For Balisha

Good morning Friends ~ This post is for Balisha, who I requested prayer for a few posts back. She posted her last post yesterday. She has decided against chemo after going through one treatment, and is in Hospice care in her own home right now.  Please keep her, her husband Joe and their family in your prayers.  If you would like to post on her blog, you can visit here, Simply Balisha.

I have followed Balisha for a few years now, and she has been a source of love and encouragement and gifts too as we came to know each other better. She is a loving, giving and creative person with a huge love of family, friends and all that life has to give.

I broke down sobbing reading her post, for her, her family and memories of my own loss 2 years and 2 months ago. But, I will see her again in the next life. Where she is going, there is no pain, no sorrow, no death, only joy unspeakable, peace and love.

You are greatly loved dear Balisha and you will be missed but not forgotten.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is a photo of a painting done by Danny Hahlbohm. His works are beautiful and touch my heart. This one is a favorite, it is called ‘Resting in His Arms’.

We read in the Bible in Deu_33:27 ~

The eternal God is thy refuge,

and underneath are the everlasting arms

No matter what we are going through in this life, Jesus is there for us. He is carrying us through every situation. He loves us deeply, more than we can ever imagine.

During the wee hours of this morning I awoke and an old hymn that I’ve not thought about in a long time, popped into my mind.  It was this ~

‘Take your burdens to the Lord

and leave them there,

If you trust and never doubt,

He will surely bring you out,

Take your burdens to the Lord

and leave them there.”

*************

I will close with this rendition of this old song on you tube.

Take your burden to the LORD and Leave It There

song by Charles A. Tindley

 

Life is precious. Be thankful for each and every day.

Love each other, forgive one another too.

Encourage & uplift.

Bless others and tell your loved ones that you love them.

FlowerLady

Beautiful Orchids ~ colorful eye-candy

Good evening Folks ~ What a nice day we’ve had here in s.e. FL, even though it was partly cloudy and we had a few sprinkles this morning.

My friend, Ramona, and I had a date to go to the Mounts Botanical Orchid and Herb sale this morning. We both bought orchids and herbs. Oh my gosh,the orchids were amazing. Next time, I will take more pictures.  I would have to say after roses, these are my next favorite flowers. We didn’t walk around the gardens today because it started to lightly rain, so we decided to leave. We spent a couple of hours there as it was, looking, deciding, then watching a little demonstration about making herb butter and cooking with herbs.

I found out that they do have a morning Herbal Society meeting the second Tuesday each month, so I plan to check that out.  I think I would really enjoy that.

Ok, I’ll start with the orchids that caught my eye, but not my pocket-book. One lady even said to me, we take credit cards, and I told her I only brought a certain amount of $, left the credit card at home. Safer that way. I spent all the $ I took. A Valentine’s gift to myself.

~ The most highly coveted of ornamental plants,

the delicate, exotic and graceful orchid

represents love, luxury, beauty and strength. ~

Google

These first photos are most of the tables set up inside, there were a couple more behind me that I forgot to take a picture of. There were a few more outside too in their little covered spaces.

I have to say that the majority of these were definitely out of my price range. This is a hobby more for the wealthy. But, I am thrilled with what I bought, and they are good orchids for novices like me. Exotics were the most expensive, of course.

OK, here are some of the beauties that caught my eye.  Some took my breath away. Some are scented. I didn’t get names of them.

Click on photos for larger view.

I think these are the blooms of one of the orchids I bought.  I bought a smaller pot and the plant has unopened blooms.  They are scented.

This one really grabs me.  I love it.  I think the price tag for this one was around $30. The colors are amazing.

Here is another beauty, a lady slipper I think.

Next are the little sweeties that I bought. I bought 6 orchids for $40.

This orchid is

Phalaenopsis 'Sunflower', scented.

Here we have the one that I showed a picture of above, purple and white blooms. 

It is

Scented Dendrobium Nobile

You can read about it here.

These next three were 3 for $10.  They are vandas. Babies or ‘seedlings’ as the tag said in the display

The next is my favorite orchid that I bought. It was the most expensive, $12, but I asked her if she would take $8, as it was all I had left. I had already bought two others from her, the yellow and the purple, @ $10 ea. She kindly accepted my offer.  She had a great sense of humor and said “I suppose you’re going to want the name of this one too for your $8.” I laughed and said “Of course.”  I had asked her the names of the other two already. There was only one of these in this tray in my price range, it most definitely stood out and grabbed my attention.

This is an ‘Izumu’ dendrobium

Well, that’s it from Plum Cottage.

I think I’ll watch the rest of part one of Louis L’Amours ~ ‘The Sacketts’. DH and I loved watching westerns. I watch movies on You-tube for free on my computer. I don’t have cable. I have heard of that wireless Roku box that you hook up to your computer and TV, so that I could watch  on a larger screen.  But, I haven’t done that yet, as it scares me.  DH was the computer geek here in our home. I’m just little ol’ FlowerLady.

I’ll close with these two you-tube videos.

I found these two musicians recently and their music really touches me, heart and soul.  I’ve always loved violin music and the guitar in this reminds me of my husband playing his guitar. He talked about, more than once in his life, playing in the big ‘jam session’ in heaven. I look forward to hearing him then.  He will be soaring.

