T Stands for Garden Flowers

 Hi everyone.

How was everyone's week? 

I had a busy week last week. I visited my mom, got to see a couple of friends I haven't seen in well over a year since before Covid arrived,  made some bread, and I visited a couple of gardens too. Then the long holiday Memorial Day weekend came along and basically it rained. 

You would think the rain would be restful, but my daughter and her beau arrived for an overnight. When they were here we had a bathroom overflow with water running from the second floor down through the ceiling onto the first floor. Luckily there was 4 of us to mop it up quickly, and nothing seemed to be damaged or needed major repair. Of course that meant many loads of wet towels that  needed to be washed after my daughter and her beau left. I had been planning on having a quiet afternoon of art, reading or watching TV.

 Oh well, it is a more interesting story to tell  than if it had been quiet.  

The exciting news is that bees will be here Tuesday (tomorrow for those of you who post on Monday and today for those of you who post on Tuesday). 

They were scanned into Manchester, New Hampshire early Monday morning, which means next scan is at my post office.The post office worker in my town told me he will be giving me a phone call around 7 AM so I can go get the bees. Everything is ready for them, including me, and hopefully they are still buzzing around in their box. 

For those of you who are interested in how they ship bees, there are new post office rules that don't allow bees to be shipped overnight on planes, and since my bees are coming from Georgia, that would have meant a long road trip if I had decided to go pick them up.  The same worker who told me he'll be phoning me at 7 in the morning also told me he's had several shipments of bees as well as chicken and ducks already this year and there has been no problems with any of them. So keep your fingers crossed.

My gardens are also ready for bees. All my hard work this month and the much needed rain we had is making them look very lush (and weedy too) right now. Here's some photos from last Friday and also in between rain drops.

If I could figure out where to plant them, I would make an iris garden.  Too bad they don't bloom for very long.

I also have azalea blooming.  This orange-red one was once a little shoot next to the one my Dad had, and he dug it up and gave it to me. It always has wonderful blooms, and a lot of them too. Dad's original tree is gone (my brother cut it down) and so is Dad, making this plant more important in my garden than most.

I bought this pink one a few years back, and this is the first year it has had more than just a few flowers or buds.

My concord grape plant is getting its leaves.

My peonies will be blooming soon.

My cornflowers are blooming.

 My veggie garden is mostly planted and so far no critters have destroyed anything.

Look at the sizes of my rosebushes this year. 

I also recently found this photo of when I planted them in late May 2014.

What a difference 7 years make. 

OK, enough of my going on about my current obsession. 

It is T day so stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog   to  catch up with all the lovely ladies who join in.

My walking friend and I went out for lunch after we visited Bedrock Gardens again this past week.  I had a salad with some water and a glass of red sangria for lunch. It tasted yummy since it was still on the warmer side that day, and the rain hadn't yet arrived. I'll post those photos from that garden trip later this week.

Thanks for sticking through this yet again long T day post. Hope you T day is a good one!

World Language

 Hi everyone.

The month of May is almost over. In the past 31 days nature in my area has gone from thinking about spring to actually blooming and becoming spring (even if it has felt raw and cold this weekend). All the changes that happen during May are very exciting to watch.

To those of you in the US, I hope you are having a great Memorial Day weekend holiday.  When I was teaching, I always loved going back to school after this holiday because we were really in wrap up mode with graduation and other fun school events. (Of course last year with covid this wasn't true, sadly!)  It could also be the worst time of year in a classroom because if it got hot, the motivation level of the kids disappeared. They would check out for summer early. It isn't an issue any more for me, and with early May being on the cooler side and now it is feeling more summery (well not this holiday weekend),  I say keep bringing on this wonderful early summer weather.

And if you are not in the US,  I hope you are also having/had a wonderful weekend.

 Elle is wrapping up her hosting time at Art Journal Journey. Thank you so much  Elle for being a great host and challenging us with your language topic. It was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of new things about language and also many things about some of you who joined us  for this challenge also.

Of course big thanks to everyone who joined in and shared art journal pages with us also. 

Here's my last page for the this challenge.

My last page for this month's challenge is what I call World Language. My page began with me cleaning off my paint brush. Since so much of that was black paint, I added the black background tissue paper with messy writing. I like the idea of the messy writing because other than it not being a pictorial script, you can't tell what language it actually is. 

The rows of people were found in an old FLOW magazine. I then added a bit of sky blue paint and used a very old die I had to make the Earth and the plane.  Although we speak and write so many languages on our planet, we really are just one people. I wish we all got along as well as the people in the magazine image seem too.

