In 2021 I learned patience and acceptance beyond any level I ever thought I would deal with. That being said, life is still about the little things.

• I had my Ancestry DNA done. I was glad I had visited the UK since a good bit of my DNA is from there.
• On the topic of the UK, I watched all the available seasons of ‘The Great British Baking Show.’ I learned a lot and really appreciated the feel-good vibe of the show.
• Does anyone else out there own an unruly Alexa? Ours talks whenever she wants to, doesn’t follow directions, says bizarre things, and shuts off randomly. I shudder at the thought of allowing her to control anything randomly important.
• Since I haven’t been able to garden, I mentioned that I really missed having my hands in the dirt. My seven-year-old grandson overheard and shortly thereafter brought me a bucket filled with dirt and said, ‘Here Grandma Carole, now you can put your hands in the dirt.’ How sweet is that?
• My 11-year-old granddaughter is taller than me. I suspect it won’t be long before she passes up her Mom as well.
• I often use voice-to-text on my laptop. If you use this feature on your computer, you know that it doesn’t always type exactly what you say. One day I was using voice-to-text and I had to stop and sneeze… my computer typed ‘bitch.’ Yikes!
• 2021 brought a multitude of kind and caring individuals who worked hard in my garden, made food for us, brought treats and gifts, helped with paperwork, and kept me in good spirits with frequent texts, emails, phone calls, and visits. I am so very grateful and humbled.

Pictured: A restaurant in Kensington, London

As much as I love gardening, there are just a few things I wish didn't happen when I'm outside:

1. Getting a gnat in your eye. Activities come to a grinding halt. 
2. Getting a buzzing insect stuck inside your ear. Activities come to a grinding halt.
3. Finding a deer tick on your arm and wondering where else they might be.
4. Starting a project when it's bright and sunny outside, then moments later clouds roll in with an unexpected burst of heavy rain that completely soaks you.
   
5. Planting a large daylily and discovering that it's six inches off where you really wanted it and you have to re-do it. This is especially annoying if you've already watered the plant.
6. Wearing a bicycle helmet while weeding where the neighbor's walnut tree overhangs one of your gardens. Falling walnuts really do hurt.
7. Getting a hole in your garden glove and not immediately taking the time to replace the glove. Having instant regret after getting a big thorn in the part of your finger that sticks out of the hole.
8. Having a snake unexpectedly slither over your foot.
9. Finding a dead, rotting 'something' in between your daylilies while weeding.
10. Being dog-tired at the end of a gardening day and realizing you still have to clean up your mess and all your tools.

What's your gardening downer?

Listen up daylily lovers. Not only is lemon juice great for making delicious lemon bars, it's a necessity for cleaning up your hands. After deadheading the mushy, drippy red and purple daylily blooms that stain your hands and fingernails, simply rinse your hands in lemon juice, then wash them with warm soapy water. Your hands will instantly look sparkling clean again!

Daylily pictured: Time Stopper

I'm not at all fond of orange ditch lilies (Hemerocallis fulva) as I've spent countless hours digging their invasive rhizomes out of my flower beds, but I'll be the first to admit that they look pretty darn good in roadside ditches.

Daylily obsession typically arrives in degrees. It slowly creeps up on you. When does the realization hit that you may have an addiction? Here are 20 common indicators:

1. Your backyard vegetable garden has disappeared. Dozens of daylilies have replaced the veggies. The farmer's market is where you find your vegetables nowadays.
   
2. You get rid of other perennials to make room for daylilies.
3. Sections of your lawn have been removed to make larger daylily beds. Easier to mow, right?
4. You attend a daylily sale, promising yourself that you'll buy no more than eight new cultivars.  But when you get home, somehow an additional 20 daylilies have hitched a ride.
5. Online daylily purchasing is fun, easy, and you partake often.
   
6. You have started growing seedlings in your basement.
7. You routinely trade daylily divisions with other enthusiasts.
8. On rainy days you create and work with daylily spreadsheets on Google.
9. You are compelled to make plant tags and labels for your daylilies.
10. You lie in bed at night orchestrating transplant maneuvers in your mind for the following day.
11. Your partner tells you they are sick of hearing about daylilies.
12. Proliferations grow  on your window sills.
13. No one has to wonder what to get you for your birthday. Duh!
14. You spend hours online researching what daylilies *need* to go on your wish list.
15. You own at least one or two daylily attire items.
16. You have friends and neighbors who also have daylily gardens. Prior to meeting you they had no idea that daylilies even existed. 
17. You remove trees and bushes on your property to get rid of the excess shade.
    
