The Phoenix Phlowers

Any of you who knows me in person, knows that I have a very limited skill set.  My skills mainly involve making programs {I sometimes think this gift/passion of mine must have been a joke when God was bestowing talents on his children because it is probably about the most useless/unappreciated skill in the history of the world}, walking {yep, plain old walking}, and dabbling half-heartedly in pursuits I think I should like, but have a hard time getting into.  Sewing, gardening, gourmet cooking, making friends, yoga, papercrafting etc are all among those things that have sparked my interest, then eluded me.   I keep hoping that one of these days something will "catch" and I'll find my next fun hobby to get into, but, alas, my efforts thus far have remained rather unsatisfying. 

Today I'm going to tell you a little about my efforts at gardening.  I love spending time outdoors and I love fresh fruits and veggies, so you'd think that gardening is something I'd be really excited about.  But not really.  One of the main hurdles I've faced with it, is that the prime hours for gardening (early in the morning before the heat of the day has set in), happens to also be the prime hours for hiking, of which is a part of my day I rarely compromise on.   My walking/hiking time is sacred and an integral part of maintaining my physical and mental health--day in, day out, month in, month out.  I rarely miss more than a day or two of hiking in a week and when I do, it's usually for a good reason (like being on a cool trip or being sick or something).  

So despite my time limitations and lack of passion, I keep trying to plant the darn garden....year after year after year.     I almost always plant a little late in the season and I do minimal upkeep (because there are a million places I'd rather be  when it's 95* and sunny outside), but we usually manage at least a meager harvest that, if nothing else, at least about covers the cost of seedlings and dirt that we put into the garden.    So that's me.  A lazy gardener who takes more after the Little Red Hen's friends than Little Red Hen herself. 

  Back in Virginia, we  had this beautiful pergola on our deck where we'd hang flowers and birdfeeders.   Hanging flowers are another love of mine (though we have no place to hang flowers in our current house) and I *usually* was able to keep them alive through the summer, at least in the back of the house, where they could catch the water that fell from the sky without any effort from me.   The hanging flowers in front of our house  didn't always fare as well, because I actually had to remember to water those.    This little corner of the deck was my happy place and I LOVED being able to see it out our kitchen and dining room windows. 

 

 See those orange flowers in the pot on our deck?   I got those one year and loved the pop of color they brought to our deck.   We enjoyed them all season, then they died of natural causes and I just left them alone.  I just left the flower pot there {dead parts and all}, assuming I'd plant something new in it the following summer.  Then something weird happened.  

Without doing a darn thing...literally nothing...they came back to life the next season.   And they were just as pretty the second time around. 

 That original deck picture was taken in 2017.  That may have been the year I got them, but, honestly, I have no idea.  They've been a part of our summer deck decor for many years now (even through 3 moves) and it's a happy day when they start to blossom again each year and occasionally even blossom twice in a season. 

In Pennsylvania, they still grew without effort, but grew in a little funky. 

Here in Utah, I have to water them...

But still they come back. 

  I think they might be tiger lilies, but I call them my Phoenix Phlowers.  

PHOENIX:  ˈfiːnɪks   (in classical mythology) According to ancient legend, the phoenix is a bird that cyclically burns to death and is reborn from its own ashes. For this reason, the phoenix often serves as a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

This final collage is comprised of photos of my Phoenix Phlowers from this summer...bringing a spot of color and joy to me once again.  

It's fitting that they're even the color of flames.

Stake Conference and Missionaries x2

oops!   I was trying to schedule this for a future day, but messed up and accidentally published it too soon, which is why you've seen this in your feed before!

June 11:
At stake conference today,  Cami and her roommate, Katy, ran into one of their good friends from BYU, Ty, who is now serving as a missionary in our stake.  They were very happy to see each other, but  said it was very weird  not being able to give him a big hug.

Emma also had her voice recital today.  I missed her first performance, but was able to see her performing, "Hark, the Echoing Air".  The camera's sound quality is very poor and does not capture the clearness and the beauty of Emma's voice very well, but hopefully this will give you a glimpse of the difficulty of songs she performs.   I love hearing her sing!  

