Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Homemade Soup

It doesn't take much--it can be just giving a smile. The world would be a much better place if everyone smiled more.
  Saint Mother Teresa
 
My husband makes the best soup when I have a cold.  I am blessed.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Family

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.  

Thomas Merton

A wedding in the family had a wedding. My two sister and brother.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

More Changes

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Jesus Christ

 
We are planning an addition on the house...right over the top of my beautiful rosemary bush.  I took cuttings before we try to dig it up to move it, you know...just in case.

 
I have been anxious although the problem is not mine alone and I am not at liberty to share.  This passage comforts me. May I ask you for an unspoken pray, please?  It is life and death.


I have shared my dill with a tribe of these greedy bastards.  It is okay, it will grow back and we will be delighted with the black swallowtails that will follow.

Sunday, August 6, 2017

Birthdays

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.

  Noam Chomsky

 
 
I share my birthday with the United States Coast Special.


Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Beauty

People often say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have not dared to look, including inside ourselves.

 

  Salma Hayek

 
Gardening from a wheelchair is a challenge. First two ghost peppers.

Schuster's catnip, she is 19 and we were told she has a lung mass. A large one.
We have the best looking basil, headed for frozen pesto for a taste of summer this winter.
We have baby figs!
Watercolor Gerbera daisy.
Look on his shoulder.
It is a Tiger Bee Fly.  She is after our Carpenter Bee nests.

Thursday, June 15, 2017

Schuster

I will always be beside you until the very end, wiping all your tears away, being your best friend, I will smile when you smile feel all the pain you do, if you cry a single tear, I promise I will cry too.

-Unknown



 
Little Miss Schuster and I have been friends for 19 years.  I didn't think she was feeling well and I was concerned she might be losing weight.  I was told over and over she was fine. 


 
I finally took her to the vet to ease my mind.  She had lost 3 of her 9 pounds.  She has a large mass in her left lung.  She is on anti-nausea meds and steroids.  They told me they could do a biopsy and more testing but I said no, I do not want to cause her pain.

 
I want her to have quality of life.  She has been my constant source of comfort.  She has seen me through pain and happiness.  She was there through divorce, surgery, the lost of my dearest friend.  She loved my Bruce the first time she met him.  She was happy to move here so we could marry and start a new life together.  He loves her, too.

 
Summer is coming.  I love this time of year.  I love the green and freshness. My friend, Vicki, gave me the Passion Flower in the black pot.  Bruce is going to make me a trellis for it. 

 
Every year I grow a yellow Gerbera for my friend, Penny.  I miss her everyday,  Yellow was her favorite color. These flowers comfort me.

 
Last year, on our trip out west to Jenny's wedding, we stopped to see my cousin, Linda.  She shared her Mother's irises with me.  They are beautiful this year.  I am looking for their permanent home,

 
The love if my life and I take care of a feral colony of cats.  A momma cat started bringing her three babies around.  This little Miss has adopted Bruce.  She runs to meet him and loves being rubbed and scratched.  She will be coming in the house very soon. A door begins to close, a window begins to open.  There will be pain and loss.  There will be comfort.  Life marches on.

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Multiple Sclerosis

Grateful living is important in the world because in our constant pursuit of more and better we can easily lose sight of the riches that lay right in front of us and within us.

Guri Mehta


The Ben Franklin Bridge
 
A trip to Philly to see my Neuro.  The new MS drug is not for me.  More risk than benefit.  We talked about Biotin.

Friday, May 19, 2017

Spring Garden Beginnings

If you don't get everything you want, think of the things you don't get that you don't want.

 

~Oscar Wilde

This is a Passion Flower dug up from my friend, Vicki's, garden and gifted to me,  How wonderful is that?!
Hostas in pots really do come back stronger some years.
Outdoor succulents on a shell from the fair Bruce and I went to last week.  A lovely memorial for a great day.  We have an Amish market and a Church Farmers Market tomorrow.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

“Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”

― Robert Louis Stevenson

 
 
Bruce bought me blood oranges at Christmas.  One of them had 3 seeds.  Just as I had given up hope, one tiny plant finally broke through the surface and a week later we have the first true leaves!

Saturday, March 4, 2017

ZOO DAYS

“Zoo: An excellent lace to study the habits of human beings”

  ― Evan Esar

We have a family pass to the Philadelphia Zoo, A very large group of us go often. The meerkats have always been my favorite. These little African birds were very friendly, staying one step ahead of my wheelchair.

Thanks for stopping by. God bless.

Friday, March 3, 2017

March 2017

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

  ~Henry Stanley Haskins



Time moves on. Happier than I have ever been, this is a good marriage. The MS progresses but I fight.  I lost my physical therapist, he moved on to more pay, a job closer to his home. Now we start over again.


A freshly brushed Dexter, my daughter's cat.