A Visit With Olivia (and mommy and daddy)

Grandma made me a new hat.

Putting on my own hat!

Giving Melmo a hug. I love Melmo!

Guest of the Day

I was in Florida working and staying at a Crowne Plaza in Ft. Myers. I was checking in to my hotel and the clerk said, "You are the guest of the day! Look at the monitor!" And this is what I saw. "What does that mean," I asked. It meant that I was upgraded to a suite, got a ticket for a free alcoholic beverage, ticket for a free breakfast, access to the Priority Club floor where they have fantastic hors d'oeuvres from 5-8 and milk and cookies from 8-9, + 1,000 extra pts added to my Priority Club account!!! And I was there two nights, so it was really pleasant!!! Occasionally good things happen on the road!

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

My pride and joy this year has been my flower bed in the front of the house. 3 years ago Elizabeth and I spent hours and hours creating the bed, putting in place over 200 castle blocks, filling it will bags and bags and bags of soil and then the same with mulch. It was truly a labor of love - for me anyway. Since we moved here in 1986 I have never liked the look of the front of the house. After the boxwoods finally (thankfully) started to die and I got AG to get rid of them it looked so bare and the idea for the flower bed started to take shape. The first year it was kind of sparce with plants here and there. I began planting lots of perennials with annuals added in between. The second year was a little better with the perennials coming back, planting more and understanding how to get rid of slugs who ate way too much and what grew well in what kind of light. This year, who knows what happened, whether I finally know how to fertilize correctly, how to prune correctly, the snows of this winter left plenty of nitrogen in the soil, or just plain dumb luck, but everything seems to be growing and blooming by leaps and bounds. I'm even going to have to move a few things that are being towered over by others. It is such a joy to go out every day to see what is growing and blooming. I hope the pictures I will add today let you see how it looks and how happy I am with it.