Update about blogCa

I-40 picked up the old Rte. 66 somewhere along the way, maybe Little Rock, maybe Oklahoma City. But it is the 100th anniversary of Rte 66 so I enjoyed thinking about my parents driving on part Of it in. St. Louis at least. Here we continued from Santa Rosita to Gallup NM, then left both highways to go north to CO.
Showing posts with label Peonies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peonies. Show all posts

Thursday, May 14, 2026

We have nature's beauty to be thankful for

 




The North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville posted these wonderful photos of Mountain Laurel on Facebook last week

Living till he is 100, David Attenborough has given incredible education about the environment to so many!

I'm thinking about how much of my life is awareness of my own participation in my environment...and learning still about how I can help keep the place healthy as well as myself. The symbiotic relationship is the key, I think.

Sharing with Thankful Thursday and Floral Friday Fotos!

Sandhill Cranes and colts in Florida


Our peonies before the rain and their own weight made them lie their heads on the ground.


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Robert Louis Stevenson said, “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” And, “Our business in life is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.”


Tuesday, May 27, 2025

Some beauty is fleeting

 

From the internet





Some smart neighbors staked them up so they didn't lie with their faces on the ground.


Their last hurrah!

And the next day, they looked like this.

Thank you sweet peonies!

The pansies have had a come-back. Until they get too hot, they will keep giving their pretty faces to mine! I have to remember to water them too.

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The organic pears. I chose three without a single bruise on them...they were firm red pears, and I've known them to ripen quickly when I get them home. But the clerk checking me out just slammed them down when she weighed them. Great I thought! I bagged my stuff in my own bags, came home, and this is what they looked like.


I cut off the bruised parts, added the yogurt, and had a yummy breakfast.

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Sharing with Wordless (almost) Wednesday on Tuesday.



No date, but quite a while ago...



Today's quote:

Fatalism is the lazy man's way of accepting the inevitable. -Natalie Clifford Barney, poet, playwright, and novelist (1876-1972)


Three glazed  casserole dish by myself.


Sunday, May 18, 2025

Now you see it.


Our two peony bushes are blooming this week!

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Yesterday around 5:30 our power went out. I was able to still read or a while, and opened the windows as well for cool winds. It was affecting several thousand people in mostly small towns in Asheville area, but not Asheville itself. I finally lit some candles to just see around things, though I had a little flashlight as well as the phone flashlight. It was mainly boring!

The power company said it would come back on by 9:30, and they would let us know the cause. They texted later that the cause was major power lines being damaged, but they didn't say by what. Some FaceBook people said it was sun spots, while I was inclined to think it had to do with high winds. 
Power came back on after I'd fallen asleep, around 10:30, and then I put on the C-Pap to help me breathe. I had horrible cough when I woke up. Probably from pollen/dust that was invisible wwhen I had opened the windows (and taken a cloth with some cleanser on it across the screens as well as the cracks in the sills where glass/screen/framing meet. I closed all the windows when I went to bed around 9:45. It stayed nice and cool all night both inside and out, and wind is still twisting the trees outside my windows as I write this.

I'm so sorry to hear of tornadoes in Missouri and Kentucky. And yet I'm grateful that I have power to heat my coffee this morning, while I know there are hundreds of families who have a damaged home now. May we remember we are all connected.

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"After the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011, when the Fukushima nuclear power plant was on the verge of collapse, a small group of people stepped forward – not soldiers, not politicians, but courageous technicians, engineers, and scientists. Many of them were already retired. They volunteered to stay where few wanted to stay: inside the danger.
"With destroyed cooling systems and radiation levels thousands of times higher than the legal limit, these men and women risked their lives to prevent the worst. They became known worldwide as the "Fukushima 50."
"Equipped with protective suits, they took on tasks no machine could do – pumping seawater into overheated reactors and working amidst the rubble. They knew what was at stake: not just their health, but the fate of an entire country.
"What they did was not heroism in the traditional sense. It was quiet courage, deep responsibility, and the will not to look away in the darkest hour. Many of them didn't want recognition—only the hope that their efforts would save lives and prevent the unimaginable.

"Their courage will never be forgotten."
Posted on Facebook page: Facts that will Blow your Mind.



Just what are they thinking?