June 12:   Speaking of missionaries and stake conference, today I ran into the missionaries serving in our ward at stake conference and spontaneously invited them over for dinner.    We made lasagna, breadsticks, salad, and this cake.   It looks all fancy, but it's actually just an overcooked cake mix cake on the inside.   I may or may not have eaten more frosting than actual cake.   

It was a lot of fun to have the missionaries over.  We saw some cool birds on our deck during dinner (a bluejay and a ruby-throated hummingbird).  We ended up playing Telestrations with them and they shared a message about redemption.  

Other than Glen being out of town, it was a great day!


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We have a volunteer...

In addition to this volunteer tomato plant that randomly started growing right next to our front door...

I've got a few other volunteers that really want to be on the blog! 

Including this bevy of beautiful maidens...

A little turtle that crossed our path...

And Glen's cache of his favorite lip balm.   

Um....don't ask. 

Not This Time

During an afternoon storm last week, we looked out the window and saw this rainbow that looked like it was meant just for us. 

  From our angle it looked like it started at our next door neighbor's house and arced its way to the house across the street from us.   We were hoping that with how nearby the ends of the rainbow appeared to be that we might be lucky enough to find a pot of gold, but alas not this time.  

Weekend in NUMB3RS

I had 13 kids at our house most of the weekend, including 9 that slept over here on Friday night.

Cami was getting paid to take care of 5 of the kids overnight and for most of two days.

4 of the kids were my nieces and a nephew that Ellie had been begged to have over for a night.

3 of the guests had fevers.

I  fed bowls of egg noodles in broth to 2 kids who are allergic to eggs.    Thankfully neither reacted to it.    The mom suspects that it's because the noodles only contained egg yolks and not the more allergenic whites.  I feel majorly horrible, especially since I pride myself in being uber  careful about people's food allergies.   I think I was thrown off because the kids were sick and not eating anything else I served.    

Cami had 1 cupcake order and 1 tutoring job during her babysitting stint, which is why I was feeding kids without her around.

Glen and Spence both completed legs of a 70-mile relay.

Glen ran about 10 miles, Spence about 14.     Two friends did all 70-miles themselves.

I worked on the yard for 2-hours in the heat of the day, mostly to escape the noise on the inside of our house.  The kids found a beautiful white-marked tussock moth caterpillar, while I found that I have the capacity to sweat A LOT.

It was 1/2 hour before the evening session of stake conference was supposed to start and I realized that I hadn't showered, I was wearing my grubbies, still had 13 kids at our house, hadn't made dinner yet, and was covered in grass stains from working on the yard.   I opted not to go.

I spent 20-minutes cleaning up after a little blender "incident" that one of my children had (see picture below).   

 I was fine most of the weekend and it wasn't really until the next day that I got a little overwhelmed....mostly after  viewing the aftermath of this weekend on our house (see a glimpse in the pictures above and below). 

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Here are a few pictures of our crazy weekend...you know, so I can look back at all this with nostalgia someday!

Did I forget to mention that my brother is back from his nearly 3-month European tour and is hoping to find a job here?    

When it Rains....

...the kids at our house take off their shoes and run in it!

You probably thought I was going to finish with "....it pours,"  but while it's true that it has been pouring a lot lately (literally and figuratively), it's also true that my kids have no aversion to getting soaking wet with their clothes on.  In fact, I daresay they think it's way more fun to play in the rain than taking a boring old shower.

Usually it's too dark, or too cold, or too thundery to take advantage of torrents of rain, but tonight it was perfect and they were not about to let a sorry old rainstorm dampen their enthusiasm to play outside.

It started off with just Emma...

and backward shirted Ellie...

both of whom were soaked to the bone in no time. 

But it wasn't too long before their giggles and happy screams drew Cami and Adam out the door to pull weeds, of which we have plenty. 

