Just As Well

 

It’s just as well that I have next to nothing to talk about this week.

“Why’s that?” I know you wanna know.

Why’s that? It’s because this weekend is the annual rummage and bake sale at our church.

I spent a day baking lemon bars, coffee cake, and no bake cookies.

I even ordered fancy-schmancy 6”x6”x3” paper boxes with windows to put them in.

I didn’t order them soon enough and as sometimes happens with Amazon, the delivery was delayed. They were supposed to be here a day before I needed them but they didn’t make it. I’d have to package them the old-fashioned way. Plastic wrap for the save! It won’t look as pretty but it’ll have to do.

  

I also spent a few hours several days in a row cleaning out clothes that I’ll never wear again. I’d found a really nice pair of slacks with a matching vest that I wore thirty years ago. I held it up and it’s hard to believe I was ever that small. Now I wouldn’t be able to fit one leg into it!

Speaking of too small...

I found a whole drawer full of teeny-tiny pieces of cloth with strings attached. No one would want these. And you know that’s the truth! I piled them up and snapped a picture. I thought you might get a kick out of it. Then I trashed them.

I went through dresser drawers and closets. Shirts with spots went into the trash to keep my underwear company. Shirts I haven’t worn in forever but were still in good shape, I washed. As I went through things I found jeans, shorts, sweaters, scrubs from my care-giving days, hats, gloves, scarves, jackets, and even a couple of sets of bed sheets I could get rid of.

I packed a couple of boxes with dishes I haven’t used in a really long time and couldn’t see myself using again. Might just as well get rid of them, I thought.

I packed a box of jigsaw puzzles — and there’s ten times that many still out in the old craft room.

Another box I packed with shoes.

And another box with craft stuff. Watercolor paints I won’t use because I’ve upgraded to better paints. Someone else might just as well use them.

I don’t know how many loads of laundry I did, but I wanted things to be nice and fresh. I don’t know how many boxes I packed because I didn’t count that either. But one thing’s for sure. It felt really good to get rid of stuff and have it benefit the church.

 

Bondi continues to improve. I watched her run across the garage on her way to the car and her backend went completely sideways and almost overtook the front end! She didn’t fall but it did make me laugh.

We’re also continuing laser treatments for her. She had a treatment this week. Pulling into the parking lot at the vet’s I spot something I thought was a fungus growing on the end of the fence. As we got closer I see it’s just a hair clip someone lost and someone else put up there for them to find.

          “The trees are turning yellow,” I said as we were coming up Welles Mountain.

          “It’s probably stress,” Mike said. We sorely needed rain.

          Finally the rain came.

          All at once!

       “It would be better if it was a slow, soaking rain,” Miss Rosie said.

“It’s too late for most of the flowers I’d planted,” I told her. “I was counting on God to water them.” I love having flowers to attract the butterflies and hummers. I’m just not good at tending to them.

 

          Speaking of flowers, Deptford Pink is blooming. Actually, it’s been blooming, I just haven’t taken a picture until now.

My hydrangea bushes are starting to bloom.

I planted two little bushes at the base of the utility pole, even though you’re not supposed to, because I thought they’d just die like most all of the trees and bushes we’ve planted do — did.

Instead, it seems to be flourishing! It’s huge!

“You can trim that back,” Patti, my oldest and very much loved, sister said.

“I know,” I replied. Then turned around and showed her my rose bush. It was doing well and had big long whips on it. “I cut my roses back,” I told her. Now it just looks short. I only got one or maybe two tiny yellow roses on it this year and now, with so little rain, it looks sad. I should’ve left it alone.

Mullein is blooming. I never thought mullein flowers were especially beautiful but these are.

Mullein is a biennial plant, which means it’s a plant that takes two years to grow from a seed to fruition and die. It starts as a low, fuzzy rosette in its first year and then shoots up a tall flower spike in its second. The soft, velvety leaves are one of its most recognizable features — early settlers even used them as makeshift shoe liners and bandages.

The tall, dried stalks were once dipped in tallow and used as torches, earning names like “witch’s candle” and “hag taper.” The yellow flowers open in the morning and close by afternoon, and small native bees often sleep inside them. Later in the season, goldfinches perch on the dried seed heads to eat the tiny seeds.

Historically, mullein was widely used in folk medicine. The dried leaves and flowers were made into teas or syrups for coughs, chest congestion, and sore throats, and mullein flower oil was a long‑standing traditional remedy for earaches. The soft leaves were used in poultices for minor skin irritations, and in some traditions the dried leaves were burned and the smoke inhaled for asthma or bronchial issues.

Something new this week is this guy! Spitfire has been getting on my desk and eating Tiger’s food.

“It’s the same food that’s in his dish over there,” I told Mike. I don’t know if it’s because it’s on my desk or in a different dish that makes it more attractive to them.

Then, instead of getting down, Spitfire stretched out for a nap.

Mostly I tolerate a sleeping cat on my desk. Spitfire thought his pillow was too lumpy and knocked my brushes to the floor. After the second time of picking them up I put them someplace else.

          I am working on my commission, which you’ve yet to see, and it’s a serious piece. Sometimes I just wanna paint something for fun. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, that also means that I have to draw it first. So I pick simple stuff that won’t take long to draw.

          My camera always makes the yellows pop. They’re not this obvious when you look at it in real life.

          I painted a second practice piece, with a little help from Spitfire.

The little painter girl is holding a brush in her left hand but Spitfire has his foot over it. I could’ve taken another photo but this one is too cute not to show you.

          “You should’ve given her curly hair,” my best old friend said. “She’d look like a little Bob Ross.”

          Miss Rosie had a different take on it.

          “That’s the way I look after I paint,” she said.

          I’m more than halfway through this old book I’m painting in and I’m thinking about doing something different.

          “Like what?” you ask.

          I don’t know. I hate the thought of closing the book up and putting it on a shelf with the other sketchbooks, but what else is there to do with them? I could paint on watercolor paper and hang them. But where? Wall space is at a premium in my house. And besides, do I really want them thumbtacked to the wall?

          Sigh.

          I guess it’ll end up on the shelf with the others.

          Let’s call this one done!

          Done!