Just A Quick Hi and Thoughts About Veterans and Verbena

Oh, I wish the photos could do justice to how vivid the new leaves of mesquite trees are. They look "alien green" and against the very dark bark of a mesquite tree they are stunning! I had to pick a few from our tree, along with a sprig of sand verbena, to put on my shrine. But first I took a few photos of them on my "nature table," along with an empty wasps' nest I found.

Both the mesquite and the sand verbena are very drought-tolerant. The sand verbena will bloom its head off with just a cup or so of water a week, but I like to give it more. It's that greediness for blooms again! More water means even more blooms. A single plant can spread about three feet square and have hundreds of blooms at once. The mesquite makes unremarkable small yellow flowers followed by loads of edible seed pods that are pretty messy on the ground, but really, anything that can live in the desert gets kudos from me. And bees just love the blooms.

The students at school had a rare treat today, although they may not know this yet. A WWII veteran came by to speak of his years in the Navy during the war. Not only did he drive himself to school, at 100 years old, but he had all his wits and wisdom about him still. There are so few of these veterans left...he was in uniform, too, which billowed around him and tugged at my heart. Like my husband, he is all angles and sticks; his upper arm looked like it was about as big around as my wrist. You just don't see any overweight super-seniors. I unfortunately did not get to hear his talk, but did enjoy talking to him while he was waiting to speak to the students. He told me that our building used to be a kindergarten, long ago, and that his two children had attended it. Amazing!

And something else amazing: My husband has suddenly become very enthused about my community garden plot. But now I guess it's "our" plot or more realistically, HIS garden plot! He has timers and sprinklers and soaker hoses rigged up to water automatically, and he is pulling weeds (and yes, some seedlings, but hush!) and planting more seeds since I was worried my bush pumpkins hadn't appeared yet. He is fussing over the lemongrass clumps as if they were newborn pups! 

I hope your Friday is going well, and that the weekend will be a lovely one and a peaceful one. As always, I will light a Holy Candle for my blog friends when I visit the church after work. I love going into the dark church, lit only by the candles on the altar and in the votive banks. Thank'ee for stopping by!

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

The Thirsty Clematis

Evidently the word "thirsty" means something else now. I can't keep up. Perhaps I don't want to keep up. I love words, yet I balk at many new definitions of words. They seem short-lived at best, and silly, almost always with some naughty or cheap connotation. I'll stick with the olde words, thank'ee. 

But back to my dear bargain clematis! Last year, alone on a table at Lowe's, looking pathetic, this poor plant, in a purple plastic pot, unchosen as a Mother's Day present, was a withered three inches of vine priced at $1.50. I had to rescue it. During the past year, it put out four small leaves, and didn't budge, baking in the desert sun. Then winter hit and it disappeared into the ground.

But with the advent of spring, out it came, growing rapidly! It set five huge buds, and I waited for them to open. And waited. And waited. And then it hit me: It was thirsty. The small amounts of water dripped onto it by the irrigation system were only keeping it alive, not allowing it to flourish. So I "flood irrigated" the bed, and within minutes, the first flower unfurled! Within three hours, all were opening! 

I don't know why, but the blooms are a lot bluer in person, and bluer in the morning. 

I think I will do more flood irrigation now. I already flooded both sides of the courtyard again, and the brand new plants have set buds.

Ah, the courtyard. I am always talking about it. When it is revealed, you will be astounded. "Is that all? It's so small!" Yes, by the way I speak of it, you might be picturing something at Alhambra. It's more the size of a Master Bath. But when it's in full bloom, it is indeed pretty! I don't have it in me to have much in the way of landscaping anymore. Too old, too sore, too poor! But I enjoy my little courtyard garden.

I have been a bit exhausted by my new job, coming home, then doing the minimum, sometimes not even having the energy to eat dinner. Just straight to bed, no blogs, boo! I hope to catch up soon. I don't like to miss even one day of the blogging world! 

