Hummingbird Moth

When I was pregnant with Nathan, Joseph and I took many, many walks. Our favorite route was through the neighborhoods of Provo ending up on the south hill that climbs up to the campus of BYU. On that hill were many plum trees which were ripe in the month of August. Joseph picked and picked and we ate and ate. Near my favorite plum tree, we often saw a hummingbird moth. It was usually dark, so we didn't get a good look, but I had seen them before and knew what they looked like.

Yesterday, when we got home from Lake Huron (Nathan and Joseph had arrived home a few hours earlier from Scout Camp), Nathan excitedly told me that he had seen a tiny hummingbird. I said, "Hmmm," as I often do. Later, I went outside to water my flowers and pull a few of my many weeds and saw the little creature that Nathan was talking about buzzing around the bee balm.

I didn't take the picture below, but it is a great depiction of what we saw. Our bee balm is waning, just like in the picture below. Cool creature!


More about Lake Huron and Scout Camp coming later!

A Super Saturday--Bunches of Stuff

Lots of good things happening here today.

Last night, my super-hero husband made me my new laundry shelves. This will revolutionize laundry in our house:


So that we can reclaim this:


For it's true purpose!

I never, ever, ever thought this would happen to me, but I now have a library in my house! I've kind-of always mused about having a library and how nice it would be. When I was decluttering, I decided to pull all of the books out of the kids rooms so that I could see what books we had, which ones to get rid of and then reorganize them. They all ended up in the basement. As I rearranged the kiddos' rooms, I realized that they don't really have room for so many books in their rooms and we settled on letting them have book baskets in their rooms where they can keep the books that they check out from the local library and a small selection of our household books. That means that most of the books in the house are now in the basement and I spent a few hours organizing them tolerably onto the shelves (hated every minute of that!!). We are awaiting some bean bag type chairs so that we'll have comfy seating. I'm so happy about it!

The first peony of the season:


And some columbines:


There are either a lot of bugs in my house to support the spiders, or just a lot of emaciated spiders. I vacuumed up a whole lot of old, dust-filled spider webs today. Whenever I do that I live in mortal fear that the spiders will come and get me in my sleep!

And then there's this ant. I call this photo, "Ant's Last Drink" and I'm sure It'll make me famous some day! Ha!:



Either way, he was on his way out. He had almost reached the ant "hotel" filled with ant poison, when he drowned in a puddle. Did you know that my kitchen counter ALWAYS has puddles on it!!?

I still have one more room in which I need to wash the walls. I only wash the walls once in a blue moon, so this is quite an accomplishment and I'm going to insist on having a gold star for this one.

Speaking of gold stars, May is quite an adored young lady. Her teachers always pay the highest compliments to her. Her choir teacher gave her excellent marks and left the comment, "Can we clone her?"

Elijah and Brigham got summer haircuts yesterday, but not the usual quarter-inch or eighth-inch type that we used to give. Nathan has asked to grow his hair out like some of the kids at school. I told him yes and he's already practicing the bang flipping technique that he so admires in others.

Sariah went to a birthday party today. She's just ecstatic whenever she gets invited to a party. She has been going around this week telling me that she can't believe she's going to a party, which has shifted this afternoon to, "I can't believe that I got to go to the party." That's gratitude for ya!

That about sums it up for my day.

Joseph and Nathan are off buying lumber for the next exciting project for the summer!

Tulip Festival and Early Season Beach Trip

On Thursday I kept the kids out of school so we could visit Holland, MI during "Tulip Time." We also went to two of Holland's beaches. Enjoy the photos! (For a travelogue, click here.)

The first beach we visited was Tunnel Park (because it has a tunnel through a dune to get to the beach). I have to say that I had great anticipation as we neared the tunnel where we would see the waters of Lake Michigan. My heart was in my throat and I was literally like a kid on Christmas morning. I haven't felt that way in a long, long time. Exhilerating!

Veldheer's Tulip Farm

One of the sweetest things I saw all day. Nathan said, "I forgot how nice it is to hold a little hand!"

Tunnel Park

We took our shoes and socks off to wade in the water. It was so funny when a wave came up and hit Brigham when he first had his feet in the water. I had hold of his hands and he retracted his whole body out of the water. Whoosh!

Ever since we visited Silver Lake Sand Dunes last summer and learned what happens to sand when lightening strikes, Nathan has been wanting a piece of fulgarite. It is rare to find it because it is so fragile, but that is exactly what he happened upon. A nice contribution to his rock collection. I don' t have a picture of it yet. Maybe he'll post that on his blog.

Holland State Park

Nice big brother trying to keep his sister warm!

1999

Looking out at our decapitated snowman, freezing weather, wind blowing, snowing, winter scene, I wanted to remember warmer days!

