Cloudburst | #WeekendCoffeeShare

Two sides of progress

Siding – one side

Storm Clouds

Intense Rain

If we were having coffee together, this afternoon, it would be because of the sudden cloudburst—lots of rain. Water’s heating for tea or Toddy coffee (concentrate’s in the fridge).

Quite a bit of the week has been devoted to hauling around siding, measuring, cutting and nailing the boards in place. Aside from minimizing my time spent at the top of tall ladders and declining to use the pneumatic nailer, I’ve been participating in the project. It’s fun, but it eats up a lot of time. The good thing is that I can lock stuff in the shop building, now, instead of having to haul so much back into the garage.

Not much else has been accomplished around the house. I did decide to take advantage of two opportunities that came to my attention, this week. First, I have been looking for a 1st edition hardcover of Fukuyama’s The Origins of Political Order, the dog having eaten most of the cover off of my original copy; I found a couple places that still have copies for sale. (My permanent library is in paper, not wanting to trust all to the availability of electronics/electricity.) The second came about when someone emailed to myself and other contacts information about an on-line workshop to take place this fall, Introduction to Japanese Poetry; I have registered for it, and ordered a book written by the person who is conducting the workshop.

I find that I am quite tired, now that I’ve wound down from the day’s work. I think that I will settle back and take a nap while the puppies sleep across the room from me on the love seat. Surely they will wake me when Al has returned from running errands.

Thanks for keeping me company on my break. I look forward to visiting you later in the weekend. Please stop by Diana’s blog, Part Time Monster Blog, later in the weekend, for her Coffee Share post and the links to others participating in Weekend Coffee Share. #WeekendCoffeeShare posts can also be found on Twitter.

Best wishes for your week!
Lizl

Late at night | #weekendcoffeeshare 2017-07-30

If  you stopped by for coffee earlier, I would have to confess that I forgot the day! For me, Saturday seemed to be Friday until suddenly the day is now Sunday. I am enjoying a cup of tea, tonight, and trying to unwind before the weekend is entirely done with.

There’s still coffee concentrate in the fridge, if you’d like a cup of coffee. I’ve a tea bag or two left, after which I’ll need to find a tea ball and brew a pot with loose tea leaves.

All of my computers suitable for typing in my recliner recharging, and so I’ve grabbed a spare keyboard to plug into my little Lenovo 2-in-1 tablet (a 310 miix?). The touch screen went out again on the Acer Aspire (known problem, evidently), and I’m so used to having a touch screen, I’m having trouble coping, tonight, without it.

This has been a crazy week, again, for allergies. In the midst of that, I have done some weeding in the garden, since a lot of the early growing plants have lived out their life cycle and died as the summer’s lack of rain makes changes all around. Even though I’ve turned on the sprinkler a couple of nights, there still are large brown patches in the backyard lawn. It’s not just the flowers that are affected. However, the blue wild flax are making a stronger appearance as the competition for space in the garden has diminished.

In my spare time, while the dogs take turns sleeping in my lap, I have been reading L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s new book, Assassin’s Price, a first and second time. Lovely book! Rates a second read-through to savor the details.

In addition to worrying about finding a replacement touch-screen laptop (or a larger 2 in 1 tablet with keyboard), I am also fussing what to do about replacing the spinet piano with a portable digital. It’s not just the space that’s a concern at this point, but also being able to play the piano when my husband (and the neighbors) are asleep. I think it’s been months, now, since I last watched television, there are so many other things I’d rather be doing (such as staring at the ceiling or out the window and thinking…not a lot on television to watch in recent years).

I am afraid that I am falling asleep, here. Must sign off! There is a post by Diana at Part Time Monster Blog, our host for Weekend Coffee Share. Do stop by her blog for a visit and links to other Coffee Share participants.

Best wishes for your week!

Lizl

A quiet weekend | #WeekendCoffeeShare

Welcome! If we were having coffee together this afternoon, I once again would be serving hot Toddy coffee with milk. (Cold water in the frig and Tetley tea bags in the cupboard.) It’s been a rough few days with the allergies, and so I am staying inside, mostly. Exercise on Saturday consisted of uncounted time on the elliptical machine and five miles on the exercise bike in the gazebo; today, I quit after three miles on the exercise bike.

Limited time in the garden, which is pretty much not worth looking at, right now. The grasshoppers have gotten into it and eaten the few blue wild flax flowers that came up. They’ve now started in on the smaller poppies. The cornflowers and prairie coreopsis are doing well, however, and I have hopes for (what I think is) the sunflower plant on the south side of the house.

