Today is the first day I’ve been out to work in the yard in over a week.
Last Saturday was my birthday, so I took the day off from working outside. (Even though the weather was perfect!) I took my morning coffee out on our screened-in porch, listened to the birds, and played my word games (Wordle, Spelling Bee, and Bardle). My husband made a McDonald’s run and came back with an Egg McMuffin for me, along with a bouquet of roses.
He also had me open my present: the dehydrator I asked for!
After a leisurely morning, we drove across town to have lunch at Mellow Mushroom (FANTASTIC pizza!) and see the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit.
My parents came over that afternoon for a cookout: honey-glazed chicken and shrimp skewers, rice pilaf, potato salad (my request from Mom), and cornbread, with strawberry cake and fudge ripple ice cream for dessert.
As birthdays go, it was pretty perfect. There are definitely worse ways for one to turn 47.
On Sunday, I was feeling incredibly sluggish. A little too much merriment the day before, probably. So I didn’t really do much, especially outside.
On Monday, the oven turned on and Ohio started baking. We had severe storms in most of the state that caused a lot of damage and widespread power outages. I feel incredibly fortunate that we were spared. The damage was minimal (mostly downed tree limbs, none very large), and our power stayed on.
The rest of the week was dangerously hot. We had heat indices above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Needless to say, that kept us indoors.
Today is much cooler, but it’s also really windy. Still, I didn’t miss an opportunity to get some work done. We were finally making some progress with the yard before last week. I feel like we lost a lot of that progress. The weeds came back and brought friends. I was already out this morning fighting that battle.
The lawn is going to get mowed later. And it really needs it. I still have to get up on a ladder to pick mulberries. And I need to deadhead the peonies.
The roses from last week’s bouquet are already on the way out. Half of them were droopy. But there were still some nice ones left, so I cut some flowers this morning to add to the bouquet.
To be honest, I have no idea if some of these flowers work well in flower arrangements. The loosestrife (yellow flowers) is already dropping its flowers like crazy, and I didn’t put this bouquet together even an hour ago. But it’s fun to experiment.
The coneflowers are starting to open up, so those will feature prominently in my bouquets over the next few weeks. I love having fresh-cut flowers in the house all the time! I will be looking at creating a cutting garden next year.
Here are some random photos that I’ve taken around the yard over the past couple of weeks.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have homemade granola and bread to make today.
Karyn Johnson 