A weekend in SC in March to celebrate 2 birthdays with The Neighborhood Gang.

Later, I went to SC again to stay with Ginny while her husband was gone to a bachelor party.

A nice relaxing weekend. Shopping at Jockey Lot. Chinese supper out. Watching the boys play ball.

Sunday lunch at a botanical gardens.

Then the beginning of May it was a trip to Ohio for the wedding of a friend. We got to stay with Very Good Friends.

Here is a sneak peek of the wedding:

Literally.

We sat in a side room in the front so as long as the heads in front of us parted, we had a great view. It was a beautiful wedding and you can see more HERE if you want.

And then on Sunday we went to Holmes Co. to eat lunch with a great group of ladies plus one new boyfriend. Velma has beautiful flowers so I indulged:

Went to the funeral of the wife of my mom’s cousin in Montezuma and go to see most of my siblings who were also there for the funeral. The next day we enjoyed having Steve and Christy here for lunch and a long chat. We seem to have no limit of things to talk about!  

And this past weekend was graduation for Tyler and school end program and picnic. More pictures to come later.

While I catch my breath.

On April 20th the shuttle Discovery landed in Florida. And being the partial geek that I am, I was once again intrigued with the numbers involved: speed, altitude, etc. This time they routed it to come in across the USA from Washington state down to Florida.

I hoped we would be able to see it but the partial cloudy situation in our western skies made it a bit tentative whether or not it would be visible. I followed the live coverage on Fox News.com. When it was over Georgia I went out to look. I saw several planes in different parts of the sky and 1 object in the western sky. It was faint to the naked eye but I’m pretty sure it was the shuttle. I was talking to someone for a few minutes and when I looked again it was gone.

At liftoff the shuttle, boosters and external tanks weigh 4.5 million pounds. Orbiting speed for the shuttle is 17,000 mph. Can you comprehend that? I can’t! The descent is 20 times steeper than a commercial flight.

These stats are the only ones I wrote down from this landing:

Altitude: 209 miles; minutes from landing: 34; speed: 16900 mph
Altitude: 53 miles; minutes from landing: 27
Miles to arrival: 2700; altitude: 46 miles; speed: 16000 mph

These stats are from a previous landing in Texas that I had written down during the live coverage. I’m assuming they’re pretty typical of shuttle landings.

14800 mph at 7:35 minutes from landing
11000 mph at 6:40
9000 mph at 5:95
7000 mph at 4:50
6000 mph at 4:15
5000 mph at 3:37
4300 mph at 3:04
3600 mph at 2:15
1800 mph at 1:12
365 mph at :30

In case you don’t like numbers think of it this way, in 7 minutes it went from travelling 14800 mph to 365. I wonder how the shuttle is designed to absorb that so those aboard don’t lose 3 months worth of lunch. There was a sonic boom as it’s speed decreased to below the speed of sound.

And the amazing thing is, the only way that man can do these things is because of the consistency of God’s laws. Gravity doesn’t change from day to day. There are many absolutes in science that enable them to be able to do mind-blowing feats such as this.

In The Beginning there was no sonic boom to blow the world into place. It was the design of a loving Creator.

 

It’s a girl!!!

Well, it was pink, anyway. The silly thing was so big and the stem so long that it spent most of it’s life on the ground. Gotta love my poppy field.

Closeup (does this not seriously remind you of a 5 oclock shadow??):

And Thing 2 with a tiny visitor:

And our lemon tree survived the cold winter. Some blooms to show for it! Come by in November and hopefully we’ll have some fresh squeezed, homegrown lemonade for you!!

It’s been fun gardening this year, especially since it seems to be going better than last year. I gave them some plant food and then we had a good rain and they really greened up quickly.

If you ever make a raised garden, don’t do it quite like we did. This would be better if it were 3 separate beds tha you can walk between. That way you can just reach in to work on it. The tiny bed in the far left is our new asparagus garden. The little shoots sprouted and grew so quickly that you could almost watch them. Several inches in a day. I believe we are supposed to wait a year or two before we’ll harvest anything from them.