Enjoy the last days of this month, and if we all spread a little happiness, maybe the world will become a better place. 

Speaking (or should I say speakin) like a Native

 Hi everyone. 

There was a show on the local TV station awhile back about New England words and phrases.  I am sure this is true almost everywhere, but here in New England we have a whole lot of words and phrases that are New England local (at least when I confirmed them on the internet). 

Never mind our way of speaking. Anything with an ar or er gets the ah sound. In some areas of New England, like Boston, that ah sound is much more pronounced. So radar is radah. And smart would be smaht.  And if you are from Worcester, my hometown, you would say Woustah. Because it is not Worchester or Worsester as some want to pronounce it. If you are speaking the name of that town properly, you would say Wouster, (like how you pronounce the vowels in the word would, with a ster on the end), even thought it is not spelled that way.

Maybe my British blog friends who read this can comment if the pronunciation of Worcester in their area of Britain is similar. I once was in London and had a conversation with someone about how to pronounce the area/ city  called  Greenwich. I called it "Grenich", and he said  back to me, don't you mean "Greenwhich"?   After I asked if I was mistaken because the 2 places called Greenwich I know about, in Connecticut and New York City, pronounce it "Grenich".   He laughed and said no I had it correct but so many of Americans pronounce it wrong and say Green-which. 

It is fun to figure out how towns and cities got their names, and I am also curious if our English founding back 400 years ago here in New England has affected how we pronounce out local town names. 

For those of you not familiar with New England, it is made up of the 6 most northeast states in the US that are Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.  And I must say, because someone will comment on this, that even though we share some pronunciation and local phrase similarities, there are a lot of language differences in and around New England.

I thought I was done making pages for Elle's Language challenge at Art Journal Journey, but I just had to make one after seeing this local show. It was just too good to pass up.

I started my page with a multicolored painted background. Then I added this sheet of lacey paper. Once that was all dry, I sponged on some gesso to pull it all together. Then I added the map. I outlined and colored in New England. Finally I typed in the words I wanted to use and printed them, then I cut them out and added them around the map.

If you are interested in what any of these words of phrases mean, here's my little dictionary. Some of these phrases are not as commonly used as they once were. Some are more localized than others. And maybe, you even use a similar word in your area too.

My Little New England "Language" Dictionary

Ayah-a Maine phrase pronounced with a long A and a yuh. It would be said by someone when you just got their attention, and they are responding to you. For example if you said "Excuse me" trying to get someone's attention, that person could look at you and respond "Ayuh"

Hornpout- a catfish 

Barrel- a trash can

Wicked- means really good/great or a lot of something, like wicked tasty or wicked rainy

hamburg- a short form of ground beef or a hamburger sandwich

jimmies- are sprinkles, little chocolate or multicolored items you put on ice cream or cupcakes or something sweet

frappe (pronounced frap not frappay)- in New England a milk shake is flavoring and milk only, if you add ice cream it is a frappe

down cellar- in the basement

elastics- rubber bands

johnny- a hospital gown

close the lights- this is a French Canadian phrase meaning turn off the lights that people who grew up in French and English speaking New England communities often say. They also might say open the lights. These are literal translation so the French words.

an Italian- not someone from Italy, although it could be, it is a sandwich made with cold cuts like salami, parma ham, and mortadela, cheese, some veggies and maybe even some hot peppers

bang a uey- make a u turn

So don't I- grammatically incorrect, but means you agree with what someone is saying to you

ice box- refrigerator

package store- a liquor store especially true in Massachusetts, shorten to packie

beater- an old beat up car

bubbler- a water fountain

bug- a lobster or an insect or a form of a VW car

the directional or blinker- the turn signal on a car

leaf-peepers- someone out looking at the fall foliage

a grinder- is a sub or hoagie sandwich made on a long thin backed roll

tonic- soda, pop, carbonated non-alcoholic drink

numb- not with it, not getting what someone is saying or what is going on

the clicker- a remote control

rotary- a traffic circle or round about

right out straight- way too busy with too much to do

statie- a state trooper police

townie- someone who lives in one town all or most of their life and has no plans to leave it

roadie- an illegal alcoholic drink in a car, not good  (or recommended you do) while driving

American chop suey- a dish made of noodles, tomato sauce, beef and flavorings

booking it- moving fast

flatlander- someone who isn't from around the area, or as they say in Maine "from away"

Have a wonderful weekend!

Rhymes

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. 

I had a busy week, and it flew by. I'm actually looking forward to being home all day today with no place I must go. The good news is  my bees shipped yesterday. The bad news is the weather people say we have rain moving in for most of the entire weekend. The rain is much needed and not a bad thing, but of course, the rain isn't really wanted by lots of people as it is a long holiday weekend here in the US. 