A Jug of Winecups, A Loaf of Bread, and Thou

I love the lyric poem known as The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by the poet-astronomer of Persia. Edward Fitzgerald translated the most popular English version in 1859. I don't know how close it is to the original Persian thoughts, but his version is exceptionally beautiful. My title is a weak play on words; in one line of the poem (over 1,000 lines long!), the poet states, "A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou" to his love -- all that he needs.

Not only are my winecups blooming, but I bought another small pot of them and have them planted in my new fire-ring in the courtyard! Winecups are native perennials, very low-growing, but with the blooms held on wiry stems well above the dark, deeply lobed leaves. 

The hollyhock roots are planted, too. And the new lemongrass! I skulked through all the pots (do you do this, too?) until I found two that each had two plants growing, instead of just a single plant. Chuckling to myself (yes, I'm THAT crazy lady you see at the plant nursery), I put them into the cardboard tray along with the hollyhock packages.

Grrr, the local nursery is a very lightweight nursery, not like the old one, back in the old days, before I was old. The old one -- gee, it was only 30 years ago -- had it ALL. This one, no. I asked if they had Dutchman's Breeches. I want to be able to point to them in my courtyard and casually ask, "Do these Dutchman's Breeches make my butt look fat?" FOILED AGAIN.

Now, when you go to the garden center, use my other trick, too. Always heft the packs of roots or bulbs that are opaque. The packages are opaque so that light doesn't prematurely trigger the plants to grow, but it prevents being able to see the size of the roots, bulbs, or tubers. So, go by weight. You want the heaviest ones! 

And speaking of that...'ear ye, 'ear ye...in the grocery store, choose your corn and your artichokes that way. BY THE HEFT. Get the heaviest ones. I guarantee, you will never be disappointed in the ears of corn again.

Now, add an extra step for the artichokes. Put it next to your ear, and give it a squeeze. It must squeak. No, I am not pulling your leg. Make sure it squeaks. Squeak = fresh. Get the heaviest, squeakiest ones. You are most welcome.

"Class, what are some facts we have learned from today's post?" 

"Olde Dame Holly, we have learned about choosing double-planted pots, and heavy corn-on-the-cob, and heavy squeaking artichokes. And we have been reminded about The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. And we have learned you're a little crazy, but we knew that, really."

Class dismissed! And as always, thank'ee for stopping by.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Wilkommen, Amigas

Do others do this? Make their dogs "talk" by speaking for them? I know one person who has made many thousands on Facebook with this -- the owner of Moonpie, a little mini dachshund, whom she makes "talk" in some kind of altered videos. The owner talks, Moonpie answers, and cha-ching, moola galore.

I have conversations with my dogs, too, where I supply both my remarks and theirs. Every dog I have had, has his or her own voice and accent. Some have been rednecks, some made their remarks in lofty tones dripping with sarcasm, and some got stuck with babyfied talk. For some reason, my little "tom-girl" dog, Sophie, "talks" in a babyfied way combined with Uff-da-isms. I think it's because she is often mistaken for a puppy. She has that little puppy-face even though she is almost eight years old. I don't know how the Norwegian got in there, though. 

All of that preamble for this! Sophie says, "Yook! The yapple twees ish bwooming!" Her loyal "luff-tenant" is Champie, and he has a West Texas drawl mixed with a touch of German and Spanish, as befits a chiweenie. Champie likes to say things like "I vill bite you, mañana. Und ze apples are MINE, amigo." 

Both Champie and Sophie are rescues. Champie bears the physical scars of his ordeal, yet is extremely sweet. Sophie is physically sound, yet has the emotional scars.

Champie loves Sophie. Sophie does not love Champie.

Good gravy, is anyone still reading this drivel? Well, I thank you! 

We have several apple orchards in this area, and a lone apple growing by the old blacktop in a somewhat bad part of the county in the shadow of the Interstate highway. I really wanted to break off a branch and bring it home, but I just couldn't. The bees struggle to find blooms here. I can't rob them of this early food.

