Flowers – Asbery's Echoes

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I just can’t decide which I like better – the zinnias or the cosmos. So I brought some of both into the house to enjoy!

“A home is for functionality. Not a show place.”

I read these words today and they resonated with me. Now, I would never say my home is a show place. It’s just a simple, little, very old house. It has rooms and they all have four walls – no open floor plan here. It has cracked plaster and worn floors. It’s been added onto and I have to be honest, the addition was not done well. The original part of the house, the over 100 year old part, is built to last. The addition, which was put on long before we bought it, was not. The floorplan is wonky. When we had it appraised years ago, the appraiser said the floorplan was odd but works. When we bought this place, 31 years ago, I didn’t really want it. The only positive for me was it was in the country. And it wasn’t going to be our forever home. And yet, 31 years later, here we are. And this is home. I’ve grown to love this little house.

Drew had been gone visiting my sister for a few days so my little kitchen table was pretty and neat with a vase of flowers sitting in the center. He was home for maybe a 1/2 hour and this is what it looks like now! He did leave the vase of flowers for me to enjoy too!

I’ve raised four kids in this little three bedroom/one bathroom house. We’ve eaten countless meals and played countless games at the dining room table. We’ve spent countless hours sitting in the living room talking and just being. I’d hate to guess how much time I’ve spent in the kitchen cooking and doing dishes. When you live in a little house with that many people, if you’re truly living, you really can’t have a showplace in the sense that you have a beautiful, spotless home with everything perfectly in place. Just the opposite. Even when you’ve spent hours cleaning and picking up, there will still be a mound of shoes at the backdoor, eggs in a basket on the kitchen counter, piles of books and toys scattered here and there, a project started and not yet finished on the dining room table. And that is how it should be. A comfortable place to just be. To live. To function.

My dining room table right now. They just keep coming! And I just keep trying to keep up!

We used to entertain here quite a bit. When the older kids were younger and our group of friends also had kids, we would have people out. The kids would play together in the bedrooms and the adults would play games and cards at the dining room table. We had lots of fun. That slowly changed over the years. As the kids got older and involved in extracurricular things, our time was spent with our friends at these functions. Then the kids grew up and moved out. Now entertaining means the kids come over to visit. And bring the grandkids. And this little house pretty much stays the same. We’ve done some improvements here and there and there’s many more that need to be done. But for the most part, it’s stayed the same. It’s home. It’s lived in and loved. It functions. Not as a showplace but as a home. And that makes me happy.

Homemade

I’m slowly exploring the art of homemade products for the skin, health and home. There is so much information out there and so much to learn. I don’t plan to become an expert but it does fascinate me and I want to learn some of the basics. I have been using a handful of homemade cleaning products for quite some time. And I have a skin cleanser that I am really enjoying. I have made lotion bars, body butter and lip balms. I want to explore more of those too. I find so much joy in using products that are all natural and that I have made myself. To know there are no chemicals in them gives me peace of mind. My newest project is infused oils. I have calendula and lavender infusing right now. They look so pretty sitting on the windowsill with the sun shining through them! In a few days they will go into a nice dark cupboard for a few weeks. In the meantime I’ll be researching what all I can do with them. I know the first thing I’ll be making is a salve with healing properties and to use for fungus. Maybe some lavender lotion of some sort. The possibilities are endless. And then next spring I hope to plant some lavender and calendula so I can harvest and dry them myself. Now I need to break out the seed catalogs and start planning!

Sunshine

It sure hasn’t been a very nice spring so far. A day with sunshine has been few and far between. Yesterday was one of those sunshiney days. I made a quick run to the local greenhouse and bought some tomato and pepper plants and a few flowers too. Drew and I planted a few pots and walked around the yard to see what was blooming. It was still chilly even with the sun shining but we just had to get outside and enjoy the afternoon since rain is in the forecast again. It’s nice to see the bright beautiful blooms

Favorite Flowers

I think zinnias are my new favorite summer flower. They come in so many different colors and they just keep blooming and blooming. Some are tall, others are perfect for borders. The more you cut them the more they bloom so you get beautiful bouquets for the house that last for days and yet they keep blooming outside. And they’ll keep blooming into fall. I’m loving them this year!

