Miscellaneous Spring Shots

A-Z took up all April, so these are a bit old.  

Pretty pink flower near the fence.

Not good at botany but the flower buffs on Facebook identified these as hyacinths.  They smell heavenly!

No idea what this is, but it's white and it's cool.

Pink hyacinths in the front yard.

Daffies in the front yard.

A patch of grape hyacinths.

The glass hummingbird on the small chimes.

PJM Rhododendron.  I learned that this hybrid rhodie was first cultivated in this state!

Creeping phlox.

Red tulip tipped with yellow

This is either a tulip or a poppy.

No clue what these are but the deep burgundy flowers are pretty.

I don't generally like to shoot flowers with the flash, but it was a rainy morning and the flash really helped to show the water droplets.

I love lilacs.  The entire side of the yard has purple lilac bushes and it smelled heavenly!

Dune 1

I was recently invited to join an exclusive club: "The Dune 1 Girls".  ;-D  They consist of a core of good  friends from forever-ago, who have been going to a particular place on Town Neck Beach for quite some time.  I was asked to hang out with them during a stretch of warm weather in April. My friends are hardcore beach bums and take every opportunity to make it down there.  I went both on the Sunday and Monday of that week; Sunday was cool and windy but Monday was definitely a beach day.  It was probably 80* in Sandwich, while only in the mid-60's at my house in BBay.  The cloudy pics are from Sunday, sunny ones from Monday.

It was dead low tide, really low too, so I took that opportunity to take pics of the Boardwalk and creek in an area that's usually under water.

There were shellfishermen in the creek.

Looking towards Old Harbor.

Very muddy marshes.

Snail condos.

Beautiful rocks in a small tide pool

Seaweed covered jetties on Town Neck Beach

Seaweed.

Town Neck Beach and the Canal jetty breakwater in the distance.  View of the beach at Dune 1.

Imagine my surprise to find out that there are seals living on these rocks in the bay!!

Gradiant colours on a beach brick (this came home with me).

Doesn't look like an eider duck or a typical seagull.  No idea what it is.

I built this next to where I was sitting.

The Dune 1 Gang.  The water was bracing.  My feet were frozen after just a couple of minutes, just ankle deep.  

Couldn't resist shooting the goofy seals again.  There were lots of them.

 What a big fattie!!!!!  I have no idea if he's floating or laying on a rock.

Yeah yeah, I know, but I don't care. I'm posting it anyway.  lol

Another Major Award!!!!!

A huge THANK YOU to Nikki over at Inspire Nordic for presenting me with the Kreativ Blogger Award! I am humbled and grateful!  

The 6 blogs I pick to receive this....and believe me this was no small feat.....are:

Tracy at Pull up a Toadstool

Kristy at Li'l Cup of Jo

Debbie at Abracadebra Designs

Sonnia at A Ladybug's Life

Meredith at The Southern Northerner

Kathy at the Giggling Trucker's Wife

Now I have to think of 10 random facts about me that I've never shared before. 

1.  The Swiss mask theatre group,  Mummenschanz, bums me out big time.  I first saw it on WGBH, Boston's PBS station, back in the early/mid 70's and it really, truly creeped me out.  It still does.  I don't get it at all.  It ran on Broadway for years and they've won lots of awards, but.....I don't get it.  It's just freaky.

2.  "Friends" is my fave show ever and I watch the reruns Every. Single. Day.  There are lots of shows I like, but I always lost interest in them after about 5-6 seasons.  Seems most shows jump the shark at that point. "Friends" never jumped the shark at all.  They ended at the right time, after 10 seasons.  I wish they'd do a reunion show, but none of the actors are interested.

3.  I'm fascinated by true crime and serial killers.  The psychology involved is extremely interesting. I kind of wish now that I'd gone to school for psychology.  I didn't really enjoy Psych 101 in college; it was just a stupid requirement I had to get out of the way and the class had about 95 students.  Now I wish I'd studied it more, or minored in it.

4.  I don't get what everyone sees in Stephen King.  He spends 800 pages building up the story and investing the reader's time in the characters, only to kill everyone off in the last 10 pages, and never saying what happened to the survivors in the aftermath!!  I liked Dolores Claiborne and The Shining, only because he actually included an Epilogue in both stories, so I finally got a sense of closure.  Don't get me started on my Needful Things rant.  People keep telling me to read The Stand but I have no interest in it.  ZERO interest.

5.  If you want to kill a houseplant, give it to me.  I'll kill it good.  I killed a cactus by watering it too much. All I can grow are weeds.  And ivy.

