A quiet third week of May

 It seems like I have done nothing but work in the yard this week - always every morning and several of the evenings. Happily, we have been favored with amazing weather all week - never getting higher than the mid-seventies - which allowed me to work in comfort. I have finally pulled all the weeds that have popped up in the back wildflower beds. As of last night, I am DONE with the west side, next to the garage. I finally have the dahlias and elephant ears in the ground. The green beans and squash have sprouted and I put in about five hills of pumpkins. And, the vinca is now finally out and the ivy is in as of Friday. 

On Wednesday, Steve and I had an enjoyable outing with our friends, Walter and Mary Bell. They were who gave us the new, blue recliner and they would not take any money so we took them to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. 

We have finished watching the first season of The Flash. We only saw about five or six episodes and that was enough. It is a well done series but every episode deals with the same old thing - Flash vs. a mutant and Flash vs. some evil person messing with the timeline. That gets tedious after awhile. Steve's May movie was Amazing Grace and that is always a good watch!  I also watched The Creator on Friday evening, mostly by myself. It was an interesting premise and the special effects were stunning but it was a pretty bleak story and it had more violence than I prefer. 

I finally finished all my crafting projects involving painting small pieces of wood. I created a garland comprised of small wooden animals and buildings and wood beads. I hung it over the family room door. Some of the figures won't stay upright and I think I need to add a small weight to their bottom back....

Always there were the Afghanistan women's social group on Monday morning and English class Thursday evenings. I took Mursal, the woman who translates for Steve's class, to get a library card on Tuesday morning. I had a home school faculty meeting Tuesday afternoon. And, lessons throughout the week, as usual. 

I will close with a photo of Ivan and his broken arm. Surprisingly, our family only had two broken bones while raising all seven children!  Beckie broke a finger and Sarah her arm.  

and another shot of Emily, Elise, Steve and me at Dave Barry last Sunday.

I am tired

It is a Monday afternoon after a very busy, full weekend that started on Friday. After a morning at the temple, we returned home for lunch and a nap and, while we were sleeping, an E3 tornado touched down about ten miles north of us! We had leaf debris in our yard and our neighbor's chimney cover blew off into the street and straight line winds knocked down a few trees in the neighborhood but it was nothing like the Central West End and north city. 

Saturday morning, we had our usual every-other-week early shift in the temple baptistry and it was a BUSY day! We have asked to be released from this responsibility and we are counting down the days - two more (on May 31st and June 14th). It has become pretty exhausting for us. We got home, grabbed a quick bite of lunch and took a short nap and then it was my spring studio recital. The venue was just around the corner at Grace United Church of Christ where I have had recitals previously. It went very smoothly and it was quite well attended by many relatives of some of my students. Happily, we had enough refreshments! (each family brings a plate of goodies) 

back row: Ben Baeres, Quinn Southerland, me, Ethan Barner

middle row: Mackenzie Jaspering, Maria Baeres, Jaxson Buttars, Dawn Olomukoro

front row: Larkin Southerland, Cayden Jaspering

We were finished by 3:30 and, by 4:00, Steve and I were on the road to Columbia to celebrate Steven's 43rd birthday. Emily, Joe and the kids also drove out to be there. Emily made an amazing Star Wars cake depicting the trash compactor scene in Episode IV. Elise brought a beautiful fruit salad and we brought baked beans. Steven and Tamara provide yummy sandwich fixings and chips and sodas. 

After dinner, we went downstairs to the television and played assorted trivia games on YouTube. It was so fun with the "complete the Disney song" game - ALL the Southerlands knew ALL the lyrics as did most of the rest of us. Steve and I were the weakest links, to be sure. 

Thanks to Beckie staying at our house with Sally, Steve and I were able to stay in Columbia overnight and attend our old ward on Sunday. It was so great to see old friends at church. We stopped at Melanie and Sal's afterwards so I could help get Melanie set up with making an online book with Blurb. Then we had lunch at Elizabeth's and played two games of Scrabble. The photo I took was of our second game where we decided to start the first word in the top left corner since that area hardly ever sees any action in most games. Kind of cool that we were able to cover the whole board....

We left Elizabeth's a little after 3:00 and headed back to St. Louis because we had tickets to a book signing tour with Dave Barry at 7:00 that evening at a library in town. Having read and loved Dave Barry for decades, we were so excited to actually get to see him. Emily and Elise also attended. 

Before the jam packed weekend, it was a fairly usual week. Tuesday morning dawned foggy and damp and I got a really cool photo of a spider web on our deck.

I also saw some amazing cumulus clouds Thursday evening after English class.  Almost done with the alphabet with my class - we learned V, W and X and we played color bingo.

Thursday day, Steve and I went down to Fred's to help him get his new Vizeo television set up and then Fred wanted me to take pictures of his vegetable garden so here we are.

 











I also renewed the tags for the Honda Element - also on Thursday - but I literally walked in and right up to the desk. I was in and out in five minutes!!!!

On Tuesday evening, I drove to Ballwin to give piano lessons to Quinn and Larkin - last time before their recital performance - and I brought back a Little Green Machine that I borrowed to clean the couch in the family room. It did a great job. I gave Sally a bath the next day and washed her two beds. Clean all around!

