Bright Bits From This Week

These are a bit out of day order but they're all part of this week.

Thursday we were meeting friends for pizza for the first time since this pandemic began.  HWNSNBP initiated this small gathering to thank the "garage boys" for all their help with sheetrocking and painting the interior of our garage.  Our original plans were to eat outside but we got lucky and they put us in the "Barn Room" which meant we were in-but-out so to speak.  The barn doors were open to the outside as it was a pretty pleasant evening.  Though I think if we had eaten outside our pizza's would have gotten cold pretty quickly.  

I decided on a little last minute project (of course).  I had seen that it was National Fruit Cocktail Day and asked HWNSNBP to pick up some small cans of fruit cocktail on his morning grocery store visit.  I used these Simple Fruits stamps and dies from AlteNew to create these "half" cards on a kraft card base.  I have a pack of prescored kraft cards and envelopes that I found during my recent craft room cleaning.  I didn't want something too big, more like a tag so I cut the card base in half and layered the fruits onto it along with the sentiment.

Inside I used another stamp for this sentiment and added the special day greeting.

I put a small can of fruit cocktail and all the leftover chocolate nuggets from the work sessions into the bags and tied them up.  A simple way to celebrate good friends.

During my weeding this week (of which there is much more to be done) I came across my pink Lily of the Valley which I haven't seen in years.  This particular bed has become overgrown with a particularly invasive plant I know as Marsh Marigold.  I am trying to remove most of it but it has these little tubers on the roots that have to come out and being that this is my wildflower bed, I'm not able to just rip it out.  I've had to scoop out the plants by their roots and I'm afraid that I'm going to be losing other things along the way that have past their blooms.  Spring wildflowers tend to bloom and then you don't see evidence of the plant after a while.  But it was nice to find the pink LoftheV again.

 

On the side of the garage we have the brunnera blooming beautifully.  The hellebores that we had here didn't make it (though they did in other areas - go figure).  And I picked up a pulmonaria plant that we added to the front of these.  HWNSNBP also picked out some astilbe that is behind these plants and not ready to bloom yet.

In the other tier of this bed we have some small red barberry shrubs which I didn't realize flowered.  Those golden yellow blossoms are quite a contrast to the red leaves.

And we have forget-me-nots coming up in scattered places.  I leave them where they're happy because they make me happy to see them.  

Rachel had ordered me some specialty marshmallows for Mother's Day that were delivered on Tuesday.  I was happy that it hadn't been too hot to melt them.  I had ordered some for gifts the week before and we had some very hot days and they came partially melted.  That meant they couldn't be gifts which was bad, but they could be eaten, which was good and bad.  I have ordered other flavored marshmallows without the chocolate covering from this company in Chicago that were also quite good.  I loved the chocolate covered ones but it's getting too warm at this time of year for them now.  They will have to wait until the fall for another order from me.

I planted spinach and buttercrunch lettuce in our raised bed planter near the house and the spinach is ready for picking.  Made a few good spinach salads for HWNSNBP and I for lunches this week.  He likes his sans strawberries and with ranch dressing. I went for a raspberry vinaigrette on mine.  Isn't it pretty?

HWNSNBP is hard at work these days putting in our flowering plants.  We have flats of vinca/periwinkle that we scatter around the yard as they are one of the few flowers that the deer do not bother.  He has been on a somewhat of a wild goose chase looking for purple fountain grass.  We usually add a few of these to our front yard landscaping.  They are winter hardy in other zones but not ours.  Here they are considered annuals and he refuses to pay high prices for annuals being that we need about 7 of them.  So he has been visiting nursery upon nursery looking for smaller, less expensive plants without much success.  It's usually in the out-of-the-way place that we get lucky with these so keep your fingers crossed.