beautiful may

I think May has officially become my favorite month. The weather in northeast IL is just about perfect this time of year. We've had abundant sunshine with low humidity interspersed with rain and cool days. May in this part of the country brings the start of farmer's markets, art and craft fairs, the opening of garden centers, setting up outdoor spaces and dining al fresco, working in the yard, planting flowers and vegetables, and the official start of grilling season.  

Before I show you what's going on outdoors at Comfy House, I want to introduce my latest house plant. This is a philodendron micans. I'd never seen this variety of phildendron before and fell in love with the color of the leaves, especially when the sunlight is shining through them. I found this plant at an art and craft show. Two young women run a plant business out of their home, which I thought was really cool. 

We got a "new" patio set on FB Marketplace at the end of April. I have it set up in a different way right now; this is when we first brought it home. Our old settee was literally falling apart and we didn't want our glass and metal dining table anymore. It's usually just the two of us dining al fresco and the table took up too much room. We did keep the two white wicker rockers (not shown) from the old set ~ those were still usable and gives us more seating options.

Early May is when perennials and trees truly burst into bloom around here. It's like Mother Nature's gift to us after putting up with five - six loong, dreary, cold months. 

{Celandine poppy}

{bleeding heart}

{bishop's cap}

{not my redbud tree ~ a neighbor-friend's ~ but wish I had one)

Right now, our wiegala bushes are in beautiful bloom...

Pink peonies are about to burst open...

Clematis should be budding anyday now, too. This and the peony bush are right next to each other and when they are in full bloom at the same time, it's breathtaking!

I really need to harvest this rhubarb (it is massive right now) and bake something. The past two years I relied on making a rhubarb-strawberry crisp, but this year I'd like to change it up. A friend happened to recently post these rhubarb recipes on social media and I thought they both looked yummy and different from the same ol' traditional rhubarb desserts. Give them a try with me!

Rhubarb Scones

Brown Sugar Rhubarb Cookies

Made our spring trip to one of our favorite garden centers last week.

I never plan out my gardening. I simply buy what appeals to me when I see it and hope for the best. Somehow, it always works. This time I got gerbera daisies, coleus, impatiens, nasturtium, trailing ivy, basil, rosemary, parsley, cilantro, dill, tomato plants, a purple beauty pepper plant, a red onion plant, a hanging basket of calibrochea and a hanging basket of passion flower vine.

Got a few of the bigger planters done ~ here's one that I did with nasturium and gerbera daisy. It'll look much better when it fills out and that nasturium starts blooming. By the way, see those little seedlings on the red bench? They are elm seeds and they fall by the ton. They coat our driveway, sidewalk, porch, patio, patio furniture, and plants and clog our gutters. I could leaf blow 10x/day and it wouldn't make a difference. It's like shoveling while it's still snowing.

The coleus and impatiens got planted (by Brian ~ he does most of the planting-in-the-ground stuff) on the shady north side of our house, just past the mass of ferns, in-between the hostas. Again, when these flowers fill out, this area will look much better.

Our little veggie garden all in pots. It's the only space in our small yard where we get full sun, as we're surrounded by trees.

May, for me, also brought me good news with the stray kitty, Smokey. I was able to easily get him into a carrier (he's such a sweetheart!) and brought him into Save-a-Pet. They will fully vet him, including neutering, and then he will be adoptable. When I inquired about him the other day, the intake woman said he was still very nervous and that they were cleaning his wounded ears three times a day. She said she'd keep me posted about his progress. I miss seeing him every day and feeding him, but I know this is for the best ~ not only for him, but for our community; especially since he wasn't neutered.

Now to have the same kind of luck with Blanco, the feral. After almost a year of taking care of him, I still can only get about three feet away from him before he bolts. I will be using a live trap to try and catch him. I have a feeling it's not going to be easy. He's also not neutered, so it makes me wonder how many kittens there's going to be roaming around soon. And so the cycle continues. 😢

Lastly, another good thing May brings is graduation ceremonies. My youngest niece graduated university last week with a major in Psychology and a minor in Sociology. She's now going on for her Master's degree is Social Work. I'm so proud of her!

Hope the month of May has been beautiful for you, too.

fast forward

Just eleven days ago on my blog, I was saying how cold and wet it was here and that spring was late. Guess I'd better be careful what I wish for: this week we fast-forwarded right to summer with temps in the 90's all week! Crazy Illinois...30's and 40's one week with the heat on, and the next week so hot that the AC is cranked.

I am not complaining about the heat, mind you. I love warm weather and sunshine. It's just that it's too early here for it to be so hot (we set some record temps for this time of year) and we totally skipped the 60's and 70's. BUT. We'll get those temps next week, so all is good.

Brian had the day off a couple of days ago and we hit three garden centers; two of which are my all-around favorites that I look forward to going to every spring. We're behind about two weeks because of the weather and now we have a ton of yard work and planting to do.

