Showing posts with label Pictures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pictures. Show all posts

Monday, March 15, 2021

The Ides of March



The Ides of March are upon us! 

Lest you think I am spreading bad vibes here with the Ides of March theme, it is actually NOT a time of doom and gloom as you read in books or see in the movies. Ides, as well as Kalends and Nones were really ancient markers used to reference different lunar phases. The Ides of March used to represent the beginning of spring, thus bringing with it rejoicing and celebrations. So let us rejoice the Ides of March and the coming of spring.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Profiling Sophie

This is our beautiful Sophie. She will be 15 years old in May and she came to live with us in November of 2007. At that time we only had Rosie inside, and Dood still lived outside. After he was injured and had to come inside, Sophie had two boys to deal with. Rosie was 10 years old and Dood was 7. She was the baby at 1 1/2, and it was fun to see all the interactions of the three as they sorted out the pecking order. It was soon established that Rosie was the alpha cat, despite his gentle spirit. 

However, for the past 6-plus years, Sophie has been the Queen of all she surveys. She visits you in the bathroom, loves life on a pedestal, even if it is just a piece of paper, and give her a box and she is thrilled (it seems a new one arrives every other day).

I miss my boys very much, and as much as I would love to open my home and heart to a new furry friend, I think Sophie is perfectly happy as things are and I don't want that to change. So for now, I love my Sophie-girl.


Tuesday, September 29, 2020

I Missed It!

Can you believe it? I actually missed my 11th Blog Anniversary Date! I guess this year has really messed up things. So, instead of reminiscing or rambling down memory lane, I will show you our lovely Sophie.


I love to use the features of my smart phone camera to enhance pictures, adding special effects and a frame. I took this one a step further into Autodesk Sketchbook and softened the background because this was just an random picture taken in a cluttered room. Pretty cat but not so pretty backdrop.

Thanks to Sophie for helping me belatedly acknowledge my 11th blogoversary (September 20, 2009).
 

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Project Obliteration

The dog days of summer are brutal here in the South, and sweat runs in rivers before you have taken three steps. Alas, we must push onward. There is much to be done. Unfortunately, I again failed to take before pictures, so my description shall have to suffice.


This has been an eyesore for years with overgrown vines covering fallen sticks and hiding rocks from past flower gardens. The vines were mostly obliterated with the weed eater and out of control bushes were given a dramatic makeover. It's not finished, but at least it is not the embarrassing mess it was.

Project Obliteration shall continue until all the vines have been...well obliterated.

Garden update: We have gotten a number of shishitos from our one plant. The poblano has several peppers, as well as the bells. One tomato plant has some green tomatoes on it. The other, I think, is too chewed off to bloom. Maybe I can get some carrots planted for fall. Right now it is too stinking hot for tender plants to survive.

Sunday, July 26, 2020

I'm okay and so are you!

It is a beautiful Sunday morning. 
Let this little red leaf remind you that it's okay to be different.
 Be yourself and enjoy your day!

Saturday, July 25, 2020

The Sky Aglow

Never waste any amount of time doing anything important when there is a sunset outside that you should be sitting under! C. JoyBell C.


Original Photo of Roses to Rainbows: St. Pete, FL 2018
It would be a shame to let such beauty go to waste, and as you can see, we did not. This was our view over the Gulf of Mexico a few years ago. My advice, when you see a beautiful sunset, is to drop what you're doing and go enjoy it.

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Shishitos and a Garden Update

This year's garden has not produced much to date...except for these little beauties. These are Shishito peppers and the first thing to be harvested. I'm looking forward to trying those tonight.

My green beans weren't great to begin with and then they got the tops eaten off by, most likely, deer. The same ones that munched on the tomatoes. The tomatoes are surviving, blooming even. We put cages around them and tied white plastic shopping bags on the wire. I read that it might discourage deer.

The bean plants are still hanging in there with a few beans almost big enough to pick, but I didn't see any more blooms. I suppose I will pick what there is an try replanting.

I did get some carrots on my first try, so maybe I'll plant some more for a fall garden.


Other things include parsley, green onions, a zucchini, red and yellow bell peppers and a poblano. And that is how the garden grows so far this year.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Gentle Waves

Many of us find peace at the beach. For me it is a great place to recharge my internal batteries. If the beach is your thing and your batteries are running on low, I hope you can recharge and draw some peace from this picture.


