Busy - Sort Of

I thought I would have all this free time when I moved here.  Nope.  Of course, physical therapy takes up a lot of my schedule each week, but the time just flies by each day.  I wonder what I have accomplished as I get ready for bed at night.  Sometimes I feel like I'm just "piddling." 

The windows still aren't installed.  It's raining so much now and we have to wait for a week of sunshine to get that done.  So the den still is empty except for the fold-out table with a sewing machine on it.  The cottage is progressing but still not done five months after the move.  This weekend I will have help getting the last of the boxes moved out and then I can move in, so to speak.  I have boxes of Cottage kitchen stuff sitting in the sunroom.  My goal is another month to make it into a studio but I hope it happens sooner than that.  I will get the cleaning lady when she comes again next week to clean the kitchen cabinets and the three bathrooms back there.  Then the rest is up to me.  I can do it.

I haven't been sewing a lot but have gotten a few things accomplished. 

I'm hand stitching down the binding for my bed quilt.  Finally!  I'm real anxious to get this on my bed and get new curtains in there.  The folks from whom I bought the house were supposed to leave the window treatments.  I guess they decided they wanted the bedroom drapes, and put some awful maroon things up when they left.  My heart flips every time I walk in there.  I am going to have some wooden blinds made to fit those odd sized, very wide windows, but in the meantime I'm going to just look for some dark cream drapes or curtains to hang.   I have a lot of this fabric left over, and I will maybe try to trim out those to match the quilt.  I just know I cannot stand what's in there one more minute.  When this is done I can mark at least one room off my list.

I have been spending some time each day working in the yard.  By "working," I mean walking around, snipping things, and just basically marveling at all the flowers and bulbs that are coming up that I didn't know were there.

It's really funny but there are things that were frozen to the ground and are popping up exactly where I planned to put those same plants.  For example, this amaryllis.  I received one for Christmas, and thought I'd put it here and add two or three more.  I'm glad I waited to start digging because green started showing above ground and then it bloomed - the same spot I was going to plant the other one.

Around the oak trees in the front and at other strategic points in the yard daylilies greened up and are now blooming.  I thought I would add something green at the base of those trees.  I guess previous owners had the same thoughts.

In several places around the yard there are crepe myrtles that were so overgrown and scraggly.  I decided to just cut those back to the nubs and see what happened. I was told that wasn't the correct way to trim them. They are all leafing out and I think they will bloom nicely this year.  Now I can thoughtfully prune them each year and keep them at a manageable size.  Under these were some really awful looking roses.  They were just sticks.  I cut those back to about six inches above the ground.  They bloomed a beautiful soft pink that's not really apparent in this picture.  They are a variety of an English rose with tiny single blooms.  More daylilies surfaced. 

Penny has been enjoying the outside a lot.  I go out with her and sit while she explores.  She's only allowed to roam between the house and the pool.  I don't want her going between the pool and the bayou for now.  I was so scared of her coming across a snake.  Everyone, the gardener, workers, my brother, the cleaning lady, have all told me that they've seen a snake somewhere in the yard.  I had never seen one -- until yesterday afternoon.  I went to my nephew's for barbecue, and when I got home I walked with Penny out of the sunroom into the yard.  We both stepped right over a snake on the sidewalk about six feet from the house next to a flower bed.  When I saw it, I reach down and grabbed her, ran (or as close to running as I can do right now) to the screened porch at the Cottage and threw her in there.  I called a friend for advice, grabbed a shovel and headed back to that area, getting advice the whole time on what to do.  Well, the snake was gone by the time I got back to it.  From my description, he told me it was a garter or garden snake and was good for my yard.  Well, I.don't.think.so!  Mr. Snake can just go eat lizards at someone else's house - or in Heaven if I see him again!  So now I'm going to walk outside with Penny with a shovel or hoe in hand. 

I think seeing my first snake is kind of like getting the first nick on a new car.  Now that it's done, maybe I can relax a bit.  Maybe.  Or not.  We'll see.

It's Monday and it's a free day for me.  I'm heading in there to work on that binding.  I guess there are more important things I could be doing today, but that's what I'm focused on at the moment.  No piddling today!