Need sunshine and a hot fudge sundae on this Slow Sunday...

 Hello - as I start writing this, my plan is to be short and sweet... we'll see how that works out. (Spoiler alert... it isn't as short as I hope but not as long as it could have been).

 I'm starting out with whining, it is the mood I am in... sorry... and more whining is pretty evenly distributed in this post... but there are some bright spots too!

The last 2 weeks have not been very productive to my way of thinking... I've lost several days to not feeling well... each bout being a different body part that was rebelling.  Digestive tract, knees, hip, hand... good grief... I'm spending waaaay too much time just trying to hold everything together. And to add to that I had a colonoscopy and an endoscopy... YUCK!!   Results were exactly as I suspected... I have GERD... what can you do about it?  Eat a diet that doesn't aggravate it and take the meds you've been taking.

The weather has also been driving me nuts. The month of May came in cold and gray and rainy... then there were about 2 gorgeous days which had been running all over town hitting garden center after garden center after garden center  like a drunk on a binge... I got a ton of petunias and a new shelf display...

There are 20 different petunias on this shelf unit.., the shelf unit came from Hobby Lobby... it is metal ... I should spray it with polyurethane... its on my list of things to do... I like the size of it and the shelves flip up and the whole thing folds up so it will be easy to store in the garage over the winter.  Back to the petunias... love this pink one...

And next to this petunia is a tiny little fern... you can probably see it better if you enlarge the pic of the whole display. I've never seen tiny ferns like this before... it was $5  which in the scheme of things was a bargain plant this year. Individual fancy petunias are going for $5 to $8 each.  Its a good think I don't smoke drink gamble or do drugs... plants are pricey pricey pricey. 

Here's a look at some of my haul... 

There's 5 flats of those little zinnias I love to edge the beds with... they are the Profusion variety and I got 5 different colors. And I got a bunch of geraniums, orange and white... and coleus, I think 8 different varieties, and lobelia, and dusty miller and some other filler stuff and this and that. Yes I suffer greatly from FOMO... Fear of Missing Out. I want to take everything home with me!! And to exacerbate my condition I've already had 2 incidences where I went back for more a a particular plant and it was GONE... so no wonder I have FOMO. 

Here's some of the pots I've put together..

A mix of stuff including that Prince Tut papyrus and cannas and geraniums and petunias.

I did two like this, one for either side of the garage... 2 different orange petunias, cannas, and some blue lobelia. 

The lady on the front steps (and yes I complained the steps needed to be repainted last year... maybe Dan the Handyman can get to it this summer)... anyway the petunias are a color I've never seen ... it was called Cinnamon and it is beautiful. I probably should pinch it all back to make it bushier... perhaps in a day or two I will.  And I wish I remembered exactly which of the 6 nurseries I got these at... I think it was the one that is the farthest away from my house ... I'd really like one more plant... but it a 30 minute drive with a detour thrown in ( another rant... EVERYWHERE I've been in the last week has involved a road closure and a lengthy detour... I've driven more miles in the last week than in I usually do in a month!) ... Don't know that I'll make the trip.

As for the dahlias, well I have plenty to plant..

There are about 150 tubers here although I'm not certain that all are viable.  Its hard to tell through the plastic bags. I'm not happy with the dahlia bed results ... don't know if it was that brutal  cold spell this winter or if I shouldn't have had Dan the lawn kid put the extra mulch on the bed... I thought it would insulate it... but of the approximately 175 tubers I planted last year I have exactly 6 plants that are showing any signs of life.  I went out and dug around in the bed and couldn't find many tubers at all... a couple of mushy remnants at best.  I suppose this Fall I should dig them up instead of leaving them in the bed. Now I am seeing a bunch of the dahlias I left in the ground around the house showing signs of life, so that is good... and even some of my cannas are coming back... but not all of them... sigh.  And to add to my bad mood about gardening I'm having issues with deer eating petunias and geraniums this year... that's never happened before... I ordered some different repellents to spray as they seem to be immune to the stuff I used in the past.  Oh and they severely pruned my tree form hydrangea the other night too. I don't have a lot in the yard that they like... right now the yard is bursting with alliums which they hate... which is probably why they are eating the other stuff. 

