A New Bloom

 We were gifted a cool morning with no sunshine early-good for me so I grabbed my weed eater and mowed for 2 hours. Got the worse of the tall grass now. Another two hours should complete the areas by the lake side, but then time to start over haha.

  While mowing I discovered a pretty bloom and one other bud on a bush that has never bloomed since we moved here-5 years ago. This is a spot that is a mess, with different plantings-a job for early spring or fall.  Looks like the previous owner bought a couple different small bushes and a vine and just planted them together in this spot. Maybe this fall I can straighten this out.

   When I saw this bloom I thought mallow but when I looked it up not sure if that is right. anyone know??  These are blooming on the dark green bush behind the flower

  I got our first box of beef cuts from the company Good Chop last Friday.

     Over the weekend I used one of the flank steaks-sliced it very thin across the grain, sprinkled adobo spice all over-and popped it in the frig for a few hours. When I make fajitas I have a hot cast iron pan with a little olive oil and toss in a few slices and cook it fast-take out of the pan and continue til finished. I combine the meat with already sauted  onion and sweet pepper slices.   The flavor was excellent and very tender. 

    I chose all lean cuts for us, since we are seniors and Larry has so many medical issues.  I am happy so far with the meat and the company.

  Happy New week

. 

Photos-in the Garden

 Good morning Sunday, we did get a much needed cool down today, not all the rain and storms that were predicted, and still very humid.

 I grabbed the camera. Perhaps someone knows what some of my perennials are. I have several tall and wide plants that have not bloomed yet.  These I grew two years ago from seeds. The milkweed is blooming again, snapdragons still blooming, I think the bee balm is blooming and I have two big tubs of seeds that I planted that I think are lavender-but the leaves don't look like the lavender I have and it does not smell like lavender.  Sooo if you recognize my plants please let me know.

  Below is milkweed

Is this lavender?  Now I am thinking could this be salvia??  these leaves don't look like lavender at all

These have not bloomed yet In the back is a huge copper pot-planted the petunias from seeds-happy with those

Another pot of the petunias grew from seeds
 

I think in front is bee balm?  don't know what the back is-all grown from seed two years ago

  

When I upload the newest photos to my computer-they do not load in order so I have to hunt for them  so I am missing a couple that I just now took to share.

    I had a photo of the black walnuts that are falling off the trees already. Too soon.

The area that I had dug up the chocolate mint-still has no mint sprouted-thank goodness so that means I got all the roots-There is still more to dig out but I need cooler weather for that.

   Happy New Week

Ink Practice

 Another super hot and humid day today-probably similar to the weather many of you are having too.

   I finished a book I was reading today-part of the Elm Creek Quilt series. It was depressing to read, as it was pretty graphic about the slavery and the civil war. The beginning and the end that brought it all together made it worth the read.  

  Watched more about the devastating flooding in Texas, made us our 2 in the afternoon main meal-and then decided to work with inks.

  I am trying to do something most every day with watercolor paints or inks. Yesterday I was attempting a scene with a squirrel in the woods eating a nut-the end result was pretty grade school haha.

  So today I used my inks-black india ink, oak gall ink which is a pretty grey, one of my inks for the brown and Windsor and Newton watercolor inks. I love their inks. I found this photo online I had bought a box with around 10 or 12 colors   

I used this page for inspiration-which was using ink

I love the look of inks.  The white ink though was thick like paint not thin like their other inks. I used a brush and went over the waterfall a bit with the white ink. Those of you that work with ink-what can I use to thin this? thanks

   I may look at this again tomorrow and add more to this  (photos will enlarge just click on them)

and for laughs-yesterday's practice-most of this was also done with inks but the green is watercolor paint

Looks like a possible cool down tomorrow-I'll take it  Happy weekend

Hot Hot & Hotter & This & That

     Good morning Thursday  Wow this week is flying by too fast. Very hot and humid, major issues with the service we got from when we installed our furnace in January-won't even go into it-but now the issue is-our a/c unit is not compatible with the new furnace-they should have known this back in January but they sent out two apprentices with no lead tech.  So unhappy with this company. The motor will probably burn out again but I am keeping the thermostat in the low 80's instead of 79 so it doesn't come on as much. Hopefully we make it through the rest of summer and decide what to do going forward. The tech that came out to change the motor told us this and said next time the motor will not be covered in the warranty-it's their bad service in the beginning that caused this-oh well what can one do to protect themselves any more. sad

