Seeing red

One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. Goethe.

It seems that summer is finally here. Our spring has been so damp that almost all my rose bushes are covered in blackspot. That, and I've been to lazy to go out and spray them. At this point, it seems easier to just let them have their first flowering and then cut them back before I spray. This particular rose bush, Hot Cocoa, is my favourite this year because it is almost completely free of disease. It had aphids early on but I just gave it a hard spray of water with the hose and it has been fine ever since.

This photo (not mine) shows the colour more perfectly. It has a very unusual shading of midnight on the outside petals, its smell is divine, and the cut flowers last for days.
The perfect rose. 

I'm going to try to propagate some of my roses this year. It's a fairly simple process with a statistically reasonable success rate. Some of my grafted bushes are getting old and would be much better as rooted bushes. Did you know that rooted roses (also known as heirloom roses) can live to be 100 years old? I like the idea of my roses outlasting me.

My strawberries are performing abysmally and are just asking to be torn out, so I went picking with Bethany on Wednesday morning. Here are the kids, all raring to go.

Josh and Natalie ate many berries, evidenced by the state of their faces, hands, and clothes. Josh refused to let me photograph his red hands, for some reason. He looks armless.

Kenzie picked about 10 lbs of berries and Daniel was very helpful running buckets of berries around. I picked about 20 pounds and then went out gleaning this morning and picked another twenty. I think we're all set for strawberries this year.

Doubtless God could have made a better berry than the strawberry, but doubtless God never did.  William Allen Butler.

One batch of freezer jam.

I foresee a strawberry trifle in my near future.

My raspberries are in full gear. These kids cannot get enough of summer fruit. They love to go out to the veggie garden and eat them straight from the vines.

Oh yes.

Not a single cherry from the tree this year.

 It, too, is asking to go the way of the mimosa. 

Sunday flowers and more

Kenzie left me some honeysuckle and a love note on Thursday.

Jeff could take a few pointers from his grand daughter.

Julie's flowers were lovely today.

I could hardly tell they were fake!

Everyone came over for Father's Day.
This is Jon on day shift.
The great entertainer.
Too bad he goes back onto night shift this week.

Dear Bethany....

...I hope you don't mind me using your children as blog fodder.

If you do...too bad!

After Daniel talked me into the sleepover, we met Jenny and the boys at the school playground.

Plastic slides do strange things to the hair of little blonde children.

The six darlings, in various states of co-operation.

Why is it that they are never all in the mood for a photo at the same time.

Oh, I know, it's because one of them is Natalie.

The sky was splendiferous.

Which I'm sure is a word, even if spellcheck doesn't think so.

Which is okay, because spellcheck doesn't think that "spellcheck" is a word.

I helped Jeff up this ladder, but he wigged out at the top so I lifted him down. 

Natalie and Josh decided to give it a go.

Natalie is not happy.

Can you tell?

Josh is dourly contemplating the wisdom of his actions.

Natalie was offered help, but determinedly backed down under her own steam.

Josh refused help and also refused to budge.

He moved his feet up a notch and found himself in a predicament.

NO.

To everything.

Waaah.

Reconsidering.

No.
Waaaah.

No.
No.
No.
Waaaah.
And then he decided to brave the mid-ladder turn-around.

Meanwhile, all the other kids are having a ball.

Back down the other side....
and then.....
stuck.
Here.
For about five minutes.
No!
He says.

Until, for no apparent reason, he backs up and he's done.

The whole time, Bethany and I were almost wetting our pants laughing.
Well, maybe I did.
Can't really speak for the state of Bethany's bladder.

And the sky was still in a state of splendour.

And then we went home.

Saturday's child

I know what it is about me that feels like a failure if I don't have anything tangible to show for my day.

I was born on Saturday.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the poem, it goes like this:

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace.

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving, 

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

I looked up the birth days of my kids, just for the heck of it. 

Because I have birthing amnesia and couldn't remember a one!

Bethany and Annie were Sunday babies, Jon on Tuesday and Charlie on Monday.

Go figure.
This website will tell you what day you were born.