Aren't these hanging chenille plants cool? I didn't buy one but I'm thinking twice about it. I might go back and get one. I came home with a variety of herbs, daisies, coleus, lupine, and tomato and pepper plants.

At my other favorite garden center, I was hoping they had black and blue salvia. I bought it from the same garden center a couple of years ago, put it in a pot on my front porch, and it grew to be about two feet tall. The black and purple (don't know why it's called blue!) blossoms were so beautiful, almost iridescent. The blossoms attracted the hummingbirds and it was wonderful to be sitting on the porch and have the hummingbirds be right there.

I was in luck. They had my plants! We bought three of them and picked up another two for my friend who wanted some, too.

We worked in the yard for several hours that afternoon and yes, we were soaked with sweat as you can tell by Brian's shirt. You can see one of the salvia plants in a pot on the ground. That sidewalk area is going to be professionally landscaped next week. We desperately need some help! The landscapers will also be putting in yew bushes along the sloped area behind Brian, with small boulders in front of them. The area with the straw blanket had hostas in it, but they looked terrible there. Brian dug them out and seeded the area.

With this heat, everything has now exploded into bloom. Remember how the beginning of the movie, The Wizard of Oz is in sepia tones and then later explodes into color? That's what it's like here. 

I was driving down our street today and marveling at the canopy of green the entire way. When it's been seven months since you've seen that, you don't take it for granted.

Just two years ago, we planted three small ferns that a friend gave to us from his yard. This year, the ferns multiplied and spread wonderfully on the shady side of the house. I'll be planting the coleus in this area for color. Then we'll spread a fresh layer of mulch.

Not kidding, just a few days ago, this peony wasn't even halfway up the metal cage. Today it's towering over the top of the cage and has blossoms on it already. So amazing how fast it grows!

CLEMENTINE

My sweet girl, Clementine loves to join me on the porch in the mornings, but I have to stick right by her or she'll take off. 

She's still hanging in there with her kidney disease and her gums being swollen where she lost an upper fang in early February. The vet dentist had said it would only be a few weeks to a few months until the gums became infected (and then there'd be nothing we could do...and of course, we would not let her suffer, so we would have her euthanized at home)...but, so far so good with just inflammation and no infection. 

I know her health could take a turn for the worse any day now, so I give her all the attention and love I can. I pretty much have always done so, being an animal lover, but I think now I'm  more cognizant of the limited time I have with her.

Have a wonderful weekend! 💖

Trying to catch up

Hi there! Sorry I was gone for so long again. Blogging seems different to me lately. I'm finding more and more bloggers are "doing their thing" on Instagram instead of keeping up with their blogs and it's easy to understand why. Posting one photo and a blurb takes a few minutes versus a blog post that can take at least an hour by the time you're done uploading and editing photos and writing a post. I sometimes simply lose my writing mojo, too.

Yard work continues around Comfy House. Brian recently finished cutting down a bunch of dead tree branches that were overhanging the fence. Not our trees, nor our fence. This is the neighbor with the dreaded mulberry tree. We desperately need some professional help with landscaping this year. We have a huge bare spot in back of our house where we had a lilac bush dug out last year. It runs most of the back of our house where there's barely any sun. We can't even get grass to grow there. We also need some landscaping done on both sides of the sidewalk (we tried ourselves - and failed) and we'd like to have bushes planted in front of our house. We need a load of fresh dirt spread under the arborvitae trees that line our back yard. We've had a couple of landscapers out here for estimates but they didn't work out. Another is coming tomorrow afternoon. They have excellent online reviews so we're crossing our fingers.

May is one of my favorite months. The landscape is finally lush and green and beautiful and all the plants are coming to life. The weather is still fickle...daytime temps can be anywhere from the high 40's - low 80's and you never know if it's going to be sunny or rainy. We've grilled twice and patio season has started - hooray!

Some plants around my yard right now ~

Bleeding Heart...

Ferns...

Bishops Cap...

Peonies about to burst open...

Celandine Poppy...

Hostas lining the walkway to the patio...

I made my first trip of the year to a favorite garden center last week.

It's still a bit early for there to be much to choose from, as far as annuals go. You can see that they start all their annuals from seed and that a lot of plants are just now growing.

So all I came home with were some lettuces (which have doubled in size since last week) and a couple of herbs. 

I normally don't buy a lot of plants at the big box stores, but the other day I was grabbing a few groceries and there was a Home Depot in the same shopping center. I stopped in to look around and found daisies ~ one of my favorites. I only grabbed two plants, thinking I'd plant them in a smaller planter, but the plants were too big. My neighbor-friend just passed along this lovely planter to me, so it was perfect for the daisies. I need just one more to fill in the area in the back of the planter.

