Whew! What a week. It might have been a day shorter, but it sure seemed a day longer. I won't go into details, but a couple of weeks ago I had to have one of those serious "sit down, this is going into your personnel file" conversations with a very talented worker who yet keeps letting her various personal crises interfere way too much with work and has left some very important things undone - one of which was not sending in recredentialing papers for one of our insurance carriers on time, which meant that the doctors can't be preferred providers again until the paperwork is done. Not a good thing at all. It's a minor carrier with whom we have very few patients, but it should never have happened. Anyway, she's doing better on the surface and there's not any specific or tangible thing to speak about, but I think she's going here and there in the building whispering. Next week there will have to be another conversation.

We keep having rainy spots and teeny bits of thunderstorms. This is looking out from our front porch a couple of weeks ago, and the leaves are even fuller and lusher now. Our weather this spring has been more like England with frequent but not torrential rains and lower temperatures - hence the heavier than usual blooming of pretty much everything from irises to bushes to trees. The honeysuckle fragrance is especially heavenly right now.

I've finally decided what to do for my hand-piecing project - I'm going to dig out the Quilt Patis that I bought a few years ago and try to do a small grandmother's flower garden project!

Beth is making good progress with her begining effort. I haven't seen it yet, but she's got all her blocks together and rows together and ready to do the border. She just did simple 3" squares to mimic an old scrap quilt like MeeMaw used to make, and started with a table-topper type size. But for a girl who's never had the remotest interest in doing any hand sewing of any kind - pretty impressive! She's been looking through some of my quilt books and has decided that the idea of strip piecing has definite merits, although I personally can't imagine doing that by hand. We're going to get some batting for her today and try to get her quilt sandwiched so she can start hand quilting. She wants to try using my hoop.

I'll leave you with another view of the interesting old quilt I got at the flea market that I think I won't be able to cut.

Enjoy the weekend!

On the road . . . and up and down the road

Heading to work (or anywhere else, for that matter), we usually go up a hill and then down a hill to get to the highway. We could go a slightly shorter but slower distance if we used Mimosa Road (the road we live on), but I prefer using the highway because it is a little bit faster and because it has a center line marked and folks aren't quite as likely to stray from side to side or just keep to the middle. Things are lushly green right now, and it's just beautiful. I took a few pictures this morning. Because of last night's storm and rains, there was a bit of lingering fog/mist. The one above is at the crest of the hill as we start back down . . . I parked there where the folks go in to get their horses and that fence post is at the corner of their gap (what folks have if they don't have a gate).

This view is from just a few feet down the road, looking off to the left . . . the highway I will soon be on is kind of down in the bottom between the hill I'm on and the one you can see across the way.

Here I'm looking back up to where the car is parked....if you went back up over the hill and down, you'd get to our driveway.

Same location, but now looking down this section of hill...there's a house in a curve...and then more downhill...then another curve...and more downhill to the highway....

This is probably way more than anyone wanted to see of the mile of road between my house and the highway...but it's SOOOOO pretty! I am truly blessed by being surrounded by this beauty going to and from town. And right now the air is redolent with so many sweet scents from honeysuckle to roses. Blackberries are in full bloom as the locust trees wane. The wild multiflora roses are simply spectacular (and just out of view in this picture, I realize, a large growth of them being just around the curve to the left). Each morning I can see more shades of green and mark the growth of leaves as silhouettes are fuller and rounder and my views are constricted. This is just an amazingly spectacular spring!

Wherever you are, I hope you are enjoying the beauties that surround you. We are so blessed to have been given this incredible world to live in - God could have given us a flat, gray world and we would not have know the difference - but instead He put us in the midst of great beauties of sight and sound and smell.

Sweet dreams.

p.s. and I hope Blogger cooperates and lets the pictures be expanded for those who'd like to see them more fully