Endless Summer

I wish! Wouldn't an endless summer be nice? Actually, I think I might get a little tired of summer after awhile - but it would have to be a long while - longer than what our Canadian prairie summers are! I don't expect to get that in this life anyway. Endless Summer is the variety of hydrangea that I have been wanting to plant in my yard, but when I found them in a greenhouse in the city, they were $50!! I really wanted one but couldn't justify the price so kept looking. Well, last week I was in Costco and this year they have a garden centre including a greenhouse. I never expected to find hydrangeas but there they were - they were not labelled so I don't know the variety but they looked like what I want and were only $15! Now that I can handle. After talking with the owner of the local greenhouse, I am convinced my plant is actually Endless Summer! If you click on the name you will get a description of this plant. Mine has a huge head of beautiful pink flowers - depending on the acidity/alkilinity of the the soil, the flowers will be either pink or blue.

My other find of the day at Costco was an apple tree. My last place had 2 trees - one crabapple and one larger variety - and last year the 2 together produced approx. 400-500 lbs. of apples. I have crabs at my current place but not other apples. I though I would like to add an apple tree someday and here I found the type I was hoping to get - Goodland - and only $20 for a 5 foot tall tree!

Now that I have some great bargains on plants, I need to get planting. I have no flower beds or garden space so am starting from scratch. Tonight I laid rocks out in a path which will border my flower beds - it's a start! I will need to haul some soil in - Dad has a truck, my brother has compost and some friends have topsoil - it's just a matter of getting it done one of these days.

Back to work

- tomorrow a.m. I really am getting better. This afternoon, I went to my nephew's place and he helped me collect rocks from a pile in his pasture for some landscaping in my yard. Being able to haul rocks around for an hour or 2 and not be totally exhausted proves that my strength is coming back. Yayyyyy!!

Just what I needed

Not long ago, my sis, M, sent me an email about a devotional blog she subscribes to - a devotional email is sent each day from this blog. I signed up, too, just a few days ago. This morning the devotion was on the sovereignty of God and it really spoke to my heart. I have told some of my friends, regarding my decision to disrupt the adoption I had so looked forward to, that I had fought the decision for a long time. We had revival meetings at our church the end of March - that is always a time of soul searching and trying to learn what God wants of us. I developed pneumonia at that time and was only able to attend the first meeting but, thanks to modern technology, I was able to listen to the services by telephone from my bed. As I lay there day after day, I struggled with giving everything to God - in fact, I thought I could give everything to Him except the adoption as I was afraid He would tell me to give it up. Like the example of the child in the devotional, I still cannot understand why it was not to be, but I need to accept that God in His sovereign way does know and has a plan for my life. Perhaps God knew that I would need this reminder today as this is the day I would have been receiving my daughter, had I continued with the adoption.

An update on the big P (pneumonia), I am just now getting strong enough to get some work done around the house and yard. It has been a long haul - I have been on sick leave again for the last 2 weeks - but I believe I am finally getting over it. I realize there are several things that have contributed to my prolonged illness - a major and somewhat rocky move to the community I now live in (finally in my own home the beginning of Dec. 07 after being "homeless" for 6 weeks), an accident with my new-to-me SUV (had it 2 months, did $10,000 damage when I hit a deer), the adoption and decision to disrupt.

Now that I am feeling stronger, I want to reach out to others more than I have in the past - like my nephew and his wife who have a 19 month old daughter and are expecting twins - I know she could use some help around the house. It is an exciting time for them but also physically draining on the mom. She told me yesterday that she had to realize that while her husband, a carpenter, could rest during the night and his body was not still building, hers was "building babies" 24 hours a day. There is a poem "Be the Best of Whatever You Are" - if you can't be the sun be a star, etc. If I can't be a mommy, I guess I will just have to be the best auntie that I can be - but I will still miss being a mommy.

Amazing how close this is . . .

VIOLET

You surround yourself with art and music and are constantly driven to express yourself. You often daydream. You prefer honesty in your relationships and believe strongly in your personal morals.

Find out your color at QuizMeme.com!

A time to weep....

My friends who followed my previous blog (which is no longer available to the public) will know where the title of this blog comes from and will probably even understand why today - Mother's Day - is a difficult day for me. It is 24 days since I phoned my adoption agency and told them that I would not be able to continue the adoption that I had been working on for over a year and a half. That was a very difficult phone call to make and an even more painful decision. There are times when I don't cry everytime I think about it but in church this morning, when people starting talking about their mothers, I couldn't help but weep. I mean cry buckets. To me, Mother's Day would have been a day to celebrate that "I am a mother!" Now it is a very sad day as I don't expect I ever will be a mother. My mother is still living and I spent part of the day with her today. I am very thankful that she understands how difficult this decision was and that today is particularly hard. I also have friends, including my sisters, who are understanding and it makes a world of a difference.

2 weeks ago, I spent a few days with all 4 of my sisters. We were helping my parents get ready to move but for me it was a therapeutic weekend. I really needed their support and they gave it freely. Thank you so much, R, DJ, DR and M. You are the best sisters in the world! They even bought me flowers and each wrote an encouraging note in a card - it started the tears again but in a good way this time.