  Hubs has been ill but getting better finally. Me I am still having issues with foods but I think I am done losing weight now as I am finally consistent at 114 to 115 for a week now-finally. That's a 20 pound loss since last winter. This is actually my normal weight before I turned towards the 50's in age. Larry finally noticed-hey you are too skinny haha. I like this weight though or perhaps into the low 20's

 I wrote down the list of supplies from the book I shared on making watercolor paints-

  There was actually quite a long list of supplies. I need to check my natural dye supply box as I think some of the items I need am hoping to have already.

  I did buy the tempered glass board and glass muller on amazon for mixing the paint. I also needed a new set of watercolor brushes-mine were super inexpensive at the time so my favorite ones are in bad shape already.  These two glass pieces were rather expensive but I went ahead and got them. This tempered glass board  was the right size with high reviews.  I will need to find someone to gift my art and craft supplies to in the future (smiles)

  I also picked up those little pans to hold the paints and I do have lots of little jars already.

 I could probably buy professional grade watercolor paints for the same amount of money in the end-but what fun is that haha.

  The author of this book lives in Canada and she is on different internet platforms with her videos-You Tube Instagram, Facebook etc. One needs her book though for the basic recipe and how to make the paints-she does not share any of that in her videos.

  She posted recently about  making paint from watermelon.  video here on facebook  I am hoping this link works-may have to be on facebook not sure.  This video is also on Instagram too. She is under her name (name on book)

Today I get my first box of USA  beef from Good Chop  Larry is not eating any meat right now so kinda bad timing-am anxious to try it though.

That's it for me  

Enjoy your day and stay cool and hydrated

Prayers for Texas

    My heart goes out to Texas.

   I just can't wrap my head around the loss of the little girls that attended a Christian camp 

     The latest news I have seen just now-a young person was rescued that had climbed into a tree, and 11 more little girls and one camp counselor to be recovered or found.  

Governor of Texas has declared July 6th day of prayer for Texas

It's Our Independence Day

 

Watercolor Practice & Fireworks have Begun

    I thought I would try to get to sleep early tonight, as I was tired but the fireworks have begun already here on the lake. I got up and watched for a bit. I do love fireworks but could do without the ones that just make a very loud boom.

   I have been practicing with watercolors and inks this week. I got out the book that I worked out of two years ago. I really like this book as they also use a lot of inks and show the brush strokes.

My piece looks nothing like the page I was using for reference-but that's ok-I am getting back to the feel of the paints again. I usually over do the watercolors when they are still wet-need to work on that.

   The brown is the hibiscus ink I had made two years ago. The purple and red is Windsor and Newton's inks and the black is another ink that I have Blues and greens are the watercolors

       Any plans for the 4th?   I have no idea what I am going to make us this year. Larry is not eating much this week , and I have to be careful what I eat still-so will figure it out tomorrow haha Now that rain is out of the area-I started the grass cutting early this morning-I will do that tomorrow morning as well. We are headed back up to the 90's-so the lake will be packed for sure. The rain was all taken out of the forecast.

   Happy 4th-all that celebrate here in the USA

Surprise Bloom

 Good morning Monday

    This is the first year that my amaryllis bulbs did not bloom in the house late winter or early spring.

   So after the last freeze when I put the two big clay pots outdoors I began watering them. One of the pots are young plants. Well just before all the rain -one of those young bulbs produced a lovely huge bloom-but on a very very short  stem near the bulb.

  Have you ever seen this before??

Happy Monday and last day of June 2025---How did that happen??? Smiles

Cool Down & Lots of Rain

 So thankful for the cool down-finally, and Lots and Lots of rain coming down since last night. My rain gauge showed 11 inches in a 24 hour period and it is still coming down around 5 pm now.

