It's a Country Life

Well, I (barely) survived one week of Alli-less-ness. The first full week of school went OK. We didn't end up on the 5 o'clock news anyway, which is always good. (Although I was on the 7:30 a.m. news on the first day of school. Interviewed live on channel 25 out in the parking lot. And then there was Friday when I sat and talked on camera with a reporter from a German TV station about our healthy school policies. But that's another story for later.)

I played outside and weeded my flower beds and cleaned my potting plant messes, etc. on Saturday since the weather was glorious. Magnificent. Perfect blue skies. Cooling breeze. Sunshine. Inspiring.

Geranium Porch

I even got up early enough to make it to the Bethany Farmer's Market at the Children's Center, which I've been trying to do for weeks. It's not the getting up, that's the problem. It's the getting out! I gave up my usual glamour (ahem) and threw on the baseball cap and jeans to do my market run. (Did you know there's a Wonder Bread outlet on McArthur? Found it when I missed the Bethany Buy-4-Less and had to turn around. Cheap bread's a pleasant surprise.)

Farmer's Market

Covered boothes, pretty pickett fence, and lots of great looking veggies, local honey, homemade breads, plants,melons and watermelons. And there was still a nice variety of produce by the time I got there around 9:30. I talked to Molly (from Molly's Garden) and her grandmother a few seconds. Along with their Piedmont veggies they had some beautiful breads, and some very juicy cinnamon rolls, that I might or might not have devoured upon returning home. I had a little help with those, actually.

Then I finished the composter I bought a few weeks ago at Sam's Club. And added lots of fun slimy stuff.

Completed Composter

It was wii bowling day at the Zimmerman Party Barn on Sunday. While the adults wii-ed, the kids enjoyed the sunshine. Jacob checked out the area of grass I asked Gene not to mow, because of the wildflowers, ya know.

Cuter than wildflowers

Gene leaves patches of grass standing all over the property, cause he knows it makes me happy when he lets the wildflowers live! The guys asked him why he didn't mow the large square in the middle of the field, and when I launched into my explanation that there were at least 5 varieties of native grasses out there, I believe I saw some manly eye rolling.

The best part of course is always the girl power at our house.

College Girls

Molly's Garden

A few weeks ago I followed the "Veggies Saturday" signs off of Sarah road and ended up at the Hall's family garden operation. Here's a bit of video with Lorne Hall, the local gardener. Apparently there is a direct connection between how the garden grows and sells, and how many dance lessons daughter Molly can take. Cool! He calls it Molly's Garden.

Colorado Sunflower Week

It's sunflower time in Colorado. Everywhere we went this weekend in Colorado, including Ft.Collins, Boulder and the Denver area, there were sunflowers blooming. At CSU there were patches of sunflowers (and patches of corn!) in front of the student union. Sunflowers are in many of the yards in my dad's neighborhood and along the side of every road and filling fields in the countryside. In fact, there were flowers everywhere. A morning walk down Dad's street was a flower feast. Every park, traffic intersection, business establishment seemed to have a pretty flower garden in full bloom.

The sunflowers were a sweet distraction from the bitter-sweet part of dropping my Alli off at college to settle in for her freshman year. I'm so proud of her, it's hard to dwell on how MUCH I already miss her, and how FAR I am away from her, and how EMPTY her room is.

Here she is in Newsom Hall just before we left.


She's pretty wonderful, I must say.

Cori generously helped me drive home and will fly back to CO tomorrow early to get to work. She's pretty wonderful too. Although I did learn that it's not particularly safe to let a geologist drive, since an outcropping of shale can whip her neck around instantly. "Oohh! Shale!"

"OOhh! Watch the road!"

Dad and Sharron and Cori and I spent a pleasant hour or two at the Denver Botanic Garden on Saturday. Cori and I wandered with her camera.

The Water Garden


American Choice Garden


An espaliered apple tree


Wildflower Garden


Cute Kid in the Herb Garden


Familiar faces


I distracted myself handily from dramatizing my departure from Colorado this morning, leaving Alli behind, by waving back at the wild sunflowers lining the highway all the way east from Denver. They lined up in small groups and large crowds, waited til our car passed by and waved their goodbyes. Of course I waved back.

(Kansas, the "sunflower state" apparently doesn't allow sunflowers to congregate on the median or shoulder of the road, BTW.)

Dewey Morning

Early morning last week, the dew was heavy enough to soak my feet and ankles on my morning garden rounds. I seriously have to stop watering my garden barefoot in the mornings! It's too much work to clean up all the garden dirt to be presentable in sandals at board meetings and such.

I'm apparently a little wobbly in the mornings, according to my dew trail through the grass. It meandered left and right from the back porch to the garden. I'm pretty distractable, so I imagine my gait follows my gaze.

Here are two morning treasures from my camera and me.








This Snow-on-the-Mountain grew up voluntarily this year. Volunteers keep life in the butterfly garden interesting.

I have volunteer sunflowers approaching maturity this week. Which is good, since some critter ate all the young sunflower plants I actually planted on purpose.

The butterfly garden is better than I thought it would be; much more variety than last year. The veggie garden needs some work. It's all good. This year, or next, I'll enjoy the work.

Oklahoma August Garden

It continues to rain on a regular schedule around here, so the Oklahoma earth is covered with green again, the trees look much more comfortable. And the weeds and grass are growing tall.

I weeded my small garden for a while this evening. It wasn't too weedy since there wasn't enough rain in July to interest even the weeds. The ground is nice and soft, so my favorite weeding tool, a long flathead screwdriver, is all I need to uproot the offenders. A few tomatoes are coming on. There are blooms and tiny green beans in the green bean patch. The basil is beautifully green and bushy, and my little variegated oregano is finally taking off. Francine brought in a box lid full of yellow squash to work today, so I'll bring a few home tomorrow. She said they gave cukes too.

I ventured into Sam's Club on Monday to buy chicken. And walked out with a nice composter (and chicken)from the garden department. It was only $35! That's pretty cheap for a nice plastic-type composter made of recycled materials. I'll put it together some time this week.

Last weekend my sister, daughters and niece did the flowers for a friend's wedding. So enjoyable. I love putting pretty flowers together for pretty girls to carry at a pretty outdoor wedding! The featured flowers were Gerbera Daisies in yellow, orange, pink, and white.



I talked briefly with Bunny, the homeowner and admired the lovely landscaping they had had installed.



Set up was at 4:00 in the afternoon on a hot Oklahoma summer day. But the evening was pleasant.



We later added bows and more Gerberas on the chairs down the aisle.



We had not worked together before to do a wedding, so it was great fun.



We did the bride and bridesmaids bouquets, ceremony decorations, reception table bouquets, some boutonnieres, and a few flowers on the buffet table and other places just for the joy.

I still have a bucket on my table with a few stray flowers I fully intend to arrange into a vase!

A couple days later, one of us was on the way to Switzerland for a delayed honeymoon, one was on the couch recovering from surgery, one was driving a mobile unit across the state, one getting organized to start community college,and one going crazy trying to get school ready to open. So it was good to have a few hours together to accomplish a happy task while enjoying the fun and conversation.