Sorry guys, but when faced with a sinkfull like she was, no wonder she thought she needed a man. (Incidentally, spell check was positive I wanted to talk about sinful, rather than sinkfull!)


Sharing with Sepia Saturday, where everyone is strolling along together.






Wonderful (75 year old) 1960 photo by fashion photographer Ormond Gigli. The building was about to be demolished so in 24 hours he arranged all the models as well as the Rolls Royce for this photo. Owner of building agreed if his wife could also be included. These were some daring models!

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Today's quote:

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity. -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

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And since I do use Wikipedia often... look what I found this week from Substack: 

Everything is philosophy

In the introduction to a post about living a more intellectually interesting life, Utsav Mamoria shares a fun fact from the results of a study on Wikipedia.

How to live an intellectually rich life

Utsav Mamoria in Tumse Na Ho Paayega

Go to the main page of Wikipedia.

Click any link that leads to a Wikipedia entry. For that page, click the first hyperlinked word in the main text. Keep doing it—your journey will look something like this [above].

Now try this for several pages. Make them as varied as Nuclear Gandhi, Cow Tipping, and Exploding Trousers.

All of them will lead you to the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy.

In 2017, three mathematicians from the University of Vermont published a paper titled Connecting Every Bit of Knowledge: The Structure of Wikipedia’s First Link Network. They tested this hypothesis over a dataset of 4.7 million English Wikipedia articles and found that Philosophy was the page where the highest no. of articles ended.

95% of all Wikipedia articles led to philosophy.

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A teapot from my past...



As I was about to put the bamboo handle on it.



Monday, May 23, 2022

Peonies yo-yo (you might say)

 

Yes I found more photos to share of peonies!

One day they're here...


The next they're gone. Did I tell you our Peony loving thief (PLT) rides in an electric wheelchair? So she's somewhat limited in where she can drive and pick flowers.


Another flower bed has three different peony plants...or maybe more! It's off the track the PLT rides usually, so she hasn't been breaking off any of these flowers, that I could tell!




And I wouldn't want her driving into this dirt on this slope either! Soon there will be irises!

These brilliant ones took my breath away!


But lest you think me a peony snob...I also saw some early day lilies.




I hope you have a delightful week ahead. Next weekend is a holiday weekend in the US (Memorial Day is next Mon, May 30.)


Saturday, May 21, 2022

Peonies that come and go

 


Almost open. The last one disappeared, I do hope these will be allowed to be shared by all!




She tore off another bloom!

But we have some others to enjoy! However this also disappeared when I wasn't looking.

Wait, what are all these red beauties doing? More on roses tomorrow.

Today's quote:

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. 
-Doris Lessing, novelist, poet, playwright, Nobel laureate (22 Oct 1919-201)3

Thursday, May 5, 2022

How we love nature (as long as it doesn't crawl on our counters!)

The peonies have started to bud. But I don't see any ants. They are needed for something in this flower's health, but with all the sterilization of our grounds, there may be few ants to be found.

I voted yesterday...early voting for the primaries in our county's libraries is really easy. I was just the 435th person to do so at our little library. But just thinking that my efforts may help get Madison Cawthorn out of the Legislature...you'd better believe I want my vote to count! Most unfortunately he is our district's representative. What a disaster!

Another topic just came to my in box...An Exo-planet. A short video follows.




The Flame Azaleas (native to North Carolina woods) have all burst into color.



And now I must make a mundane statement about the prices we're trying to live with these days. This week I finally was able to buy some water for the C-Pap machine. The grocery store has been out every time I've looked in the last 2 years. But the cost used to be a bit over $1.00...and now each gallon costs $1.50. There are actually quarts for sale also, at $1.00 each. The gallons have increased in price by 50%. I can, and have lived without using any water in my machine. That may need to be my choice again soon.

I was unable to purchase my choice of brand of toilet tissue. They have a huge stock of a brand I don't like...this store has the habit of filling shelves with whatever they happen to have, rather than stocking the variety of brands which they used to have. So I got something that is totally made from recycled materials. Yay me. I've been recycling for years, and finally am going to use one of the end products of that effort.

Today's quote:

 “If our heart were large enough to love life in all its detail, we would see that every instant is at once a giver and a plunderer.”

Gaston Bachelard