So I'm chomping at the bit to get stuff in the ground... but today and tomorrow are pretty much non-stop rain and that isn't warming up the ground. I was doing some reading and dahlias like the ground to be around 60 degrees when you plant them... and zinnia seeds need a ground temp of 70 to germinate... and I bought a thermometer that can tell you how warm the ground is... and my soil is still cold... which I knew ... as even the window boxes I planted a month ago are barely taking off... it has just been too cold and wet and gray... sigh... 

In my crafty world things are also  not peak performance. I put down the Teresa Kogut Remember Me sampler and picked up the Sunnyside Sampler from The Drawn Thread. It is a smaller piece ( relative to the Remember Me sampler)  and I really thought I could power through it and perhaps get it finished by the end of May... not sure that is going to happen... here's where it stands...

I'm about half way done... and I would be closer to 2/3rd complete if not for this problem house...

It is the smallest house on the block... but it took  me 3 rounds of stitching and frogging and re-stitching to build it.  There is a large charting error so if you stitch this piece be sure to check that out... but the charting error really wasn't the cause of my problem... counting was... my first attempt had me 2 stitches off... too much to fudge on this piece as there is only one or two stitches between each house. My next attempt had me one stitch off and I thought about leaving it alone, but it would have thrown off the alphabet at the bottom for the rest of the piece and my OCD couldn't take that. I'm also finding myself changes a bunch of the flosses for this piece. I'm using the DMC conversion which isn't great IMHO... and so I find myself looking for a lighter or darker shade of the proposed color. I'm making a lot of notes since I fear I may put this in time out and then I'll never figure out what I did.  I picked it up last night for a couple of hours and so far so good...no frogging.

And next Sunday is Mother's Day... and I always treat myself to a brand new guilt free start that weekend. My dilemma is I don't know what I want to start...right now I have it narrowed down to 2  choices... 

Primitive Lady by Ewe and Ewe and Friends..

This is an oldie but goodie I found in my stash... I even had the floss and some linen in the envelope... but I don't like the linen and I'm going to change some of the flosses. If you enlarge the picture you can see the lady is a red head and her hair is all french knots... very curly... like a certain stitcher I know well...LOL

My second choice is also an oldie but goodie but it just arrived at my house this week...

a reprint of Prairie Schooler's Garden Samplers... I like the two on the right hand side... I went and got all the DMC flosses  and I have linen I can dye or paint for these... and there is such comfort in stitching Prairie Schooler that I might not have anything to whine about... hmmm... I may be onto something here... Right now I'm attracted to long narrow samplers as I'm running out of wall space in my humble abode but there are still a few narrow spots I could tuck in a finished piece... and yes I know this is crazy thinking but it does make me happy... and we can all use as much happy as we can get our hands on!!

Well I was going to wrap up this post with a bit of my Spring/ bird decor but right now technology is not cooperating.  I submitted to doing updates on my computer and my phone the other day and I've had nothing but problems every since. Things were just fine they way they were for me... grrrr..... I'm sure that as soon as I hit publish the pictures I'm waiting for will appear... sigh...

Anyway I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts and go spend some time there seeing what others are up to... that should improve my mood.  I see a peek of sunlight but the weather radar has a nasty looking blob of rain headed this way in an hour or so... Perhaps I'll head to my basement sewing studio and cheer myself up with some quilt blocks... there are two new to me tulip blocks I'd like to play with... need to focus on positivity ...arrgghh... for some reason Blogger has decided that positivity is mis-spelled... which is making it very hard to be positive... and since I don't drink I suppose I could go drown my sorrows in a hot fudge sundae...  where are my car keys??

happy stitching-

carol fun 

Positivityi