Tulip Festival 2021

I've lived in Bellingham since 1987, but this year was the first time I officially went to the tulip festival in Skagit Valley. The fest was cancelled completely last year due to the pandemic. I went with my friend Marisa to RoozenGaarde and it was totally worth it. We stuck to the display gardens and didn't go out into the fields, and the gardens were amazing. Here are some pictures.

Bush's Pennsylvania Wildlife Camera

This video was on This is Colossal.com today, with a link to the You Tube channel of the photographer Robert Bush Sr., located in Pennsylvania. I instantly smiled when I started to watch it; it's a peaceful respite from this crazy world. He has a camera set up to film a spot at a creek where a tree fell across, and you see all kinds of wildlife using the tree to cross over to the other side. I hope you enjoy it.

Nancy Jones

Nancy Jones

A year ago today we lost one of the most vivacious and positive people on the planet, Nancy Jones. I had known Nancy almost my entire life, she was my mom's best friend while I was growing up.

Nancy & Larry Jones

My mom passed away in 1985, a year later I moved from Michigan to Washington state, and for a long time I lost touch with Nancy. In 2008 we reconnected when she and her husband Larry traveled through Bellingham on their way back to Michigan after an epic road trip that took them to Alaska, and back to the lower 48 via the Alaska Marine Highway.

It was so wonderful to see her again, and we stayed in contact until her death. You would be hard pressed to find someone as uplifting, and happy to be alive. She was a natural conversationalist, intelligent, funny, just a beautiful soul. She loved the color orange, and I always think of her when I see orange flowers, especially California Poppies. She loved to cross-stitch and created the one that inspired the name of this blog. I will miss her the rest of my life, and am very glad I was able to call her a friend.

I Couldn't Resist

Get Fuzzy (via Go Comics) - January 9 2020


It's always embarrassing when someone starts singing from West Side Story when they meet me for the first time and hear my name. The next time that happens I can think of this and smile 😃

Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice

Last night I watched Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice on CNN. I had missed the chance to see it in the theater this fall when it came out, and am so glad I finally got to see it. By the end I was crying, I was so sad when I had heard in the last year that she could no longer sing because of Parkinson's Disease. I have been such a huge fan of hers for my whole life. Of course I can't begin to sing like her, but that doesn't stop me from singing along, and belting it out as best I can in the shower, or wherever no one else can hear me! 

Towards the end of the movie I started crying when Emmylou Harris chokes up saying that there will never be someone that sings like Linda, because those are my feelings exactly. Most of the people I've met that are younger than me seem to have little interest in the music from the not so distant past, and have never experienced, and have no appreciation, for just how amazing her voice is/was. 

It made me smile that the movie included a snip from her appearance on The Muppet Show - among others, she sang "The Shoop-Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss), something I always wished ended up on an album.

My favorite album is Hasten Down the Wind, and the song "Give One Heart", but I love it all, especially Canciones de Mi Padre, and the song "The Charreada", she could truly sing anything ♥

https://www.lindaronstadtmovie.com/

Hello 2020

Pearls Before Swine - January 1, 2020

But seriously folks...

2019 Christmas Tree

So I'm starting off the year with the hope that 2020 will bring wonderful new things. 2019 was a beyond busy year at work, which ended with me being laid off after 8 1/2 years, less than 2 weeks before Christmas. I was definitely very bitter to begin with, for many reasons, but I have slowly let it go, with the belief that I deserve to be somewhere that I am valued, and at the end, I wasn't.

I had a quiet Christmas with the cats, and today was the same - but today we had some beautiful sunshine for the first half of the day, and I appreciated it, and hope that is a good sign for the rest of 2020. I will be able to take a little "me" time for a short while, and I am looking forward to spring and hoping that wherever I land next work-wise I will be able to enjoy more of the summer than I did last year, and really for the last 8 years to be honest.

Boo

Munchkin

Boo & Tommy New Year's Day 2020

The Garden - July 2019

Bachelor Buttons

The flower garden continues to bring new things and the return of my favorites. The Bachelor Button seeds were actually planted last summer and didn't do anything, and then came in like crazy this spring along with the Larkspur. The California Poppies re-seeded themselves and came back in beautifully as well. The Dianthus came in stronger this year, and there are actually 4 different varities/colors in one pot for a extended burst of color. The thing I am most excited about is my first attempt at Gladiolus and they bloomed with one of my favorite colors, the beautiful coral red, and a lavendar/blue one is set to open soon too. As I type this there is a green Hummingbird feeding on the red Crocosmia on the side of my front porch, so much color happening right now!

Dianthus

Penstemon

Gladiolus

Spring Flowers May 2019

Russell Hybrid Lupine

 Long time no see (me). This continues to be a crazy year at work, and I have been working 6 days a week for I think almost two months. It has left me little free time and energy to be posting here, but I have been spending as much time as possible with gardening and starting seeds when I can.

I continue to try new things, some I have success with more than others, but I am becoming a big believer in direct sowing some seeds outdoors because I can't always manage to get seedlings strong enough to handle transplanting.

One of the funniest things that happened this spring is that I got a bunch of volunteer Larkspur that came up in the flower bed in back. The plants that I had started from seed indoor last year didn't do that great in 2018, but they re-seeded themselves and came in better, stronger and taller than all of the ones that I planted last year.

The other plant that didn't do anything when I planted seeds last year were the blue Bachelor Buttons, and several of them came up this year. Mind you, both of these are annuals. Go figure!

