Iced Tea Chat: Suddenly Summer

 

Hello dears, do come in.  Today I can offer you iced tea with lemon or mint or lemonade with mint, lemon slices, or strawberries to float in the lemonade.  Let's sit here on the porch for a bit and enjoy the breeze.  I know it's rather balmy outdoors just now, but it's so good to see and feel the sunshine after the rainy, cloudy days we've had.  Besides, you can get a better view of my garden.

 planter at the edge of the steps      

a close-up of the tiny little begonias.

I planted this pot about two months or so ago and it's taken off just lovely.  The Dusty Miller wintered over from last year.  While I lost plants over winter, this one plant hung on and then it came into it's glory and grew and grew.  I've added in a coleus, which has to be one of my absolute favorite annual plants, simply because it's pest resistant, colorful even when not in flower, and loves being pinched back.  All that pinching back nets me new plants that I root and move to other spots all through the season.  Coleus is most definitely a giving sort of plant.

The dark purple salvia are lovely, but not quite the eye catcher I'd hoped they might be.  The geranium is the first one I've ever planted in with other plants and it's definitely done well.  I didn't know they liked to keep company with others.  The purple heart trailing over the back edge are cuttings from the hanging basket on the porch and the wee little begonias, blooming their heads off, were just a stem that survived winter.  It too has been a very obliging companion plant.

The garden corner of the patio starts here.  I have Mandevilla, Dill weed, a tiny bit of coleus, Celosia and some dark purple salvia in this pot.  There is also a hibiscus here in this pot that wasn't blooming at the time I took the photo.  It's a deep golden yellow but the stamens are hot pink and so it goes very nicely in this pot with the pink mandevilla and celosia.  To the right are tomatoes and a Citronella that has really filled in nicely.  T

Here on the corner of the patio, I've all sorts of pots and planters lined up.  Tomatoes are the dominant plants.  As you can see, I have them in all stages.  I counted 20 tomatoes on the four plants last week and that was with a horned worm infestation.  I've been keeping my eye on them and picking those nasty things off.   I took some of the lower branches off and stuck them in soil.  And the two little tomatoes in the one pot that are a bit ahead of the recently planted ones and a good bit behind the others volunteered itself to grow in my compost bin, so I transplanted it to this area in the hopes it might be fruitful here, too.

In the back with the trellis is the rescue rose.  It's a pretty little thing with small orange blossoms.  The little rose sitting on the ground in front of it has been transplanted to the long planter left of this rose bush.  There are two beautiful tomatoes to the right.  And lots of bits of tomato I'm trying to root in front of the rose as well.   There's a small hydrangea I've rooted to the right and ditch lilies in the pot to the left.

I have onions tucked into the larger tomato plant pots.  And you'll likely spy a few more in with the flowers and herbs.  They've done beautifully.  I think I lost only two of the sets that Sam gifted me.  

You can see I've interspersed flowers, too.  The tomatoes have some marigolds scattered in with them that haven't yet gotten big enough to bloom.  There's a bit of basil scattered in those pots as well.  

The orange rose is the rescue rose I bought at Lowe's on a deep discount.  I repotted it, trimmed it, watered and fertilized it and just look how lovely it is!  It does my heart good to see a suffering plant take on new life.  And yes, those are onions planted in around it as well.  I told you I tucked them just anywhere.

The long planter at the back has two different types of salvia.  I can't remember the deeper pink one's name, but the white airy looking ones are called Whirling Butterflies.   Yes, onions in that planter as well...and I've scattered other flowering seeds down in and transplanted a few marigolds there as well.  I am completely careless about color combinations, loving flowers so much that I just happily toss them all in together regardless of a color scheme.  You can see the little roses middle right of this photo that I transplanted here.  The pots in front of this long planter hold vinca, verbena, and another geranium.

And the Lemon Citronella on the left of that photo has grown well.  I hoped it would keep some bugs at bay but so far, no.  Still, it adds a nice textural interest with the leaves.

At the far end of the row are the hydrangeas and lavender.

Here is the pink planter filled with eggplants on the bottom row, more onions, sage.  The second row is onions and oregano.  The top row has a single tomato that is hanging in there, two basil that aren't in the least happy about life in the country, more onions and loads of chives.

Seeing all this before me as I sit outdoors with Caleb or come to sit on the porch each morning with coffee makes me feel so fruitful and ambitious to be even more fruitful.

I've always loved the idea of a kitchen garden, and I really do feel that the very best spot for one would be right there at the end of the patio and perhaps down around that side where the planters are lined up.  I see it all surrounded by fencing and looking quite neat and trim.   You might note that every spot that gets enough sun also floods every time it rains, lol.  Not ideal in a rainy season in the least.  That's why I have pots.  They at least will drain more quickly than the ground does.