We really needed some rain, and I really needed the cool down too.  Of course my grass is so high already-oh well.  I am sure the Missouri rivers here will be flooded as some of the low spots and coves on Lake in the Ozarks. We are up high so we are safe from flooding. Although our basement will get some rain coming in when we get this much.

I found this photo online-looks like our lake right now-missing the lake houses.

        I wanted to do a re do of the Spring in Paris-into a Summer in Paris. I didn't get perfect stamping images and since this was the second try didn't want to use more watercolor paper on this.  I used my watercolor pencils instead of inks-which were fun to use too-and my dip pen and ink to make the cobbled street.  This was so so but I am working on doing something with paints every week-hopefully a couple days a week.. After I painted the big heart-not sure if I liked that or not-but the color does match with one of the flowers to the left so kinda brings it all together.

  Click to enlarge for better viewing.

   It has also been two years ago that I bought a few glass dip pens-I Love using them.  I had bought a hand blown glass pen first, however it is quite fragile looking so I mostly admire that one.  At the time I wanted to learn calligraphy but too  much has happened since then.

   The dip pen shown above was the second glass pen I bought, but it is a bit bulky for letter writing. I used it here for the cobblestones. I found it on Amazon and it came in a really nice wooden box, with a little glass piece to rest the pen on.  The crystal ink pot is vintage and Larry brought home two of these from a garage sale years ago. They came sitting on a little wooden piece that would sit on a desk. The top is silver-I love using these. I keep my own black walnut ink in one and the other black ink.

   I also found on Amazon back then, very nice glass dip pens that had a huge markdown-after I bought one to see what they were like-ended up being perfect for letter writing-so I bought a couple more. At the time I didn't know if these would break easy-so far none of them have..

   Another nice thing about this cool down-no super loud fan motor to listen to  since the a/c is not coming on. I need to call them Monday to find out if they got the new motor or not-I need to do some food shopping early this week too-am pretty much out of fresh veggies and fruits..

   Happy new week!!

Trouble W/ AC & Beef in a Box & Painting

   It's been a long day-well they are all the same hours-haha-but seemed long.

We had a new heating system put in early January this year, and the guys needed to come back out several times to get it working right.  We had replaced the A/C system when we first moved here.

  Yesterday the blowing fan started making loud noises, today it was much worse-our heating system is under warranty for a year for service calls and parts. It took me awhile to locate their phone number-I was never given a card and was not even on the manual. 

     So she was giving me a hard time that the a/c was the issue and I said no it's the blowing fan you put in for the furnace that also is used by the a/c.  So she finally understands but the service call is not until tomorrow late evening. They are booked solid-of course do to the extreme heat. Their service call charges is outrageous-so hoping no issues with that.

  So I had the a/c turned off all day and this evening it is just too hot for us so had to turn it back on always something isn't there?  I was concerned that the loud noise would make things worse but we both need the a/c especially Larry. The high heat plus humidity continues.

   I have been looking for a source to buy quality beef. After talking with the rancher that sells it at the little farmers market nearby I wasn't real impressed on how it was handled.  So  I decided to look into beef boxes as I am very happy with the Alaskan seafood that I have shipped.

 I spent a couple hours looking online. One I really liked a lot but after chatting with them the beef is from Australia and not the USA   So I decided on Good Chop-I liked their cuts-was looking for mostly lean cuts, they did not have free shipping like most do, but it was around $10.00 so not too bad.  Their special today for new subscribers was free shipping, $50.00 off my box and I think my next box too, I also got to choose from a couple free items-I chose the hamburger. The box size I chose--  the smallest-was to pick 6 items and they had many lean cuts to choose from.  The bill ended up at $108.00. Most of the beef packages had two pieces in them, the rib eye is very large. I thought I would get one really nice steak-that will feed us for a couple meals too.  This company represents USA ranchers and they had a high ranking- This company also lets you choose how often to get a box, can change the cuts as well. I could have gotten it next week Wednesday but decided on the second week in July.

 This morning, I found the spiral pad of watercolor papers and found many pieces I did two years ago, with my own made watercolor inks as well as the watercolor paints. Looking at them now-I was too hard on myself  Smiles. I was working out of  a watercolor book in hard cover spiral from Japan-I worked out of that book a lot-It showed you the strokes, and suggested paint colors.  