Still, I did get some photos taken yesterday and today before the allergies took hold. I sleep in a room with an air cleaner (HEPA filter); I forget from one year to the next how essential it is to sleeping with allergies. 😀

Sunday’s Flowers

 

Saturday’s Flowers in the Rain

On Saturday, Al and I went out to dinner at Denny’s, where I ordered the salmon (from the salmon skillet, which I cannot eat as on the menu) and steamed broccoli, which was kind to my blood glucose level. Then we went to Target to buy five of the last six cheap 2ft x 3ft poster frames which we are using, along with the two previously bought to try out, to frame the seven poster-sized photo montages from my parents’ memorial services and my father’s 100th birthday party, which was the day after Mother’s memorial service. Fantastic, having them available to me to look at. I am not hanging them all at once, but am propping them up or hanging them one or two at a time. It makes me happy, seeing the pictures across the decades of smiling faces. Memories of parents, their siblings and us getting together with them and their children. The holidays. The vacations that I missed, being the oldest and away at school and then working, by the time the next six of us were old enough to go on vacations. They did a lot of stuff I never even heard about, before looking at the photos with my siblings at these last family gatherings.

That reminds me that I look forward to seeing the family home, redone by Eric (brother) and Cheryl (his wife), who’ve bought the house and have been putting it to rights. I am excited to see it, having been quite impressed by what they’d already done with it the last time we’d dropped in there.

It would be fun, I think, to have regular “coffee share” times with the family members who still are within this thirty-mile area. I wonder if you get together a lot with your various family groups. We all seem to have scattered, us kids, getting together with the in-laws’ families, but not our own. Sort of like being orphaned.

Al and I turn seventy-one, this year. I am concerned that we will have trouble maintaining relationships, getting together face to face, scattered as we are from New England to California. I could, if I had to, handle a trip by rail; I had too much trouble with air quality traveling by air, the last time I flew East, which was in 2007, I think. Not sure that I could do it again and be able to walk off the plane at the other end of the journey.

Again, I was late getting to this, getting together for a visit, and I must move on, now. The Scampers are eating their supper, and I have to look to getting organized to fix supper.

Be sure to stop by Diana’s Part Time Monster blog for her post and the Links button where you can find links to other WeekendCoffeeShare posts of the week.

Best wishes for you, your family and friends, during the coming week!

Lizl

#WeekendCoffeeShare : How can it already be *next* weekend?

If we were getting together for coffee, this weekend, I’d invite you to have a chair in the backyard gazebo. There’s noise from a lawnmower down the block, but keeping the windows closed on that side helps. The dogs are wondering if I’m here for a while, so they should lie down, or, if I’m headed back to the house…and the dogs decided to bark at the nextdoor dog, owner and their company, so we’re inside the house, again. Ah, well.

You know how, when you’re walking along (metaphorically) and the ground drops away under your feet? That’s sort of what I’m feeling like, today. I’m not an outgoing, out-and-about person, but if I had been, I would have isolated by now.

I very much do not like discord. Even more, I do not like bullying or attempts at thought control or imposition of a narrow “norm” for acceptable thinking and determinations of judgments. I’m pretty much live and let live. I want to understand people, rather than establish or enforce some sort of conformity to arbitrary guidelines for “proper” thinking.

I don’t suppose that a turtle shell can pass for a cocoon. Spinning a cocoon implies not just comfort, but also a longer-term separation from the outer world. Perhaps I will be a turtle, pulling back into my shell for a while, instead.

I would tell you instead of my purchase of two poster-size frames, which I got to hold two of the photo collages from my parents’ memorial services. I have enjoyed propping one or another of them against the wall that I face, sitting here in my rocking chair, so that I can look up and see the two of them standing or sitting together or in a family setting during the holiday seasons. It’s not that I went running to my parents (or other family-of-origin  members) when upset, because I didn’t, even though I suspect they often wished that I would. Rather, it’s knowing that that pattern is not going to change, now. Not within my lifespan, anyhow.

We could take our cups outside and visit my backyard garden. Now that most of the flowers have come up and bloomed, some are already dying off, and others are taking their places.  My most favorite, the annual and perennial blue wild flax flowers, have finally appeared.  This is my first year with the California Poppy, Forget-Me-Nots and Siberian Wallflowers. Also, I’ve several types of Coreopsis flowers, the only one of which I recognize is the Plains Coreopsis. I have taken hundreds of photographs, perhaps half a thousand, over the past week and a half. One of my joys is finding a bee or a tiny hoverfly in a picture of a flower. The garden, the gardening, weeding and picture taking can be totally absorbing.