Saturday, March 14, 2020

Love from Sophie

Sophie sends her love in this autographed photo. She is absolutely the sweetest thing, and makes us smile many times every day.  I hope she helps you, too.


Thursday, March 12, 2020

Down By The River

This is a beautiful, peaceful place. Drink in the beauty and let it soothe your mind and soul for a moment...or ten.



Sunday, March 8, 2020

In Stitches

Hey everyone! It's been a while (again), but I've been a bit preoccupied with what has been going on in the world for the last few months. We won't talk about that now, though. I think we could all use a little chuckle.

When I sat down to write, I looked into my drafts folder and found this fellow looking back at me from an otherwise empty page. What is his story? Let's listen in and find out.



















"Hey Spud, what happened to you?"

"Aw Doc, they put a newbie on the plow and he dang near sliced me in two" groaned Spud. "Can you fix me up?"

"Yep, but I'm afraid it will leave a scar and you won't make it to the gourmet aisle. Nope, you'll probably end up bagged and tagged at Walmart" said the Doc.

"That's okay, Doc, at least I won't end up in one of those new frou-frou recipes, you know boiled, whipped, beaten and baked, then drowned in cheese, or spiraled into boiling oil. No, I want to be fried up nice and crispy in some hot bacon grease.   Now that's the way to go."

The Doc was nearly in stitches himself, and laughing he said "good luck, Spud. I'll be looking for you in Wally World."


Friday, September 20, 2019

Roses To Rainbows Turns Ten

Well y'all it has been ten years! Can you believe it? This blog has been a lot of things over the years. It has been a place for me to share my cats, trips and other adventures. It was where I learned I could write fiction (at least to some degree), waxed poetic on occasion, cooked, cleaned and chased clutter six ways from Sunday. I quoted famous people and then told you what they really said.

Last year I started an online store, Rosie B. Designs, and made the announcement here with occasional promotional posts.  The store is where I get to explore the other side of my creativity. It is tough getting a new venture going in such a competitive market, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would stop by and look around. Pictured below is a sample from one of my collections.


As you can see from the rest of the pictures and the past few posts, I have gone off on yet another adventure, gardening. My garden is very small scale, consisting of a few beds and containers. However, we did have green beans and squash a plenty this summer, and some of the best parsley I've ever had.

These are a couple of my sweet snacking peppers and my plant still has lots of peppers on it. They are ready when they have turned orange. Aren't they pretty?



Also, given my love of all things potato, I planted potatoes in buckets. I made the mistake of planting too many taters per bucket and they didn't have enough room to grow, so this is the sum total of my crop. Live and learn, and I'll do better next year...I hope.



In the ground for fall are some beets. It has been so hot with no rain so they may not do well. They have just sprouted and I do keep them watered, so we'll see. I plan to get a bulb of organic garlic to plant next month.


In conclusion, this blog turns ten years old today and has been through a lot of phases and seen a lot of changes. It has also been woefully neglected of late. In fact, I dropped out of the "Chill" writing challenge last January because I was just not inspired. That was a first! I like to write fiction and fun posts for challenges but the topics just didn't work for that. 

So what does the future hold for Roses to Rainbows? That is TBD, but feel free to explore the archives and dig up some oldies but goodies!


If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Mid-August Garden Update

It has been a hot summer with what little rain we got coming in fits and starts. Four inches here, a half inch there, and plenty of sunshine. This meant lots of watering, and I was nearly as wet as the garden when I was done. It would have been nice of all that rain we had back in the spring had been spaced out a bit.

The second run of beans is still producing and we had a great dinner last night of fresh squash and beans, and a pepper from the garden cooked in with some fried potatoes. I should also mention that fresh-from-the-garden-parsley is amazing. Now I know that parsley actually has a fragrance. It was so good in my parsley, garlic, anchovy and olive oil sauce for our skirt steak. Yum! If you don't grow parsley, you should.

The squash have had a good run, but they are winding down and will soon be removed to start the fall garden. 


