Garden Tradition

One thing that has become a tradition for me is to take pictures of my step-mom's garden when I'm over for the 4th of July celebration.  She has a super green thumb, and her roses are always beautiful.  So, I'm using those pictures for today's post.

It's still way too hot for me, and about to get hotter.  I think I saw we're supposed to be in the triple digits for several days - pretty unusual for SW Ohio.  I'm glad I got the shots of the flowers 'cause with this heat, they definitely won't be looking this nice for long!

That's it!  The highlights of a beautiful garden.  I love the variety of colors and types of flowers, too.  There were a lot more, but I tried to restrain myself.

I had to laugh when I went outside to water the plants.  In some ways, it feels like I'm cheating by using pictures I took yesterday.  I can make all kind of excuses, but I am really enjoying the challenge of looking for (and finding) new subjects to photograph as well as varying perspective.  When I started watering the plants, I saw the way the setting sun was hitting the clouds, so I put the hose down (it was set to "Soaker" anyway) by the base of the plant, and went in for the camera.

Yup, got some more shots today, so even though I'm using pics from yesterday, I did take more today!  And, not just the sunset clouds.  I saw a grasshopper in the back yard, and got some shots of it.  I also noticed my re-blooming lilac was blooming, but wasn't able to get a really good shot of it (maybe tomorrow).  The mandevilla blooms are looking pretty nice, as are the butterfly bushes.  I also liked the "remains" of the clematis after the blooms fall off.  I think I may also have tomorrow's post pretty much taken care of already!  Hmmm . . . I thought I was procrastinating.  I'm gonna have to work on that some more.

Sigh

What a day.  It's never fun when I have to be up and moving before 8 a.m.!  Today was Mom's colonoscopy, so not only was it early to start, it has been one LOOOOOOOOOOONG day.

Fortunately, since Mom had one of the first appointments, her doctor wasn't running behind schedule; the last time Mom was the last appointment, and I think the doctor was at least 2 hours late on starting her procedure.  Today, the procedure was finished about 15 minutes after it was scheduled to begin!  Woo-hoo.  I guess letting the scheduler know just how upsetting the previous procedure had been helped out.  Whew.

Everything was fine - Mom's colon was given a clean bill of health, and she didn't have any bad reactions to the anesthesia.  I did have the text of the day for my brother (due to autocorrect) though.  I was telling him that it was obvious to me that her clear liquid diet of the previous two days affected her ability to think logically or make decisions.  The text he received was:
"Amazing what lack of protein & carnal can do to you."  Still makes me giggle.

I got Mom back to Friendship Village around 12:30, but she was pretty cranky still.  She'd had a small bottle of Gatorade in the car on the way home, along w/ about 6 peanut butter crackers.  But she was determined to walk from the front door to her room (this was one of those things I really wanted to argue w/ her about, but knew it would just completely destroy her, so I bit my tongue).  She kept saying that she felt like she was drunk.  When we got back to her room, I waited until she was sitting down before I went back to move the car.  None of the specials from the dining room appealed to her, but she was hungry, so I warmed up some of the chicken broth that was left from the clear liquid diet prep.  Once she had that down, she started snoozing.  I stayed for about 2 hours before I tried to wake her up, but she was OUT.

I managed to make it out of the parking lot before Mom called me on my cell.  From the way she was sawing logs, I'd figured she'd be out for a couple more hours, so I had asked the nurse to check in and make sure she knew when it was dinner time.  I don't know what woke her up, but she called me to find out if I'd decided we weren't going to the surprise retirement party for one of her former students who was later a co-worker.  

So, shortly thereafter, it was back to Friendship Village, then off to meet everyone at O'Charleys.  I'm glad we went - it was great for Mom to see a lot of the teachers she used to work with.  Some of them she hadn't seen in quite a while; others she had seen within the last few weeks.

We were saying our goodbyes when one of the other retired teachers asked Mom if she liked it at Friendship Village.  She paused for a minute, then said "No, not really."  This was just about 15 minutes after she asked the retiring teacher when she was going to come visit Mom at Friendship Village for lunch.  Mom was not fishing for an invite to "escape" or eat elsewhere; she enjoys having people join her for meals there.

All of this when I didn't get enough sleep, had a sinus headache, and wanted to be home curled up with my beastie boys and reading.

So, now that I'm home, I picked some flowery shots to post to brighten up my day.  No, it wasn't a bad day, but I needed a little boost.  I do feel a bit more optimistic now and am ready to take another of my sinus cocktails.

Most of the flowers are from my trip to Woodland Cemetery yesterday.  The first three are from my yard - primrose and yucca.  The yucca is a plant Mom transplanted from her dad's yard, and it's pretty for a very short time.  I think again this year I'll be cutting those huge stalks back once the blooms are gone.

I loved the orange of the lilies planted among the red/pink of the roses.  The sun was so bright that the normally red roses looked pink.  There's no mistaking the orange of the lilies though.

Once again, I am deeply thankful for a creator that provides so much beauty to uplift me when I need it.