John has promised multiple times to put my new metal planters together, but that promise is apparently a pie crust promise: easily made and easily broken.   He'll get around to it sooner or I'll take matters in my own hands, which will make him ill with me, take over and fuss that he wasn't ready to do this just now knowing full well that he's been promising to put them together since they arrived in February for my birthday.   No bitterness on my part.   This is a pattern that has played out hundreds of times over many promises made over the past 30 years.  I don't nag.  I ask.  I wait.  I ask again.  I wait.  I ask one more time.  I wait.  I start to do it myself.  He intervenes.  He fusses.  And the whole while, I know that what has made him so ill is not that I have taken matters into my own hands, but that he has failed in a promise he'd fully meant to keep but kept putting off one more day.  

I used to feel ill-used about it.  I did.  I felt it was disrespectful and a lack of love and all sorts of things.  I'd get mad finally and fuss and act ugly over it and feel ill at myself for being so.  But then one day I realized that he does the same thing over stuff HE wants done.  And as I watched and saw that it wasn't him putting my wants aside while he attended to his, but just his nature to keep putting things off for one reason or another, I stopped feeling ill-used.  Instead, I started encouraging him to attend to the things he 'meant' to do for himself and reminding him of the things I wanted done and then I'd warn him that I was tired of waiting and was just going to move ahead and do what I could on my own.  

And so now, we play our roles in a much better way.  True, he is ill-tempered while doing these things for me, but that's on him.  I'm happier that I have behaved in a manner that I can live with and kept my own peace, you see.  It's up to him to figure out how to stop feeling so bad that he's made himself upset.

Oh the kitchen is looking so sad this week.  As I remove hooks and pictures and decorative items and load up the stuff in the cabinets that I know I don't need, I realize more and more how much personality I had applied to the kitchen area.   It looks rather dull and bleak.  And very well worn.

I've been looking at the walls wondering when I should consider painting them.  Now?  Before things are on the roll? Will they just end up dinged?  And what about those areas that won't be covered by new cabinets but currently are?   Should I discuss this with the contractor and have him do the walls?  I have no idea how much more that would cost...and I'm not keen to add to the costs with the bathroom renovation coming right on the heels of the kitchen.  Should I wait until all the new cabinetry and counters are in and just paint what is still exposed, saving labor and paint?    I've no idea.  I'm very much up in the air over it.  

And all of that hasn't even gotten to the repair work on walls, nor choosing the color.  Do I want grey as I've always thought?  Pale or dark?   Do I want a pretty blue or something else like a soft yellow or pale pink?  A pale soft green?  It's just too much to bear thinking about with all else going on and I think over and over again, "I'll just wait..." 

Truly, anytime I have a hard time making my mind up?  I make up my mind to just wait.  I've never regretted just waiting, but I have always regretted hasty decisions!

On the other hand, I know well when my mind is made up.  I've never once thought I might like anything other than white kitchen cabinets.  I lived with very dark cabinets in my first home, natural wood cabinets in my second home, maple in my third and I knew when we began to look at new homes that I wanted white cabinets.  I've never regretted having white cabinets all these years.  I knew it was what I wanted in this renovation.

 When we were out recently looking at click and lock vinyl planks for the flooring, I chose the same one on four different wall displays, "Sterling Oak" it was called.  I didn't know it was the same sample.  I just walked up to each display and after looking said, "I really think I like this one best."  It was John who said, "Well that one is 'Sterling Oak'. I went back to look at the last sample and the one before that and said, "So is this one..."  "And so is this one!"  "Then your choice is already made," he said.  Happily, it was also his choice.

But as for wall color?  No clue.  Seriously, no clue.  Perhaps it will come to me once the new kitchen is installed.  Until then, I'll just live with what I've got.  I have for the past 26 years.

John looked at me Tuesday and said, "How would you feel if I just step back with this whole renovation thing?  I don't mean postpone it but I let you deal with the contractor and the delivery of the cabinets and such?  I find I'm just getting anxious worrying about the contractor not calling back and all that sort of thing."  I just looked at him and said, "Well honestly John, I doubt you'll feel any less anxious over it, but I will handle it.  I've already made up my mind that if they can't get him to meet them for a delivery, we'll just have it delivered here and we'll put it in the kitchen sitting..."  I could see him visibly relax.  "Oh...So you've been thinking about this already!  Good.  I couldn't decide what was the best thing to do."  

Sometimes I feel a little bit tired of making decisions myself, but John has true decision fatigue.  After 27 years as a paramedic, he had to literally make life and death sorts of decisions too often.  He was coming home and dealing with the responsibilities and decisions he had to make here.  I noticed he was getting very upset, disproportionately so, when he'd make a mistake or feel he had, when he was still working.  And more and more of the home decisions were pushed over to my shoulders.  Sometimes I made mistakes, too, and still do, but I was a lot easier on me than John was on himself.  He's hard on me when I mess up, but I remind him that the choice was mine to make, and I made a choice. I remind him that the mistakes I make aren't going to ruin lives or result in bankruptcy or death.  They're minor things and we'll just correct the mistake and move on.  That usually calms him.    

But the sheer number of decisions we make is overwhelming at times.  I have to make a decision every single day about meals, about how to use items at our disposal, about shopping, about potty training, gardening, household works, finances, etc.  The grocery store is laden with all sorts of choices...Gracious the number of decisions there alone is enough to make one feel rather loony. 

Add in the big life choices, and sometimes, it's easier to try to ignore the circumstances than it is to make the decisions needed to deal with things.  And that leads to consequences we often really don't want to make a decision over, but we're forced to...Never a good thing! 

We have a life situation going on here.  They happen routinely enough, it seems, don't they?  We are getting on.  I've had to make some hard choices and decisions.  For the most part, I am not a person to be firm and stand my ground, especially when it comes to others.  I tend to want to sweep up the debris and make things easier and then, stupidly, resent that I've done it while making things harder for myself.  However, reality bit hard the third night I laid awake wondering how I could manage to meet this crisis.  When John looked at and said, "It's not OUR crisis...We didn't set this in motion.  We don't have to rush to meet it and fix things," I was able to move my thinking in a different direction.  But yes, it did mean I had to make a choice.   In the end, I chose to let the circumstances be on the shoulders of the person whose trouble it was.  It's not mine to fix.  Truth is, I can't fix it, not suitably, not without doing us damage and creating a whole new crisis.  I can be supportive without being responsible.  

And you know what I discovered?  While I was busy making myself feel guilty for choosing to guard against damage to us, I found out that to the other person, it's not really a crisis.  Not enough to worry about.  So why was I fussed?

We had a very interesting event happen Sunday night.  The sky clouded, the wind picked up strongly and started twisting the trees about.  I was sitting here in the living room looking out the window and wondering if there was a worse thing than the predicted thunderstorm coming our way.  My phone rang and Sam said, "Y'all get out of the house, get out right now and head to town!"  He'd found a weather radar (something I shall have to find on my own phone) and the storm coming at us was moving very rapidly with lots of funnels showing up.  

We drove into town.  It is the first time we have ever evacuated our home in all the years we've lived here.  We've seen some pretty rough weather and only once were we ever concerned enough to take shelter.  

Now let me tell you all something.  John loathes a thunderstorm.  He's gotten through many a one calmly enough this year only because Caleb is truly afraid of them (as is Joshy).  And in order to keep Caleb calm, John and he sit down together and talk quietly, which appears to be soothing to them both.   The only other time we ever thought we might take shelter, John was so dang slow getting into the safe area that the worst went over before we got there.

I swear he was even slower on Sunday night.  I was outdoors, pulling clothes on over my nightie with the car door open, ready to jump inside it.  Katie loaded up Caleb in her car and I told her to go on into town.  John didn't come out and didn't come out and I went back indoors to see where the heck he was.  In the music room gathering his song book (original songs that we haven't copied and put in the safety deposit box) and unplugging his equipment.  "Come on!" I said, grabbed the notebook and went back to the car.  Did he come out then?  No.  I shouted loud enough to carry over the wind, "LET'S GO!"  No kidding.  He came out to the car, said "Oh I forgot something, let me run go get it..."  I seriously considered just cranking up the car and driving myself into town.  He was soon back.  And the whole while, he didn't even have on shoes...

We took shelter in the grocery store in town.  Bess works there and her employers allowed us to come in and shelter in the back.  Rain pounded so hard on the roof that I couldn't hear myself think.   The children had their faces shoved up to Kindles.  Caleb, Katie and Sam had their faces shoved up to phones.  John called his brother to talk to him.  I soothed Josh, who was white and visibly shaken and told me quietly that his chest hurt.  I confessed that mine had hurt me too, and I was pretty sure it was anxiety.  He and I did some deep breathing together.  

Sam showed me the radar he'd been watching, and I could see how rapidly the storm had progressed towards us and that it was now dousing us with heavy rain.  At 9:15 the weather alert was cleared, and we all came home.  The roadways were green with leaves that had come off the trees.  None of the trees were bare, and only minor limbs were broken, most of those obviously already deadwood anyway.  But yeah...Sunday night was not the quiet evening at home that it normally is.  

I think I shall end here.  It's been a long and busy day today and I'm ready for some downtime.  I'm going to stop working/writing and start coloring.  I find more and more I get excited about coloring.  It's obviously been very good for my busy mind to slow down and just concentrate on color.

I hope the last days of June are lovely for you.  Hard to believe that the weekend will usher in July, isn't it?  Fireworks and barbecues and snow cones...And the good hot weather that always makes me ready to snuggle in at home and not go out at all, lol.  

Happy Summer!