Sweet Smells

Ahh, sweet smells. You know, the ones that instantly transport you to a time, or place, or just to blissful smiles. Bread baking, sweet peas and lavender blooming, newly mown grass, lemon blossoms, freshly ground coffee beans, skin that's been in the sun...you have a list of your own I'm sure. One of my very favorites is the smell of sheets that have been hung on the clothesline to dry. Sometimes I bury my face in them as I take them off the line and take a long, sweet whiff. They smell so fresh and sun-filled. Climbing into bed with line-dried sheets is truly olfactory heaven. One can't help but have sweet dreams.

Sky Blue Pink

Mother Nature is an amazing artist. This evening I went out to gather the clothes from the clothesline and looked up to see this view to the east. Light from the sunset was shooting across to clouds on the opposite horizon. The colors were intense and beautiful. When I was a little girl, my Dad would call this color combination "sky blue pink" and sky blue pink it has been to me ever since.

Bells are Ringing

Sometimes the coolest part of gardening is unplanned, or unplanted as the case may be. When I first moved here, the lawn went all the way up to the road in front of the house. The last few feet was a nasty slope up that was difficult to mow. So two years ago we decided to kill the grass and turn the slope into a shrub border. We planted a couple of forsythias and spireas to provide a future shrubby hedge. What we didn't expect were the ladybells. There were a few of them around the base of the old cottonwood tree. We thought that was all there was. Ha, were we wrong. The whole border area between the lawn and the road is now covered in ladybells. They are quite the groundcover and so tall the young shrubs can't even be seen when the ladybells come up. They are lovely and a beautiful color of purplish blue. I love surprises like this!

There is No Such Thing as Leftover Souffle

Tonight was one of those nights. There was a last minute change of plans for the evening and we suddenly found ourselves trying to figure out what to have for dinner. I think we did pretty well. There was a lovely cheese souffle made with eggs from our friends Diane and Michael at Fiddler's Ridge Eggs. You can tell I'm not a food blogger since I forgot to take a picture of the souffle when it came out of the oven. You'll just have to trust me that it was tall, beautiful, and had a perfect "top hat." There were greens from the garden, as well as some sweet little baby carrots, the result of my finally getting around to thinning out the carrot row. There was a loaf of Paesano bread and amazing olive oil for dipping from Zingerman's, gifts from some wonderful friends (Thank you, Steven and Linda). There was a light and fruity red wine from the Wine Company of Moscow, too. It turned out to be a delightful meal. The picture really doesn't do it justice...and there was no leftover souffle.