 

Of course they weren't pulling weeds to make our flowerbed look nicer, but they were merely using the weeds and clumps of wet dirt sticking to their roots as a base for their dam.  Yes my kids like dams as much as I do....except whenever I tried to call it a dam, they told me I had a potty mouth and insisted that it was actually a "darn."  (serves me right for showing them that comic a few weeks ago)

In the process of their dam darn building, they came across a little tiny cricket...

which Adam decided was too cute not to pick up and admire...

and then place as his first passenger in his tin foil boat...

Adam ensured that it was a five-star gutter cruise for his little cricket buddy.

At least that is until the boat crashed into a weed growing out of the neighbor's curb that had created a boat killing little vortex and mini dam.

Randomly the kids didn't call me a potty mouth when I called that one a (damn) dam.


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Foxes and Bottle Rockets...Oh My!

I feel like life is moving a million miles an hour right now and I can barely blog about it fast enough.  With all of the other end-of-school-year excitement going on, none of these events from this past week really deserve a blogpost of their own, but since I don't want to forget them either, I thought I'd just make a little all-in-one recap. 

Human Foosball
At Young Women's this week we did a little spot clean of the church (and passed off a Good Works experience for PP in the meantime), then played a game of human foosball.  It was humorous to watch the girls get really into it.  I also found it  a little funny watching how lost the Young Men looked without access to the basketball courts.  

Really Old Bottle Rockets

During the scout pack meeting this past week, Adam and the scouts were launching bottle rockets.  Each boy was to have brought their own soda bottle for the occasion.  Since we don't drink soda, I thought I was going to have to buy a bottle and just empty it out for Adam to use.  Right as we were leaving though, I discovered a long lost bottle in the garage that I'd long ago filled with water.  On the way to the church Adam emptied it out and removed the label.  On the back of the label was a coupon for another bottle.  It expired in 1999.  Although struck with the fact that perhaps I should clean the garage more often, I laughed when Adam informed me that his rocket had the 2nd highest launch of all the boys'.  Apparently they made really nice soda bottles in the 20th century.  

Fox and Pileated Woodpecker
Now that the weather is nice, we've started walking the mile to school a couple of times a week again.  Despite living in a very suburban area, we love that we still have have wildlife that call our neighborhood home.  On a recent walk to school we almost simultaneously saw a fox and a pileated woodpecker.  It's always a bit disconcerting seeing a fox while on foot, but it didn't seem interested in getting close to us in the slightest, so we just enjoyed watching it for a bit.  The pileated woodpecker is one of our very favorite birds to see and it never fails to stun us with how strikingly beautiful and surprisingly large it is.  We only occasionally get a glimpse of it and it never fails to make our day when we do. 

Photo source:  The Bird Point

Tile 

After months and months of waffling over whether we wanted hardwoods or tile, we have finally made a decision.  Behold our tile choice (color and pattern):

Photo source: Crossville Tile

Deck: Before and After

Remember Glen's horrible incident from last fall?

The one where he lived through his own Wile E Coyote episode when he stepped on a loose board on the deck and it flipped up, smacking him in the face, and required 7 stitches to fix.

Well, Glen is pleased to announce that the offending board is not only gone, but was recently chopped to a pile of rubble along with the rest of the crumbling deck.

We went from boards that were weathered, loose, and discolored...

to beautiful, smooth, and strong.



The old deck from a distance....


and the NEW DECK!!!!


Styling it after our neighbor's deck we added the pergola into the corner to be our little garden paradise...

We hung flowers and bird feeders....

and put in a birdbath...


It hasn't been there long, but already our deck and little pergola garden have brought us little spots of happiness into our day.   I love peeking out the window when I cook and we all love to arrange our chairs during mealtimes to be able to see the bright and cheerful colors of the flowers and to admire the new birds it seems to be attracting.  We keep our bird id book on the table with us  and after a week  we've already seen three new species that we'd never seen before (rose breasted grosbeak, common flicker, and we think a yellow-bellied sapsucker).

Oh, and it's also nice to be able to walk on the deck again without fearing that someone might end up in the emergency room again.

  Now we've got that big item off our to-do list....

only 19,353,391 more to go.