Hubby's tomato now has 5 tomatoes on it and we are hoping they will survive to ripen. Did I mention we are not seasoned gardeners? In my other bed, I have three zucchini and another pepper. The tag says it is ancho/poblano. Could be one or the other or a mixture. Doesn't matter to me...it's all good. After the yellow summer squash, I am looking forward to some late summer zucchini.

Still to come are beets and maybe some more radish, and I hope to get onions and garlic in around the first of October.

What's in your garden now?


If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Can You Believe It's Already July?

So where does the time go? The older I get the more often I ask this question. Time is flying by faster than a spaceship from childhood cartoons. That said, the garden is growing by leaps and bounds. At least the squash is. It is finally producing! We picked two and I counted nearly a dozen more tiny ones just set on. Thank goodness, I was beginning to think I was the only poor schmuck on the planet who couldn't grow squash. And guess what? That third (and last) row of radish actually produced a few radishes for hubby's dinner.


That may all be in jeopardy because while I was watering this afternoon with the hose attached to the newly reconnected spigot, I was startled to notice that the tomato was somewhat shorter than yesterday. Now wait a minute, they are supposed to grow upward, right? I looked closer to see that the very top had been chewed off (at least they left the blossoms). Then the beans...nearly a half dozen of my beans had been chewed off as well.

Now folks, this garden isn't in the country. Nope, it has been in the city for nearly 30 years and even when it was squarely in the county, there were rarely ever any wildlife spotted except for the usual birds, hoppy toads, as we called them, and the occasional garter snake.

Well, it appears that we may have deer munching our veggies. We've heard about deer sightings in the neighborhood, but haven't seen them. We have seen deer where we live a short distance away and also in the city, twice this year late in the evening.

Whatever it is at least they haven't show a preference for squash...yet. Fingers crossed.



If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

Late June Garden Update

Hi there and welcome back to the late June garden update. We are neophyte gardeners, and are feeling our way through with the help of videos and articles on gardening, and what I remember from "helping" my mom years ago. Getting a late start did not help either.

I started with some herbs in pots, and most of them are still surviving, maybe even thriving (pictured below is my sage), although still too thick for optimum growth. I plan to thin and transplant as I figure out where they should go. The radish did absolutely zilch, but the beans are producing nicely, and we have had at least four decent batches for dinner.


We created a raised bed for additional planting, and so far have several squash, a pepper, a tomato, more radish, another row of green beans and some green onions I got from the store, used the tops in cooking and cut off the bottoms and planted. Yes, you can regrow vegetables from cuttings.

Here are some pictures of the garden's progress.

Here we have the bed after we have added a layer of leaf mulch and starting to spread the layer of top soil (6 bags). According to what I read, you can either mix all your ingredients together or layer them. We chose to use the layering approach.


Next we have the layer of Black Kow, aka manure (2 bags). Back when we were planting the potato buckets, we could not find Black Kow, so we made do with a different brand. By the way, the taters seem to be doing fine and it looks like buds are setting on. I figure they've been planted about 6 weeks now.


Our top layer was 6 bags of garden soil. We got this on sale earlier in the season for $2 a bag. Sometimes we do actually plan ahead.


Here it is all pretty, leveled out and ready to plant. Now what?


Here it is now with the squash on the left, the tomato in the cage, the beans at the top right.There is also a sweet pepper, some onions and more radish. Obviously, there is more room and I have some hot peppers in pots - my second attempt to start peppers from seeds. The first were Hungarian hot wax peppers, but none of those seeds sprouted. I must have had a bad package of seed, because everything else came up.


Right now there are little peppers, the beans (second crop) are coming along nicely and the onions are sprouting. I should have onions in a couple weeks. The squash are blooming, but as yet have none have set on. I doubt that this planting of radish will yield any edibles either. They are an early crop and I knew that going in, but we had a lot of rain and an out-of-state wedding to attend when we would have been setting up the garden. 

Our thumbs are not the best shade of green, but we decided we would, once again, like to try our hand at growing something besides weeds. I'll pop back in later for another show and tell.

Bonus picture - first crop of beans (both green and yellow, aka wax beans).



If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Friday, May 3, 2019

Beans, Bugs and More!

This is my bean crop. These two sections are the yellow (wax) beans and the first to germinate. Looking good so far! The radish are the first row (at the bottom of the following two pics). 


