it's still summer

Hello, friends! 

I know Labor Day weekend signifies the final hoorah of summer, but I like to keep in mind that we have another three more weeks of this beautiful season.

Give me all the days of warmth, sunshine, bright flowers, and patio sitting.

I would never get tired of spending Sunday mornings barefoot on the patio with my iced coffee and newspaper (it's the only day we get the paper).

My pots of veggies have been giving us beautiful tomatoes...

and I just harvested the first of our red onions. (Why are they called red onions if they're more purple? 🤷)

Evening walks to the lake to see the sunset are a bonus to living in this neighborhood, but the sunsets are getting earlier by the day. I hate having to close the blinds in the house at 7:30 now. Though in the throes of winter, I'll only be wishing the sunset were as late as 7:30. Aack, my mind can't even go there.

Our little town had their annual weekend fest in August, which always ends in a fabulous fireworks show over the lake. Thousands of people from all over come to see these fireworks. We stay home and watch them from our side yard. I don't like crowds or loud noises. Truth be told, I'm not a fan of fireworks in general because of the trauma from the noise to our veterans, cats and dogs who are usually terrified from the noise, and the terror and damage to wildlife. I saw online that some cities are choosing to do drone or laser light shows, and I'm all for that.

My birthday is in August, too and we spent the day in Chicago. One of the places I wanted to visit was St Michael Church in "Old Town". I'm not Catholic, but this place is rich in history and architecture, so I wanted to see it. It's one of the only handful of buildings that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. 

The interior was breathtaking. I got goosebumps when I walked in and saw this view.

Two violinists and a celloist were playing soft music, as they were getting ready for a funeral service.

It's been so dry here in Illinois this summer. The leaves on the neighbor's maple tree are already turning red on the top. And this photo was taken at the end of August! Way too early, that's for sure. There's also dried leaves all over our property. Another sign of dryness. I love the low humidity, but we desperately need rain.

It's supposed to be in the 90's the next few days, so we'll be firing up the grill tomorrow. I'm going to make a mayo-free potato salad. Not sure which recipe but it's between this French potato salad or this dill pickle potato salad. Either of one of them perfect for summer.

PS: totally unrelated subject, but for those of you who do your own blog header, especially if it's photographs, what photo site do you use? I'm more interested in a free one, but haven't had any luck with a Google search. I used to love PicMonkey, but it's no longer free and I wouldn't really use it except to change my blog header once in awhile. Would that be worth it?Thanks for any suggestions.

Have a fantastic 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.

💓

august simple pleasures

Oh, how I love summer. It's just not long enough here in Illinois. Sun-filled days that light up my home; making tomato galette from farm fresh tomatoes (though the small ones are San Marzanos that we're growing); being grateful for kind neighbors who bring me peaches from their peach trees; dining alfresco at socially distanced restaurant tables; birds cooing at us from high wires while we take our evening walks around the neighborhood; spying a hot air balloon in the sky while riding in the car, wondering how carefree the people in the balloon must feel; visiting the hens, roosters and turkeys at a local farm; ending a beautiful summer day by walking down to the lake and watching the sun set.

*************
I have to throw in here that I hate the new Blogger format! It's different every time I write a post and unfortunately, more frustrating each time, too. Why did they have to change what was working just fine and why is it not user friendly?!

these strange days ~ and spring things

These days are now like a blur, one running into the next, not even sure what day of the week it is. I went grocery shopping yesterday and it left me feeling disheartened. It was like being in a strange sci-fi movie. People were like zombies. No one was making eye contact or even smiling. There were no sounds of conversation. All I heard was the music over the speakers. I got home, scrubbed my hands, unloaded my groceries, wiped down what items I could with a Clorox wipe, disinfected my countertop, fridge handle and door knobs, and washed my hands again. Then it was off to the vet with Clementine. She needed routine blood tests and a general exam to monitor her kidney disease. Another bizarre sign of the times where the vet tech comes out to the car and takes the pet into the animal clinic while you wait in the car. 

We had beautiful weather last weekend, so we worked in the yard, raking out the garden beds of all the leaves and sticks and dead matter that accumulates over the winter. I cut down all the perennials, too. You can see the lilac bush to the right, starting to sprout green buds.

This is my small herb garden at the back of the house ~ and all the dead stuff I raked out. It's amazing how much accumulates over the winter. Of course, a lot of it was the dead mint stalks, too. The chives and mint and red leaf sorrel come back every year. I think the thyme might be coming back, too ~ I saw some little leaves.

On to the butterfly garden. I raked all this out and cut down the phlox, purple coneflower and black-eyed Susan. See how there's a border in the front of the garden with holes in the ground? That's where we had buried colored wine bottles, neck down to make a pretty border many years ago. Then we had filled in the border area with small landscaping rocks around the wine bottles. Over the years, the rocks have found their way out of the border and wood chips and moss have moved in.

I pulled out all the wine bottles and we soaked them in a tub of soapy water and scrubbed the dirt off. Brian will dig up the border area and we'll start all over with the wine bottles. We don't want to fill in the area around the bottles  with rocks again though. Not sure what we'll do.

 Another spring project we got done last weekend was cleaning off the patio and setting up the patio furniture that had been covered up all winter. We didn't unbox the cushions for the seating yet though because the weather is still too rainy. And Brian will eventually power wash the patio, too. The patio looks so bare with just the furniture sitting there and no plants and flowers, but hopefully soon!

 I love seeing all the perennials coming back to life...

 the tangled mess of clematis...

lilac buds that remind me of miniature grape hyacinth...

hostas that first look like asparagus...

rhubarb (can't wait to make a rhubarb-strawberry crisp!)...

and how cool is this reviving peony?

I'm still taking my daily walks down to the lake, though I've missed a couple of days here and there due to either rain or laziness. A few evenings ago when Brian and I were walking, the sky was still that perfect blue and the almost-full moon was like a beacon.

So peaceful at the lake.

Indoors, not much has changed for spring except the mantel. 

I love the combination of pussy willows and daffodils in this blue and white pitcher.

That's about it around here. Hope you all are safe and well and hanging in there. These are trying times ~ physically and mentally ~ for many.