Headaches and hot weather...

 As we head into summer and the temperatures increase so, it appears, do the headaches.  Had a bad week last week, but feeling better today (Monday), so mowed the grass before it got too hot.  Inside now, to catch up with a blog post.

 
In the Garden - This rose plant was cut down to the ground earlier this year, when the fence was being put up, but it has grown back stronger than ever...

Marnie brought me two of her 'dead' plants to try and nurse back to health...

a bay tree and a Tasmanian pepper berry

Out and About - did a walk up Dooley's Hill with Marnie...

It's a bit secluded so I don't like to walk it on my own...

And on another recent trip with Marnie to Burnie, we stopped in at Penguin Beach on the way back...

In the Kitchen - baking soda bread...

And chicken stirfry...

Knitting - I've been working on these little baby jumpers I mentioned in my last home post...

And have started a new project!  Marnie gave me a gift voucher for our local Yarn shop for Mother's Day back in May, but I had been having trouble finding a pattern I liked.  I finally found one and have bought some yarn.  A lovely soft and light 50% wool/50% alpaca.  It's so nice to knit with.  Let's see if I can get it finished by winter :)

Reading - I have these two books on the go...

And as we head into summer, I'm already dreaming of autumn :)  

Enjoy this little spring excerpt from Stillmeadow Sampler by Gladys Taber...

At this season of the year, I think often of Thoreau living his solitary life in the hut by Walden Pond.  I too, in spring, feel impatient with the busyness of life.  Thoreau knew what he was about.  "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Sometimes, I think, we rush so, we finish one schedule only to make a newer and busier one.  We do not, ever, live deliberately and fully, for we haven't time.  I know few people who go outdoors now and sit quietly for a couple of hours just looking at the miracle of spring.  Sometimes as we drive along the country roads, I see occasional figures stretched out in lawn chairs.  But they aren't observing May, they are reading the newspaper or a magazine.  They are like the people I have seen on the great beach at Nauset on Cape Cod who never hear the music of the tide because they have portable radios playing hot music!

I hate to think what Thoreau would have said to that!

That was written in 1959.  I'm sure Thoreau would be horrified at the 'progress' we have made!

I hope you can take some time this week to 'smell the roses' :) xx