April ramblings

I will begin with some fun photos from the bird feeder....

A friend from church was going to be away all day for a meeting on Tuesday and she asked if I could let her little dog out to go potty in the afternoon. She lives quite close so it was a very easy task. This is Talia. She is very old, blind, and sweet as can be. 

I have started taking photos of tombstones a new section in the cemetery across the street. This is my fourth section to cover in four years. Slow and steady wins the race....

Steve had to take his euphonium to the shop on Friday and it turned out to be a super easy fix - the cork from his spit-valve had fallen out and that eeensy teensy missing piece just wreaked havoc on playing the instrument! The shop didn't charge for the repair so he bought a book of euphonium solos as a way to show appreciation and our credit card was denied! When he got home and told me, I immediately called the credit card company and someone had stolen our number and was trying to make purchases! Aaak!!! So, we will get a new card and I had to contact all the places that automatically deduct payments from that card - what a hassle! But, I am glad it was caught early. The last legit purchase I made on that card was on Thursday night at a gas station that had really good prices - much lower than all the surrounding stations. And, I think that is where my number was stolen. Maybe the station was getting kick backs from credit card thieves??? Won't be visiting that station ever again -

Weather and time actually worked together and Steve and I were able to take a bike ride around the neighborhood Friday evening. 

The choir number I had planned to sing in May had to be totally scrapped. First of all, I wanted to sing it Memorial Day weekend which was a super dumb idea since most of the choir will be gone. The only available day to sing was Mother's Day but the song is kind of difficult and we would be pressed to learn it by then.  And, it is not a Mother's Day song.  So, this week, I spent the time to mash together three Mother's Day songs from the Primary children's songbook and I entered them into Finale and viola! We have an easy piece to sing for May.

We watched two movies this week - The Flash on Monday (never seen before - I have also never seen the television series so I was not comparing the two. I though it was funny and entertaining) and Pelican Brief on Friday(both of us have seen it. Good movie).

A friend in the ward received her endowments on Saturday afternoon. Steve and I attended and we are in the below photo taken afterwards. The friend, Darlene, is in the middle.

Also on Saturday was the symphony. Selina and Jared Forsythe had four tickets and they invited us. We gladly accepted and we fixed a steak dinner at our house before hand. The program featured a relatively unknown mid-twentieth century female composer from Poland - Grazyna Bacewicz - and her Concerto for String Orchestra which was very lovely and Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler that was amazingly awesome. I am generally not a fan of twentieth century compositions but these were very listenable. The big draw was the Dvorak Cello Concerto. The cellist was young, from Romania, and extremely talented. And he did two encores.

 

Today, I spoke in church. I also taught Primary. And we had a Self Reliance and Resource Center meeting at 5:00. It has been a busy day!

below are the meeting attendees: Roc, Dawn, me, Evans, Steve, Kurt, Fred, Mariam, Dan and Mike

Easter week

This past week just flew by! I guess I need a brake job done on my life???

Monday evening, we finally had a fire in the backyard pit. We needed to burn the Christmas tree and the trimmed raspberry canes but we just couldn't pin down a good evening - we were either busy or it was too windy or rainy but Monday night proved to be the perfect time. 

Tuesday, I installed a pole in the center of the yard to hold the Feathersnap feeder the kids got me for Christmas. I did my research and feeders need to be at least 5 feet off the ground, 7 feet away from a fence and 9 feet away from a tree branch to keep squirrels from getting to the seeds. I found what I thought was the perfect spot and I dug my hole and poured my qwickcrete cement and installed the feeder....

I had to re-charge the camera and get it synced to my phone and then the bird photos started coming in...

and then THIS!!!!!

Nooooooooooooo......I am so frustrated!  HOW on earth did he get up there?  I WILL say, though, that, so far at least,  the squirrel photos are much less frequent. So perhaps it is just one ridiculously acrobatic squirrel that is visiting? 

I pruned the far reaching vines of my Concord grape over a month ago and last week, I soaked them and wove them into six wreaths - one large one for my front door and five smaller ones to give away. I found surprisingly nice looking fake flowers at Dollar Tree and I put them on the wreaths and gave them to four church friends and one neighbor. And here is the one I made for me.