A corner of the vegetable garden. The wood chuck ate most of that garden!

May was born at the end of a very hot summer. That was the first year we lived in our house and my first time gardening. Joseph spent hours and hours digging garden beds for me. (Many of those beds have since been filled in with grass.) I planted most of the flower beds with seeds and was given the gift of perennials from a couple of people who heard that I wanted some. As I planted the yard in flowers that year I told myself that I was planting it for the baby that was coming, as a gift. The yard was beautiful that year as a result.

I remember looking out our bedroom window one night at the sunflowers that were growing there. On the stem of one of the sunflowers was a tiny frog. Michigan is full of frogs. It's fun to hear them chirping, but we usually just see the toads in the grass, bumpy and brown. Or we see the bull frogs at the nature center. I keep meaning to plant sunflowers in that same spot in the hopes of seeing another little frog. If you look at the pictures, you can also see a little tree. It's a flowering plum. It's pretty big by now. I wouldn't be able to take that same picture today. Mostly you'd just see tree.

The sunflowers

We didn't get an ultrasound with the pregnancy and so we didn't know if the baby was a boy or girl. I had a kind of sixth sense about it though and bought many, many baby girl clothes at garage sales that summer. May brought a lot of joy to our lives. The best word I can think of to describe the time after she was born is 'sunshiney.' She was a peaceful baby and a beautiful one. Since she was too little to enjoy the gift I gave her that summer, I give it to her now.

When each of our babies have been born, we have picked a classical piece for them. May's piece is "Sheep May Safely Graze" by J. S. Bach. It is a happy, lilting, sweet melody that totally captures those early days of her life.

The day my water broke, I had driven down to Charlotte (40-45 minutes) because they had the closest Walmart. I heard that music while I was driving and just knew that it was "the one."

I love you, May!

P.S. Just for my own benefit, Nathan's piece was "Air in D" by Bach, Elijah's was "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" by Bach, Sariah's was a violin piece from Chris Baker's doctoral CD (Joseph, do you remember?), and Brigham's was Pachelbel's "Canon."

A Little Sunshine

It's 34 degrees, grey as can be with rain pouring down on top of our ice and snow. Lots of big puddles because the rain has no where to go. I don' t even want to go down and check my basement for signs of leaking! But, here's a little sunshine from last years flower beds!

Moon Flowers

These are my favorite flowers of all time. They are vines that grow up to 15 feet long and have these ginormous (Not sure how that is spelled, it's a word of Sariah's. No, I don't know which DVD that came from!) blooms that are 5-6 inches across. They open at night and shine brightly in the moonlight and thus, I believe, the name moon flower. I planted all my seeds late this year and was unsure if I'd actually see the wonderful flowers before the freeze. They are easy to grow and you can buy a package of seeds for about $1.89. Try them out next year!

Photographer

Joseph has always wanted a camera with which he could take close-ups. He took some really nice flower pictures lately and also captured this picture of Brigham that I'd love to blow up to poster size for my wall! Oh yeah, and I love this one of May.

Fall!

Here in Michigan, Fall is my favorite season. To be honest, I have to say that once Spring gets here, it is usually my favorite too. But, at any rate, I love to live in the midst of deciduous trees in the autumn. It is really so lovely. We are planning a fall color tour this year. We'll head up north on an upcoming weekend and if we get any good shots, I'll post them.

Funny thing is that my summer flowers finally bloomed. We are in full color over here because I planted the seeds and bulbs so late in the season. I love it. The best of both worlds!

These glads have finally graced us with their presence!

Yard work

Today we all headed outside to the yard and WORKED!! It was the best we have all gotten along for a few weeks. Go figure. Everyone was pretty much nice to everyone else.

Joseph planted the garden. He takes care of the vegetables and I take care of the flowers.

I have been trying to answer once and for all the question, "Am I a gardener?" Last week as I was digging in my front flower bed, my visiting teachers came by (They both live right in my neighborhood. Yeah!), and one of them said, "That does not look fun at all." I just laughed at the comment. As I kept on thinking about it though, I was thinking to myself that I DO like to shovel dirt. Crazy as it may sound. So, then, under that definition, maybe I am a gardener. I spent 2 more hours today doing just that, shoveling dirt.

I've got plans for all that dirt, too. The two pictures show my available dirt. If you have a favorite flower, speak now or forever hold your peace! I dug out my old seeds. Hopefully, they'll still grow (2003). It's nice to have dirt with no weeds, no plants, because then I get to be creative.

Eight years ago was the prettiest and probably always will be. I didn't plant until the end of June and in Sept and Oct the yard was plum FULL of blooms. I'll see what I can make of it this year!

Oh, I know, I'm a gardener, unless it's HOT!