  This is what I ended up with

Here is the page I was working off of-I will try this again tomorrow as mine is totally different This is an Iris flower. I don't like the green I used either.  It was fun and relaxing-so that's a good thing. I had the a/c situation on my mind too

I also opened up the box of inks I had made two years ago-and I figured as much-they mostly changed to different shades of browns but I like them.  I used the back of the paper of the painting from yesterday for samples. If you  enlarge the photo-click on it-and you can read what I made the inks from. The hibiscus on the far right held it's color the best. I will use these up in paintings-love the muted soft colors.

Some of you may remember this piece-one of my favorites. I used stamps and my handmade inks, along with Winsor and Newton watercolor inks It took me a bit to find the post again-in 2023 This photo cut off Paris--Spring in Paris

Happy mid-week, and stay cool 

Watercolor Painting

   A couple years ago I tried painting with acrylics and also watercolor paints. I like the watercolor paints better. I got discouraged as this needs lots of practice, never took a class, but I have picked up a few books.

  I do like the watercolor book on wildflowers, and today I got the newly published book on making watercolor paints from botanicals and veggies which looks really good. I need to buy a few supplies to get set up though.  This looks like a good beginning for this project. Her You Tube channel is excellent with all sorts of different botanicals to make into the watercolor paints. One needs the book though to know what added ingredients are required to make the watercolor paints.

 I have a little desk top mini easel that is perfect for me. I grabbed a thick piece of paper that was included in some stationary and just played on that-for fun and to get the feel of it again. For me I think painting is a mindset-just be confident and do it haha  well hoping I get better this time of trying.

  So this was just for fun-used one of the flowers as a guide from the book, and added the little bird and birdseed and a little something top and bottom I think my style-if I end up with one-is more folk or country  the photo will enlarge just click on it.

Staying Cool?

    How are you all staying cool??  

I never had air conditioning in the house until we moved down to Missouri for our retirement years. In this area it is a must, especially for health conditions. We usually have high humidity along with the heat.

  We were mid 80's F before 8 am already this morning. I set up the garden hose so I could water the perennials early mornings or early evenings after the sun goes down a bit. I may need to water twice.

  I started on a deep clean of our home this morning-we have vintage wood pieces so a good time to get out the Liquid Gold wood cleaner.

 I was really stuck in the house over the bitter cold winter, and now summer begins with severe heat and humidity-that's Mother Nature for ya-Smiles.

 Thinking of cool foods for summer -what are your favorites??

    

Here is a link to lots of summer cold salads

a coconut shrimp salad from above link

How about ice cream?

  A few years ago I bought a ice cream cone maker-to make me a gluten free ice cream cone-have not tried that yet-not sure why now. I think that goes on my to do list this summer.

Please stay hydrated and cool during these extreme hot temperatures

 Hugs from the Ozarks

Hot in the Ozarks & Ramblings

   Summer came in with the Solstice yesterday. Hit mid 90's and will continue  through next week as  well. What a complete turn around here from too much rain and perfectly comfortable temperatures to this extreme heat wave-I will need to water my perennials this evening going forward.

  Snoopy says it best haha Of course the non seniors are loving this weather so the lake is crazy-always fun to watch the different boats go by

Yesterday morning I mowed on the hill and stood on a gravel path down to the lake that Larry put in a few years ago. Some how this messed up my back by evening yesterday. ugh I have lost a lot of weight figuring out what to eat for the acid reflux and over the winter I have lost a lot of muscle too I will need to work on that. Still in a lot of pain today so could not get outdoors to work this morning.

 We mostly eat port and chicken and I am eating more ocean fish now too. Today Larry informed me he is tired of pork and wants more beef. He never says anything so this must have been on his mind for awhile With his heart condition I didn't think beef was all that good for him. I did look it up online and it suggested beef cuts good for seniors.   The wal mart  here where we live now has horrible meat, and the beef prices are out of line too.  The local grocery store has a better selection to choose from so will need to explore that next time. I also put in a request for meat shops near me in a local facebook group for this area of the lake. Maybe there is butcher shop that sells meat nearby.