6.  Crafts I suck at:   Candle making (it's a lot of hurry up and wait), knitting/crochet/macrame (I have a 'dyslexia thing' with it), stenciling (paint or ink ends up bleeding under the design no matter how careful I am), woodworking (can't drive a nail in straight to save my life), flat peyote beading (can't figure it out), rubber stamping (again with the ink bleed, or not enough ink is used on the stamp). 

7.  I pick up accents very quickly and find that I'm already starting to drop my Rs, now that I'm back in New England, especially when I'm tired.  And I can't resist spelling 'lobster' and 'chowder' as lobstah and chowdah.

8.  I used to be a vegetarian when I lived in California, due mostly to peer pressure more than anything else.  It's one of the only times in my life I've ever caved into peer pressure.  It seems that everyone in the Bay Area is vegan or vegetarian and buys organic.  I got a look of disdain whenever I mentioned getting my produce at the supermarket, instead of from the organic market in Fairfax. I even knew people who wouldn't eat a veggie burger if it was cooked on a grill that was also cooking meat.  Needless to say, I was back to eating meat within days of moving to Washington.  The bottom line is that I love chicken, pork, turkey and ground beef, I missed it and I can't not have it.  

9.   When my sweet Bear goes on the road, I make him some sandwiches/snacks for the first day or night he's gone, and I always include a little love note on a yellow stickie.  He hadn't mentioned them, so I thought maybe they'd come loose in the bag and he didn't see them.  Then one time I didn't put one in and I got a text, "Hey where's my note?"  ;-D  

10.  I have to hide when my squeeze is cooking lobstah because I think it's too cruel to stick a live creature into a pot of boiling water...or as he calls it, 'the jacuzzi'.  He thought I was joking last summer when I mentioned it to him and was taken aback when fled the house for about 15 minutes when he was preparing to cook one.  He told me that he'd never heard of anyone needing to leave the room because of that, but as it turns out, it's fairly common, esp. among women.  I used to take refuge in my childhood bedroom when my dad was cooking lobstah too.  Now he gives me a heads up so that I can go in my craft room, outside or run an errand.

Blogging A to Z 2012: Reflections

Well I survived the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

I am going to utilize the questions posed on the A-Z main blog site as a guide for my comments:

1.  How did your journey through the alphabet go?  Did you meet new bloggers with similar interests?

Having my posts almost all prepared and scheduled to publish before the end of March made life much easier.    Instead of starting at "A", I wrote topics as I thought of them, and then just organized them to be published on the right days.  I want to thank Bev at Blue Velvet Vincent for suggesting I participate.

I've added a whole bunch of new blogs to my Blog Roll, here on my main page.  Lots of creative people out there who have a lot in common with me!!!

2.  What were the highlights for you?

I did pick up quite a few new followers, which is cool.  Going into the challenge, I had about 52 followers.  I now have 93.  And I met a lot of GREAT new friends/bloggers!!!

I even won a contest at Abracadebra Designs!  I can't wait to get my new beading book!!!!  Thank you so much Debbie!!!!

3.  Did you enjoy posting daily?  What was your biggest hurdle? What was your easiest task?

I actually prefer to post every other day vs. posting daily.  That gives people more time to check my blog instead of having to catch up.

One of the biggest problems I had with the challenge is that a lot of the blogs on the list didn't actually participate, or quit part way through.  So I spent copious amounts of time trying to find people who were participating.    A lot of the post entries I encountered while surfing from blog to blog were way too long to read, especially the people who are writers and posted chapters of their stories.  I kind of prefer to hit blogs where people talk about their lives, things they are interested in, post photos & music, etc., rather than reading short stories.  There were some blogs on which I left a comment, but didn't follow.

Blogger changed the New Post/Dashboard format in the middle of the challenge which really sucked. I did manage to find the option to switch back to the old format.  The new Blogger format is extremely cumbersome and difficult to navigate.  Also all my posts are scheduled to automatically publish at 7:00 a.m. East Coast time, but I had to manually publish them in the mornings because they didn't auto publish during the challenge.  I kept checking to make sure they are on East Coast time, and they are, but they still won't auto publish.  I am hoping that Blogger lets us keep the old format if we want to, but I have a feeling they are going to be like Facebook and Pinterest, and force us into the new format.  Interesting to note that my posts are publishing automatically again now that the Challenge is over.  Hmm.....

4.  Was time management an issue?

I'm not sure I would be able to participate in a daily blog challenge again because it was very hard to keep up, not only with reading comments on my blog, but responding to them (which I only do occasionally) and keeping up with reading all the new blogs that I started to follow.  I was only able to do this because I am unemployed and on my own most of the week.  I don't know how anyone who works full time with a family at home could have participated successfully, either posting or reading/following new blogs.  I had to set aside a good chunk of time every day to do this, and by 'good chunk', I mean a couple hours during the day and another couple at night.