Now for the not-so-fun stuff. I mentioned in my last post that we were busy with some projects, one of which was some updates in the kitchen. We are still looking for a general contractor. A good one is hard to find! The one we thought we were going to use turned out where they hardly do any of the work themselves; they simply suggested other businesses that could do each job. We do not want to hire five different contractors just for some kitchen updates! Another contractor that was supposed to stop by a couple of days ago to give us an estimate simply didn't show up. I didn't receive a phone call, email or text - nothing. 

We decided to start with something easy - a new ceiling fan in the kitchen. I know some people don't like ceiling fans in kitchens, but we happen to love having one in there. I do a lot of cooking, plus this is where family and friends tend to congregate, as the kitchen truly is the "heart of the home". In the warm months, the extra breeze from the fan is a big plus. We've never had a problem with grease on the fan. We hired an electrician because we needed some other electrical work done in the house, as well. We went out and bought a ceiling fan we thought would work, but dummy us didn't measure how far down the fan would hang. Turns out this fan is 1) way too low, 2) way too dark for our kitchen and 3) way too bright since the light is LED and we don't have a dimmer switch. And...we still have dead zones around the kitchen with one big LED light, so we need recessed lighting in the ceiling, too. So now we are stuck with a fan we hate until we find another one. The electrician said we should get one that comes with a remote where we can control the brightness of the light or else he can install a dimmer switch on another type of fan. We also obviously need a flush mount fan. And I think a white one would be best. Of course, the big box stores don't have anything like this in stock. It would have to be special ordered. Who would've thunk that something as simple as a ceiling fan could get so complicated?

The excitement doesn't stop there. When the electrician was up in the attic, he found torn screening hanging down from the center of the attic ceiling and a big pile of dead leaves. He said it looked like we had a nest of squirrels in there over the winter! We couldn't believe it. We haven't heard a thing overhead...no scratching or scurrying. And Brian was understandably upset because a neighbor-friend who's a roofer just did some minor repairs on our roof last fall. So these naughty rodents must've chewed through something to get into the attic. Brian got on the phone to an exterminator right away and they're coming out tomorrow morning. We also recently discovered - via our cat Monkey - that we have mice in the basement. Oh, the joys of home ownership! Now that we're *ahem*, getting older, I am starting to see why people move into townhouses or condos when they retire. Sometimes all this upkeep is just too much.

(sunset on our neighborhood lake)

Thanks for hanging in there with me and my sporadic blogging as of late. Hope you all are doing well and staying healthy and safe.

💓

spring garden planning

This spring has been so fickle. I thought for sure that our wet, cold (and even snowy) April would bring warmer temps and drier weather for May. That hasn't come true, so far. It's been mostly chilly, damp, and rainy. I feel like we'll never get the yard cleaned up and mowed, garden beds mulched and flowers planted. The positive side: everything is so green now!

 Can't wait to make a strawberry-rhubarb crisp with my own rhubarb.

Clematis has really taken off, but right now it looks like a tangled mess. Pretty soon it'll have huge, purple flowers.

Peony about to bloom...

This past Tuesday after physical therapy (which is going OK...slower progress than expected, but no surprise there...it always is for me!), I stopped by the garden center even though it was barely 50 degrees with whipping winds. I wanted to see what was available right now to plant in flower pots and perhaps pick up some herbs. I was walking around with pots of basil and cilantro in my hands and one of the garden employees said to me, "I hope you're not planning on planting those right now!" She said it was still too cold for the basil. I asked about the cilantro and she said it was too windy. Sigh. I put the plants back. No use in buying anything right now and then having to keep it in the garage.

 Every spring on my first visit to a garden center, I get a little excited and want to buy every plant and flower I see. The adult version of a kid in a candy store.

Who can blame me when there's all these bright, beautiful colors?

 Gerbera daisies - one of my favorites.

And beautiful, romantic dahlias.

I've been thinking about what I want to do for Zippo's memorial garden. When we had Zippo put down last November in our home via mobile vet, Brian buried him in our back yard. It's a spot close to the back pine trees, near the composting bin and by the neighbor's fence. It's a bare, weedy spot, so needs a lot of work. In the meantime, I ordered this plaque on etsy.

I was thinking Forget-Me-Nots would be appropriate for the memorial garden...

 and perhaps some catmint, too.

There was another day that I visited a couple of nearby antique shops during their garden days spring sale. I poked around, outdoors and in...

and ended up coming home with this.

I haven't decided yet where I'm going to use it outdoors (hung on the fence?) or what I'm going to do with it, but it's all part of the spring garden planning that's going on.

Well, I wrote most of this post yesterday - Thursday - and today when I got up, I was happy to see the sun was shining. Granted, it's only 43 degrees, but I'll take the sunshine and dry weather after so much rain. I read that the farmers are behind in planting because of the flooded fields, so I shouldn't complain about not being able to plant flowers just yet.

Have a wonderful weekend!