Rusty n ails. Rusty rust. Rusty stringing-words-into-sentences-into-paragraphs-into-stories. I'll get there. Again. 

Sweet peas. One of my favorite flowers. One of the first flowers I successfully grew as a kid. When I was a teenager, they let me grow sweet peas on the south side of the house. I can't recall though if I was a decent shepherd of sweet peas. You know, if I had watered them regularly without being told. I doubt they would've told me if I forgot. Knowing the parents, they would've given the sweet peas a drink if they were watering in the area. The parents were great. I like to think they were impressed that I actually took an interest  in growing stuff. I also planted Sweet Williams beneath a tree in the front yard, but they didn't do as well as the sweet peas. Sweet Peas. Sweet Williams. Yup. I was attracted to the names. This morning I collected sweet pea seed pods in the backyard. Their season went quickly. The sweetpeas in the picture are the last for this year. They're volunteers. I didn't even know there were sweet peas until I looked out the wind

WOW — Cosmos! The first Cosmos to grow in our yard, as well as the first of the season. The online Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word wow as "a striking success" when used as a noun and "to excite to enthusiastic admiration or approval" when used as a transitive verb. The noun has been around since the early 16th century while the verb usage was said to begin in the 1920s. Wow, huh? Every day, I am wowed by the wow's happening on the once-the-front-lawn. Today's wows are all firsts on some sort. WOW—Pompom Poppy! Friend BB gave me seeds from her yard for the past three years. This was the first year for them to pop out for me. WOW—Sunflower! This is the first sunflower of the season. The Husband and I first saw it this morning.   Wow is for the letter W , which is the theme for ABC Wednesday . Click here to see what bloggers from around the world have posted.  Merci beaucoup, ABCW team.

Some of you dear readers may recall that the Husband and I stopped watering the lawn and bit by bit began pulling it out. The Husband has given me carte blanche to plant what I want where I want. He seems to be happy to do the grunt work such as digging holes, hauling, placing heavy plants where I say, and putting stuff in the green garbage can. He's such a sweetheart, the Husband is. Today, I give you a peek of the view around our mailbox. The cosmos showed themselves over the weekend. It was a grand surprise. We had no idea what flower the feathery green stalks would be. Below is the view looking from the house. The Mama kept the orange roses and pink daisies in pots. I chose to put them in the ground because they have a better chance of surviving. Those are the last of the Spring poppies. Yesterday I pulled out a lot of old growth, throwing many of the seed pods back into the yard. Maybe poppies will show up again in late July. By the way, if you want to see how th

Summer is time  for sunflowers to grow over our heads. Summer is for less time on the computer. Summer is time for the Husband to get his hair cut.  Summer is for playing outside—pretending to be  all sorts of things, including a super muscle man with his terry cloth cape. Today is time to hook up with All Seasons , a weekly meme hosted by Jesh of Artworks from Jesh StG. To check out other participants, please click here . Thank you, Jesh. 

Am I allowed to say I’m a cancer survivor when I didn’t know I had cancer? On the fifth of May, as I lay groggily in a hospital bed, the Husband relayed the good news to me from the Surgeon. “’The surgery was a success!’” the Surgeon said.  Cancer was found but it was noninvasive.” Huh? Last week, I went to my follow-up appointment with the Surgeon, who said again, with a big encouraging grin, “The surgery was a success!” He gave me a copy of my biopsy report, summing it as such: A benign tumor was found on the  layer of muscle tissue of the uterus wall and paratubal cysts were discovered on a fallopian tube. There were a lot of cancer cells, but they were all contained within my uterus. They had not yet embedded themselves into the uterus wall—the saving grace. Several days later, my brain has begun to process it all. I don’t understand it. How I got cancer. Was it because my womb, who really ought to have a name, didn’t get to carry life? I imagine my uterus was looking

Two Fridays ago, the sunflower plants (those standing green guys in the background of the photo) were about one-third the size they are today. Two Fridays ago, I was sleeping off the effects of a robotic laparoscopic hysterectomy in a hospital room over an hour's drive away from home. I am healing well, thank you. I think I have inherited the Mama's resilience genes. It could also be described as the gene that resists letting go, chilling, and not doing anything at all. Fortunately I have also inherited the Daddy's gene of that's enough being whatever, so I have decided that I will not work in the yard unless the Husband is with me. Did you think I was going to say not work at all? Ha! I appreciate all your warm thoughts, prayers, positive vibes, and well wishes. They're all helping me get stronger each day. Love you, one and all, Su- sieee ! Mac P. S. I'll write about by not-so-hysterical adventures soon.

Slap. Slap. Slap. Slap. . . . Molly the Cat stopped and quickly turned towards the sound of the noise. She watched a big bear of a teenage boy running on the sidewalk across the street. Where was Molly several minutes beforehand when a noise behind me caught my attention. I watched a young man roll down the street on his skateboard holding to the leash of his running big bear of a dog. Mornings are wonderful around here. It's the letter P today on ABC Wednesday . Click here to check what other bloggers from around the world are writing, por favore signoras e signores. Thanks, ABCW team!