Well, as Sophie would say, "T'ank 'oo fer stoppin' by, yoo betcha!" 

Champie adds, "Y'all come back, ja?"

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

A Little Shrine to Mary

Some blog friends have asked about my little wall shrine dedicated to Mary, so here are some photos of it. 

The little vintage statue is from Italy. I think the statue has a very sweet face. The round crown tells us this is a depiction of Mary at Fatima. As a child, I got the Jiffy Pop inflated popcorn container a bit confused with Mary's Fatima crown. 

I very much wanted my mother to buy a Jiffy Pop! I was just fascinated by it. We made our popcorn in a large saucepan. It involved a lot of wiggling of the pan on the burner, an occasional lift and shake with the lid firmly held, and then quickly getting it back onto the burner for more wiggling and sliding. There was always some scorching involved.

I do think that popcorn popped the old hard way tastes better than microwaved popcorn, though, or air-popped popcorn. 

I am at the rock-collecting, tile-collecting, and wood-buying stage of my outdoor shrine. In the meantime, I enjoy switching out the decor on the shelf shrine. The candle to the right was just added from the Easter Vigil this year. The loyal tigers are always present, however. They think they are guarding her, but shhhh...she is guarding them!

Note to my non-Catholic friends: We are not worshipping Mary. We are venerating her.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

As Evening Falls on Easter

I have not been around the blogosphere today yet. That is my treat for this evening! It has been very active at church, and I was there since Holy Saturday at 7 p.m., with a trip back home to check on husband and pets and shower and drink something since I got very dehydrated. I wanted to attend as many Masses as possible, the Easter Vigil, and the special Rosaries we were saying long after midnight. 

Outside the building, wisteria is beginning to bloom! Its unmistakable scent mingled with the incense last night at the bonfire, and so today I went looking for it after noon Mass. 

As to our bonfire, even though it was very scaled down due to the wind, we got terrified for our Bishop, although he seemed unaware of his danger. But our padres, our altar servers, and our deacons kept him safe, each one grabbing at his loose vestments as the wind whipped them around near the flames. At one point a bunch of sparks flew out and hit him right in the chest, and we all cried out, "Wooooooo," and "Ooooo" and "Noooo!" but he continued on, unperturbed. 

The wisteria was around the side of the church, climbing on a screen built to shield the air conditioners from sight. There was a huge golden bumblebee trundling about on the wisteria. It made me think of children finding the golden egg at Easter egg hunts. This golden bee was guzzling nectar and maybe loading up on nature's golden treat, pollen. I was so pleased to find this fine, fat bee, and the reason is at the end of the post!

I hope everyone has had a peaceful Easter. As I get older, that is my favorite wish for others: Peace in their hearts. I like to sit in the church when it's dark, and just feel the peace wash over me. The banks of votive candles shimmer in the gloom, and the sanctuary lamp (red tabernacle candle) burns steadily. Our cathedral is the only one in the area still open 24/7, a point of joy for our priests. 

A few days ago, one of the priests mentioned to me that he thought a yellow dress would suit me for Easter. I was very surprised, but tickled at his idea. Yellow, shall we say, does not suit everyone, and I wondered where in the world he got that idea, as his color sense seems to be zero. I looked in vain for a modest yellow dress, locally and then online. But I found a pretty yellow blouse and paired it with a black skirt, and felt it made me look like a bee, ready for spring!

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly 

Maundy Thursday

Above: A photo of a bit of the stained glass windows at church. The pieces of glass are about an inch-and-one-half thick! I hadn't realized stained glass was that thick. Since it's spring, I tried to capture mainly the pastel tones. The church is dark and somber during Holy Week, making the windows even more striking than usual. Today is Maundy Thursday. The birds are valentining, the buds bursting, but within, all is very still and quiet.

I love to roll out obscure words, and my everyday speech is peppered with them. I know it's odd, and that I'm odd, but to quote that wonderful philosopher of the ages, Popeye, "I yam what I yam." I told something my father used to say to me in an earlier post. Now I will tell a very quick story that my mother told about me: When I was three, she rebuked me for something I did, some behavioral misstep. And she said I looked at her and said, "I am what I am." The End.

