Happy birthday Alli!!!

Check out my new garden gnome......and his hat glows at night!

It's been a week here already.  Ralph has been battling low blood sugar since this weekend, and Monday I had to call the paramedics to revive him - not the way to start the week for either of us (I love our First Responders!!!)   He's still on a roller coaster with his blood sugar, and I don't really know why.  

Summer is here!  It feels like we, once again, skipped Spring.  We had 94 degrees here this week.  That did mean that it was beautiful here for Easter - which was great because I had a houseful of dogs and people that could escape outside.  Ronna, Joe, Jeff, Kirby, and Dave came for Easter, along with Oscar, Lily, Molly, Grute, and Max.  A full house for sure!

We went for a couple of walks with the dogs.  The field is full of wildflowers, and the creek is full of tadpoles.

My newest project (not like I needed a new one, but...)  This will hopefully go together quickly.  I'm planning it for a 'retirement' present for Alli's one-on-one aide.  Alli will be leaving the program in June, and she's had Karen for at least the last 6 years to take care of her.

Here's how the garden is going - 6 tomato plants in...

Sugar snap peas in the back (grown from seed in the garden bed), asparagus beans and tomatillas (grown from seed) in the next row, green beans in the next row (just seeds right now) and a ton of lemon cucumber plants (most grown from seed in the greenhouse).

Eggplants in the back (the ones on the left are grown from seed), green peppers, jalapeno peppers,  lettuce seeds, and lettuce, chard and kale in the front.

The family is in for Easter weekend - 4 extra dogs, 1 extra cat and 5 extra people.  Whew!  We took most of the dogs on a long walk yesterday, and the wildflowers are blooming in the field.

Yesterday was a perfect Spring day - and I played hooky from work (just a couple hours though....) and picked up some tomatoes and peppers.  

I had a whole bed of volunteer tomatoes this year...

My sweet peas are still doing good.

And the lettuce, spinach and chard that I planted earlier this Spring.

We lost a good friend last night....We had Jasper put down.  She was 14 1/2 years old....RIP Jasper

Finished!  I (finally) finished hand-sewing the binding on this quilt.  I think it took less time for me to make the quilt top than it did for me to sew the binding.  This is for AJ's friend Wes that is getting married in June - the first of his buddies to get married.  AJ is in the wedding, and his friend Jeff is the best man.  AJ helped pick out the quilt pattern and the fabric.

We had actual Spring last weekend!  Sunny weather, around 75 degrees...perfect!  We are now, once again, back in the 'real Spring' of Shasta County - wind and rain, but last weekend was perfect!  

Dave came down, and and I put him to work.  He and Alex did a green-waste run for me. I have at least two more runs to do, but it took forever for them to do just one run - the dump was backed up because everyone else was doing the same thing.  There is still a lot of clean-up from our 'snow-mageddon' that we had in February, so the green-waste area is a hopping place.

My peas are popping up too!  The seeds I planted in the greenhouse aren't doing that great, but I will have some lemon cucumbers I can plant, I think.  Most of the seeds didn't germinate (bad seeds??? some of them were pretty old....)

The trees are blooming....

And my lavender plant is starting to bloom - the bees were all over it!

Alex and I painted the heads again

And our big project on Sunday was gluing rocks in the fountain.  The rocks under the waterfall had all fallen down over the last couple of years, so Alex waded into the pond, and I put glue on rocks and handed them to him (after hauling all the rock over.....good thing I'm working out!)  The fountain looks much better now!

New haircut!!!