Today I want to share a page from a found journal. Last month I was doing a bit of attic cleaning out when I came across a bin filled with some journals I had made a long time ago. I've showed you a few already.

Today I have a page from an old journal (probably from around 2000)  I made but that I have never posted before. The journal has an ocean theme which is one of my favorite topics. This spread's rhyming words work perfect for a language theme.

Since I have never posted this book before, I think it should be OK to link this page up to Elle's language challenge at Art Journal Journey. My other co-admins can let me know if this doesn't work, and I'll take it down.

My daughter had a children's book where the whole story was about kids doing things and using rhyming words to tell about what they were doing. You can tell I made this spread a long long time ago because my daughter is now 29 and who knows where the book ended up.

I remember having a lot of fun making this page and coming up with all the beach rhymes.  I may have to do this again sometime soon.

The background is 2 sheets of mostly matching paper cut to size and glued down on the original book pages. The phrases are printed on acetate and then cut out and glued. I made the water at the bottom out of blue paper, torn and then edged with glitter glue. And I added a mini tag with a quote just to finish off the page.

Here's a few of other photos from that same journal. I'll share more some other time.

One thing I did with this book was not cover over every single page. I liked some of the illustrations. That included the cover, which I left as it was.

Yet as you can see in this next page, I made some big changes. I cut pages and used some cloud scrap- booking paper to cover the background. The gold paper frame is not meant to be a porthole, but I used it as one and created the cool paper collage in it. Wouldn't that be a fantastic view?

And of course, when you are outside you should use sunscreen.

And this last page for today is the inner cover. I left the big title already printed on the book and added some other images. I did color my page with some inks and paints, and I added some other paper which look gessoed . I made a little tag too. And perhaps you remember the netting you used to be able to find in scrapbooking supply store? I  must have had some because I used some of that on my page also.

Hope you enjoyed the art and also have a wonderful start to your weekend.

For the Hitchikers

Hi everyone. 

 I'm here with another language page for Elle's challenge at Art Journal Journey

Recently I had a hankering to make a space page,  and I needed some kind of language connection. Then someone on the blogosphere posted an image of something with a number 42 on it, and that was all I needed to make the connection to Elle's language challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Sometimes words or numbers in a language mean a lot in a particular context. For many people the number 42 might be their age or their street address or even a shoe size (European sizing), but for others it has another meaning.

As quoted from internet:

"The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years."

I  enjoy the Hitchiker's movie, which I have seen several times, but I have never read the books. I must admit I never hooked onto the number 42  the way real fans have (guess I am not a true hitchhiker), and someone had to explain to me what it was. Once they told me, it came back to me from the film, and today I used it many times on my journal page.

The number 42 on my page doesn't necessarily mean the images or layout of this piece are connected with the film nor the book.

I used a piece of cardboard from a postal box as my base. I painted it 2 shades of red and stamped the 42 on it all over the place.  I used my space alien stamp set (on white paper) to make my images. After I stamped and colored them I fussy cut them and glued them onto my page. 

I used a yellow and also a white wax pencil to make the lights under the spaceships. I stamped the quote on the page. I also used some black glitter paste to create the surface of the planet that the alien is standing on.

And if the number 42 isn't enough to link into the Art Journal Journey language challenge, the more cliche quote "Greeting Earthlings" does. Somehow I wonder if an alien was to land on earth, how would they know which  of all the planet's  languages  to use to address the people they came across?  I guess if they are so evolved to be able to actually travel all that distance across space to get to earth, they might be easily able to figure out how to communicate. 

That's my page for today. Hope your week is going well.

One More Veggie Tag

Hi everyone. 

I'm back today with another tag for Pinkie's Fruit and/or Vegetable challenge at  Tag Tuesday.  It was fun to play with my fruit and veggie stamps, seeing I've had them forever and haven't used them as much as I could have in the past few years. My inspiration for this tag was all the good veggies I hope to get from my garden this summer.

I started by stamping some small veggie images. These are from an ancient foam set from PSX  that I bought around the time I started stamping, around 22-23 years ago. I colored them in and then stamped the quote on the tag a few times. I used some green water-reactive ink on the background, but I wasn't crazy about it at this point. To fix that, I took some thin green acrylic paint and covered the whole tag. 

I stamped the big veggies with colored ink on white paper and fussy cut them. After I arranged and glued them on the tag, I stamped the quote 1 more time on white paper, cut it out and added it to my tag. Finally I used a green paint pen to make little dots all over the background; I outlined the edge of the tag with a black Sharpie, and lastly I attached a small washer I found on the floor around the hole at the top of the tag. I think the washer must have fallen as I was cleaning up a little bin of parts that had been sitting out on my screen porch all winter.