5.  Was it easy to come up with ideas for each letter, or were some harder?

It was fairly easy to come up with ideas for each letter.  I did try to do the difficult letters first.

6.  How about commenting?  Did you stumble upon sites still using word verification? Did this prevent you from leaving a comment?


Yes, there are A LOT of sites using word verification (aka CAPTCHA).  If you type it incorrectly it keeps giving you more words till you get it right, and since the words are nonsensical to begin with, I made a lot of typos.  It's very, very frustrating.  I find it annoying and unnecessary.  There.  I said it!!  No offense to those of you who use it/feel you need it, but I'd much rather see that my "comment will appear after blog owner approval" vs. having to take the time to do CAPTCHA.   I have never used it on my blog and have encountered very few problems with spam and trolls.  I have had an occasional spam comment but it's not enough to make my readers suffer through  CAPTCHA.  I really just want to leave my comment and go to the next blog.

7.  What will you do different next year?

Not sure.  If I am still unemployed, I will participate.  If I am working, I just don't see how I will have the time to post daily, read comments, respond to comments and visit all the new blogs too.

8.  What pearls of wisdom do you want to share with the Co-Hosts of this event?

I cannot emphasize enough the thing about not using word verification.  It's a giant pain for commenters.  Also, being a little stricter about people signing up and then not participating.  That was a colossal waste of time for me, trying to find people who were actually doing the challenge, and stuck with it through the letter Z.  I also saw some bloggers mention that maybe there can be some kind of category system to make it easier to seek out stuff people are interested in.  I love that idea!!!  That would really help cutting down on the time it takes to visit a site only to find out that it's not your cup of tea.  I am way more apt to visit blogs under 'Hobbies/Photography' than I am 'Religion'.

Overall I had a great time and am glad I participated!!  Thanks to all my new followers too! I appreciate your support!

Finally a Couch!!

My mom had a spare couch sitting around, and as I always found it comfy, I asked if we could use it till we could finally locate the reclining sectional we want.  She said that was fine, so we picked it up the day we moved all Russell's stuff from storage, since we had the moving truck.  Now, being 5'2", this is a perfectly adequate piece of furniture for me.  And was for my 5'0" mom and 5'6" dad.  When my squeeze saw it for the first time when we picked it up, he laughed somewhat uproariously at her 'doll house furniture'.  Needless to say, the poor man's feet hang off the end of it and he looks like Gulliver on a Lilliputian-size couch.  I can lay flat out and my feet still don't reach the end.

This is one of my Sagan's fave stuffies.  I always thought the sentiment, "Why can't I lay on the couch?" was just too cute.

*Sigh*  We didn't have it two weeks, and it was already claimed in the name of New Saganland.  "Is my couts nao, mama.  You sits in teh chair."

Twin Acres is the Place To Be....

Twin Acres opened for the season on March 31st and all I can say is WA-freakin-HOOOO!!!!

When Sandwich was still a small town, the ice cream shop everyone went to was called Frannie & George's, or Fran & Georgie's, depending on who you ask. It was across the street from Sandwich Mini Golf, on Rte. 6A and everyone knew everyone, and it was always busy.  It closed in the 70's, and we were left without our go-to ice cream shop.  The closest would have been Four Seas in Hyannis or at Dick & Ellie's Mini Golf in New Seabury.  

Twin Acres opened in the mid-70's, on Rte. 6A, close to the town line with Bourne.  It seemed like such a looong drive from E. Sandwich where I lived, near the town line with Barnstable.  It was such a treat on summer nights, to be playing w/ my cousins and hear the 'grown ups' announce that a Twin Acres run was in the offing, and did we want sundaes? And who wanted to go for a ride to get them?  The 3 of us crowded into the car for the trip down there.  

Everyone has gone to Twinnies since that time, not to mention the tons and tons of tourists in the summer.    I would always go whenever I'd visit from the west coast, no matter how cold it still is in the spring.  I had to have my usual vanilla/chocolate soft serve twist. They truly are the best.  Their menu has branched out a lot since that time.  It's been renovated and a larger parking lot (but still too small) was made.  There are benches and picnic tables too, and it's beautifully landscaped.  Sometimes you can't even get close to the place on summer nights.

Right now it's only open on weekends.  Good Friday found us in Sandwich running errands, and we stopped at Twin Acres for a cone of soft serve.  It wasn't terribly warm, but it was sunny and pleasant enough to sit on one of the benches to finish them before leaving for BBay.  It's so great to be sharing this time honoured tradition with my honey, and I'm sure we'll be back several more times this season! 

Wordless Wednesday

 *Cackle*