and the Bradford pears have all traded their little white flowers in for bright green leaves. And the phlox in my little garden by the front door is a riot of purple:
I love this plant. I do nothing to it all year long, except maybe water it once in a while in the summer (when it is a pretty green ground cover). Then every spring it rewards me with all this color! And between it and the house I can see the beginnings of my Shasta daisies coming up. I love daisies; they are such cheerful flowers.
I am not much of a gardner; in fact, I would say I'm not a gardner at all, but these simple things bring a lot of joy. What doesn't bring so much joy is the mowing of the grass, which happened for the first time this season. It probably should have happened last week, but it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. And that meant it was even more necessary by yesterday. Thankfully, my husband set the height on the mower high enough that it left all my little yellow dandelions in my grass. I know, I know, they are supposedly noxious weeds, but I love the little things! They make me smile at their pretty yellow, especially when the grass is all so bright green, like this:
I love lots of color, no matter how bad a gardner I am, so sometimes I try to add color in ways that I can't kill, like this fun metal pinwheel (that doesn't actually spin so much, but is so cute!):
And of course, my colors aren't all just outside. I love lots and lots of color in my yarn too. I haven't succeeded in getting a lot of knitting or crocheting done lately, but I have made a couple of ponchos and am working on finishing a pair of socks. Speaking of riots of color, how cool are all these mini skeins?
Someday I hope they will be parts of a Beekeeper's Quilt (pattern can be found on Ravelry), cute, squooshy little hexagons of happiness.
What has been taking my time away from yarn lately? Well, it's books. I have to say, working in a library is just deadly if I am trying to keep my books-to-read list at some kind of reasonable size—say keeping it at only enough titles that I can read in this lifetime and not so many titles it will take me till the end of forever to read them all.
But reading is awesome. It's so fun to escape into another world for a little while. Sometimes that world looks a lot like a world I am familiar with, such as the newspaper newsroom world in Brad Parks' novels "Faces of the Gone" and "The Girl Next Door." Sometimes it's a world I can only imagine (and then make it up as I go along) such as in "The Hunger Games." And sometimes it just brings history to life, such as in "Pope Joan" or "1776."
I have read (or listened to, but have only listened to about five) 23 books since the beginning of January. It's been a long time since I've sat down and read that much, and I am loving it! No, I don't get to read all day because I work at the library, but I sure am reading a lot more than I have in a long time.
When was the last time you visited your local library and checked out a book to read? Has it been a while? Go! Visit. Check out a book (or several). Find a big shade tree, sit down under it and read. Escape. Have fun!