There you have it.

And to wrap up my post, I thought I would also share some flower photos today also.

I walked around my gardens and took these photos, as well as taking some from  plants in my containers  too.

Enjoy and hope your week is going well.

Butterflies

Hi everyone. Once again 2 weeks have flown by, and it is already time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday

For the next 2 weeks our challenge is called Butterflies.

I decided to go with a tag this time as all kinds of art is accepted at Try It on Tuesday.  I made a spring colored background by rubbing a multicolored ink pad along my white tag. I stamped the flowers (Paper Artsy) and hand colored them in with markers. I did the same with butterflies fluttering around the flowers. I also added some black metallic paper tape along the bottom, this beautiful TH lady, and this fun sticker quote from Studio Light, Art by Marlene.

Be sure to check out all the butterfly art from the other members of the design team.

I bet there will be a lot of beautiful butterfly inspired art also.

And there you have it.

Thanks for visiting.

 

T Stands for Garden Time and More

 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday. 

This past week I have been busy with lots of work around my gardens and yard. I was getting a little crazy about accomplishing it also, and that was stressing me out. I had plants to put into pots and into the ground, seeds to plant, my screen porch to clean and set up, an electric fence to figure out for the beehive...

Thankfully last Tuesday morning my walking friend sent me a  text and asked if I wanted to walk that afternoon at the Urban Forestry Center. At first I thought I should just say I couldn't make it, but then I rethought that idea. Funny how sometimes you need someone to throw you off track to put you back on track. I think my brain was still running automatically on work time, and with our now summer like weather, it was telling me that I have limited time to get these things accomplished. 

And that is not true.  What I don't get done one day I can do another day.

Hopefully by next spring I will have made it through that first year of adjustment and my brain won't have to be reminded about time.

Here's a pretty view from out walk. I've shown you this before, but not with everything green. I think later this week, depending on when the bees arrive, I might get back to Bedrock Gardens to see the rhododendrons.

And I have managed to get my work done. Why did I stress about it?

Here's a few photos of all my work last week.

This first one was taken as I was putting in the veggie garden.

Time to thin my lettuce and kale in the cold frame. Spinach is about ready to pick and eat, as baby spinach is so tasty.

These are just a few of the many pots I planted  with some herbs and annuals.

It also took parts of 3 days to finish this next project, but the plastic came off the screen porch, all the yard paraphernalia got taken out, and then I cleaned it up. After that I set it up.  I moved around a lot of the furniture this year and am fairly happy with the result. The white Adirondack chair you can see in the photo could be moved outside, but it is a good place to sit and talk on the phone.

I just love my hammock. Especially in the later afternoon with a book.

I pulled out my old trunk from the basement this year. I bought this when I was a senior in high school and took it off to college with me. I got it cheap, and it needed a lot of repair then. It could use some more work now, fresh paint, and maybe finally getting leather straps on it. (But it is not high on the list.)

We've been working on getting the electric fence around the beehive. It is done, hurrah! We haven't turned it on yet though. Now we're waiting for the bees. The bees should ship this week, but I'm not sure exactly what day they go out or arrive.

And after all that work, the hubby and I went out for Sunday lunch. It was nice to be taken out for lunch by the hubby.

When we went to lunch last Sunday there was no line at Pop's.  On opening weekend however, there was a line.  (This and the next 2 photos were back on May 8 that I never got around to showing you.)

As we were standing in line on opening day, a worker came out and covered over everything that had already sold out. That day I ended up with fried clams (still one of my favorites) instead of a lobster roll.

This past weekend I had my lobster roll. I substituted onion rings for the fries. They came in a paper bag, and I shared some with my husband.

The grease on the bags looks pretty disgusting, but the food tasted oh so good.

This is why my  sandwich carton doesn't have many onion rings in it. I just put a few out and then took a few more and continued that until I had my fill.

This was the one of the best lobster rolls I've ever had, even better than usual. Maybe because it was my first of the season. Not the cheapest sandwich on the menu, but Pop's aren't over priced. Plus it supports our local New Hampshire and probably Maine also lobster industry. And most importantly, is a favorite of mine. 

We picniced in the car, watching boats on the the Big Lake (Lake Winnepesaukee) which is right across the street from Pop's.  

.Here's my drink which I brought from home, and my ticket to T over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog

Hope everyone has a wonderful T day and week ahead.

Thanks for visiting.