My oregano plant is flowering

It is also a nursery!  Can you see?  You can click to see larger.

Tiny spiders!  Now I am not really a fan of spiders, but I think the mom made an excellent choice of spots for them to hatch in!  It’s green and aromatic and is topped off with beautiful purple flowers!  I wonder how many are inside the web cocoon.  Or, maybe I don’t want to think about that!

Happy Friday and don’t forget, The Pet Parade summer edition is coming on July 29th!  Please join ELK, and Sam of course, of red or gray depends on the day, and me, and Timmy and Polly, too!    Get those pets ready for marching!

July Peas

My mind is speeding along today.  A not so great side effect of the Prednisone I’m on (again) for more poison ivy rashes.  Along with that are the feeling that my ears are clogged and a really unpleasant indigestion feeling.  How in the world can I be getting poison ivy when I don’t go near it?  I’ve got some ideas.  Timmy loves digging.  He used to only dig in one empty garden area, but has taken to digging in a few other areas recently.  Maybe there are poison ivy roots he’s getting into.  I brushed up against the wheels of my husband’s garden tractor the evening before the second outbreak appeared, while getting the sidewalk chalk out of our garage.  I sat with my legs on the driveway while we drew with the chalk.  Maybe some oil from the tractor wheels was on the driveway.  Grrrr.  But anyway, what I really wanted to tell you was about how I was wide awake for an hour during the middle of the night last night (another side effect) and my mind was trying to race along, but I kept trying to focus, “What will I post for Love Thursday?”  Well, because of the racing thoughts, a list of random things came flooding through, not a bad thing!  So here’s part of my list.

I love:

• How comfy and cool the sheets on my bed feel
• The ceiling fan over our bed set to low, blowing a gentle breeze onto us on a warm summer night
• The sound of my husband’s even, deep breathing in his sleep
• The sound of crickets
• How I can, only when the air is still and clear, hear the sound of a train in the distance.  I love that sound.
• The sound of the birds chirping in the early morning
• The smell of my basil and tomato salad.  The basil is from my garden.  We’ve only got a few small green tomatoes so far, so the tomatoes are from the store.
• My kids picking peas from our garden.  We eat them right then and there.  No cooking peas for us!
• The curlicue grabbers on the pea plants:

Edited to Add: How could I forget to add one other very special thing that I love?!  The Pet Parade!!!  The summer edition, brought to you by my sweet blogging friend, ELK of red or gray depends on the day, and I, is coming on July 29th!  Get those pets ready for marching!

Go over to chookooloonks for more love!

This dog is not hesitant about telling us how he feels!

I’m busy working on exciting crafty things today!  I’ll tell you about it very soon! (I’m posting this so that I don’t procrastinate any longer!)

July 2002

I’m remembering summer vacation, 2002!  This photo was taken at Busch Gardens in Virginia.  We loved this little ride.  When we went back to Virginia last summer I wanted us to ride it again, even though my kids aren’t such little ones anymore.  Can you believe this ride is gone?  I wonder if it wasn’t exciting enough.  Today I’m missing the good old days when my kids were little.  In my memories those times were so carefree.  I know that we had our ups and downs then, just like we have now.  Sigh.  I think my hormones have gotten the best of me today.  I’d better turn it over to you now!

What are you remembering today?  If you have something to share with us today, leave a link to your blog post or photo in Mr. Linky.  If you don’t have a blog, tell us about a memory in the comment section.  I want to hear from everybody!  (If Mr. Linky  isn’t working, you can put your link in the comments section.)  Please remember to:

• Leave a link to the specific blog post, not to your general blog address, to make it easier for people to find your memory post.
• Make sure your link works and that it goes to your specific memory post.
• Put a link back to here in your post so that your readers can come and read about everyone’s memories!
• Visit the other participants and please leave comments on their posts!  We all love comments!
• Enjoy the party and come back next week for Monday Memories: The Twentieth! Can you believe it?!

I wish you a warm, sun-shiney Friday and a wonderful weekend!

Monday Memories will be up on Sunday night!

