Common Ground Coffee House #116

Sounds like the weather out here! I haven't figured out what they do NOT have.

Morning glories: they CAN be noxious weeks in this country too. Guess it's all a matter of perspective. One year when I had outdoor gardens I'd gone out of town for a week and came back to morning glories holding all my veggies hostage at vine-point. It was a tangled MESS and I spent the rest of the season battling them. They made themselves a particular nuisance with the peas. I swear their leaves morphed into the same shape as those peas!

However, we live in a city now with precious little space, so now they're a thing of beauty and I actually PAID for a packet of morning glory seeds! They really are pretty...in their place. LOL

Still, I've always been a sucker for weeds. Some are so pretty and overlooked just because they're abundant. One of my favorite things is dandelions, but if your yard is "unkempt" enough to grow dandelions and you live in a half-decent place, the city will come and make you cut your grass. Very sad. I think the grass is at perfect height when the yard can fill up with those bright yellow, happy dandelion flowers! (all yellow flowers are my friends)

Pansies...love 'em. They were the first flower a boy ever brought me. His name was Adam. They were purple. He was around 10 and had them hidden behind his back and we promised not to tell any of our friends how I got them. (he picked them from his mom's yard with her permission) because neither of us wanted to get teased for liking each other, so we kept it secret. Very sweet kid. But despite being poor myself, I turned snob on him because his dad was a truckdriver, he said he wanted to do the same, and I had higher aspirations for my life as at that point I'd been taught that women stayed home and husbands worked, so I figured my future husband should have a really high paying job.

Never forgot those flowers...or him. Hope he found someone worthy of him and I'm guessing she gets lots of love and flowers. LOL And half of his sandwich at lunch.

 

What a sweet story Gina....about the boy and his little bouquet. When I was that age the only boys I knew were my brothers, as I went to a parochial school that was gender segregated. I do recall going to a ball when I was about 12 I think, I recall I looked like a daisy....all in white and yellow. We were paired up with boys whom had also come from another school, I had never seen him before nor he I....I think we were mutually repulsed lol, he was in a hired suit and obviously had been terrorised into wearing it, he kept on writhing with the dicky and collar, poor lad.

Much nicer day today, very cold but sunshiny and blue with a flock of fluffy white clouds.:1_grouphug:

 

Dear me, has everyone died out there, or are you enjoying the summer weather.

I have been washing and cleaning today. Over to a friend's place for dinner, lives in easy walking distance. We had bangers and mash with carrots and silverbeet, then played cards until I was beaten again. She does like to win and then wended my way home in the bitter cold....it must be about 5C.

Please add a prayer for some of the teens that attend my church, as they have been getting themselves into quite serious trouble much to the dismay of all.:tear:

 

Good afternoon folks!

We're still in a heat wave out here but having fun splashing about in the pool. I just love being in the water! It allows me to get some exercise that I normally wouldn't be able to handle without the ease being in the water provides. Whoo-hoo!

I'm really missing the zoo and can't wait until temps go down enough for us to go visit again. We tried once and it was a miserable failure. It's just too plain hot. It's 104 today, the heat index generally soars a number of degrees above that though and being surrounded by pavement doesn't help unless you want to melt butter on it. Which we did yesterday. :laugh: I'm about to go look up how hot it needs to be to pop popcorn and if it looks possible, we'll go experiment with that. Gotta have some entertainment, right?

 

Popcorn huh? Well some of the ladies on another board I am part of are baking cookies on the dashboard of their cars! And they've had success too!

Luckily, we had some sort of weather thing that dumped a bunch of rain on us yesterday, so now the humidity is down. Temps are around 95, but this IS July and its normally this hot.

Right now I'm glad its Friday. I'll be happier even when I figure out what we are having for supper. Usually it would be pizza night but I've gone beyond my budget the last couple of week so we are COOKING tonight. I have a freezer full of food so it shouldn't be too hard!

 

Waft some heat down here please......it is wet and cold.

Played board games with friends last night and the sound of the storm made it right cosy in their lounge with the wood fire ablaze. Despite the noise one of the guests discerned the earthquake noise....very mild.

I am very pleased I am not a Christchurch resident....they have recorded 7500 quakes!!!!! since September's first biggie. People are leaving in droves...the mental stress must be beyond belief. The idea of living on a plate of jelly is very unappealing and when the ground quietly bubbles around you. Lots of pics on youtube if you enter Christchurch quake.

Stay cool!

 

and now lucky lucky Christchurch is under snow with power outage...."I am leaving on a jet plane...." Wanganui was cold enough for snow but we missed it, Taranaki and Ruhapahu are sporting white cloaks.

 

It rained early today while we were still snuggled in our beds so that's a blessing in one way, a curse in another as it will over 100 today with the heat index around 112, which will be smothering with the high humidity from the rain.

We've been doing a lot of swimming. I'm writing a little story on the heat and got to take some fun pics, including some completely adorable ones at the zoo, but going out today for fun or even swimming won't be an option so I'm going to write my story and do some cleaning instead, although there isn't much to do.

