Ups & Downs & Round & Round on a Slow Stitching Sunday...

 Hello... hope things are well in your little corner of the world. Things here have been up & down and a bit of round and round thrown into the mix. First I want to thank all of you for the prayers and good wishes for my dental surgery... I used them!!   It wasn't as easy this time as last time... I was totally wiped out on Tuesday after the procedure and my son told me to skip babysitting on Wednesday and rest some more... and I did.  I've been a good patient... the doctor said so...LOL... I brushed and flossed and used the special rinse and took all of the antibiotic... on the follow up visit last week it said both spots, the extraction and the prep for the implant looked great... nice and upbeat... then the down stuff came... turns out they had a hard time keeping my airway open during the IV sedation. He suggested I see a specialist for sleep apnea... and if I can get the specialist's office to return calls, I'll make an appointment... grrr... I don't doubt that I do have sleep apnea and I'd like to get it checked out... I have a feeling a c-pap will give me better sleep... but I am concerned that the airway issue will keep me from being able to do IV sedation at the dentist office and I have more work to be done....  and so I left the office feeling a bit up & down... but I for the first time in months my mouth wasn't hurting... until the evening, when it was... argghhh... I suspect that the infection is not totally cleared up. I'm back to my ibuprofen regime ... will be calling the office on Monday to discuss if I need another round of antibiotics.  So that has affected my mood.... 

I have been medicating myself with gardening for the last two weeks... somehow weeding and seeding and planting gets my mind off my mouth.... we've had a TON of rain... 5th rainy-est May for the area... I haven't  hardly watered  at all ...which is good for my water bill... but lots of things I've planted in the ground are having a slow go of it.   I'll include a some pictures below...

Things in pots and the pyramid of petunias seems to be doing well...

 the marigolds are struggling... I've had to go back and pull out dead one and replant several times... it is a good thing I want a mix of different varieties because every time I go back to the garden centers they don't have the ones I bought previously. 

One of the window boxes ... that dahlia to the right side is one I left in the ground over the winter... already pushing 4 feet tall!... and this year I'm planting shorter zinnia in front of those shrubs. 

Some new to the yard perennials... tickseed and tall phlox...

and this is called a Shrimp plant... Hannah at the garden center talked me into this one... not that is was a hard sell...LOL

and the dahlia bed!!!

It is looking great... I'm trying a new way of "staking" them this year... I've put steel garden stakes every foot or so and make a 1 foot grid from twine... the idea is for the plants to grow between the twine and be supported by it, instead of trying to stake every single plant...  I'm still waiting on a shipment of tubers for back of the bed. Turns out one of the places I purchased from has somehow disappeared. No website, no telephone, no email...poof!!   However there was still a FB page and it was filled with gardeners like me saying I paid for the tubers back in Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr and have never received them. I filed a dispute with Discover and they are giving me a provisional credit and trying to sort things out. Soooooo... I went back to see if I could get anymore tubers and lots of places are already sold out... insert frowny face... but Longfield Gardens still had some pretty dahlias left... I've bought from them before... twice already this year... they tubers I got were very nice and my order should be here tomorrow. I'll be sticking with them from now on. 

As for decorating....I know lots of people have moved on to patriotic... and I have plans to do the same... in another week or so... haven't had the motivation yet... in the meantime I'm enjoying my Spring-y decor... a mix of my favorite cross stitch designers... Blackbird Designs, With Thy Needle & Thread, From the Heart Needleart, Barbara Ana Designs, Pineberry Lane... and some vintage McCoy and Shawnee pottery mixed in. 

I haven't gotten a lot of cross stitching done the past 2 weeks... couldn't concentrate...hoping to change that situation today and work on some patriotic stuff. 

As for sewing... I forgot to take pictures, but I put the back together for a top I made months ago and I got it and  the flag quilt from the book County Seat Quilts finished and off to Delinda to quilt... click here for glimpse of what my flag quilt looked like half done on my design wall. 

I did work a little bit more on the Bonnie & Camille swap blocks... 

maybe tonight I'll work on it... all the big blocks are done... just need to do the sashing & the border and I am LOVING that border print. 

As for round & round... I've been knitting socks again... a mindless pursuit for when I'm tired and can't concentrate... 

Don't know what my plans are for the next 2 weeks... last week had lots of appointments... this week only has one listed so far. My yard is pretty much planted... I've been spreading seeds every couple of days and I know a few more perennials will follow me home throughout the summer.  The weather has cooperated a bit so I was able to take Elliott to a park last Tuesday... the one with the bulldozer you can rock back and forth on and the digger/scooper apparatus in the sand box ... Elliott ADORES anything construction related... and we hit the jackpot last Tuesday... sitting in the park, totally unattended (but thankfully locked)  was a small back hoe/digger... 

as you can see he was in awe of this beauty...there was no one else around so I let him crawl up on the tracks and stand in the bucket... if the doors hadn't been locked I know he'd have gotten inside it... he was greasy and dirty when we left the park but quite happy!

Hope you have a good week ahead... I do wish the world could get it acts together... my Grandma told me time moves faster the older you get... well I'm getting old mighty quick because it appears to me that things are getting worse at a much faster pace... and I DO NOT LIKE IT ONE BIT!!

I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts... enjoy the pretties over there...

happy stitching-

carol fun