There are several entrances to get to the falls and several different levels of hiking ability required.  But, they don’t post that information at each of the entrances.  I guess they figure you should just have to discover that for yourself, while you’re struggling to get back up the steep hill you were just dumb enough to climb down.  It was quickly apparent that the first trail we picked was way beyond our ability.  After making it back up to the parking lot and taking time to start breathing again, we piled in the car and headed to a different entrance.  This trail had many more people on it.  It was a wider trail.  The people we saw coming back didn’t look like they were going to pass out!  This was it!

We saw a lot of the rushing, noisy river.  I tried the shot above with a slow shutter speed.  I didn’t have a tripod, but I think I held the camera pretty still and I like the way the water looks!

The day was mixed sun and clouds but it was pretty dark on the trail because of all of the tree cover.

We never did get to the falls.  My oldest son’s stomach wasn’t feeling good and we had to get back to the porta-potty at the parking lot.  My poor boy.  But by that time we had had enough hiking anyway.

On the exit road we came upon this old iron foundry.  I love the old brick.

The drive home was scenic and the sun stayed out!  And best of all, we got home before either of the dogs decided to poop in the house!

My simple things list must begin with this:

Scratching your poison ivy rash, I know, I know, but just a little scratch!

This one is from my boys:

Sniffing Timmy, our Parson Russell Terrier

More from me:

Watching Timmy using his paws to arrange his blankie until it’s just right for napping!

Looking at my sweet children sleeping so peacefully on summer mornings.

The scent of honeysuckle in the breeze on a summer evening.

My youngest son and daughter picking berries from the wood-line in our yard. My son says they have a sweet burst of flavor!

Hearing the sounds of guitar coming up the stairs from our playroom when my teen-aged son is playing!

My daughter asking my opinion of her amazing drawings!

My youngest son’s love of the Food Network shows and his excitement for trying out his own recipes!

The taste of Kalamata olives!

Cold, cold iced green tea!

The flickering of candles on the occasional evenings that our power goes out during a storm, and the soft sound of our voices on those nights, too!

The way spell checker on my email program always wants to change to word blogger to logger, cuz, you know, bloggers and loggers are so similar! It makes me smile every time!  Oh! My spell check here wanted to change the word bloggers to floggers! heehee!

Go on over to Christina’s for more simple happiness!

June 2007

My memories today are of vacation 2007.  We were in Cape Cod!  We went at the end of June and there were no crowds yet.  The weather was pretty cool still and the ocean was f-f-f-freezing.  There was a little ice cream parlor/sandwich shop down the street from where we stayed that we went to for sandwiches and ice creams!  The inn that we stayed at was a little weird.  The room that we were staying in was connected to the rest of the inn, but it was like our own little cottage.  It had a big room on the main floor that was a living room/dining room/kitchen.  It had two sets of stairs going up to the loft area.  Well, they called them stairs, but they were as steep as ladders!  The loft had three tiny bedrooms.  The bathroom had such a low ceiling that my husband could barely stand up in it.  The shower felt like it was about 2′ x 2′.  (I’m sure it was bigger, but not much!)  They had a print of a cowboy over the toilet that had creepy eyes that looked like they followed you.  In the evenings when we were downstairs watching tv, we heard all kinds of bumping and thumping noises upstairs.  I told the kids that was just the people in the attached room making noise upstairs.  Then, on the day we were leaving, my kids read a guest journal that was in the room that mentioned how supposedly the room is haunted and the guests thought it was so cool to hear all the thumping.  I looked from the outside and saw that the adjoining room did not have a second floor.  Yikes!  Also on the day we were leaving we had a cute little visitor to our room.  A chipmunk ran through the living room and out a hole to the outside!  What a place!

What are you remembering today?  If you have something to share with us today, leave a link to your blog post or photo in Mr. Linky.  If you don’t have a blog, tell us about a memory in the comment section.  I want to hear from everybody!  (If Mr. Linky  isn’t working, you can put your link in the comments section.)  Please remember to:

• Leave a link to the specific blog post, not to your general blog address, to make it easier for people to find your memory post.
• Make sure your link works and that it goes to your specific memory post.
• Put a link back to here in your post so that your readers can come and read about everyone’s memories!
• Visit the other participants and please leave comments on their posts!  We all love comments!
• Enjoy the party and come back next week for Monday Memories: Part Nineteen!

I remember going to a parade with one of my aunts that was held to honor our troops that served in Desert Storm.  They played this song when a group of disabled veterans were going down the parade route in a bus.  Goosebumps.