18. You are forced to hold a daylily sale because you must make room for more new daylilies.
19. You plan vacation road trips around garden visits to daylily hybridizers.
20. And finally, you must have the latest daylily buzz so you become a member of both your local daylily club and the American Daylily Society.

How many of these indicators should you admit to before you are considered a daylily addict? Good question! I'll venture to say that at least five true statements indicate you've started walking down that path ;) And myself? I'm definitely in trouble for the simple reason that I am familiar with each and every indicator, but I'm not admitting that they're all mine...

Daylily pictured: 'Something Angelic'

2020 was uncharted territory for me in more ways than I could have ever imagined.

I've learned:

• I am blessed with some over-the-top, amazing people in my life who mean the world to me.
• guarantees are for appliances.
• not to stray too far from the 'here and now.'
• that potato chips, brownies and soda in one sitting is not a good idea (even though my 'here and now' self would disagree).
• you can deal with difficulty whether or not you have courage.
• gratitude is necessary.
• it's all about perspective.
  
• the fortune-teller was wrong.
• material items live low on the totem pole.
• finally, and of utmost importance, it ain't so bad that it can't get worse.

Pictured: A quaint storefront I passed by in Bath, England.

This photo never fails to make me smile. Our (very social) granddaughter was out-of-town for a weekend visiting her other Grandma and Grandpa. Ange and I had stopped at her house to feed and play with the two family cats while they were gone. We found this message on the steps that lead to the front door. Clearly our granddaughter was worried that all of her friends would come looking for her and wonder where she was. And it also looks like her Mom told her it was not a good idea to write a message like this on the front steps. So what do you do? Well, you just cross it out. Too cute!

Here are some of my experiences that make up the ever-present irony of daily life. Do any sound familiar?

1. Good news....free samples of pizza at the grocery store
   Bad news...it's 'breakfast' pizza - no wonder they give it away
   
2. Good news...the grocery store offers an insanely cheap price on an item
   Bad news...you have to buy 10 of them to get the cheap price
3. Good news...you are given a *free* car wash token
   Bad news...while going through the car wash,  your rear windshield wiper gets ripped off, never to be seen again
   
4. Good news...while shopping you finally locate a public restroom
   Bad news...there's not a shred of toilet paper to be found anywhere
   
5. Good news...it's Saturday
   Bad news...your alarm clock woke you up at 5 am because you, while on auto-pilot, activated it the night before
6. Good news...you are having friends over for dinner
   Bad news...you forgot to press start on the dishwasher full of dirty dishes
7. Good news...a dog-walker dutifully carries their plastic bag
   Bad news...when his dog did the deed, the dog-walker did a 360 to see if anyone noticed; he assumed no one did and continued on his way. The plastic bag must have been a fashion accessory.
   
8. Good news...you spent $150 at the grocery and replenished every item you wanted
   Bad news...except for the one item you desperately needed to make your evening meal
9. Good news...you bought ten beautiful perennials you couldn't resist
   Bad news...not one empty space was available in your garden
10. Good news...gasoline prices are at an all-time low
    Bad news...you're 'sheltering at home' and your travels are limited

Recently I passed by a home that had a ginormous resin cow in the front yard. The homeowner had tied a chain around the cow and wrapped the chain around a tree trunk with a padlock. Cows are big here in Wisconsin! This is yard art at its best!

You've all seen yard whimsy gone wild, yes? It's that yard that has one too many flamingos and somehow crosses the invisible line between tasteful and tacky. It stops you in your tracks to gape at in disbelief. Thoughts I ponder when I see yard whimsy gone wild:

• How do the homeowners cut the grass? Clearly, in many cases, a lawnmower isn't an option. Do they just go around the entire yard with a weed-whipper?  I once saw a man on his hands and knees trimming his yard with a hand clipper so as not to disturb his yard art.
  
• Can there be too much of a good thing?
• Does the inside of the home resemble the whimsy-fest that's happening on the outside?
• Rock on yard whimsy! Keep the smiles coming :) Wouldn't life be boring if we all liked and did the same thing?
  

I'm gifting myself with a couple of weeks away from technology. My blog will be on hiatus until August 18th.  We'll catch up then!

Pictured: Twin fawns that visit my yard daily - Mom is hidden in the thicket, watching.

