It's Too Hot to Bloom!

Summer in the Central Valley of California is hot.  Did I say hot?  I think I meant to say SCORCHING!  

 Needless to say, all the flowers are in survival mode.  Not much blooming going on, plus I've been out of commission for about 2 1/2 weeks with this illness.  Things have been a wee bit neglected.  I've even lost a few container plants, but I still have a few. 

Wanna' see?

Ivy and coleus that will go back and live at my school when it starts again in about three weeks.

Asparagus fern and verbena - not blooming I'm afraid.

Yeah!  Blooms!  This is lantana near the kitchen garden.

Yarrow in the kitchen garden.  Isn't this a gorgeous color?  I picked it up at Walmart.  

Cosmos and zinnia and you might be able to see the asters too.  These are also in the kitchen garden.  I can't believe how crazily these have taken off.  (Hey, don't look too close - they need some deadheading - BIG TIME!)

Nasturtium - I know these are edible but I've been too chicken to try them yet.  They've also been grown in the kitchen garden organically.  Have you ever eaten these?  They are supposed to be kind of peppery.  What did you think?  Did you eat the leaves or blooms or both?

Purtiful! (I do like to make up my own words.)  This is a lemon sunflower.  

I kind of like it - A LOT!  Can you tell?

This is our lemon tree on our back patio.  It nearly died this past winter.  It's now starting to thrive and the crazy thing just bloomed.  Don't know if we'll get any lemons this year, but is sure is getting healthier.  It's sibling the tangerine tree isn't doing nearly as well.  I put variegated vinca minor in with the lemon tree.  It looks so pretty cascading out of the pot and has such sweet little purple flowers in the spring.  

And here's how my cherry fairy garden is doing.  Our two other fairy gardens aren't doing quite as well.  I think I might need to move them - too much shade maybe.  

I hope you enjoyed your little visit to the parts of my gardens I'm not too embarrassed to show you.  :)

I hope you can come back and visit another day.   Please feel free to buzz on in any time!  

Oh dear!  I got my post and linked and I forgot to link back to Tootsie Time.  Boy I am out of practice for blogging! So here goes.....

Please come join the party over at Tootsie Time and show off your bloomers - um, I mean blooms!

Well On the Mend.....

Again, dear friends, thank you so much for you encouraging words and prayers.  It has meant so much to me and my family.

Today, I went to an oncologist because my primary doctor was concerned about my not improving and enlarged lymph nodes.  In fact, he said the dreaded words to me, it could be lymphoma.  So I've been praying and just staying positive and working on feeling better, which I do.  I would say I'm now at about 90% of normal.  I didn't want to say exactly where I was going because I didn't know anything yet and I felt like I didn't want to raise the big alarm when there might have been no need.

So today, the oncologist really believes I have had some sort of viral infection and he said he would bet BIG $ that it is not what we have been afraid it might be.  I will have to go back for additional testing to make sure, but I am feeling so much better.

Thank you friends!  I believe your prayers and kind words have helped me get through this time.  

 

Getting Better

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your kind words and prayers.  I am slowly getting better, but we still don't know the root cause.  So on Tuesday, I am going to a specialist.  Please continue to keep my small family in your prayers.  I am so grateful for all of you out there.

Where have I been?

Well, I have been sick, very sick, for a week now.  Appendicitis was suspected, but I don't have that.  Then diverticulitis, but I don't appear to have that, so now we're looking at more testing.  Please keep us in your prayers.  I would so appreciate it.  When I know more I'll let you know.

Blessings,

    

There's a Buzz in the Air.....

This is the buzzing season for me.  I have time to really sit and think about subtle changes to make around Sweet Bee Cottage.  I can look at magazines and blogs for inspiration and then actually do something about it. 

Here's just one change I did today.  Just moved some furniture from one room to another.  Thought some additional seating in the living room might be nice.  

These "new" chairs came from my dining room/sunroom.

That Fabulous Phyllis sewed the seat cushions for me.  I found a matelasse bedspread from JCPenney's and used some blue fabric I found at Home Fabrics and she sewed up a storm.  These match my reading chair in the sunroom.  

We installed a skylight in here a few years ago.  This room really needed light and WAS so depressing on a bright summer day.  What a difference!  Plus I love to sit in the living room on a rainy day and watch the rain fall on the skylight.  It's fun to watch the stars through it too.  

So....

what do you think?  Now we can comfortably seat six adults in here.  I'm still not 100% sure about it - I'll have to see how the traffic flows.  I'm thinking about moving a couple of other pieces around in here to help the flow of traffic.  

Well now thanks for buzzing in today.  It's a wee bit cooler here today but 103 degrees tomorrow. YIKES!  I better stock up on the lemonade and salad greens.  By this time next week though we're supposed to be back down to the mid 90s.  Trust me - that's a pleasant summer temperature here.

Hope you're finding a way to stay cool today.

Open Up! ME is at the Door!

Now you know you might have a serious ME problem if all your sets of keys have ME key rings.  Hello world.....it's me, Sweet Bee......and I have a serious ME problem.

House keys.....

School keys.....

School lanyard.....

Want to see more?  

Buzz on over to Cherry Chick 

for

Thanks for stopping by!

Wearing My Pink on My Sleeve (er...Wrist)

Happy Pink Saturday!

I might have mentioned before that our home does not have a lot of pink (unless you count Baby Bee's room) but I do love to wear pink.

So today I'm sharing with you some of my favorite pink bracelets.

But first, you must feast your eyes on this lovely dresser scarf.  My dear friend, Lynne, sent it to me.  We met through a Valentine's Swap and just hit it off marvelously.  She is so sweet and sends us little treats every so often.  (Shhhh - don't tell her but I'm working on something for her right now.)

