Mornings

This is my new morning spot. Complete with flowers, coffee, and a book. You can go out in the morning and hear all of the birds talking to each other, watch the deer and turkeys in the neighbor's pasture, and pretty much forget that anything else exists for a while. My little garden boquet. Chamomille, lavender, yarrow (white and yello), and bee balm. Sometimes the most unlikely flowers look beautiful when put together. The same could be said about people, I suppose.

I hope you have a beautiful, flowery day. :)

Love,

Malinda

Ladybugs and Coneflowers

So Adam and I are sitting on the front porch one evening last week. We are talking. The bad dog is hangin in the yard and the other three are sprawled all around us. The kittens are playing (does anybody need a kitten?!) and I look to my left and see the echinacea (a.k.a. purple coneflower). I am thinking about how pretty the flowers and how they change as they grow. Then I decide to take a picture and Adam realizes that I haven't heard anything he has said to me in the past five minutes.

The "cone" part of the flower starts off like this. As the petals get bigger, they droop down and the red part actually does form a cone. I love this stage, though, because the petals are pale and the middle is bright red and I can stand like a silly person and follow the geometric patterns in the middle of the flower. Then I take another picture and another until I realize that I need to actually respond verbally to what Adam has to say to me.

Then this morning I am trying to decide what to blog about and go ahead and resize my flower pictures. Then I saw..... Mr. Ladybug!! Do you see him?? The only thing I love better than taking pictures of ladybugs is finding ladybugs in pictures I have already taken...

I hope you all have a wonderful day today and are enjoying the beginning of your summer. Keep a smile on your face - you never know who might need to see it....

Friday Was a Busy Day

I will start this post with a shamelesss surely-someone-needs-a-kitten picture... Then I will move on!! Broccoli. Mmmmm. It'll be done soon and I will be in heaven...

Potato flowers. Well, they're almost flowers. and Yes. Potatoes DO make flowers.

My irises are still blooming. This makes me all kinds of happy.

This also makes me all kinds of happy. The Lovin' Husband made our garden(s) about two times bigger. He works so hard! I preciate you, Baby!!! Maggie, of course, is making sure everything all around her beloved Adam is a-ok.

Peas soon!!

These three things fill my heart up. Sage flowers, the red barn, and a beautiful sunset. My favorite time of everyday that I get to be home.

Amen and amen...

Have a great day!!!

A Good Day

Sometimes the sunshine make a day "good". Sometimes the rain maks a day "good". Sometimes a dreary day makes a day "good". Just not always good for everyone!! I'm so thankful that even though it is dreary and raining here in Tennessee I know my garden is growing, the water table is high, my animals have water, and when I look out my front window I see the irises from my great grandmother and my grandma blooming away. Also today I get to see one my church families. My "home" church. The smiles and hugs and love that abound there make me smile, too. Enjoy your day today even if you think it isn't a "good" one...



Love,
Malinda

Potential

When I think about people a lot of times, I think about their potential. You meet them and see only who they are at that moment. Then you start to get to know a person. They share things about themselves and you share back and before you know it a person has blossomed before your very eyes.

Once you commit to fertilizing a friendship things often get sticky. Sometimes the people you thought would prune your branches only ever want you to prune theirs. Sometimes their are thorns (like the Thorn Tree from You Know Where). But a person always has the ability to blossom if you foster that within them.

Sometimes it is easy to write people off because they are mean or rude or just so angry and upset inside that they can't be happy. I forget that it is easier to pray for someone than to just leave them to the elements. And when you start praying beautiful things start happening. Seeds are planted and new seeds sown. Cycles are broken and different cyles are started and sometimes all it takes is YOU.

I'll be gone for a few days and unable to blog, but I'll be back!

Pray for someone over the next few days. Pray that they will find the sun and blossom.

Love and more love,

Malinda

Some Sunshine and Some Rain

It is raining this morning. I'm happy for a break and I know Adam is. We're both so sore from all of the garden preparing. Our plants are happy, I'm sure. I didn't water them or the seeds I planted yesterday in hopes that the rain would come along and do a much better job than myself. I'm all about conserving some water. I found some pretty "weeds" blooming in the side yard and took probably a hundred pictures. There is such beauty in the unexpected!

Potatoes are doing GREAT. We're growing them differently this year and are just amazed at the difference in the plants. All of the beds have begun to sprout. *happy*

More sunshine.

I love the native plants of Tennessee and have decided that I will have irises til the day I die. I keep finding them in the side yard that we have been clearing.

Look for beauty somewhere today that you normally wouldn't. When you find it, show somebody else and enjoy it together

Lots of love,

Malinda

I Miss Summertime...and No....we are NOT naked

Really, I am wearing a tank top. Also, we both have pants on. Hee Hee. I found this pic from this past summer and it made me happy, so here it is. I love that he is just so much taller than me that my head fits at his shoulder and neck. The garden is behind us and kind of blurry. Also, if you look close, you can see the gray in my hair.

He's my flower man in the summer time. He looks like he's growing out of the ground with the grass - everything about this pic I likey.

I can't wait for spring. Happy day, people.

Christmas Presents

The Lovin' Husband and I don't believe in spending a lot of money on "Things" at Christmas, so every year we sit and talk about meaningful, yet inexpensive gifts for our loved ones and how to go about making them happen. This is my first attempt at embroidering and I really had fun using my imagination on the flowers.

I got the birdie pattern from a book by Aimee Ray, but everything else is from my own head.

Please pardon the wrinkles... I was too excited to iron this before I took a picture of it.

www.2ndharvest.net

another site for you!!

A Random Post of Randomness

I like this plate... I like this one better, though.

The flower has shoes...I don't know why, but it does. At first I liked them, then they kinda weirded me out. I'm back to liking the shoes. I have accepted them for what they are and now I'm going to move on.

Got me a couch at the local Goodwill. $30 dollars of sheer and total happines. It is delightfully tacky, I think and...

It matches my new curtains (thank you Martha and K Mart) in a strange way.

On a totally different note, my sweet Mama works at a thrift store and I love to dig through the kids books. Yesterday I found the Charlie Brown Dictionary vol. 1-8 in pretty good condition for 10 cents a piece. You just can't beat that, people. I guess now is the time to tell you that I have an unnatural addiction to children's books. Since I cannot purchase them brand spanking new, I make a game out of finding older books to take home so that they may be loved once again.

Finding Charlie Brown and the Smurfs all in the same day just about did me in, ya'll. Of course the music reference in Charlie and the Smurfs' front cover made me smile. You just don't get better than that.

Have a Smurfy day!!