About the only relaxing thing we did all week was to re-watch Hunt for Red October on Monday evening. I taught my last home school class on Tuesday and orchestra is over for the season and I sure hope I can have a more relaxing summer???!!! Of course, there will always be yard work to do but I am almost finished putting in the bedding plants I bought. I think I need to close this blog. I am kind of distracted because the weather people are on the television announcing the strong storms that are blowing through. We are under a tornado watch until 3:30 in the morning! Springtime in Missouri....

Happy Mother's Day

I am delighted to report that the squirrel baffle still continues to keep them away from my FeatherSnap feeder. Here is a cute little sparrow having breakfast

I have just one orange iris and it bloomed during the week. 

I FINALLY finished transplanting as much of the vinca ground cover as I can use in the flagpole flower bed in front and the dogwood flower bed in back. Our neighbors say they want the rest and I asked if they could get it by the 18th. Yesterday, I bought the ivy that I will put in its place. I have about four forsythia that I want out of their current location and I found time to plant one next to the current patch of ivy and I will put another about four feet away where the new patch of ivy will be planted. I am SO ready to get that driveway border project completed. 

I have almost all of the bedding plants I bought last week planted into pots. And, the squirrels noticed because the very next day I saw that they had tried to dig them back up! I had not taken the time to place the pieces of chicken wire around the small plants! Well, I took care of that oversite right away. 

Steve and I took another bike ride in Monday evening and, on Tuesday afternoon, I had a new bike seat installed. I haven't had a chance to take a test ride since. Hopefully tomorrow....

I had several blankets and zippered bags completed so it was a month to attend Happy Hookers on Wednesday. And, I came home with a TON of zippers (which was a good thing because my zipper supply was on empty)

This was a civic orchestra concert week meaning three nights were taken up by rehearsals and the performance. It was a pops concert and the music was quite fun to play - including a West Side Story suite, Dance of the Hours (think Fantasia with the dancing ostriches, alligators, and hippos), music from Magnificent Seven, Stars and Stripes Forever.  I was in charge of the program, as usual, but we did not do the many-page booklet format like our other concerts. I just had the program order, the performers, a small section expressing thanks and a QR code for donations. I was able to fit all of that on the front and back of a half sheet of 8.5 X 11 paper cut down the middle long-wise. We didn't wear all black but had solid color tops with black bottoms so I had the programs printed on five different colors of paper to match. Steve, as usual, attended the dress rehearsal and we brought Fred Olver along. Emily, Noah and Quinn came to the performance and I also brought Maliha, my English translator for the Afghanistan women I teach. She had never attended a concert before. She had never been inside a Christian church before, either (we played in the First Presbyterian Church in Kirkwood). She has only been in the U.S. since last September and her life in Afghanistan was pretty oppressive once the Taliban took over. Before they were in power, she was able to obtain a law degree and she worked with the Americans which is why she had to evacuate. She still follows much of the Muslim way of life but you can see that she does not wear the hijab.

I will close with a funny story. About two weeks ago, our car keys to the Kia Soul fell between the seats in the middle consol. Steve reached his hand down and pulled up these....

As you can tell, they are NOT Kia keys. We have NO IDEA where these keys came from, how long they had been in the car, nothing!!! Happily, after a more thorough search, we recovered our actual keys and I have been on a search for the owners of the fake keys ever since. 

Today promises to be a quiet, relaxing Mother's Day. Steve made me gluten-free waffles for breakfast. The choir will sing and I will teach Primary. Steve is grilling steaks for dinner and I will chat with all of the kids at some point during the day. I got two cards from Steve plus a $20 Culver's gift card and an azalea plant to put in the dogwood flowerbed. 
 

Feeling the "Forth"

I am so tired of photos of squirrels (cute as they are) from my FeatherSnap bird feeder. So, I bought a squirrel baffle on Amazon.

I installed it Tuesday morning, and I have not had a squirrel photo since! HALLELUJAH!!!  A rose breasted grossbeak and a cowbird visited this past week. 

Steve and I got one bike ride in Monday evening. We got to watch two movies: Legally Blond on Monday and Conclave on Saturday.  We own Legally Blond and I wanted to watch it again after seeing Lucy in the musical. Conclave came highly recommended by Steven and it was beautifully done and so interesting, especially considering current events. We also started watching Season 1 of The Flash this week. 

I went to Columbia this week. I left right after Thursday English class and got to Steven and Tamara's home a little after 11:00 p.m. They have such a lovely, comfortable guest room and bathroom! I dedicated Friday morning to helping Elizabeth Crippen with whatever project she needed help with and so we worked on getting her craft room back into shape. I returned to Steven's for lunch and a nap and then I drove to south Columbia to give Ethan Barner a cello lesson. He is working on the Vivaldi Double Cello concerto and I am playing the second part so we needed to rehearse for our May 17th recital performance. I ended my time with Elise at Shelter Gardens for a little stroll. 

I was back in St. Louis by 7:00 Friday night. 

Sunday afternoon, we got to attend the Sheldon All Star Chorus spring concert. It started with a recital featuring the choir members who took private voice lessons throughout the year. Noah had a solo and he did so well! 

 

I will close with photos of the flowers in the back yard - clematis and iris