Guitar and Violin Cover by

IVAN & KEZIA

 

Happy Valentine’s Week

FlowerLady

~ Love is Eternal ~

Blooms

 

Good morning Folks ~ I was out in the main garden area yesterday morning when I spied my first opened bloom on a red passion flower vine. I’ve been watching the bud

grow and finally there it was open in all its glory. How thrilling. This vine is one of two cuttings that rooted, out of six.

Day before yesterday I noticed an opened orchid bloom from my friend Nanci. I have several other orchids with buds in various stages. They are always thrilling to see.

Speaking of orchids, the Mounts Botanical Gardens are having an orchid and herb sale this weekend.  My friend Ramona and I will be going Sunday and are looking forward to it. I really want to add to my herbs, so look forward to seeing what’s there.  Hopefully plants will be reasonable. I’m not saying an orchid won’t come home with me too. I’ll let you know.

Below is a plant I bought at a yard sale last year along with two other purple flowering plants. I don’t know what this is, so maybe some of you gardeners will be able to help me out.

You can see some buds on the tips of branching stems, and an open bloom at the bottom.

Here is the open bloom, sorry about it being blurry.

Thunderstorms are expected this afternoon and tomorrow, and I do hope we get some rain as things are pretty dry and thirsty that don’t get hand watered by me, or that the sprinklers don’t reach.

I just finished a fiction book the other night, ‘The Forgotten Garden’ by Kate Morton. Right near the end was a great line which I felt was just right for me and maybe some of you will like it too.  It is this,

“You make a life out of what you have,

not what you are missing.”

Great food for thought.

That’s it for now.

FlowerLady ~ From Plum Cottage

Yard sale find, rearrangement, raccoons

 

Good evening Folks ~ Here it is the first of February already. Wow!

We had some chilly weather this past week, yesterday was a perfect day, and I was at work. That’s the way it goes sometimes.

On the way to work yesterday I stopped at a few yard sales. At one I found out I had just missed a quilters cutting mat, etc. Dang!  That’s on my wish list, with the clear ruler and the rotary cutter. I did get a nice storage cabinet though at another sale.  I almost missed it, as I didn’t really see it until I was getting back into my van.  I got back out and went over to give it closer inspection. I asked how much and he said we just marked it down to $25.  We had $50 on it. I looked at it and didn’t really want to spend that, so offered him $20, which he rejected and said he’d just keep it.  Well, I was thinking on it, then decided to walk away, when he said Ok, you can have it for that. I gave him the $ then he loaded it into my van and off I went. Happy as a lark.

I really didn’t know where I was going to use it, I thought the bathroom, but alas the space I had in mind was too small. Bathroom is tiny. I was disappointed and thought to myself, I shouldn’t have spent my money. Went to bed to read before sleep and dang if raccoons weren’t on the roof at 7:30 and were around until 3:40 this morning. Twice on the roof, then screaming their high pitched horrible screams off and on somewhere around here, the rest of the time.  I was even dreaming about them screaming. Needless to say, my sleep wasn’t all that great. I finally fell asleep after they quieted down, and didn’t wake up until almost 7, which is really ‘late’ for me as I’m usually up at 4.

During my two cups of coffee this morning, I started rearranging the bedroom, dismantling and making a space for this cabinet. I was excited. I worked for about 4 hours, ate lunch and took about a 2 hour nap.

This is the piece I bought. It is 62 inches high, 17 3/4 inches wide and 10 3/4 inches deep. It has cute little bunny knobs on it.

Inside the door. I’ll show what’s in the egg cartons later in this post.

This is how the area looked before rearranging.

Here’s how it looks now. I brought an old painting with holes in it from the workshop, to cover the wall where a window used to be.  My dear B-I-L will be helping me soon with putting up faux bead board paneling and I probably won’t leave that painting there.  It works for now.

The cupboard to the right of little white cabinet was found last year or the year before, curbside.  The little wicker rocker was bought at a yard sale last year for $3. I’ve got more shelf liner to cut to face the drawer fronts in the larger storage units.

I found these little shoes in a box of my dear husband’s childhood stuff, given to us several years ago. It was in a stack of things in a closet and I looked in the box today and inside these dear little shoes was a little note ‘Mark’s first shoes’. I see these kinds of things displayed all the time on blogs and thought, why not?  These have special meaning to me, of course. Underneath this vignette is an old raggedy prayer rug.

Now here is what is inside the plastic egg cartons.  They make great little storage boxes for small things.

These are crocheted wire baskets surrounding either glass marbles, or flattened on one side, glass bits. The ones in a fine silver wire are done with what we think could be a nickel wire, size 38 gauge, very fine. The others are made with artistic wire, not as fine a gauge. I made these in 2009, then got bummed out after I posted about them and a guy told me to be careful working with nickel as it can cause blindness. WHAT? I have a whole spool of this very fine wire that DH gave me and it was the start of my crocheting with wire, and then I lost interest. So here these things all sit.

Here are little baskets with beads around edge and on the handles.

Here are the first pieces I crocheted with the fine wire.

These are little crocheted seashells, and babies.

Ok, this is long enough. I’m going to go get horizontal to read before sleep.  I hope you all have a nice week. Count your blessings, learn from lessons good and bad, be well, be thankful and be happy.

Love & hugs ~ FlowerLady

P.S. ~ The leak is fixed. Thanks be to my dear B-I-L Todd. We had a good visit too.  I fixed chicken divan in the crockpot, made Idaho instant mashed potatoes and heated up yeast rolls (from a pkg.) and we had key lime pie from the grocery bakery.