A Rainy Saturday in May

Thank you all for the thoughts for my DDad, he got home Sunday afternoon and went back into the hospital this past Wednesday with a sodium count lower than it's ever been! He went home yesterday with strict instructions to not drink more than a liter of fluid a day until he can get in to see his doctor - all the water he drinks is flushing the sodium from his system - sodium levels can't be increased quickly as it will damage his heart but the low levels aren't doing much for it either. DDad never does anything the easy way!!

My computer desk sits at a window facing our front yard and our bird feeders are right in front of me, so I get to watch all the comings and goings. This time of year is especially enjoyable as we're along the migration route for a lot of birds. A female rose-breasted grosbeak has stopped by today. The chuck-will's-widow (this link will take you to Cornell University's ornithology site, it's a great birding site) has returned also. That one I don't see but hear - ALL NIGHT LONG!!! It's very loud and there have been times I swear it's sitting on the pillow next to me. It's a member of the night jar family and sounds rather like a whip-poor-will. We are right on the edge of its breeding territory - lucky us...

We had beautiful weather all week, but the clouds rolled in yesterday and look like they're here to stay for a goodly while. I'm definitely not complaining though, all this water is good for the well (I live in fear of it going dry) and it's certainly greening things up around here. The Hubs was able to give the lawn its first mow of the season - looked more like he was cutting hay it had gotten so long, but it looks very nice right now. The azaleas have gone by without me getting a picture *again*, but I did snap a pic of the roses -

I adore these roses even with the colors being a bit washed out - they're really a deep red! They're Double Knockout roses and while I'd love to say that I spend hours laboring over them to keep them this beautiful it would be a lie. These roses are pretty much maintenance free (a little pruning in the early spring) and then they take off on their own! No bugs, disease resistant AND they bloom from early/mid-April until October (northern central Virginia) which means they put up with humidity and high temperatures. No, I don't sell them, raise them or have any interest in them other than the fact that they make my house look beautiful and between these and the daylilies, they make me look like a real gardener!!

Here's a close up of one of the blooms:

As this is supposed to be a stitching blog, I suppose I should talk about my stitching a bit. Egyptian Garden received a bit of attention this week. Actually, in addition to my weekend time, I stitched on it three nights this week (a bit of a miracle for me with my schedule) and got to this point:

I'm hoping to finish this border over the weekend. As I'm a top-down, left to right stitcher, I'll probably turn this in the frame at some point.

I did receive some stash in the mail, but forgot to take a picture. Unfortunately, the one pattern that I really wanted,Witches Hollow by the Primitive Needle, is out of stock and they don't know when, or if it will be stocked again. I was going to pull motifs from that one for a "Cape Cod Cats". I'll try a couple of other stores, but I'm afraid I missed my opportunity.

This has been a very long, rambling, disconnected post, but if you ever get the chance to sit down and talk with me, that's how I am - one thought leads to another, leads to another, etc and more than likely none of them seem to be and often aren't related at all. One of the real dangers of my random access memory - just never know what's going to pop out! I also am easily distracted by sparkly things and butterflies - difficult to believe I'm trusted with multi-million dollar decisions on a daily basis!