This section is my Blue Lake bush beans. A little slower than the yellow ones, but over achievers as they have nearly caught up with the others. Actually they weren't that far behind, and sprouted quicker than expected. 

The sage is also starting to come up. Wish me and these tender young veggies good luck.


This cute fellow is the Eastern Eyed Click Beetle. He had accidentally hitched a ride on hubby's back and got unceremoniously swatted to the ground before I knew what he was. Fortunately, he survived to fly away. They are harmless to humans!


This lovely creature is a Luna Moth who was hanging out on the wall next to the light fixture. What a nice surprise since we don't see them very often.


Here are some of the strawberries I transplanted. It looks like they are going to make it.


I won't bore you with the incremental progress of my garden, but will update when things ramp up a bit. Until then, happy gardening.



If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Herbal Update and a Butterfly

Seen in the early morning...well about 8:30. That's still early, right?  Isn't it beautiful. I am thinking maybe newly hatched and drying it's wings because it was sitting so still on the wall. I love butterflies, and am hoping to see some Monarchs this year.

Swallowtail
The oregano, thyme and parsley are coming along nicely. I may have made a mistake planting them as I did, scattering seed in the pots. Transplanting could be tricky, or I could just thin to a few per pot. The replanted basil (not pictured) has started coming up, too. At last check, the sage hadn't sprouted, but they were supposed to take longer.


I'll try and get some shots of my beans and radish for a later post. Until next time, happy gardening!


If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Time to Plant

Summer is just around the corner and I have started planting...yes you heard that right. Now it's nothing big, just a few herbs, beans and some radish (for hubby, I don't eat radish).

I have a few more things to plant, but there is a crap-ton of work yet to be done to prepare a place - maybe a raised bed or some large containers. I don't know what yet, but the weather is right for growing now that the temps are warm and the monsoons seem to have subsided, at least for the time being.

The herbs: (pictures strangely deleted)


To date, the thyme and oregano have sprouted, and the basil got overturned, probably by a squirrel or other critter. I had to replant it. 

I also have a large container that is probably 7 feet by 2.5 feet and maybe a foot deep that was originally used to house bait. My mom got it years ago when the man who sold bait closed up shop. It has been used for plants ever since, and I have it now. 

I grew beans in it last year and they did pretty good considering I failed to notice that I had bought climbing bean seeds. The stakes I put up were not sufficient and some ended up in the neighboring azalea. Nevertheless, we got several batches and they bloomed right through October.

We shall see what happens this year. I planted all bush beans! All gardeners are welcome to chime in with stories and/or advice.


If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Breakfast in bed, please!


We have had our beautiful Sophie for almost 11 years now and she's just as sweet and quirky as ever. Like all of our cats, her personality has continued to develop over the years. After the passing of her housemates, (Dood, 4 years ago and Rosie, 5 years ago), she has been "talking" more than ever before with an ever-growing vocabulary. I believe she is either channeling the boys, or was just never able to get a word in edge-wise and is now making up for it.

If she were talking in this picture, she might be saying, "breakfast in bed would be nice for a change".

Do your cats talk to you, and what do you think they are saying?



If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Chasing The Rainbow


We were returning from Ft. DeSoto and as we came over the bridge at Tierra Verde I spotted a rainbow. It was not raining where we were at that moment, but it was or had been raining somewhere. We followed the rain clouds and the rainbow, hoping for a better view. All you can see of the rainbow in this picture is a tiny segment to the left of the first palm tree, but the sunlight transforms these ordinary condos into something beautiful.

Here is the rainbow when we first saw it.
On another note, today is October 20, 2018 and it occurs to me that I failed to acknowledge my ninth year in blogging (by exactly one month). 

How did that happen? Well, to be quite honest, I have not been very diligent in posting and basically took the entire summer off. Life is busy and time taken sitting at the computer stringing words together took a back seat.

Am I back? Yeah, maybe...I'm not sure, but it would be sad to just quit. Did I get where I wanted to when I started out? Nope, but that's okay, at least that's what I tell myself. My goal continues to be to inspire people, give them something to think about or at least make them smile.

So I guess I'll keep on chasing the rainbow and hope that my words will reach the person(s) that they were meant to reach.

Remember, the welcome mat is out and the virtual doors are always open so make yourself at home. Please leave your calling card in the comments below so I can greet you personally.