"Tell me everything will be all right," I said to the Husband. "Everything will be all right," he said. I like to be reassured now and then. Molly the Cat looked over at me. "Everything will be Okay, Lady." Purrrrrrrrrrr. It's a day late for ABC Wednesday . Better late than never. Click here to check out the participants. Thanks, ABCW team!  Oh, the theme this week is the letter O.  

Wild mustard greens is one of my favorite foods. I like to sauté the greens in garlic and soy sauce. Add a bit of bacon grease, if I feel like being fancy. Yummm. When I was a kid, it was common for the Daddy to pull our car beside an orchard or field full of wild mustard. The parents got out to collect bunches of greens, while I wandered about, gazing and doing who knows what. These days I wouldn't gather any wild mustard unless I knew the property owner and was assured that the property is certified organic. Last year, the Husband and I decided to grow our own mustard "field", not only for food but also to help put nutrients back into the soil. We purchased a pound of mustard seeds online, but sowed about a third of the bag. Toss is more precise. In December, I tossed the seeds willy-nilly into the backyard. Today it's a mini jungle of green and yellow back there. Some of the mustard plants are nearly five feet tall. I read that these plants can grow betw

The VHS tapes have been staring at me in the living room for more than a month. It could even be two months. I think that was the last time the Husband and I opened a bunch of boxes from storage to determine what to use, keep, throw, donate, recycle, maybe repurpose, or maybe sell. I think these VHS tapes are ones that I thought we might be able to sell online one day. This morning I finally did something with 12 of the VHS tapes. I bound them together with duct tape to make two walls for a bottomless planter. That's it in the photo. Pretty cool, huh? The planter would've been made of all VHS tapes, but I didn't have enough tapes. Fortunately, I kept the doors of a small cabinet, which fell apart last year, for the other two walls. I figure the pretty flowers will take the focus away from the funky taping. Maybe later I'll pretty up the planter with color or simply put something beside the taped VHS-tape side. It feels good to make something! Today I'm

Molly the Cat leads me out the front door before breakfast most mornings. "Go see what needs to be done," she telepathically prompts me as she begins her patrol of the perimeter. "No cats here," she sniffs. "Ooooh, ladybug." I check out new flower seed sprouts, note what sprouts need to be thinned and where I might replant them, bend over and pull up weeds, and so forth and so on. Sometimes the Molly's and my morning routine lasts a few minutes, especially when it's cold or rainy. "Forget this," says Molly when she quickly does an about-face several feet from the front door. Other times, we're out there for an hour or so, weeding, planting, digging, watering and whatever this heart pleases. Now and then Molly circles me to make sure I'm doing a decent job. What I like the most is looking up from my task and seeing Molly lying near by, eyes closed and body purring in the the sun bubbles. I feel like I'm doing the

I'm sulking. As in my teenage-self sulk, which was playing my guitar all Sunday afternoon, singing Flowers on the Wall , Elusive Butterfly , Bridge Over Troubled Water , and other angst songs, in the living room. I did do that. One time, during a pause, the Mama called out from the kitchen, "Are you done now?" hahahahaha . The poor Mama. She was a saint to endure two or more hours of my off-key singing and probably out-of-tune guitar. Okay. Focus. Back to the subject I began. I'm sulking. I don't want to do this not-a-hysterical operation even though I know it's a preventative measure that may let me live the full life that I'm meant to have. Don't worry. It will happen. In three weeks, I'll no longer have a reproductive system. I'm way beyond baby-producing time so my fist-size of a womb with attaching tubes and ovaries will be no more. I've never given birth. I wanted five kids. Maybe I have them in parallel universes

I'm creating a structure at the sidewalk end of our front yard. Not a fence. Just look at it. What creature could that evolving spiderness-of-a-something keep off our property? Giggle. Hmmm, maybe that's something I ought not to giggle about. I'm making this not-a-fence out of skinny branches of the fruit trees we pruned a few months ago, as well as from the second-time-with-The-Mama era. I'm not kidding. You can find all sizes of branches in our yard that I'd say were at last 10 years old. Some lie on the ground waiting for their time to become something helpful, such as the stakes holding up the boards that the Mama put around her flower and vegetable beds. Have I digressed? Doesn't matter. :-) That's my story for the letter N , this week's theme of ABC Wednesday . Click here to check out the participants from around the world. How cool is that? Thanks, ABCW team!