A Few Frugal Happenings

I try to work at being frugal as much as I can but I always forget to keep track. When I do keep track I usually find myself trying even harder or I realize some of the things we do that are frugal that I don’t think about. A few frugal things from the past few days –

We trimmed one of our trees instead of hiring it out. Trimming trees means lots of clean up work but it sure saves money to do it yourself if you can!
Lots of dead branches gone from our tree.
Mom gave me a bunch of green peppers from her garden. I chopped them all up and froze them. They will taste so good in casseroles and Sloppy Joe’s and such later.
We took advantage of Menard’s 11% off sale. You get a 11% rebate on all purchases, even those that are on sale! That’s when we bought our decorative fence supplies.
Drew found fish sticks on sale at the local grocery store – he loves fish sticks! I hate to buy them at regular price as they are so expensive. I then made some homemade tartar sauce to go with them. It tastes so much better than what you can buy in the store and I can make just the amount we will eat!
I was wanting a star to hang on the chicken coop but wasn’t really wanting to buy one. Then I had a “duh” moment – I used twigs off the branches we trimmed off the tree and made my own primitive star using twigs and twine. Perfect! I just might have to make a couple more!
We built our privacy fence ourselves. I can’t imagine what labor costs would be. Joe always does these things himself so we’ve never had to pay for labor. Between what his dad taught him and what he learned working construction for a local company years ago he can pretty much do anything except electrical. That he won’t tackle.
When I want fresh flowers in the house I go outside and pick what I want. This year I planted a lot of zinnias from seed. They come in so many colors and are so easy to grow and the more you cut them the more they bloom!
Beautiful bright cheery colors!
Joe’s been drinking lots of sun tea. So easy to make and so frugal.
We had a friend drop off some homegrown sweetcorn. That along with some fresh green beans from Mom’s garden made for a yummy supper alongside hamburgers from the freezer.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. I’m slowly working on building up my pantry. I put it on hold while we’ve been busy working outside and I thought this week was going to be really busy but plans have changed. (I’m very thankful!) Next week is Ragbrai – The Register’s Great Ride Across Iowa – and we will be having 20 plus people camping out in our yard Thursday night. There will be an extra 20,000 plus people in our little town of 2,000. Needless to say I will not be going to town on Thursday. But more about that later. For now I can relax the rest of this week and keep being frugal!

Weekend Randomness

We had no set plans for the weekend. Joe was gone all last week – gone for a couple nights then home one night then called out again the following day. He was exhausted. I’m glad we didn’t have anything planned so that he could relax a little after such a grueling week.

Dad brought over a bowl of wild black raspberries he had picked from the timber. I love them, nobody else here cares too much for them. So I made a cobbler. Drew ate one helping. I ate the rest. It was so good. I didn’t eat it all in one sitting – I did stretch it out over a couple, three days!

And for some I reason decided to make sun tea for Joe and Drew. Drew had asked me to buy a jug of Arnold Palmer tea for them and as I was filling a glass for him it dawned on me, I bet I could make this a lot cheaper if I made sun tea and put lemon in with it. So I got on Pinterest and guess what, I wasn’t the first to think of this! (I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be before getting on Pinterest – I was wanting to see how others made theirs) Drew thought it was a neat process and Joe enjoyed the tea although next time I’m not supposed to use quite as much lemon! I didn’t realize until I read up on sun tea that it is mostly a Midwest thing. I remember Mom making it a lot for Dad when I was growing up and we saw someone at the camp grounds awhile back making some. I’ll be making sun tea a lot I think the rest of the summer – it sure is cheaper than buying the jugs at the store and it’s so pretty to see sitting outside in the sun. I just wish I liked to drink it. I try but I just can’t get it down.

As you can see – way too many toys and stuff. We don’t have picture perfect bedrooms – we let the kids decorate their own rooms and really make them theirs.

On Saturday Joe mowed, I weeded and put down some more mulch and then we headed to Ottumwa and bought Drew a bunkbed. It’s a long story but he hasn’t had a bed for the last few months and had been begging for a bunk bed. We had shopped around earlier in the month so we knew what we wanted and where to get it. We brought it home and spent the rest of the evening putting it together and lo and behold – Drew slept in it! And he slept in it last night. He has not been one to sleep by himself for a very long time so this was huge – for all of us! If I had known a bunk bed would have been all it took, we would have done this a long, long time ago. I don’t know why but with Abby and Aaron we had no trouble with them sleeping in their own beds. Eric and Drew not so much.

Hopefully some day soon this will be deck instead of an eyesore!

Sunday we decided to finally start working on extending the deck. And of course we discovered that while we thought we had some of the boards we needed up in Joe’s woodpile, we actually did not. So after starting in on the project, we had to make a Menards run for more supplies. This was absolutely not in the budget which means we’ll be putting the pergola project on hold until next year. Which is fine. I can wait. But that also means less work for Joe this summer which is not a bad thing. We didn’t get as much done on the deck as we had hoped and it looks like there’s a lot of rain in the forcast for this week so we might not get much done but we’ll work on it as we can and eventually it will get finished.

