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Wordless Wednesday

Autumn is just around the corner... yay!

Summer

It's that time of year again - picnics, parades, barbeques, and fireworks - all to celebrate our country's birthday. How wonderful it is that we can do that! Happy Fourth, everyone!

Although I don't have a photo of it, I want to share a simple, festive, and yummy fruit salad, perfect for those picnics and barbeques. All you need are fresh fruits and a clear glass bowl. Choose a variety of fruits in various colors, such as strawberries, watermelon, cantalope, kiwi, peaches, grapes, mango, and blueberries, to name a few. Cut the larger fruits into bite sized pieces. Start layering them, one type of fruit at a time, in the glass bowl, saving the blueberries for the topmost layer. Be sure to alternate the colors, and when you're finished you'll have a striped, colorful bowl of fruit. It's fabulous!

Summer Daisies

Finally! I think summer might be here. After weeks and weeks of chilly, windy weather, the sun has decided to shine and the sky has managed to stay blue instead of grey for two days straight. Bringing these daisies into the house adds a hint of summer inside, too. So with the outside and inside brightened up, the next logical step is to brighten up the blog - I think it's time for a new banner. I like my springy little nests up there, though, so maybe I'll wait until June 21st, the official start of summer!

May Roses

The month of May, already! This year seems to be rushing by, so I guess it's true that the older you get, the faster time spins by. May Day as a holiday never really took hold in America because the Puritans frowned upon it, but as a child I always enjoyed reading about May Day celebrations in English stories - they were full of merriment and maypoles and ribbon. My friends and I would do our part by making cones out of colored construction paper and ribbon, then picking flowers to put inside. We'd hang them on the doorknobs of the older women on the street, ring the bell, and run. I suppose those  women must have known the flowers had been stolen from their own gardens! I don't go around ringing bells and running any more, but I must confess I still steal flowers. These lovely roses (and lots more, ohhh, lots more!) came from an empty house across the street that has six rose bushes towering over the porch. The house has been empty for about two years, but the roses keep blooming every spring and summer - very profusely I might add. I can't help myself. When one bouquet dies I just have to go over and cut another, thief that I am. But really, you can't even tell, the bushes are that full. 

It's also Pink Saturday today, although here it's pink with a little yellow thrown in! Be sure to visit everyone else's pinks too.

A Cup of Flowers

Ahhh, Spring! I've been going in and out of the garden center these past few days, buying colorful flowers to refill window boxes and flower pots. I just love the ambience there - people pushing carts around and seriously contemplating whether to choose white roses or yellow, or trying to decide between grey or terra cotta pavers. There's a lot to think about when putting the pieces of a garden together! This garden center is a place full of delightful surprises - lovely stone fountains, gorgeous garden tables with scrolled ironwork and chairs with preppy striped cushions, an aisle of heavenly freesias, another of cheerful daisies in yellow, purple, and white... I could practically live there.

I picked a cupful of my new flowers to bring indoors and I can see that I need more blues and violets, since I'm going all out with color this year. It's just the excuse I need for another visit to my new favorite place.

Mosaic Monday :: Spring Flowers

Spring is such a fickle season. After days of balmy weather we suddenly had a weekend of wind and hail, and even snow in the nearby mountains. So I searched flickr for bright, colorful Spring flowers - daffodils, primroses, tulips, crocuses, pansies, azaleas, even a sweet butterfly... one of these days Spring will be here to stay!

Mosaic Monday :: Blossoms

When Springs rolls in and all the fruit trees around here bloom, I'm always taken by surprise. I know it's going to happen, but it happens so suddenly - seemingly overnight. There they are the next day, beautifully dressed in their pink and white blossoms. They're all so gorgeous! It's such a testament to the workings of the seasons - Spring brings renewal and hope and freshness, without fail, and I always feel that way too - renewed and ready to tackle the world. And the first thing I usually start with is cleaning my house. hmmm....

Photos are from flickr.

Joy

There's joy in the air this morning.

I can hear it in the happy chattering of the little birds that gather in the trees and bushes...

I can feel it in the thin Spring sunlight...

I can almost taste it when I see the bees busy with their work...

and I can certainly see it in the blossoming of hillsides, fields and trees.

 

Three cheers for Spring! I think we're all glad it's here, or nearly here!

Early Spring

I always claim that Autumn is my favorite season, but then Spring starts unfolding just about now and I usually feel like rethinking my position. Spring is rebirth and renewal, it's the upward cycle of the seasons, and Autumn is, well... death. It's amazingly beautiful to see the leaves change into those splendid colors in the fall, but it's over so quickly, whereas Spring unfolds slowly and tantalizingly. True, there are often false starts with Winter looming up for a last dance or two, but we know that Spring will happen; that the sun will get warmer and brighter, and that flowers will bloom again. It's inevitable. It's comforting.

I walked by this tree today, and had to run back for my camera. It's the first blossoming of Spring that I've seen this year, and I could almost swear the branches were bare yesterday!

A Year in Review

   This is my pictorial tribute to a year of seasonal beauty, lovely memories, and new life (in particular our baby grandson born in August - the highlight of 2008, I'm thinking!). I took these photos throughout the year and used them in a 2009 calendar that I made for my family. Now the new year approaches, and I hope we will all remember to enter into it with hope and expectation... to rejoice over each new day whether sunny or snowy... to treasure and protect the beauty of this world we live in... to give thanks for family and friends... to count our blessings and forget our disappointments... to live life well and peaceably and not forget how important the little things are... to keep laughter on our lips and making sure every day counts for something good. Sounds like a plan to me!

To see more "Years in Review", zip on over to Cindy's blog My Romantic Home. There's a long, lovely list to enjoy.