I must have heard that on Popeye. But I didn't like cartoons as a child; the way the characters were drawn, defying the laws of physics, always upset me. I can remember trying to get my legs to spin around as depicted on many cartoons, and trying to get my hair to move in that strange, undulating way of a Disney cartoon princess's hair. And to this day, Gumby makes me feel ill, off-balance.

Anyhoo, my love of archaic terms - well, that's why I always use the old terms for many things, especially holidays. Today is "Maundy Thursday," or Holy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper, the day that Christ gave us The Lord's Prayer, and so much, much more. 

I am always moving things around on my indoor shrine. I like to move some pieces to a little nook at the corner of my bedroom window. My shrine is to Mary. I have a very old statue of her that is guarded by a fierce-looking china tiger family (told you I was strange). I keep the statue guarded, but the Holy Cards I like to rearrange. This is the "nook shrine" today, with one of my favorite Holy Cards and some sand verbena in a Cracker Barrel restaurant maple syrup bottle. Reduce, reuse, recycle! I will dust the shrine nicely and show it off in a future post.

But THIS I will show off now! This is the incredible giveaway I won from Rugs and Pugs <---Link!. If you haven't visited that delightful blog, you are missing out. Rug hooking (wool!), cross-stitching, pug-loving, wit, wisdom, and beauty, it has it ALL. Go ahead, click that link, go see! 

Wherever you are and whatever your beliefs, if any, I hope you are having a lovely Maundy Thursday!

The Flower of the Family

My father used to have a joke he liked to tell. He would say that I was "the flower of the family -- the bloomin' idiot."

My family was exceptionally intelligent, except the baby of the family -- me -- lagged far behind them. In my family, the intellect was the be-all, end-all. My siblings had extraordinary intelligence, as did my parents, especially in the areas of mathematics and music. I have no real talent for either one, although I tried very hard to do well in those subjects and please my loved ones. But I never pleased them!

I do feel I have a special gift, however: I am transported by beauty. Sometimes I feel like my heart will burst when I see certain flowers or hillsides or paintings; or the way the light goes through a vase at sundown or a leaf at sunrise, or through Champie the Chiweenie's ears anytime, making him look like a dog with bright pink petals growing from his head. Note to Champie: You are a handsome, handsome lad, my fat and faithful friend, and you wear those petals well.

Here are a few more "purloined pictures" (thank you, Joanne from Cup on the Bus) from the little park I "accidentally" found myself in after accidentally scaling a rock wall (at MY age!) and accidentally avoiding detection by sneaking about. I was NOT the only one to enter this off-limits park, however; a well-known ne'er-do-well character wearing a black mask (over its eyes, not its nose and mouth) was there before me! Yes, the paths were covered with paw prints of raccoons! 

Hope you enjoy. Three kinds of crabapples and some other pretty plants like quince and redbuds were also blooming. Some are not in sharp focus; I was too busy trying to sneak to concentrate.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Free "Spring Springing" Cross Stitch Chart!

Here is a little free chart (see link below with color charts, symbol charts, and key) with two versions based on both my Jumping for Joy design and a good friend's primitive bunnies (used with permission) that she stitched long ago. I hope you will enjoy stitching it, if cross stitching be your hobby! It is easy enough for a beginner to stitch, too, for those who may be interested in taking up cross stitching. I am unhappy with the date, as I noticed it is off-center. "Free, and worth every penny," as we say. I flipped the top flower motif for an alternate version. The alternate version just has the color stitches shown, not a symbol chart also. I have run out of time because Spring Break is over for our school, so it's early bed and back to work tomorrow. Out of time to play, BOO! 

Use this LINK <--- so that you get the PDF of this chart. It's stored on Google Drive and that is as safe as things get on the internet!