In the back yard, I could also show you the progress that we have made on building the woodworking shop. We are almost ready to add the soffits and order the wood siding. Al plans to paint the undercoat (which I cannot be around because of the chemical fumes) and let the boards dry thoroughly before adding the “safe” paint, which I then can be around and help put the siding up.

My health is generally improving, and I am sleeping through the night almost every night. I am (mostly) remembering to eat and take the medication on time. The blood sugar level continues to drop, and my blood oxygen level is in the normal range nearly always.

I continue to enjoy rereading old favorites from my library. I recently finished rereading The New Acadians by Evangeline, who was an ancestor of ours, and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, which I pull out at least once a decade. I always learn/discover something new each time I read the book. Next on my reread list is Elswyth Thane’s Williamsburg series, followed by Cluny Brown. I came across my mother’s copy of Cluny Brown, and so I now have a falling apart “reading” copy and one that’s not quite so bad and should last until I can no longer see.

In other rereads, I am just finishing the Harper Hall series by Anne McCaffrey and the Empire and Ecolitan series by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., to be followed next, I think, by Mindy Klasky’s Season of Sacrifice, which is still my favorite among her books.

I will close with some photographs from the garden for you to enjoy. Be mindful that Diana at Part Time Monster is back from her recent time away to host Weekend Coffee Share. You will find the link to the URLs of other Coffee Share participants there; look for the Links button at the end of her post.

Best wishes for your week!

Lizl

On Edge, California Poppy

Poppy Flower in Partial Shade

California Poppy, Gold in White with Dew

Where did the weekend go? | #WeekendCoffeeShare

The weekend—this past week—has been cluttered, and I have lost my way in the midst of it all. I’d welcome the chance to sit down with you for coffee and hear about how your week has progressed. Toddy coffee, here, and carrot sticks. Also, Tetley tea (black and strong) and a pitcher of filtered water in the refrigerator.

I have been escaping to enjoy taking photographs in the wildflower garden and to put in miles on my exercise bike, which lives in the screened-in gazebo in the back yard. While there still are lots of weeds in the back yard, I am making progress in getting them pulled, now that the plants that I wanted in the garden are getting large enough to identify.

Poppy & Hoverfly (Close-up, 2017-07-08)

Forget Me Not wildflowers, Lizl Bennefeld (2017-07-08)

WIldflower in my Garden (Coreopsis?), by Lizl Bennefeld, 2017-07-08

California Poppy, Lizl Bennefeld (2017-07-07)

Bee in the Garden, 8:34 a.m.

Hoverfly & California Poppy

Plains Coreopsis, Lizl Bennefeld (2017-07-07)

Lady Bug, Sunday Morning Walk

Much progress has been made on the backyard workshop, and I’m being called upon less often to lift and carry, now that the doors and windows close. And there have been fewer storms and fewer branches being blown into our yard. The Scampers adjusted quickly to the noises of the Independence Day celebrations here in town. Even when the fireworks sounded loud enough to be just outside our own door. I guess the process of accustoming the dogs to the fierce thunderstorms has added benefits. I have high hopes for getting through this fall’s fireworks association convention and demonstrations that rock the house even from the next town over, without even keeping the dogs awake.

I finally remembered to order refills on the Scampers’ Flea and Tick pills, this weekend. As it turns out, the website we order from keeps a copy of the vet’s approval and our orders, so all I have to do is click the correct medications and fill in my gift card number of the month.

This has been a “keep busy” week, and I have been putting in a lot of time on the elliptical machine (living room) and the exercise bike (gazebo), which has been bringing down my blood glucose level. Although I forgot to take my medication, this morning (not the first or second time, this week). Seems, however, that my numbers are staying down even so, and I expect that sticking to my diet and exercising help with that.

I must share with you that I have made no progress on getting together socially with anyone here in town. Although a poet friend (an acquaintance, I suppose, really) found that she would be stopping here on her way to a wedding in central Minnesota. She’d never before visited North Dakota, but has relatives in the same town in which I live. I found that I very much enjoyed visiting with her about her poetry activities and family history and current events. I do not recall the last time I offered to fix a meal for a guest. I spoke with … someone, grief counselor or diabetes educator, about my needing to make contact and form some relationships with people locally. I wonder, now, as I find I’ve gotten out of the habit over these many decades.

Happy that you have stopped by, and I am looking forward to visiting other blogs, as I am able, on the #WeekendCoffeeShare circuit. I understand that both NerdintheBrain.com (Emily) and PartTimeMonsterblog.com (Diana) have links to the Linkz page where the participants in Weekend Coffee Share are placing their links, this weekend. Diana is taking over as host, again, after her needed time off.

Hope that you’re enjoying life! I plan to visit again soon!

Best regards,
Lizl