Being Easter week, our church sponsored a Maundy Thursday event where I was asked to provide fifteen minutes of reflective music on my cello. Steve and I watched the movie version of the Lamb of God on Friday evening and, even though I had just lived the music the weekend before, I still enjoyed watching it. We watched Ben Hur on Saturday evening. Still a good movie, although pretty long (3.5 hours) Our Easter Sunday service was a bit stressful for me. Over a month ago, I had agreed to play piano for a cellist in the ward as part of the musical program for yesterday. I have a book of religious string solos with piano accompaniment and she chose an arrangement of All Creatures of our God and King to play. As I started practicing the piano part, I found that I really didn't care for the arrangement. It had a complicated meter and it was a bit too "pop" for my taste but I persevered because Addie said she really liked the song. We never found time to rehearse together until Saturday evening (the night before performance!) and, after playing through it once, she said she was not really a fan of the arrangement either! SO, we picked out another song in the book which meant I had to learn a whole new accompaniment in less than 24 hours! Thankfully, it wasn't as difficult as the first piece. Then, an hour later, I got a text from the choir accompanist saying she was really sick and couldn't play for choir the next day! I texted back that I would just play the piano and the choir would sing without a director. Now I had TWO piano pieces to learn in less than 24 hours! Happily, the choir accompanist's husband also plays piano - as well as I can - and, at our before-church run through, he offered to play for the choir.  He went off to the Primary room to practice and, in performance, he played about as well as I would have. The choir seemed happier to have a director in front of them.  And I was waaay happier being in front of them rather than in front of the keyboard.  The cello/piano number went fine. 

The Southerlands and Beckie came over Easter Sunday for dinner. It is always great to have a table full of family! Larkin is "wearing" some little crochet Easter baskets as ear-rings. They were made by my sister, Jerri over forty years ago!

Below is my rhododendron in bloom. I transplanted it earlier this season and I am glad to see that it is still alive and well. 

Forsythia plants are easy to propagate. They grow long stems and, if one bends a long stem down and anchors it in the dirt with rocks or stones, they will grow roots. I did that with about five stems last year and now I have about five "new" forsythia bushes I need to transplant. I put two of them in the flagpole bed earlier last week. I have two more I will transplant this week now that the soil is wet again from our weekend of rain. We had so much rainfall that I dumped about four gallons of water (!!!) out of my five gallon bucket I keep up by the front gate for my daily trash collection on our walks. 

We live in a very Catholic town so Good Friday and Easter Monday are school holidays. As a result, there was no Afghanistan women's group gathering this morning. I was given the gift of time! Hopefully, I will have a few more "gifts" throughout this coming week....

 

Lamb of God week

Look what our neighbors, James and Pam, gave us earlier this week! I am so sad I can't eat a single one. Steve and I wonder if he works for Krispy Kreme because they are not cheap! 

I was able to do just a little bit of yard work throughout the week - I started transplanting the vinca into the flagpole flower bed and I cleared out the beds with the herbs up by the deck. But that is about all. Thankfully, the creeping phlox don't need any work to be beautiful! And the violets growing up in the back yard are definitely my weed of choice.

It was a BUSY week of rehearsals and performances. On Monday, I drove up to Wash U. to hear the Civic Orchestra's dress rehearsal with the three teenage concerto winners of the Frager contest that the orchestra sponsors every spring. Wow, they were incredibly talented. SO much ability and poise for high schoolers. On Thursday, I drove over to Lucy's middle school to join Emily in seeing the opening night of Legally Blond - The Musical. Lucy was in the chorus. She did a terrific job and, while the actors were not the best singers, their acting was great and I enjoyed the play.

On Friday, I drove to O'Fallon, Illinois (just across the river - literally a 30 minute drive which was exactly how long the drive to Wash U and Ballwin are) for the final dress rehearsal of Lamb of God and, happily, it went waaay better than the full rehearsal we had last Sunday night. And, last night was the performance, which went well, and our final performance was tonight. It was fun to be involved with it again, especially to be playing cello rather than bass, but I am thinking I might not participate next year. I guess we'll see.... Here I am with Holly, the extremely talented high school junior who played the solo cello and David Goff who is also a very talented cellist, even with three fingers on his left hand! (He lost his finger to a table saw - yikes!!!)

The two nights I was actually at home (Tuesday and Wednesday), I watched two animated movies featuring mice!!! Tale of Despereaux on Tuesday and American Tale on Wednesday. I wanted to see American Tale after hearing "Somewhere Out There" being sung. I loved the voices of Madeline Kahn and Dom DeLouis. As for the Tale of Despereaux, I have NO IDEA how it ended up on our movie shelf. Was it a gift? A hand-me-down? Did I buy it even though I don't remember ever seeing it before? Regardless, I thought it was delightful.

I had three morning events that shuffled my regular morning routine up a bit. On Tuesday, we walked with Fred to the polling place to vote for our mayor, comptroller, alderperson and school board. On Wednesday, I drove to the airport to pick up Beckie from her three-day visit with Kyle and Micah in Arkansas. On Friday, the Afghanistan women's group had an additional social to allow girls from Nernix Catholic High School do some volunteer work with the children. 

And, this wraps up a very busy week. May next week be a lot more calm....

 

A wet beginning to April

It has been a very rainy, wet week. We had severe weather on Wednesday but the bad stuff was all south of us. Steve and I did manage to get some free soil at the Carondelet site on Tuesday to bolster our two raised gardens before all the rain started. Everything in the yard is loving this rain! I have had two asparagus pickings already. My lettuce is coming up. And the redbud tree I got from Emily's front yard back in 2021 (it was a volunteer that needed to be gone) finally bloomed this year! 

