Bloomers

Good morning, my friends! If you thought you were going to get a break from my endless prattle today, then you would be wrong. I'm still mouthing off on a daily basis. For sure though, I'm taking the next couple of days off. We'll be in full-on packing mode, and it's going to get ugly. Trust me. You don't want to know a thing about it. 

On the other hand, things have been looking up flower-wise. Mike was the first one to spot it, but when I looked out the dining room window yesterday morning, I was surprised to see the poppy had bloomed overnight. These tend to show up around Memorial Day, and so it wanted to do its part, I suppose.

It was a surprise to see this one because it was way behind my other poppy barrel. The one by the greenhouse is loaded with big fat buds, and so I was expecting it to bloom first. By yesterday afternoon, one flower was showing itself. When I looked outside this morning, there were two looking just like this one.

Well, flowers blooming will get me walking around outside no matter what time of day. Smitty accompanied me on my walk. It's always good to have your guard cat along. You never know when you might encounter a marauding squirrel or a giant slug preparing to slime you to death. Smitty protects me from the squirrels, but he's let me know that I'm on my own when it comes to giant slugs. How would he ever get that sh*t off his fur with only his tongue to clean up. Ick.

I noticed a third of the Joker peonies was opening, and a bumble bee was having its way with it.

Also, I noticed the Coral Sunset peony has a flower opening. This next image was taken late in the afternoon.

I ventured out early this morning (before my coffee!) to see if it had opened. Not yet. I'm hoping we'll be able to see the whole thing by this afternoon.

Continuing on, the lithodora has created a beautiful blue carpet. The bees love this too.

And I noticed the Burning Bush is sporting tiny yellow flowers. They're about the size of a pea. This bush turns bright red in the fall, and thus the name.

Finally, I checked the plum tree to reassure myself that it is actually producing plums this year. And, yes! These won't ripen until September, and so they'll be waiting for us when we return. There are two desserts I love to make with the plums, and so that will be nice to come home to when our journey is finished.

 

In yesterday's post, I said I was going to give the Spring Flowers top priority, and I did. It's a small finished quilt now. It ends up at 12 x 13 inches.

Here's how it looks from the back.

The Raggedys got some time in the afternoon. I've stitched both faces now. Aren't these cute? I'm going to have fun stitching this one.

So today and tomorrow will be packing days. I'll pack food one day and my clothing and toiletries one day. I'm still trying to decide which to do first. I've already packed some of the food, but I still need to go through the refrigerators and decide what to take along and what to discard. We're taking along an insulated shopping bag and some ice blocks. When we cross the Canadian border, I'll put anything questionable in the bag in case the border agents want to look at anything. It'll keep things chilled until we can stop and put things back in the refrigerator. I'm really, really, really hoping the agents won't want to look inside the camper. It would mean opening all three slides and freaking out the kitties. Freaking out the kitties is something we want to avoid, especially at the beginning of a trip. So there's that.

I've gone through my toiletries noting what needs to be packed, what needs to be refilled, and what needs to be discarded. The laundry is done, and so I just have to decide what clothes I'm taking. Anything I don't need between now and Tuesday was packed yesterday. We're making progress, but we have two full days of work ahead of us.

So, okay. Our drive to our first stop is about 4-1/2 hours, and we're going to try to time our travel through Seattle to avoid rush-hour traffic. (Interstate 5 through Seattle has some terrible traffic, in our experience.) We'll be staying at a state park near Bellingham. If we get in early enough, I'll blog on Tuesday afternoon. If not, then it will be Wednesday morning, for sure. I'll need you guys to help me build  confidence that our border crossing will go smoothly. Please be ready with some encouraging words, okay?

And like I always say to the kitties...we'll see you on the other side.