Nearer My God to Thee by Margaret Ullrich

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had started working on our garden.

It was a late start this year, after we'd had a very cold winter.

In the front yard the caragana has yellow flowers and the blue irises are in glory.

Our chokecherry finally bloomed.  

The flowers have blown off to make room for the fruit.

The peony shoots are looking good, but they don’t have a flower bud yet.

The five rhubarbs are ready for picking, to be used in a dessert this weekend.

Grass and white nancies survived the winter and look lush.

The alyssums add another nice touch of white.

The lilies and daisies hopefully will bloom when they should.

The grapevine that provides shade over our kitchen window is beginning to leaf.

We have three lilacs that flower in sequence along our back fence.

The lilac by the garage has only produced one blue flower.

We have our fingers crossed for the other two lilacs.

The back yard is in its blue phase - lilacs and chives - with a touch of pink provided by the half dozen bleeding heart shrubs.

Soft pink and pale lilac petunias will carry the colour throughout the summer.

They were finally planted on Wednesday.

I had to take a break because my sciatic nerve made it impossible to stand for any length of time after I had carried the seven stepping stones to our garden.

This winter they’ll just stay in the ground, and I’ll level them next Spring.

After seeing Lord Ronald Gower’s garden at Hammerfield Penshurst, Dorothy Frances Gurney wrote in his visitor’s book

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

I had always thought that she was feeling a bit sore after working through a day of gardening when she wrote that little poem.

Gardening chores use muscles that had been taking it easy all winter.

Lugging around those round concrete stepping stones never used to bother me.

I guess I’ll have to take my age into account more when doing yard work.

The days of planting a dozen tomatoes, a couple of perennials and a few dozen annuals in a day or two are long gone.

And I've made my peace with the chives.

Inspired by Love It or List It, I decided to pick up a few things for my home.

Don’t get excited.

I know that on the show they usually give Hilary a budget of a few thousand dollars.

I went to the dollar store and picked up placemats, fabric peonies, a soap dispenser and a pitcher that fits in our refrigerator’s door so it’s handy for cold water.

What can I say? I don’t have a budget of a few thousand dollars.

But then I wasn’t asking anyone to knock down walls or to replace all the plumbing.

About tonight’s full moon in Sagittarius…

Some folks call it a “Full Strawberry Moon”.

It’s also called a “Mead Moon”, “Rose Moon” and “Thunder Moon”.

According to the folks at astrology.com: 

Both Mercury and Neptune recently turned retrograde… this tends to cloud facts and offers unscrupulous people an opportunity to try to sway you toward their point of view. Watch that you don't allow your common sense to suffer, as you're likely to feel emotional and opinionated.  

Move out of your comfort zone and explore unfamiliar topics or places.

If you have a vision for your life and know exactly what you'd like to do, use this time to talk with people who can help you. 

All full Moons mark a culmination of any plans you set in motion during the previous new Moon, which was on May 28.

Move out of my comfort zone, eh?

Like what… drop by IKEA?

Okay… common sense must rule.

Just because I look, doesn’t mean I have to buy.

A culmination of any plans you set in motion during the previous new Moon.

Well, the garden is done.