Category Archives: Nature

It’s a Sunny Morning!

It’s beautiful outside! The sun is shining, the sky is BLUE, the birds are singing! Glorious! I snapped a few photos to show you, so I can share my sunshine with you. My kitchen faces west, but you can see shadows in the grass.

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And, out the front door (east) the yard is all nice and sunny. When I am sitting at my kitchen table I can look out both the west facing bay window and the east facing front door.

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You can see the last remaining white magnolia blossoms and to the right is one of our (?) flowering bushes. We also have a larger one which got a little clipping yesterday. I made a bouquet with quite a few of its blossoms. They smell absolutely heavenly!

Does anyone know for sure what these are? We didn’t plant them, so we don’t know. They smell and look like lilacs, but I couldn’t find this variety anywhere on the internet. Last year, I must have found a photo of these because I then thought that they were honeysuckle. I just now searched for honeysuckle and these do not look like the photos I found at all. Hmmm… any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

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Thanks to Orli and April for the links to my flower question from yesterday. These are called Creeping Charlie here in the U.S. with a European version called Lamium amplexicaule. Yesterday I discovered this “weed” growing in our yard, but with the fuchsia or magenta blossoms. They are from the mint family, so a bouquet might be nice.

Hope you all have a beautifully sunny day. If not, I’m sending some your way.

Bye for now!

It’s May!

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It’s May, but it doesn’t feel like it around here. We are on day 6 of dreary, dark, usually rainy weather. Ugh, ugh, ugh! Really, I am so very tired of it. When it is so dreary day upon day, it takes a real mental workout just to get out of bed in the morning.

One thing that I’ve started doing in the last few days is to count my blessings (and I have many) before I get up, so I can get up on the right side versus the wrong side of the bed. It makes all the difference to get out of bed with a grateful heart rather than a “woe is me” feeling inside.

Once I get up, this is how I start my mornings on these dark days–30 minutes of blue light (and a cup of coffee or tea 🙂 ). The blue light really make all the difference in how I sleep at night (as long as I remember to stay off of the computer a couple of hours before bedtime).

Just to show you how dreary it’s been… I think this was taken on Thursday or Friday.

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In addition to the clouds, we’ve been getting lots of rain too. A mallard couple thought that our pool cover was a pond and flew right in yesterday. The feral cat was on the deck, the dog was barking at them, and they didn’t care; they stayed awhile and swam around.

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One of the blessings that I took note of on Saturday morning was the sunshine we got at 5:00 pm on Friday. I know, not much, but I’ll take what I can get. I made sure my BJD resin dolls were out of the sunlight and opened the curtains in my sewing room. It was so nice and warm!

Unfortunately, my last doll outfits (the one I just finished for Sugar) and the one I’ve been working on all week are in blue. Couldn’t I pick something in yellow? It is really hard to work with blue when it is dreary. I think I will look at the weather forecast the next time I want to make something in blue. lol

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Here are some photos from the last time I took a sunshine-y walk (last Monday). The violets were blooming; I love violets!

Even dandelions are pretty (I think so anyway).

These teeny tiny purple flowers bloom in large patches in the grass this time of year. They look like a carpet of purple. Does anyone know what they are? They are super duper tiny; you can see that they make the dandelion appear huge.

We are supposed to have a very nice week, so that is what I am counting on, but I am aware that you cannot count on the weather, so I had better prepare myself… just in case.

Daffodils, Magnolias, and…

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This is daffodil season here in northern Illinois. They are blooming prolifically alongside the roadways and in gardens. Last week, on the way home from picking up my daughter, I took a little detour to see if this roadside garden of daffodils was blooming. It was! Isn’t it gorgeous! I snapped a few pictures to show you this glorious garden of daffodils.

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I thought there was only one variety blooming here (basic yellow), but on closer inspection saw tiny daffodils and cream/yellow varieties as well.

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This was my very own little clump of daffodils ten days ago. Ugh, snow! Luckily, the snow didn’t kill my daffodils; they are fine and still blooming.

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We are starting our second week of springlike weather. So happy, happy, happy! It is finally spring and oh, so wonderful outside. These are my daffodils today.

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Truthfully, I think they liked getting snowed upon. They are still doing great ten days later.

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The magnolia bushes didn’t like the cold snap much, but luckily they were just starting to bloom, so we didn’t lose many blossoms.

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And, here is a photo from about a month ago that has nothing to do with daffodils or magnolias, sorry, but I wanted to share it anyway. When I was with my mom in January she gave me this puzzle. She saw it at the store and thought of me as it depicted many of my favorite things. Even though I am busy making things for our dolls, I finally had to put it together. It is the last (material) gift she gave me. Thank you, Mom!

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I hope you all are having a great start to this new week. I know some of you had snow over the weekend, sorry about that. I hope it melts in a flash, so spring can come back… and stay!

Bye for now!