Grateful living is happy living. Every year at this time I like to take time to reflect on things that made me smile or feel grateful over the past year. Here's my list:

• Buying an item at a garage sale and a week later finding a gift card tucked inside. After checking the balance online, it was never used! Regretfully, after going to 20+ garage sales seven days prior, I was clueless  as to which house it came from. So all I can say is "Much obliged indeed!"
• Being able to have some great laughs! And a laugh is so much better when I can get it at my husband Ange's expense. I must preface this story by saying that our four-year-old grandson is obsessed with bodily functions, especially burps and farts. Since Ange is just a grown-up version of a four-year-old, he downloaded a 'fart app' on his iPhone which our grandson L-O-V-E-S. Here's the funny part; after Ange and I spent an afternoon with our grandson, on the way home we stopped at an evening garage sale. You're familiar with pocket-dialing? Well, while Ange was looking at garage sale items (in a small garage filled with people), the iPhone fart app activated in his pants pocket, and the volume was not low. You should have seen the people scatter!
• Receiving an unexpected gift of an entire pound of high-end chocolates from a specialty shop in Oshkosh. Definitely my guilty pleasure! I ate nothing but chocolates that evening for dinner. Best.meal.ever.
• My eight-year-old granddaughter asked me if I was aware of the fact that by the time she's a teenager, I would probably be dead. You gotta love this girl :)
• Getting the gift of a perfect September day that coincided with a day off from work. The local weather had forecast thunderstorms and rain all day, when in fact it turned into a beautiful day with temperatures in the low 70s. Gardening heaven!
• Finding a division of a daylily I had admired in my friend's garden potted up and sitting by my car at the end of a work day.
• Our brother-in-law is a rock star. After two brain surgeries, lung cancer, chemo, radiation, and heart bypass surgery (all in the course of a few years) his sense of humor and resilience is nothing short of amazing. He also makes me think twice before complaining about anything.
• I know this will be hard to believe, but before 2018 I had never seen the sitcom 'Friends.' So over a six-month period I watched the entire ten seasons on Netflix. The best part was that every single episode made me laugh! And who doesn't need a happy place to go to at the end of the day?
• Ange and I have had the same card-playing group for over 20 years. Cards have become quite comical as of late. We are spending more and more of our time figuring out who dealt last, who laid down the last card, and who the heck snuck Canadian money into the pot. Thankfully, none of this interferes with having a guaranteed good time with lots of laughter.
• Finally, I'm so grateful that Ange always takes time to help me out in the garden. He says he hates flowers, but just between us, I kind of think he's playing me.

Pictured above: Minneapolis sophisti-cat 'Sophie,' a shelter rescue who now lives the life of a princess

Here are some arborvitaes in our yard that we refer to as 'Poodle Trees.' Note that all the lower branches are missing. The deer stand up on their hind legs and eat the branches as as high as they can reach. Over the years, we have come to embrace this look. Deer topiaries? There are deer-resistant arborvitaes available, but we didn't know that at the time these were planted.

I tried to get a photo of the deer eating the arborvitaes, with no luck. So instead, I added a photo Ange took many years ago of an apple tree that used to be in our yard. It's of very poor quality because he took it through a window from inside the house. During apple season, the deer would visit the tree every day. Some days there could be up to three or four deer at one time dancing around the tree -- so comical to watch!

October 27th was National Black Cat Day. What a perfect opportunity for me to reminisce about my first black cat, 'Uncanny / Canny' (I liked both words / Couldn't make up my mind). I got eight-week-old Canny when I was in college. We shared an upstairs apartment in an old house with roommates Sandy, Gail, and Gail's small dog (pictured). Ange was around in those days, too. We stayed in that apartment for a year or so, but did what most college students frequently do; we moved and (of course) did not get back our security deposit back. Gail's dog had chewed a good portion of the bedroom carpet and I melted a huge candle onto the orange shag carpet in the living room. Long story; not important. Sandy, you must have done *something* to that apartment -- it wasn't all Gail and me, right?

We loved our larger place, but apparently Canny didn't. We kept him inside so he would acclimate to the new surroundings, but he would sneak out if someone opened the door. He kept trekking back to the old apartment, which was about six blocks down and two blocks over. When I'd walk to school in the morning, there he'd be, sitting on the porch of the old house. He would never fail to come down and greet me. On my way home, if I'd see him, I'd pick him up and carry him back to the new place. Canny would stay for a day or three, but eventually disappear again. Over the course of many weeks, this happened numerous times. Canny's territory seemed to be more important to him than anything else. So I finally talked to the girls who had moved into our old apartment about the 'Canny situation.' They loved having Canny around. He was, after all, a most awesome cat! So I reluctantly passed the torch to them knowing that he would be well taken care of.

So there you have it, my very first black cat, Uncanny/Canny, left home and never said goodbye. Could this be Ange's fault for relentlessly teasing him with a water spray bottle? Probably.

There are mixed opinions as to the exact date of National Black Cat Day. I went with October 27; being close to Halloween just seemed right. #loveblackcats

Since yesterday was Earth Day, I thought I'd share some summer scenes.