It's past noon and I haven't done what I said I would do today. But, I did make apple scones for breakfast and went out to the front yard with Molly the Cat to deadhead daisies and pull some weeds. Now I'm writing about it all. All distractions from filling out income tax forms. Doing the taxes should take less than two hours. I already did a first pass last month to get an idea of the damage to our checkbook. So, no big deal, right? I'm listening to the Full Sail album by Loggins & Messina in hopes that it will get me into the mood. Yes, right after I imagine myself snorkeling in Hawaii.  Ah, such pretty fishes.  I'm linking up with All Seasons , a meme hosted by Jesh of Artworks from JeshStG. Click here to check out other participants.

If I had written this post several days ago, I may have been called it Hysterical Report . Actually, I thought about renaming this blog to The Hysterical Report . I'm glad I waited. I'd rather not be hysterical about anything. I am on a new adventure. No. I take that back, it's not new. After 12 years, this adventure's path has come into the foreground. It's simply not a good idea to let the grass grow over this path anymore. My in-my-face-but-not-hysterical-adventure is an upcoming hysterectomy. Da-dah! Oh-oh, did I lose you? Come back when you can wrap your head around the concept of a hysterectomy. It took me awhile. I realize it helps for me to write about it. Yesterday afternoon I got a chest x-ray, one of my three pre-op things to do. The other two are an EKG (next week) and several blood tests (a week before the operation). Did you happen to flash on the Operation board game, by the way? Because I did the X-rays in town, I repeated myself a lot to the lab

A year ago, this day, we buried the Mama. "I already have a place," the Mama said. "With your father. They saved me a space on top of him." Always a forward thinker, as well as practical-minded, the Mama bought a dual burial grave site when arrangements were made for the Daddy in 1982. He was buried in the Veterans section in the cemetery a few miles away from the house. The section was new, so the Daddy scored a front row seat, beneath a big old shade tree that was planted in the same year as the Daddy. I'm sure the Mama was pleased with where her bones are resting. In life, the Mama liked to watch people go by. When I had to arrange all the funeral stuff last year, I was very thankful that the Mama took care of the burial site. I was also grateful that after 34 years the mortuary had a pristine paid-in-full record of that transaction. I hope the Mama's spirit is having loads of fun and laughter soaring through the Universe at beyond warp speed.  I have

These evenings, one of Molly the Cat's favorite perches, after consuming a bunch of dental treats, is her post that sits on top of a coffee table. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  I think if the girl could talk, she'd tell me to stop with the camera already.  Murrrrrrrrrrrrrr.   It's the letter M at ABC Wednesday . Click here for more M posts. Thanks, ABCW team!

Today marks the anniversary of the first year of the Mama's spirit roaming through the universe. This photo was taken a week before the Mama's final adventure of life begun. I'm glad that the Husband, Molly the Cat, and I got to go through that last amazing trip with the Mama. One of these days I'll tell the tale. Sweet cheers to the Mama!

I feel like a mad agronomist (as in mad scientist). Also, a mad farmer. This morning I started vegetable seeds indoors. If these seeds take, I guess we're having a vegetable garden. This is the first time I'm trying this pre-spouting step. Usually, I throw the seeds in the ground. Comme ci, comme ça. (Showing off the little French I recall from one semester of Francais.) I don't know what got into me this morning. Maybe it was wondering what to do with the several hundred tiny paper cups that are in the closet. You know how that is. You can't find the package of paper cups that you thought you bought so you figured you didn't buy them. So, you go buy a package and a few days later, voilå, there is that first package of paper cups. What seeds did I plant? Sitting in that orange container are 16 tiny cups of bean seeds. The seeds are from the Mama's last vegetable garden in 2015. They're quite tiny because of that year's drought. I'm guessin

Click here if you'd like to see how the former lawn has progressed. From last Thursday to Monday morning, I've been playing in the front yard, changing more of the looks of the former lawn. You see, the weather predictors said that rain is a coming. (And it has!) So, of course, I needed to take advantage of the rain. I dug, hoed, and pulled patched of turf and sowed wildflower seeds. The Husband also got in the fun and dug holes for the Mama's roses that were getting nowhere anymore in their pots. One of the dilemmas of creating flower plots in the front yard is trying to keep the birdies from eating the seeds and the kitties (not Molly the Cat) from turning the plots into their personal latrines. No problem. The Mama taught me a good enough solution. We took the branches that we pruned from the fruit trees last winter and criss-crossed them across the flower plots. Voici, voilå! With sun, rain, and good fortune, all will be in bloom by the end of April

The Mama's purple daisies. Molly the Cat was right (See yesterday's post ). Primavera. Earrach. Jaro. Molla. Musum semi. Spring! Our first late afternoon of Spring began with a gentle rain. I got a few plants and a bunch of seeds into the ground just in time. Hurrah! Here's a little bit of what Spring looks like around our house. Asian pear blossom. Volunteer lupine. Domesticated mustard (not at all tasty like wild mustard). Check out what's going on with other bloggers around the world at Our World Tuesday . Here's the link . Happy Spring, One and All!