The yard has been weeded and feeded or is it wed and fed? English is a strange language. And the lawn has a few stripes, thanks to yours truly. I simply cannot seem to get it spreaded as evenly as I should. I’m not sure if I’m overlapping too much or not enough. It’s not very bad just enough to see what’s going on!

And the kohl is rabi-ing.

Love how water beads on the leaves.

And we have plenty of kale if you want some for garnishing or eating.

  

And now I’m really trying to decide if I want to plant a certain vegetable. One word that describe it is

mucilaginous

 

Know what it is?

 

So, if any of you Pennsylvania (or other) folk go to the Gospel Express auction tomorrow, you can see 2 of my canvasses up close and personal. And you may even bid on them if you want.  I’m generous that way.

A 24×36 of this:

 

and a 16×20 of this:

And they are much more brilliant in print than they show here (or at least on my screen). So if you decorate in pastels these may not be for you.

You know, seeing my art on display gives me a funny feeling. Kind of like you parents when your child performs. What if people don’t like what they see? What if “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in this case means my vision is off?

Okay, I’m not that paranoid about it, really! And I have a 24×36 of that first one to put somewhere in my house. And as you know, we did not decorate in pastels.

I really want a big field with a hill full of red poppies cascading down. Not that poppies typically cascade or anything. The only place I know of anywhere close to here is along the interstate near the overpasses.

And I’m not going there. I could just see a big car pileup happening.

Why couldn’t this field have poppies in it

instead of this flame weed stuff. 

Yeah, I know, then they couldn’t make hay in it like they do when this stuff dies off.

There is some story from my childhood that niggles in the back of my mind. I don’t remember the story or the moral. It seems like it had something to do with someone (probably a child) planting lots of poppies somewhere where they supposed to and this big crop of poppies took over the place. They couldn’t get rid of them no matter how much they wanted to. I think it was sort of a Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out stories.

Anyway, poppies always seemed a little Evil and something you definitely didn’t want to plant on purpose for fear of them being forever a pestilence.

I was at Lowes the other day and I saw a potted poppies and thought “what doth hinder me?” Apparantly nothing did.

It said Mixed Colors but I was kind of hoping for mostly red.

Yesterday morning I watered them and there was 1 red bloom and 2 “pods”. By the time I got home, a white one had started blooming.

I wonder what color the next one will be.

And here’s my poppy field.

Really big, isn’t it! I might GPS just to find my way back home!

So if you know of any big poppy field near you, give me a holler. I need an excuse for a road trip. Not really but in case there’s one close to my travels that would be splenderific.

While I was at Lowes I spotted a few more Gerber daisies and since I only have 4 plants I was sure I needed more. Then I thought, “how many Gerbers does a person need?” and I knew that would be exactly 0. So I settled for getting only 2 more.

These tinged ones are my favorite out of all that I have so far. The colored tips are so pretty!

painted:

And its a shame because all the plants I got 3 weeks ago still have not been transplanted. Yeah, I know! I really do have it on my list of things to do in 2010! I’m working on a tipsy pot thing (idea from my friend Velma) and if doesn’t tipsy over I might share with you some pictures later.

These Gerbers crack me up. They look like Dr. Suess characters. I call them Thing 1 and Thing 2.

And there’s a pre-adolescent Thing 3 peeking out at the bottom. Hope I don’t run out of numbers.

 

And now I must make my corn casserole and go to bed. It’s kind of a marathon weekend with activities this weekend. Pre-communion services Thursday, school fundraiser (pancake breakfast, yard sale, bake sale, auction) this morning, 50th anniversary celebration for long-time friends, Taste of Home cooking school tonight, communion tomorrow AM and potluck dinner tomorrow.

Adios and good night!