Time Off

Been a few weeks...again! Lots of things have occupied my time since I last posted. The weather has been up and down - nice warm and sunny days mixed in with cold ones. We even had frost one morning the week after Memorial Day! The three baby Eastern Bluebirds have hatched and are being well cared for. They're growing nicely and I imagine will soon be testing their wings. Yesterday I saw a female Oriole sitting on our clothes line post with some string in her beak. She's either building or adding to her nest.

The garden is planted and doing well so far and the flower beds are planted as well. A few shrubs that had seen much better days have been removed. The swing set is disassembled and pumpkin and watermelon seeds were planted where it used to occupy space. My final paper for school has been written, submitted, and reviewed. And...the fire wood pile has grown significantly in anticipation for the next two winters. Amid all this activity, we made a trip to the cemetery on Sunday before Memorial Day to plant flowers at my dad's grave. I usually had made a wreath and floral arrangement of silk flowers but this year wanted to do real flowers.

You'd think with having 10 days off I would have worked on stained glass. Well, no, I just didn't have any energy for that with all the work that needed to be done around the house. But, I went back to work yesterday and when I got home, after taking the dogs for a walk and backing a batch of chocolate chip cookies, I started in on stained glass again. I completed two small flower pieces (they're in the slide show) that will probably make it to the holiday bazaar. There is a great connection with going to work and busying myself with stained glass. I have been finding the situation at work to be frustrating and immersing myself in stained glass really helps take my mind off, well, literally everything else. Kind of like an oasis in the desert. Still sacred time...