Even the dog looks bored and frazzled. :laugh: Seems criminals are getting antsy. We've have more than a couple suspicious happenings going on at night in the surrounding areas. A few nights ago it was too hot to sleep so around 1-2 a.m. I went out front to water and noticed someone wearing all dark coming down the road, later saw him snooping around a business, then doubled back and was crouching down by cars in front of a set of apartments. He saw me and casually walked up the stairs to the top set of apartments but I know he didn't live there...I went in, walked back out and there he was walking down the stairs, so obviously went up there just to fake that he belonged there. I called the police to report suspicious activity but they never showed, so I just watered anyhow and kept an eye out.

Yesterday I spoke with a neighbor and I'd not told her of the incident. She started telling me how she called security around 11:30 the night before because someone was up on her deck looking through her second floor window. That was the night after I saw someone, so sounds like we have an issue with someone looking for trouble.

You'd think that would scare me, but what actually made me jump when I was outside? A big old dog went trotting by! Of course you don't hear a dog trotting, so all of a sudden it was just THERE. It went right past but that scared me more than people. I can watch and see/hear someone walking near, but I certainly wasn't expecting a doggie descendent of Goliath to pop up five feet away!

 

Well well well. School starts again! I'm not working the first two days, gonna sit back and enjoy being alone with hubby tomorrow, the next day some friends from out of state are visiting, then it's the weekend.

I'm happy tonight. :thumbs:

 

It has been a beautiful fine day after a morning of rain in wintry New Zealand. I have been running about with my insurance premium as apparently NZ has copped it big in the reinsurance world....just possibly because of Christchurch and its 7500 earthquakes since the biggie last year.

Up by a whopping $1000.00!!!!! It is enough to make one feel very uncharitable indeed,:tonofbricks:

 

Ann, if you can post a pic or 2, Martha's Vineyard is such a romantic sounding name and I believe it to be a beautiful place indeed.

I plan to go to a girlfriend's house who lives in the next suburb.....and her house abuts the beach!!!! The smell of ozone was glorious and the sun setting over the stormy sky. Absolute magic....:thumbsup:

 

Hello Folks! Finally I am able to log in to the BB and see what everybody is doing in my old "playground."

My wife, Lenke, is home from the hospital. She spent 13 days there straight and then another 4 days because her mediastenoscopy surgery got infected and they had to open her up and clean out the infection. The result was that they left an open wound on her chest (close to her throat), which has to be re-dressed every day by a visting nurse.

During her initial surgery they discovered that the enlarged lymph node was infected. When the surgeon cut into it, for a biopsy, puss came out. This infection was lingering on from her double phneumonia from last year. The doctors said that she was "lucky" to cleared out that infection just the nick of time, for it started to get into her blood - and that is 50% fatal. On July 6th she got into the hospital with 104 fever, internal infection, irregular heart beat (170). She completely lost her strength and could not walk, she was delirious, and all this came on her on 4th of July, when we were having a workout at the local Bally Total Fitness center. So, 4th of July for us was not ending with a glorious firework but a quiet fizzle.

But praise the Lord all is well now and Lenke is slowly recovering. Her open wound is clear and slowly closing up. She is getting physical therapy to rebuild her strength.... and yes, I know she is getting better, for she is starting to boss me around. :tongue3: Thank you all for praying!!!

 

I am pleased that your wife is home and on the mend Barnabas....as an old nurse I always told the female patient that she can direct operations from an easy chair with feet up, favourite drink to one hand and family to peel the grapes for her. The male patient was encouraged to get up and do...what a sexist pc incorrect body I am :laugh:.

Ann...it snowed here today ( I am impressed having spent most of life in the sub-tropics....it is hailing at the moment and I am thinking I should get ready to walk up to Mass as it is a holy day of obligation for us micks.

 

Good Morning everyone!!

Welcome to the first day of school in our parts. Public school that is. We've been homeschooling for the last 3 weeks or so, PS is behind!

However, Chris begins a class in mechanics today that is offered to all highschoolers (even us homeschoolers, only we have to pay for it lol) so we are excited about that. He was beginning to be a little bored only being here at home. But this class and they gym membership he talked me into should alleviate that some.

We moved Cass back to the university yesterday and I think it was worse than moving her last year. We are missing her already and it hasn't even been 24 hours!

The menagerie has a new member. Someone dumped out a kitten early Saturday morning at the end of our drive. Teach me to lay in bed and not look out the window I hear a car door. She is a friendly little gray on white thing that we are calling Ashes at the moment because she loves our fireplace and she was covered in soot when I found her. The other animals (3 dogs, 3 cats) aren't especially fond of the idea of yet another creature in the house, but they'll adjust!

Ya'll have a good morning, I have to get back to work! The house is a wreck this morning!

 

Ah, no work today. Staying home relaxing, after a bit I suppose I should work on household chores.

Nothing too exciting lately. That's a good thing! Kids are back in school and that's going fine. The weather continues to stay in the hundreds most days. The guy on the news said it's going to break some kind of record for most number of days in the hundreds for this area. We did end up being blessed with rain two days in a row, but now we're back to the high temps and no rain. I quit watering, it's not worth the effort, although it was kinda nice to be the only one with flowers and bright green grass. :smilewinkgrin: Finally made the last payment on a new violin for my violin girl, so that was a good feeling. Now my other one could use a flute, but we're taking a break for a little bit before committing to yet another monthly payment although the flute we looked at IS really awesome and a decent step up that she could use. However, the one she has will hold out for now so it's not a flute emergency or anything.

Hopefully the lack of excitement will continue. :thumbsup: