monarchs…

26 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by sulis303 in family, garden, life, moments, nature, Photography, Uncategorized, weather

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big girl pants, blessed, butterfly, chrysalis, experience, family, fun times, garden, grandson, lily of the valley, milkweed, moments, monarch, nature, photos, plants, Pokémon, time, widow

yesterday morning my youngest grandson was dropped off at ten by his two older brothers who were heading off to a two-day Pokémon event…

about fifteen minutes after they left he spotted the first of our monarchs as it emerged from the lily of the valley where they had gone to turn into their chrysalis stage… I had been watching this chrysalis for a number of days as it was the only one we could find…

perfect timing, and he spotted three more as they came out to dry their wings…

the first one had a wasp attached to its wing and it took me quite a while to get it off… not sure if that hurt it or whether the wasp had already injured it…

the others eventually flew off after their wings dried out, but this little male spent most of the day with us… finally it was gone, so we are hoping that it was able to fly…

what a wonderful experience to share together;-)…

happily…

14 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by sulis303 in garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized

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beautiful, big girl pants, blessed, dahlias, flowers, garden, happily, happy, memories, moments, nature, plants, purple, retirement, The Dahlia Expert, time, widow

enjoying time in the garden…

the dahlias are doing well and happily they are opening at different times so there should be some blooming throughout the weeks, rather than all at once and then nothing…

when I planted them I put the plastic bag they came in into the pot and now I can’t read the name, lol…

so far a purple one has bloomed next to the house…

and then a delicate white with purple tones bloomed… 3 flowers last week and 3 are blooming right now…

I cut them and put them in a vase to enjoy in the house…

currently that plant has 4 more buds on it… looks like another white one is starting to open… looking forward to how beautiful it will look when it is completely open…

that leaves two still to develop buds… can’t wait to see what colour they turn out to be… when I ordered them I asked for purple and white varieties…

with my retirement, I am enjoying the ability to spend each day in the garden all summer long…

irises…

29 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by sulis303 in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement

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babies, big girl pants, birds, blessed, flowers, friends, garden, house finches, irises, learning, moments, nature, pond, purple, sparrows, sunshine, time, treat, widow

a few days ago a great friend came by for a garden visit…

she brought me some gorgeous dark purple Japanese irises and a branch of lovely mock orange blossoms…

we had a nice time as we checked out everything growing in the garden and then watched the birds for ages… she knows lots about birds so I even learned a little, lol…

the house finch couple came by to visit and the house sparrows had a feeding frenzy as the parents and babies flew around and parents fed some babies and encouraged others to find their own seeds…

it was such fun to watch the way the youngsters fluttered their wings… and tried to land in various places… a few times I thought they were going to land right on us…

the sound was amazing as everyone was chatting and calling their family members, clearly wanting to be recognized, lol…

great fun to spend time with someone else who can happily listen to the water and bird watch for hours at a time;-)…

three…

22 Monday Jun 2020

Posted by sulis303 in family, food, garden, life, moments, technology, Uncategorized

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big girl pants, blessed, computer, family, garden, grandson, leak, moments, pond, sink, supper, Technology, three, time, widow

three things caused problems on Saturday… the sink leaked, the internet stopped working, and my tv lost its signal…

made me rather grumpy, particularly as I was trying to help someone with something online…

today my son-in-law and grandsons came over for supper and for the middle one to mow my grass… he also moved and filled all the bird feeders…

while they were here my son-in-law fixed three things, which made me very happy…

he installed a new pump and got the waterfall running… he fixed the small pump in the garage pond and it is running beautifully… and he figured out the problem with my sink and got it working… what a treat…

I truly am blessed;-)…

froggie…

12 Friday Jun 2020

Posted by sulis303 in garden, life, moments, nature, Uncategorized

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beautiful, big girl pants, blessed, common frog, fish, frog, froggie, garden, hiding, leaves, lilies, lily pads, moments, nature, pond, quiet, time, widow

saw the frog a number of times yesterday while I was listening to a program on my iPhone…

it has hopped past me a few times over the last while but never when I have a camera in my hand…

yesterday froggie was out sunning on the rocks around the edge of the pond… when it jumps in it swims across in just a few seconds…

according to research it appears to be a common frog… interesting, as for the last few years we had leopard frogs…

got some nice pictures;-)…

and another exciting thing is that the water lily leaves are just starting to rise above the water… this first photo was from last night and only the top corner of one lily pad was peeking out of the water…

now four lily pads are above water on one plant and two on the second plant…

bedtime…

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by sulis303 in business, health, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized

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bedtime, big girl pants, blessed, covid-19, crazy, fluid, moments, retirement, time, widow

been noticing that how we use our time has changed in this covid-19 period of our lives…

apparently I couldn’t have started my retirement at a better time…

in conversations with friends we’ve talked about how it doesn’t really matter what bedtime we have, because for many of us, we don’t have to get up at a certain time…

last night was an example for me… I went to bed at 8 in an effort to get rid of a nagging headache… I woke up around 1, still had the headache, and couldn’t get back to sleep so eventually I got up, had a hot tub and spent a few hours reading in the living room…

there was a full moon so I spent a lovely few minutes with my camera and tripod taking photos…

finally around 5:30 I went to bed and slept until 9:30;-)…

just saw this post on Instagram from @canadianchocoholic… an example of changing times…

as emails come in from banks and other organizations; tv ads mention options to delay payments; the government continues to come up with ways to assist businesses and individuals in these crazy times, I truly am blessed that my home is safe, my income is secure and I don’t need to leave for any reason…

time is fluid…

helping…

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by sulis303 in business, life, moments, retirement, technology, Uncategorized

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backup, big girl pants, blessed, friends, Google Photos, happy, helping, iCloud, iPhone, learning, lunch, photos, research, shopping, Staples, teaching, Technology, time, widow, Za Pizza Bistro

spent an hour or so this morning moving pictures in my Google Photos into albums… I really need to do this more often once I’ve got my Albums sorted out so that it doesn’t take so long…

just about the time I finished I got a text from a friend who wanted to do some shopping for an external drive and maybe spend a bit of time learning a few things about her iPhone…

I did some research on best deals and when she picked me up we headed to Staples to purchase the drive… it was a great deal, she got a 2 terabyte backup for the same amount I paid for 1 terabyte in September;-)…

we learned about a new offering they have… $20/month for a year for online support for up to 5 devices… sounds like it might be a great program for those who don’t have access to their own computer geek…

from there we went for lunch at Za Pizza Bistro… delicious, and I had half to bring home for tomorrow’s supper…

once we got home we spent another hour or so going over some tips and tricks for the iPhone… we’ve already scheduled our next time to play together…

after she left I wrote out notes about all the things we covered and sent the info off to her…

helping others with technology makes me very happy…

relish…

25 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by sulis303 in family, food, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized

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big girl pants, blessed, breakfast, family, memories, moments, relish, shopping, son-in-law, the "A", time, widow

had a lovely day…

my son-in-law arrived and we had breakfast at the “A” before we headed to Costco…

I really enjoy spending time with him and relish every moment… lots of great conversation as we talked about their upcoming vacation…

off to Costco where we picked up a few things and renewed my membership as well as used my annual refund towards paying the bill… this time when the renewal notice arrived, the cheque was on the first page, lol… last time it was on the second page and I didn’t see it… maybe I wasn’t the only one who didn’t see it…

I always appreciate when one of the kids come shopping with me… once we were back home, he helped put everything away and we had a cup of tea before he left to get his errands done…