Aren't the flowers a lovely shade of pink?

I photographed all my bracelets on this dresser scarf.  

Doesn't it make a sweet little background?

Have to confess, nothing special behind this bracelet, but I do like the hinged bangle and the silvery and pink flowers on it.

This bracelet is from my friend's, the Fabulous Phyllis's, shop.  Very simple but it can really dress up an outfit.

Now this bracelet I made.  

It's on a stretchy cord and it's the first time I tried to do a double set of beads.  I was very proud of this bracelet.  It has a nice sparkle.

This last bracelet is the most precious.  Baby Bee made this one for me a couple of summers ago.  I think she used every pink bead she could get her hands on and I love it!

I hope you enjoyed your little visit to our cottage.  What a treat it is to see that you came by.  

And thank you, of course, to the lovely Beverly from How Sweet the Sound for hosting this wonderful celebration of all things PINK!

Simple Pleasures

Today really feels like the first day of summer vacation.  

No swim lessons.  

No swim practice.  

No meetings.  

Just time to do what we want.

Baby Bee and I were taking a little tour of our kitchen garden and we spied an enormous zucchini that we missed harvesting.  

These are all flowers I grew from seed in my kitchen cutting garden.  Sunflowers, lime green zinnias, bells of Ireland, cosmos, and double ruffled cosmos.

We picked a little bouquet while we were on our tour too. 

 All of these things brought to mind one of my favorite books of all time.

Do any of you have this book?  

It was published in 1992 and I bought it when Worker Bee and I had not been married very long.  What is so interesting to me is to see how these 101 simple pleasures have not changed that much from then until today......

Susan at Ash Tree Cottage just blogged this week about sleeping out under the stars.  We don't have fireflies in California, but when we visit family in Kentucky or Minnesota I could spend hours watching the fireflies.

And how many of us enjoyed the fireworks we saw on the Fourth of July?  

And how many of us want those beautiful blooming window boxes?

And next year I vow to grow morning glories and have one of my birdhouses on a pole in my garden.

Can you see this ginormous zucchini?  They grow crooked!

So here is our simple pleasure for today.  We will be making chocolate zucchini bread from this book and some chocolate chip cookies from Becky's recipe for chocolate chip cookies at Sweet Cottage Dreams.

Simple pleasures......


What are some of yours?

Today I'll be joining the party at Cindy's Show and Tell at My Romantic Home.  Hope you can stop by and visit some of the other participants.

If you are interested in this book, it's available from Amazon here.

Cherry Fairy Garden

Had to share my latest project with all you sweet Rednesday folks!

I made a Cherry Fairy Garden!  

If you want to read all about it just click here.

Thanks Sue for hosting the reddest party in Blogland at It's a Very Cherry World.

(Doesn't that sound like the best amusement park ever? I can just imagine rides like the Tilt-o-Cherry Danish and the Cherry Swirl.)

Please stop by to see all the other fun Rednesday posts today!

Sweet Bee & Baby Bee's Fairy Gardens

Have you ever wondered what a fairy garden might look like?

Well Baby Bee and I were inspired by Brenda over at Cozy Little House to create our own in the hopes that some fairies might come for a visit.  We decided to create three gardens  - with more on the way undoubtedly - and we had so much fun.  

First we have

Baby Bee's Flower Fairy Garden.....

We started with this unfinished birdhouse.  She wanted it to have a thatched apple green roof.  I was stumped for a few days as to how we could accomplish this......

 but I eventually thought of using pine needles or branches from our coastal redwoods.  So we trimmed the ends of some branches, cut off one side of the little branch and then glued them to the roof, like this.....

Then came the paint.....

From there we used an old galvanized planter and put the garden together.

We used zinnias, some baby tears, some Scotch moss, and a purple potato vine.

Honestly, I'm not sure if everything will survive together, but it looks pretty for right now.

Now the fun part - accessorizing!

The fairies have a little bathtub with a mossy rock to stand on.  The fence is for some privacy.  We still plan to make a little towel for the fairies and put up a welcome sign for them.

The next garden we made was a 

Beach Fairy Garden.....

This is planted with some more Scotch moss and a succulent.  Yeah, we'll see how these survive too, but again, I like the way they look together.  This just has a little house and I found some tumbled glass that reminded me of beach glass so in it went.  We might need to add a little to this, but we haven't found quite the right things yet.  A little beach lounge chair would be so cute.  

The last garden we made was a

Cherry Fairy Garden.......

This is planted with baby tears, a coleus, and another succulent.  I lined part of the edge with these ME cherries that were just being stored in a bag in the hall closet.  Then I found a little miniature hutch that I painted red and white.  It's a good squint paint job.  (If you squint at it, it looks good.  Not squinting, it doesn't look quite as good, so by all means please squint at it.)  Maybe someday I'll make some little teeny tiny dishes out of clay to put in it.

I lined it with these black rocks and I added a little pitcher that I painted cherries on.  I planted it in an old white and red enamel dishpan.

Dear Worker Bee is even thinking of making his own fairy garden - Fairy Vegas!  Yes, his humor is slightly warped but he's definitely worth keeping.

My nieces, Reader Bee and Cutter Bee want to make some too.  We're even talking about making some for Baby Bee's 10th birthday - which won't be until February 2011!  

If you have the least little desire to make one of these - DO IT!  Our imaginations just went wild with these and we had so much fun.  Almost everything we used were things we had on hand. 

Hmmm....I'm already buzzing with ideas for more gardens.....

Thank you so much for stopping in.  Be sure to let me know if you make one of these - I'd love to see it! And I'll let you know if any fairies stop in for a visit.