So this week, I made some progress on using all my fabric stash. Only not much, because I got sucked into buying these irresistible lovelies. At least I used up all the new purchases and used a few existing ribbons and laces besides.

This shirred fabric sewed up quickly into sun-dresses for Kenzie. It is priced by the inch, if you can believe it. Kenzie likes them, but I'm not sure if I'm very happy with how the shoulder straps turned out.

Why, oh why, can I not resist adorable baby flannel? I sent the last batch of baby blankets to Haiti. Wonder where these will end up? Lovelovelove the roses.

So, Bethany and the kids came over this afternoon. Almost as soon as they got here, Daniel started nagging me to have a sleepover. We went through several scenarios, with me saying an emphatic No to each one. It promises to be a busy weekend and I suggested that next weekend might be better. After his asking me about 20 times and me answering the same way, I finally caved and said that he could stay tonight. He smiled quietly to himself and started making plans for Papa. I told him Papa has  to work tomorrow but he said that was okay, Papa could play tonight.

A little while later, I went into the living room and found this:

Apparently, my reputation as a pushover is assured. He never had any doubt but that I would say "Yes".

Sisters, sisters....

...There were never such devoted sisters. Irving Berlin.

Kenzie and Natalie spent the night on Friday. Now, you have to understand that Natalie is adorable, full of personality and audacity. She also has regular meltdowns, being possessed of a "sensitive" disposition. So life is amusing and .... interesting ... when Natalie is in town.

I wasn't sure if Natalie would sleep the whole night through. Last week she slept in our bedroom and woke briefly in the wee hours of the morning, so I was a little worried. I awoke feeling very rested on Saturday morning and thought to myself, "Wow, Natalie slept all night, how great was that?"

Here is Kenzie's story.

Nana, Natalie woke up screaming. I had to get her out of the playpen, she was really heavy. I put her in bed with me, next to the wall so that she wouldn't fall out. But I couldn't sleep with her in my bed so I had to put her back in the playpen. She was really heavy!

All that and I didn't hear a peep! 

Kenzie and Natalie slept late.

So did Great Nana. 

Their rooms are next to each other.

Kenzie is a devoted big sister, full of love and patience. For all her "blondeness", she is all heart. I wish that I had been half as good a big sister as is she.

Sunday flowers

Sorry Karen, I tried to crop you out!

Beautiful vagabonds

Jeff and I have been bird lovers for a long time. We spend a small fortune on black oil sunflower seed and Nijer thistle seed every winter to feed our small friends. It's getting to the point that we feed them all summer long too. Mum and I bought two nice sunflower seed feeders for Jeff for Father's day. A little early, but he needed them now, not in two weeks. We were soon rewarded with some resident chickadees, who have been infrequent visitors until now. I love their song and their friendly habits.The photos aren't very spiffy, I haven't managed to get close enough to the birds. I need to spend some more time waiting patiently, but it won't be this week.

The nicest surprise has been the hummingbirds that are rewarding my planting efforts with some quality time at the coral bells and other flowers in my garden. Here is a cute little guy at the bleeding heart  that spent a long time in the side yard yesterday. 

This hummingbird was sitting on some honeysuckle vines which I passed as I was walking to church last night. They look like a completely different bird when sitting and fluffing their feathers out.

There has also been a hummingbird visitor with a ruby throat that shines iridescently in the sun, on those rare days that we have actually seen the sun.

The ubiquitous blue jays love the sunflower seed too. They are so common here that I almost don't like them, because they have a habit of burying most of their food in my garden, so I have to contend with little nut trees and stray sunflower plants. But my Mum comments on them all the time as if they were a rare species, so I have to remind myself that not everyone gets to see blue jays in their back yard. Or on their mimosa stumps!

And, of course, the voracious goldfinches that cost us so much in thistle seed. But they are so adorable that we don't even flinch as we raid our wallets any more.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Harper Lee, in one of the best books of all time.

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Chinese proverb.

I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. Emily Dickinson.

I once had a sparrow alight on my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. Henry David Thoreau.

And on that note, I will say "Amen".