   I was a vegetarian in the past for several years and I  never cared for a lot of beef anyways growing up so I really am not good at cooking it either-Will need to look into that.

  :Looks like our nation has gone from too much rain and storms to a massive heat wave.

Stay safe everyone.  Oh and looking out my kitchen window today I saw a couple different butterflies and also one hummingbird enjoying the milkweed flowers  Smiles

  

Summer Soltice

 

June 20, 2025 9:42 pm central time

Summer Solstice Goddesses (below copied from online)

Aine (Celtic), Amaterasu (Japanese), and the Horae (Greek), particularly Auxo (Greek) are all goddesses associated with the summer solstice and its symbolism: 

1. Aine (Celtic):

• Aine is a Celtic goddess of love, fertility, and sovereignty.
• She is often associated with the sun and plays a significant role in Midsummer (summer solstice) celebrations.
• Aine embodies the peak energy of summer, the abundance of life, and the vitality of the earth.
• She is seen as a connection between the natural world and the realm of the faeries.
• Her radiant presence reflects the power of the sun at the summer solstice, symbolizing warmth, passion, and creativity.
• Honoring Aine during Midsummer celebrates both the abundant growth in nature and the inner strength of individuals. 

2. Amaterasu (Japanese):

• Amaterasu is the Japanese sun goddess, and a central figure in Shinto mythology.
• She is considered one of the most important offspring of the god Izanagi.
• While not directly tied to the summer solstice in the same way as Aine or Auxo, as the sun goddess, her presence and energy are inherently linked to the sun's power and influence, especially during the time of peak sunlight. 

3. The Horae (Greek), particularly Auxo:

• The Horae are goddesses in Greek mythology, representing the cycles of time and the seasons.
• Auxo is one of the Horae, specifically associated with summer, growth, and vegetation.
• As the goddess of summer, Auxo embodies the bounty of nature and the ripening of crops during the summer season.
• Her presence is associated with the flourishing harvest that comes with the abundance of summer. 

In summary:

• Aine and Auxo are both strongly connected to the summer solstice and its symbolism of abundance, fertility, and the peak of nature's energy.
• Amaterasu, as the sun goddess, is associated with the sun's power and influence, which is at its peak during the summer solstice. 

These goddesses represent different cultural interpretations of the significance of the summer solstice and the celebration of life, growth, and abundance associated with this time of year. 

It's Raining Again

   Good morning, It's raining early today. I am grateful for the rain as some years here in the Ozarks we get very little rain June til September.

  I thought I would browse the internet and share some photos. Rain an be calming and peaceful this time of year (these photos are all royalty free)

 Enjoy your day

Garden Photos

   This afternoon I got back out digging up the chocolate mint. I have never seen mint with such large root systems, and packed in like a brick almost-a huge job for sure. Never could dig this out without all the rain we have been having. 

  I made progress yesterday and I was back out a bit this afternoon. The runners are soooo long that I yank a section out and then dig out the root system. It is raining again so needed to come in. I did grab my camera before it started really raining hard.

   That just soil area is part of the area I have been working on. This mint is mixed in with Larry's shallots and those gladiolas-too, so that will be a chore to get the mint out in those areas  I may just dig up the gladiolas first and then dig up the mint and replant them

It doesn't look like much but all that blank soil was solid mint. 

around the garden-with all the rain ,all of the perennials I grew from seed and planted two years ago are now huge.

Do any of you know what plant this is below?  Two years ago this was a tiny little plant that I bought on ebay. I think it was one the hummingbirds like-Mary you bought one too do you remember the name?? thanks

   That tube sticking out directs the rain water down to the lake and in our basement-like it did when we first moved here.

This year the deer or the chipmunks keep digging up what I plant in my big copper pot (above) I just replanted it again with some flowers I grew from seed.

I have a few large clumps of yarrow

Below these pretty purple ones are mixed in with the shallots I really like these

This geranium seems happy in this huge pot

Below flower seeds I scattered last week-mostly zinnias, I did the same with saved marigold seeds today

Happy new week everyone.