Clematis

Russell Hybrid Lupine

Begonia

Looking Forward to Spring!

Savage Chickens

Pickles

Pearls Before Swine 

Well, February was a really rough month to say the least. Here in Whatcom County we had overnight (and quite a few day time) temperatures below freezing for the whole entire month. As I right this there is still snow on the ground around my house and in piles around the county, accumulated from several snow storms from over three weeks ago. I joke that it was like having a Michigan winter all in one month. We also had several very strong wind storms, and the cause of most of this cold is air coming down from the arctic via the Fraser River Valley in British Columbia.

My neighbors lost a 50 foot+ evergreen, and my landlords had half of their 20 foot+ lilac bush split in half. I was so excited in January starting to see things show signs of life for spring, and now I'm wondering if any of the spring bloomers are going to survive this brutal cold.  The other fun was catching a cold at the start of the month that caused me to miss a few days work and total sapped my energy for at least two weeks. Like a lot of folks, I am really, really looking forward to spring and it warming up. I just started my first seeds this afternoon, my hope for the future, Cherry Rose Nasturtiums ☺ 

Cherry Rose Nasturtiums from Floret Flower Farm

Happy New Year 2019

Baby Blues - January 2, 2019

So obviously I don't post very often. I intended to do a thoughtful post reflecting on 2018, and looking ahead to 2019 on New Year's Eve, and clearly that didn't happen. So here I am after a long day of work, and running an errand after work, and it's now 12 hours after I left the house for the day.... and I'm posting a comic strip that really hit my funny bone because it was so relateable. 

After I got home, and started to get settled in, I had to move the couch to retrieve not one, but two toy mice the cats were playing with when I encountered a small pile of pine needles from the Christmas tree! I got a Christmas tree on the Saturday right before Christmas - this was the first tree I've had in around 20 years. I was kinda bummed that it didn't last longer, but I had to take it outside on New Year's eve because it was dropping so many needles. I thoroughly vacuumed the living room (or so I thought), but, well, you get the picture.

I really enjoyed the tree for the short time I had it. I really love the smell of a real tree, and it was nice to see ornaments that have been boxed up for what seemed like forever. Some ornaments from childhood along with some I got for myself or received over the last 30 years. This was the first tree that all of my cats had experienced and they actually did pretty good at not messing with it, but I did manage to find two small ornaments on the floor as I was cleaning up. 

So long story short, I'm alive, my days are just long with work, and so I'm not on the computer sharing stuff that much because it's a lower priority with the little free time I seem to have. I do post on my Instagram because it's convenient to do on my phone, it's where I do most of my web-surfing to get the news and entertainment. I am doing okay, and like everyone else, I'm looking forward to spring and working in the garden and seeing everything new that I planted last year.

The cats are all doing okay; they all got to the vet in September, and Munchkin was diagnosed with Diabetes, but he's doing much better now that he is getting insulin shots twice a day. Tommy is feeling older lately, but he's at least 16, so it's to be expected.

I hope everyone that reads this is doing well, and forgives me that I'm not a prolific writer.

Happy New Year! Maria

Munchkin

Boo & Tommy

Trump Tried To Mansplain The Midterms To Women

I thought this was a good bit to accompany the Mike Luckovich political cartoon in my previous post....what do you think?

Straight From the Horses A**

Mike Luckovich, October 17, 2018

Today's Lesson in Humanity

I really liked today's Savage Chickens.

Mike Luckovich

Mike Luckovich - July 8

These two political cartoons speak to how I feel about the current White House; illustrating how stupid and also how cruel our president is.

Mike Lukovich - July 4th 

The Garden

Lupines

So it's obviously been a while since I posted on the blog, I mostly post on Instagram, it's easier from my phone. I have been over the moon with the garden this spring. Some of the things I planted late in 2016, or early in 2017 really came into their own this year.

The Lupines were planted last spring from seed, but I got started too late in the game for them to bloom at all last year, but I was okay with it knowing that the plants were gaining in size and healthy. They did not disappoint me and I was rewarded for my patience.

The Delphiniums are going gang-busters, growing at least a foot taller than they were last year. The mini Rainbow's End climbing roses have been the most spectacular transformation from last year. I got them as small, what I thought were bush roses, and they barely bloomed in 2017. My friend Marisa is who clued me in to the the fact that they were actually climbing roses, so I got the two trellises in the fall and holy cow, they are just covered in blooms this year. My camera doesn't even begin to capture their glory, they are truly stunning in person.

The story on the rhody is that it came from my landlord's son Andy, and we had no idea what color it was going to bloom until it did. Andy has his own lawncare/landscape business, and at the request of a homeowner, removed this older bush from their yard, and he gave it to my landlord's Susan and Lester to plant on the property line on the side of my house. We were all thrilled when it turned out to be these vivid violet blooms. 

I got the Clematis last year from Kent's Garden & Nursery and it really took off, and is going to fill in nicely. Susan and I scattered the poppy seeds around the big evergreen in the back and they are so bright and cheerful. The pink peony I planted last year is blooming right now, and got the Coral Charm peony at Joe's Garden's a month ago and only got one bloom, but I am hoping that it also does better in it's second year.

So there we are, this is pretty much my life now, spending as much time around the flower garden as I can, it's my little oasis, hanging out with the birds, the bees, the flowers and the kitties ♥

Rainbow's End Mini Rose

Foxglove

Rhododendron

Begonia

California Poppies

Clematis

Sarah Berndhart Peony

Coral Charm Peony