T Stands for Tuesday-more gardening

   Hoping all you mothers had a wonderful Mother's Day here in the States last Sunday. The lake was very busy all weekend despite the off and on rain with boats and those noisy personal watercrafts. The sailboat was out again too on Sunday and he had the perfect wind for his sailboat. We had a warm and very humid long weekend

  This brings us to Bluebeard and Elizabeath's T for Tuesday where we share a post with a drink related photo. Find link in my side bar to join in 

   

  I have been outdoors every day either weeding, planting or weed eating our yard. The weed eating was done in between small spurts of rain for three days now, I have one more area to finish. I use up 3 to 4 batteries at a time which is close to 2 hours-that's enough for my back in one day. Then I charge them back up for the next day. I know it's allot of hours, but the lawn service people are just too expensive, and I don't want to buy a lawn mower either-knowing me I would end in the lake haha.  We are also working on bringing in rock to get rid of most of this grass

  We had a lovely surprise down by our lake front. When we first moved here I dug up a few plants including our blue flag iris that love wet feet. They love being near a pond so they can get their feet wet. Larry thought they would grow well here at the lake by stuffing them in cracks into the rocks that is our natural sea wall here where we live.  A  couple years ago the lawn service continued to cut them down even after telling them not to-I finally fired them.  Last year we thought we lost them since they had been cut down so many times the previous year.  When I was weed eating grass over the weekend in that area-Wow so happy to see them again!!

Sunday morning the first bloom. These are Larry's favorite flowers-so I was thrilled to see them again. 

    They look like an inspiration for a painting

The electric company here that uses the lake to make power lowers the lake after summer and then brings the water back up by Memorial Day weekend. Once the water is back up-it will rise up to these plants but not totally cover their roots-just keeps them moist. So the lake will be much deeper here on the edge when that happens

  Last year I learned about hummingbird plants from one of my blog and slow mail friends  They are a perennial and the butterflies and hummingbirds love them-so thought perfect for my garden.  I bought 3 plants that were quite small when I received them in the mail and this spring I had lost two and then accidently pulled the third one out when weeding grrrrr  So I went back on Ebay and bought a different color and from a different seller-this is the seller's photo 

This is the name of this perennial   Agastache kudos silver blue hyssop mint  This was a different seller and the plants came so well packaged, were large and healthy. I gave him an excellent review I was so happy. This is a photo of them. The box even had a couple air holes for the plants.  I planted them early Sunday morning-in front of a rocked area I have been working on-to the right of the big copper pot. They will have room to spread up there and they will be tall with the rocks behind them-should look nice.

                                 

   I also got the area in front all weeded-saved the wild violets, and brought over allot of those chocolate mint plants which will then turn this area into a ground cover.   

   Behind that area I finished more of the weeding where the goldenseal plants are that I had planted last year and Monday the bloodroot plants should arrive so I can get those planted. There is just enough shade for those two plants in this area-they naturally live in the woods where it is shady. I will place bark around those plants too.  

 So the off and on rain the last couple of days has been perfect for gardening.

    I have a couple drink shares.  A couple weeks ago I started a batch of limoncello which is so refreshing on a hot summer day.  I used around 12 large lemons-peeled the peels into vodka, where it will sit for a month. Strain add sugar and a little lavender, can't remember now if water is also added. If interested in the recipe tell me in comments. We keep the finished limoncello in a plastic jug in the freezer where it stays nice and cold.

   So now I had a dozen lemons with no peels on them, so I made us fresh lemonade and used splenda instead of sugar to sweeten it up.

  The pottery lemon juicer is one of my first handmade pottery purchases-back in the early '70s. I love using it and have not seen another one as nice. I think I bought this one in North Carolina where I lived for awhile back then.

I also brewed up a flavored decaf coffee for something different, I decided to bring out another very favorite handmade pottery piece of mine. This was a 4 piece set of cups and I also bought the pretty pitcher that matches-which I need to bring out and use this summer. These pieces are soooo light weight. I had asked the potter how she did that and she told me her pieces are electric fired.

  I baked us up a big cast iron skillet full of apple crisp with the fresh rhubarb I had found at the Amish store a couple weekends ago. Makes a nice snack in the evening or I like it for breakfast too.

    Saturday I received the little mending loom in the mail, it is a cute little piece, will try it soon.  This is already long so will share a book next week

  Happy T and new week

T Stands for a Rainy Day & an Attempt to Paint

   Happy T everyone,

       We gather at hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth blog to share a post with a drink related photo You are most welcome to join us. A wonderful group of talented and friendly artists and crafters

   I heard the soft rain as I was waking up this morning, and it continues off and on. A pleasant spring like day-I love it.

 Sunday was amazing, by afternoon we were in the 60's f with light winds and full sunshine. I was just getting ready to suggest that Larry go throw a fish line in off the deck, and our good friends (near the woods house) dropped in for a visit. So the guys went fishing and us girls chatted and caught up. A nice afternoon.

  I have been drinking cups of decaf coffee with whipped cream. The whip cream on top that melts into the coffee makes me smile haha

and today (Monday) when I  made up a fresh pot for me I remembered these lovely cups that I don't use often. I bought this set in the '70s in North Carolina. I loved this artist-and she electric fired her pottery (opposed to gas fired) which made her pieces very light.

   I did finish up the spinning for the pretty blue merino and silk blend. I had a difficult time with this one with all the different textures and bits of wools and silks-but it will be fine for my saori style weaving project. This goes into my bag of spun Yellowstone Park inspired colors.

  I did not meet my goal for the project of finishing setting my loom and the threading by end of February so that goal continues for March.

 Friday early evening a bit before darkness there were these bright yellow spots on the lake from some sort of reflection. I finally figured it out that it was from the almost full moon being so bright. I wanted to try and paint that.

  Today (Monday) since it was raining I wanted attempt this.  I thought I would just try painting with no influences from Your Tube videos etc-but I think I will look for some inspiration on how to paint water and skies.

    I almost did not share my piece as this may just be too "primitive" but I actually like it. As those yellow spots in the water were really amazing to see and figure out where they came from.

    The sky should have been a bit lighter. Since there are houses and docks across the lake for my view I added in dabs of brown to seperate sky from water.  (so don't laugh to hard 😀 when you see the painting)

   This is the pad of paper that came with my acrylic paints-I forgot to take a photo of the paints I was using-not allot of color choices and when I tried to lighten the blues they got more grey.

     I wanted to play around a bit first before I decide if I want to learn more about painting and pick up more colors.

    Finished piece before glueing into my journal

Taking photos and then looking at this-I for sure needed more contrast of blues between the water and sky-I do want to learn to paint water better. It was just before dark when I saw this scene.

   That's it for me this week.  

We just finished our main 2 pm meal a bit ago, so need toclean up the kitchen and then I am going to bake up a batch of cookies that I mixed up this morning. This is the one with no flour-I used mostly almond butter and a little cashew butter, dark keto choco chips, yellow raisins, quick oats, keto sugars and some spices.  I will update this post with a photo of cookies to share

Happy T