No Assembly Required -

October? 

Impossible!!!

Where has this year gone?

Where have I been you may ask...not far!

Travel far has not been possible due to Bob being tethered to the hospital and cancer center...just a 15 minute drive from home. Our car hardly needs a driver, it knows the way there unaided!!!!

Our only travel has been within North Carolina to visit longtime friends, or other medical facilities. Our hotel stays have been to use up free nights earned before they expire, usually within 25 miles of home as that's where those friends live, and some nights we've checked in downtown where we enjoy an overnight 'staycation' with a nice restaurant meal and a hotel breakfast...a welcome change from cooking for me!

Yes, we certainly do miss 'happy travels' to lovely places, and especially

 miss crossing the pond to my home and family in England and France. 

I'm now a Great Aunt as my niece in France recently had a beautiful 

baby girl - hoping we'll be able to go meet her some day soon.

The arrival of Autumn is probably my favorite time of year. Here in our area many start decorating very early for Halloween. My outdoor decor is now minimal, a knobbly pumpkin on the steps, yellow mums to replace Boston ferns in my porch hanging baskets, an Autumnal flag, and lots of lanterns. No major assembly makes decorating much easier!

As our neighborhood changes with smaller homes being sold and multi-million dollar mansions (the latest build has a sale price of $6,250,000!) replacing them in this now 'hot' area of the city, the Halloween decor changes too. Perhaps you've seen them...........gigantic, larger than life terrifying skeletons clambering out of shrubs or sitting on the porch, spiders in webs stretched across an entire lawn area, huge ghosts flying through the trees.  All very costly. I want to know where the heck will they store those 15 foot tall skeletons the remainder of the year? Perhaps in one of the three car garages which come with those big homes.

A glimpse of my indoor decor. The still much loved older paper pumpkins,

a few new fresh pumpkins from the farm, and Diana the Huntress now

 sports a witch hat. Pardon me Diana!

Wishing you a happy Autumn season.

I''ll try to get back here again soon.

Mary

Parallel Lines - Springtime

This is an update on a previous post, I think!!!!
My poor old blog is playing tricks with me, probably

 because I'm not here often these days! 

Life doesn't always remain on the straight and narrow.
Curves are thrown.
Corners insist on making turns.
Lines spread wider, or narrower.  
Collisions occur.
Predictions don't always come true.
Life is not always how you want it.
Youth is precious.
Aging is not always fun.
There's no place like home.

Growing old takes courage. A lot of courage. Older adults can be overwhelmed by uncertainties.The future sometimes looks bleak. 'Live and let live' is not easy when all around seems to be falling apart and one feels that the end is perhaps nearer than once thought. It may be you, your spouse or partner, a family member, your best friend or neighbor. Eventually we each are faced with circumstances that we may feel unable to manage. We may struggle to adapt and move forward. We help in many different ways best we can. We don't lose hope. We encourage with words and deeds. We smile, laugh, pray.........and sometimes cry when nobody can see us. Life is so unpredictable. We don't plan to get old. We have to learn to adapt, to live one day at a time, and be grateful for kind family and friends. We do what we are still able to do no matter how insignificant those small things are, or how different they may be from what we were used to doing in those magical younger years.

The sun came up this morning and the first thing I noticed was its warmth and welcome in the upstairs hall. I took this photo, came down to my laptop, flipped open the cover, grabbed a cup of coffee and knew this was the day I would at last come back here.

Sadly, it's been far too long since I posted here but as my eighteenth year of blogging popped up recently I'm doing this quick post before this becomes another crazy day and the laptop remains closed down.

Update on Bob:  Bob's health issues continue. He completed the 2.5 months of chemo following major surgery, but the follow up scans show the cancer has reared its ugly head and spread. Following another mini-surgery we are now several weeks into a new treatment plan, immunotherapy. Two weeks on for infusions with one week off between. Lots of labs - he had a chest port inserted as his arm/hand veins are shot. Oncologist and assistant meetings are often. This will continue through early June followed again by CT scans and exploratory surgery.  The cancer center has become our second home. Appointments eat into our time and prevent any travel but we are grateful that the medical staff are welcoming and kind. We will continue to fight together in hopes we can beat this damn cancer.......and continue with gratitude for any years yet to come.

Please keep Bob in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you dear friends and readers. I'll try posting a more upbeat story soon.......on flowers, trees, blooms, the usual springtime notes bustling with garden stories.  We've been busy outdoors with re-painting projects, pruning and tidying up. Some paid help required but we don't mind as long as the garden looks lovely..........we spend a lot of time out there now!

The story of a garden -

. . . . . . and then there's the weather! 

We are at the mercy of the rain, winds, biting cold, 

and blazing sun!

Not too long after arriving in the USA many, many years ago, I discovered homes stood on a 'lot' which consisted of a front and back yard with a house set usually in the center.  The word garden was not used so much out in the burgeoning suburbs - it was yard work, go play in the yard, back yard barbecue or cookout, park in the front yard, "what a pretty yard", "Yard of the Month" signs . . . . . . and so on.  

Being English, I thought then, and still do, that a garden was far removed from the connotation of a yard which, to me, was more like a bleak school yard, ironworks yard, factory yard, builder's yard, logging yard, even prison yard - you get the idea!  A yard was a barren expanse of concrete or dirt. Hardscaping at its worse . . . . . ugly, treeless, with perhaps touches of dirty green weeds growing between the cracks, metal fencing, rolled barbed wire, snarling dogs, armed guards!!!

So, we live here in our small house, our 'cottage', surrounded by a garden. The front garden you've seen in my photos often, and at every season, and which I like to think is well-cared for.  It has changed a lot over the years regarding plantings. This was a farm at one time - we even dug up a tractor seat - and the trees remaining are quite massive. 

Getting back to the back garden. You can see in the collage photos of a few years back below with work underway to restore/rework what we had allowed to happen over the past 10 years.  

I blame much of it on being away traveling the world!  Also our sometimes loss of physical ability - aging backs, knees, and shoulders that no longer always work the way we would like. Ivy and vinca had a literal field day smothering everything, the open area once a lawn, the side and back flower beds, the fence, the corner behind the potting shed. For a while it looked quite lovely and I named it my 'secret garden'. I would sit in the gazebo enjoying the encroaching greenness of the now huge azalea bushes, the towering privets holding gently formed bird nests, the wisteria waving from the arbor built to hold it and now grasping out, clinging to and 

climbing surrounding trees.  

Over those years I stopped cutting back the jasmine, honeysuckle and rambling roses on the back fence as they looked so beautiful. The squirrel population grew, a few cute as a button chipmunks arrived, the rabbits hopped out from the undergrowth, along with lesser favorites such as grey foxes, opossums, raccoons, mice, feral cats. . . . . . .and the ever hungry deer family, along with a coyote now and then! A few huge, but thankfully non-venomous snakes slithered by, but I'm certain there were many poisonous copperheads hiding in that ivy!  It's the snakes and the mosquitoes that scare me. My beautiful garden birds I love the most and whom I want to continue to visit to feed, sing and nest in my garden.

This is a post I found in my my drafts this morning!  No time to fully update it right now but thought I would glance through it and then post it at long last as I just don't have time to write a new one!  We are hiring help with the garden this month as everything is becoming overgrown somewhat and we can't do it ourselves. Obviously these older photos were taken in full blown springtimes of the past. Right now most things are still sleeping or just peeking through......and the deck was replaced around this time last year so looks a lot more spiffy!!!!

How does your garden grow?