And slowly but surely, this will be a useful and pretty space too.

While Joe was working on the deck doing things I couldn’t really help him with, I transplanted some hosta and day lillies that were going to be covered up by the new deck. Since we won’t be working on the pergola this year, I went ahead and planted the daylillies by it. Joe wasn’t wanting me to plant anything more around it until he got the sides put up but I didn’t have anyplace else to put the plants. Plus, we have the mulch to put around it and I don’t want it to set too much longer in the bags for fear it will mildew so this week I plan to put the mulch down too. We’ll just have to work around things the best we can next year and I won’t put anymore plants in until we’re done. We put the pergola up a few years ago thinking we would use it a lot but we just don’t so our plan is to use the old, rusty, corrugated tin we have to put a roof on and put sides about halfway up all the way around with more of the tin and we also plan to put a floor in instead of the loose rock that’s there now. Then it will be shaded, free from rain and somewhat secluded. Hopefully we will use it more this way.

That was our weekend. Nothing too exciting but we did get a few things accomplished. Now onto the week ahead. I’m thankful Joe doesn’t have any scheudled days to be gone overnight this week or for the the next few weeks. Unless some emergency crops up again. I don’t mind a day or two here and there but being gone the majority of the week just isn’t fun.

A Perfect Day For Wandering

After being cooped up in the house the last couple of days with all the rain, Drew and I decided to go for a walk around the yard. We ended up in the neighbor’s field! I’m thankful they haven’t planted anything here for the past couple of years. Although I enjoy the corn fields I really enjoy the beauty of it just growing wild. The sky was beautiful while we were out and the wildflowers are really blooming. All the colors just amaze me. You can’t enjoy the beauty of it without walking out in it and really looking though. I enjoy the flower beds around the house but I just love the wild beauty of a field overgrown with grasses, wildflowers and weeds.

While I was enjoying the flowers and the view Drew of course was exploring what he calls his favorite place – the hay bales. He loves to play around and on these hay bales. They are lined up along a fence line between our place and the neighbor’s field and he makes forts and secret places between the fence and the bales. It’s a great place for a little boy to use his imagination! I’m very grateful we’ve been able to raise the kids out here in the country!

Rainy Thursday

We got rain yesterday- 1 1/2″ to be exact. And we needed it. Things were really starting to get dry in our area again. Others in the area got up to 3″. We are very thankful for every drop of it! It was dark most of the day and there was lots of thunder and lightening. It was raining when I got up at 5:00 this morning and it was still raining at noon. We hadn’t had a rainy day like that in months. It was a perfect day for burning candles.

It was also the perfect day for making a pie, Freezer Peanut Butter Pie. I’m not a peanut butter fan but Joe and Drew love it so I thought this would be perfect for the hot weather that’s supposed to be moving in for the weekend.

It was also a perfect day for running outside between the raindrops and gathering Hollyhock blooms so Drew and I could make dolls out of them. Mom never grew Hollyhocks but I have always loved them and have planted a few over the years and yet I had never made dolls out of them. So I got on Pinterest to find out how and Drew and I had fun making them. I think they look a little like sweet southern belles! I think everyone should slow down and make a Hollyhock doll once a while. It’s amazing how much joy you can get out of something so simple. I’m not sure what Drew had more fun with though, making the dolls or playing in the rain while I picked the blooms!

Little Things

This little guys was hanging out in my Hollyhocks. It always amazes me what we can see if we just take the time to slow down and look. He seemed to be enjoying his perch and never moved a muscle. Just watched me take his picture and check out the Hollyhocks that had bloomed while we were away camping. It’s the little things that make me happy!

Quiet

After a busy weekend it was nice to have a quiet Tuesday. Drew must have been wore out from the weekend as he was calm and quiet all day. I got the house picked up and vacuumed, the kitchen and the bathroom cleaned. We didn’t venture outside anymore than we had to due to the heat. I was happy to see my peonies finally bloomed. I love peonies – they are so beautiful and they smell wonderful! Too bad they don’t last longer!

After supper Joe and Drew headed over to Dad and Mom’s so Joe could help Dad repair his mower which gave me a nice quiet evening at home to stitch – I don’t get quiet evenings at home much this time of year so I really enjoyed my stitching time and watching Calling the Midwife! It’s funny though – I looked forward to this time – a couple of hours of quiet alone time – and yet I was more than ready for my guys to come home!