Steve and I got to watch two movies this week - The Martian on Tuesday and BYU TV had a scrubbed version of The King's Speech so we watched it on Friday. Both very good. 

English classes for the Afghanistan folks started on Thursday. It was nice to be back in the saddle.

Steve and I buckled down and did our taxes on Friday. Whew! (and we actually get a refund)

This weekend is General Conference and Elise has been watching with us. She is in St. Louis for the weekend to attend a concert of Voces8 in the beautiful Basilica on Friday and she participated with Emily, Joe, Noah and others on a trivia team on Saturday. They tied for second place!!! Below is a photo of Emily and Elise at the concert. 

My conference project has been to wind and sort all the yarn that people keep giving me! The Happy Hooker ladies don't like the "specialty" yarn (fuzzy, nubbly, or fat yarn) so I am the recipient. I have enough yarn to keep me making nifty knitter hats of all sizes for the next six months!

 

Wrapping up March

Below is evidence that the Christmas tree at Julina's is truly down and packed up. Yay!

Our drive back home was smooth and we had the rest of Monday to settle back in. 

Tuesday I repotted some spider plants, I picked up my new glasses and I drove to Ballwin to give piano lessons to Quinn and Larkin. I got to see Noah's new bass that someone gave him. 

Wednesday Mary Bell and I had lunch at Karen Bazdresch's and then we all three went to the City Sewing Room. (we've been there once before - it is a yarn and fabric and sewing notion thrift store where one buys by the pound). I needed to find some fabric backing for some patchwork quilts I have been making from donated fabric scraps. I was successful and I brought back even more fabric to make more patchwork quilts.  These are mostly wheelchair blanket size or tummy time size with a few crib size blankets as well.  Karen also gave me two shopping bags full of yarn so I will be continuing to make many, many hats of all sizes. The weather was finally conducive to transplanting so I got out the shovel and dug up a lilac bush that I had planted the first spring we were here in St. Louis. I kind of loaded the front flower bed by our living room window with too many shrubs so I moved the lilac to the newly made flag pole bed. I also re-positioned a rhododendron that was being crowded out by another shrub up by the window. Whew! It was tiring! Maybe I am still not quite back to normal energy after my November surgery or maybe it is because I am actually getting old??? Elise drove to St. Louis early Wednesday evening (it was her spring break week) so she could help celebrate Beckie's birthday which we did Thursday evening - one day before her actual birthday since she couldn't get off work on her real day. Beckie and Elise had lunch together on Thursday and then visited the zoo. Southerlands came over that evening and we had a great birthday celebration with lasagna and strawberry shortcake. Elise stayed again Thursday night and headed back to Columbia early Friday morning. 

On Friday, I planted a second lilac to balance out the first. I also divided and moved some lilies from the front flower bed to the flagpole bed. 

Our friends, Mary and Walter gave us their old recliner for our TV/Family room. I happened to mention to Mary at our lunch on Wednesday that Steve and I were looking for a new one to replace the one that was broken down and she said she had one in her basement that was just sitting there, unused. They not only gave it to us for free but they also brought it over! Friday dinner was gluten-free fried fish and onion rings with coleslaw. I tried making hush puppies with the little smidge of leftover batter. SO un-healthy but SO delicious! That evening, Steve and I watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. It was not what we were expecting but was actually better. Quite moving and we thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Saturday was a long, full day. Steve, Sally and I left the house at 7:30 for a day in Columbia. As soon as we arrived, Steven and Tamara joined us on our shopping trip to the Amish. Karen gave me a gluten-free recipe book that used alternative flours (think millet, sorghum, etc.) and, surprisingly, I found those flours at the Amish store. We also bought "regular" gluten free flours (like brown rice and sweet white rice and potato starch) plus other things like cracked wheat and other cereals and candy that they sell in bulk for really cheap prices. It is always fun to shop at the Amish stores.  After we dropped Steven and Tamara off back home, we picked up Elizabeth Crippen and took her to Culvers for lunch. Here she is standing on her one good foot and her prosthetic foot.

We also visited Marcie Luebbert, a long time friend, and Melanie and Sal. We also took a nap in the parking lot of Schnucks before heading over to Elise's where we hung out until it was time to meet Steven and Tamara at Cheddars for dinner.

Sally hung out in the car at the Amish, stayed with us on the Culver's patio, visited Melanie in her house but stayed in the car with Marcie, napped with us at Schnucks, ate dinner and hung out at Elise's place and then stayed in a kennel that we brought while we ate dinner at Cheddars. She does pretty well as a traveler, thankfully.

After dinner, we picked up Sally and headed back to St. Louis. It was so great to see everyone and visit. It was also so great to plop in our own bed that night!