I hope you all have a great Monday and a great Holy Week. We had a fantastic Palm Sunday Mass, very moving. Our priest, several of the Knights of the Altar (altar boys and girls), and deacons put on a spoken-word play. Our priest has a really great voice.

I did something naughty today. I snuck into a closed park to take photos of the crabapple blooming there. This is an open-air park few visit that has been closed for over a year, due to "COVID." The lure of the spring blooms was too much. I had to miss them last year. Even if a person lives to be 100, that's just 100 times to see crabapple blossoms. This photo shows the old and the new: Last year's shriveled crabapples, and this year's promise.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Lilac-Violet Cactus Welcomes Spring in the Desert

 

Before showing off the "unicorn cactus" as I like to call it, here is my favorite kitchen decoration. These little chalkware chickens are always on display. The hen was painted by my son while I painted the rooster, when he was very little. I love children's artwork and handwork. Their creations are so open, so fresh! 

I had to mail some seeds that I sold, so I stopped by the landscaping at City Hall, which is downtown like the post office. Spring arrived within a week: Trees that were bare last week are fuzzed with green this week.  Ice plants have dozens of blooms and have plumped up. The agaves (above) are stretching out. I think the center of the agave looks like a little dolphin face. And the prickly pears are barnacled with buds.

I am very partial to these lilac-hued cactus, called Santa Rita prickly pears. They are a very unusual spot of pastel color in the landscape. In winter and early spring they are lilac and purple with aqua; by late spring and summer they will turn more a pastel blue gray.  In the landscape, they are striking. I wasn't the only one taking photos of them; in nearby Old Mesilla, tourists had phones in hand, taking photo after photo of the violet-hued prickly pears that line the famed La Posta restaurant's parking area.

I know many of you are still awaiting spring to truly show herself! But when it is over 100 degrees here (37 C), you will be having the last laugh as everything dries up in the heat!

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Your Favorite Smell, Garden Surprises, Desert SNOW in March and Printable Spring Tags!

Well dearies, here we have some free digital speckled spring tags to download and print out. I was thinking of speckled eggs, and flowers, and decided to combine the two. As always, please use the link, because Blogger compresses and resizes images posted and then they don't print properly. TO GET A GOOD LOOK at the tags to see if you want to download them, RIGHT CLICK and choose "Open link in new tab" and that will make the little magnifier appear.

You can download from Google Drive (safe) from this LINK <-----

Amazingly, it snowed today here in the desert -- on our mountaintops. It sprinkled some cold rain on the foothills and in our valley, the Mesilla Valley, where the Rio Grande is and where the chiles, onions, cotton, and pecans grow.

 

The mountains are the Organ Mountains, so called because the tall granite outcroppings (locally called "the needles") looked like organ pipes to some, probably homesick settlers who had left such heavy instruments behind. I can't really imagine the grit that the people had who moved here, the ganas, as they say in Mexico. All these g-words, basically meaning the desert pioneers had guts.

Update on my community garden plot: Whoever had this plot before was a blue-ribbon gardener. I thought I was going to have to amend the soil and dig a lot to prepare the bed. But no! My very first shovelful of soil showed that not only was it already amended, but it was PLANTED! With strange bulbs, pushing up to the surface! And the bed has different mints including apple mint, big mounds of what turned out to be the best-smelling lemongrass ever, other herbs yet to be figured out, and I don't even know what-all. Some heirloom tomatoes, too.

I gingerly poked in a few seeds of sunflowers along the western side of the plot, for shade. And put in a few pumpkin seeds (bush pumpkins) and some Korean Melon seeds that were given to me by a fantastic gardener in a seed club we're in. But I didn't dare dig anything. I just made little holes with a stick.

Those with mint-phobia, don't worry. In the desert, mint cannot take over your beds. They are limited by the extreme dryness and easy to keep in bounds with watering methods.

I am most excited about the lemongrass. I haven't grown it before. I gave it a good haircut and the little blades are already coming up from the roots. I think it's one of my new favorite smells!

What is your favorite smell? Does it vary by season, as mine do? 

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly