Spring is Definitely Here

I just love Japanese maples.  My husband collects them.  He has all sizes.  The one below is in front of our bathroom on the front of the house.

This one is in the corner of our backyard.



Here's another little one, and I love the dark red leaves on it - also in our backyard.

I just love the red ones, but we we also have a beautiful green one in the backyard, too.

Last year this tree was so beautiful - also a red one - that is right outside my kitchen window.  This year it seems to have bit the dust.  Really hate that because I so loved looking at it several times a day.

Perhaps one of these will eventually take its place.  This is my husband's little Japanese maple nursery.

The ivy in these little pots is doing really well.  It is actually the same ones that grew here last year.  They suffered greatly during the winter, but they didn't die. I just cut off all the old dead stuff, and they took off again.  I love this little wallhanging we bought several years ago at a local nursery.



This is one of three rose bushes we have of this type.  I can see this one from my kitchen window.  It is just popping wtih buds.



Piece-lique

Took a class from Sharon Schamber on piece-lique. It was a fun technique to learn.

Rainy Day in Alabama

Yay! We are getting a good soaking rain. I hope that means some of these record-setting levels of pollen will be washed away!!! I don't need a chart to tell me how high the pollen is this spring, but, WOW, I've never seen a 11.7 count before!! 12 is the max.

It has been in the 80s during the day all week. That is hot early even for Alabama. Today I had to break out my cropped pants, short-sleeved shirts, and sandals. Oh, dear, my "fish-belly" legs are whiter than my white cropped pants! I need to find a beach!!

On this rainy afternoon I put roast, potatoes, carrots, and onions in the crockpot. Also have yeast rolls rising. These are just a cinch to make when the electric bread maker does the mixing and rising. Gonna have some fine eats tonight!!

A First Rose!

A week or so ago my husband cut the rose bush outside my kitchen window back quite severely. But it is loaded with buds and produced the 1st bloom today. It may not look like the most perfect rose, but any rose is beautiful to me.

Day Lilies

Here are some of my day lilies coming up. The ground surrounding them looks awful right now. We have a landscaping company hired to clean out all this old bark and replace it with new. They are also going to build a cement block border around our flower beds and a tree in the front yard. Can't wait to see it completed. Stay tuned for updated pictures.

Pollen!!!! Allergies!!! ARGH!!!

My allergies hit full blast this week.  Living in the south has a lot of advantages - beautiful foliage in the spring and the fall, but the one BIG disavantage is when all those trees pop out in their beautiful flowers, so does the pollen.  And I happened to be severely allergic.  I went through all the testing and took allergy shots for over 6 years.  My first allergist told me that if I would stick with it for at least 3 years, I had an 85-95% chance of being cured with the new medications, and the pollen here would never bother me again.  That sounded like a deal to me, so I pain-stakingly got my shots - one in one arm, and 2 in the other twice a week to start with, then once a week, year round.  I was so allergic, that I would have large welts on my arms each time, which required them to have to go at a slower pace with me.  Then my doctor died about halfway into this, and the new doctor ramped up the dosages in spite of my reactions.  So I got larger, itchy, welts to which I would apply ice and take an antihistamine.  In the middle of all this, I developed occular (eye) rosacea (had never heard of that until then).  The allergy season would exacerbate it most years.  Then my eyes would be terribly swollen, constantly tearing, and cause MUCH misery for the next 6 months.  I would have about 2-3 months by the time it ended until the next spring allergy season would start.  Two years ago, after I received my allergy shots I went to the car and started sneezing violently.  It immediately started up the rosacea.  The next spring, I told my doctor that I was not going to take the chance of that happening again.  I wanted to stop.  I apparently was in that 5-15% that there was no cure for.  She simply said that it works for some and doesn't work of others.  She said we would just treat the symptoms as they came.  That is what I did last year - took two oral antihistimines, an antihistamine nose spray and antihistimine eye drops.  I had the best year last spring that I ever had.

So when the symptoms hit last week, I started all the meds.  This week I developed a terrible cough - didn't feel bad - just coughed.  Plus my eyes teared a lot, but it didn't seem to be turning into the dreaded rosacea.  I prayed hard and stayed inside all I could, which is just dreadful when the weather is so nice and the sunshine so inviting.  You just feel like a prisoner on your own home.  :(  Yesterday, I went to the doc-in-the-box hoping to get a shot of Betamethazone.  I usually have to get at least one to get me through the season.  (Yeeeeowie, do those hurt!!!!) I think it has given me the boost I need.  My eyes feel soooo much better today.  Praise the Lord!!  Thank you, God!!!  If I make it through this season without the rosacea, I'll be so eternally grateful!!

Now to enjoy a little basketball for the rest of the day.....

Latest Quilts

The first quilt is made from a jelly roll with me adding the light background.  You can't see it in this distant picture, but the dark areas are all different fabrics.  I finished the pieced part at a recent quilt retreat and added the borders yesterday.  Now just need to get it quilted.

This little number is made from 5" charm squares.  Since I don't have any more fabric to make borders in that line of fabric, I think I'll just quilt and bind as is.  I much prefer the finished look of borders, but don't really want to order more fabric just for that.  Plus, I'm not sure where I even got these charm squares.  I just kind of collect them from here and there.  :)

I seem to be stuck on quilts from pre-cut fabrics.  I'm just a sucker when I see them.  They are so easy to use with minimal cutting, and I'm all for all the shortcuts one can get.  So many quilts, so little time!!