this link:     http://skyley.blogspot.com/2019/03/skywatch-friday-7-march-2019-edition.html

Babysitting the 2 year old last week

So, the 2 (nearly 3) year old grandson had a bad spell of coughing last week and his Mommie FINALLY took him to the doctor on Tuesday and he has pediatric bronchitis.   OY!   So, Nana got to babysit him Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, which meant I had 3 13 hour days.   I was sick myself on Thursday with some kind of stomach cramp virus (24 hours) and I honestly don't remember much about that day except that both he and I took a 2.5 hour nap in the afternoon!

by Friday I was feeling somewhat better (still no appetite).   However, hubby did run out and get me some of Sherman's chicken and rice soup, which our family always gets when one of us is sick and that seemed to help me A LOT.   I was actually thinking about getting out a syringe and pulling out just the liquid for the 2 year old, but I figured he would just spit it out all over the couch, so I restrained myself.   It probably would have helped him, don't you think?   Anyway, he is on 10 days of a liquid antibiotic and some prednisone (ugh...)...I don't think Mommie is giving him that any longer because it made him SUPER HYPER and we ALL don't need that!!!

I will probably have to babysit him ALL next week, so I'm taking a bunch of my fabric and crafting supplies AND my sewing machine with me.  I also still have to drive Miss Ellie to kindergarten, so we will venture out to do that and then stay at his house.   Poor hubby will be left to fend for himself.

Oh, well...such is life.
~~Cheryl Ann~~
Here's the little man with his Daddy at the Living Desert Reserve.  He IS a handful!

Farmers Market visit

So, our daughter and grand daughter went to our local Palm Desert farmers' market Wednesday.   This was Miss Ellie's first trip!   She had a visit from a tiny farmers' market during day care, but this was her first real one.   She did get to sample an orange, but refused a date or any other item!   She did get to experiment with an old fashioned scale and stop and smell the sunflowers.   She really seemed to have a good time and I found a vendor who sells some kind of small orange.   I bought 8 of them for $2.00 and they are sweet and delicious.  I'm going back to visit him Wednesday next week and buy 8 more!   We all had a good time.