Dandelions and Daydreams

This week has been one of the busiest of the summer.  We found a neighbor who has a cherry tree, and she wasn’t going to harvest the cherries.  So far we have picked almost 18 lbs of cherries from her tree.  We are also working on another (smaller) sour cherry tree.  This same neighbor has enough fruit to keep Brenton and me busy for a long time.  As the summer progresses, we will be harvesting plums, apricots, pears, apples, and raspberries from her yard.

While we are on the subject of raspberries, I have to tell you about our latest apartment find.  I think the most exciting thing about living in a duplex or a rental house is that you never know what you are going to find in the yard planted by past tenents.  Brenton was out moving the hammock stand in preparation for the owner to come mow the grass and he found a small raspberry bush growing at the edge of the yard.  It looks like it has come over from the neighbor’s yard.  There is a small patch just on the other side of the backyard fence.  I think raspberries taste like sunshine.

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Today I stumbled across Laylitas recipe for Rhubarb and strawberry empanadas.  I wasn’t fortunate enough to grow up with the delights of rhubarb pie or rhubarb cobbler (too hot to grow rhubarb in Georgia), but I am definitely liking the looks of this recipe.  I wonder if it is too late to get rhubarb from the farmer’s market.

Photo credit goes to Laylita from Laylita’s recipes.  Go check out this blog.

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I’d like to thank desperateblogger at And Life Goes on for awarding me the Arte Y Pico Award.

Now I’d like to pass this award on to five other amazing bloggers:

• Melissa at The Inspired Room who always inspires me to make the world a more beautiful place, starting with my very own home.
• Molly at The Pipers. Molly is an artist with words.  If you have time, please check out her series on How to help a grieving friend written out of her experience of losing a baby 3 days before the due date.
• JJ at Nature Shows and Dreams.  This is one of the first blogs I check every morning.  She has some beautiful photography from her walks in Northern Michigan.
• Pat at Back Porch Musings.  Another blog with lots of pretty pictures of beautiful things.
• Finally, another lovely blog with lots of pretty pictures:  All things Bright and Beautiful

If you have been tagged for this award:

1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone
3) Show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award. Make sure you visit the link above.

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After reading my last post, I realized it might come off as a bit negative.  The past 2 months have certainly not been the easiest months of my life, but I am delighted that God has answered the prayers of so many people who knew about our trouble getting pregnant.

Any pregnancy is a miracle.  A whole baby develops from just a single cell.  Amazing!  When things get hard, I just remind myself that there is a reward waiting at the end of all this.

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Do you ever get those ‘we miss you’ emails from some store you haven’t shopped at in a while?  I’m not going to offer you 20% off your next purchase, or anything terribly exciting like that.  Now is just the time for me to post a note to tell you what I have been up to for the past few months.

The last I posted with any regularity was WAY BACK in March!  I can’t believe how time has flown by.

I spent half of March sick with a cold that I just couldn’t shake.  Then I went on vacation for a week to visit my parents in Georgia.  When I got back, I relapsed with that nasty cold.

On April 3, life took a huge turn when I decided on a whim to take a pregnancy test and it turned up positive!  After trying for a year and a half and accepting that we would likely just adopt…well, I walked around in a daze for 2 days.

April was spent recovering from that cold while descending into the depths of morning sickness.  Most of April and about half of May was spent laying on the couch thinking, “There must be another way.”

With a baby on the way, and summer coming into full swing, Brenton and I decided that it was time to move out of our tiny 1 bedroom apartment.  On May 15 we found a comfortable 2 bedroom duplex to move into and one week later we had cleaned out the old apartment and gotten completely moved.

Now I am in the process of unpacking boxes and planning a small garden for our new yard, all the while trying not to overdo it and get sick again.  Now that I can get off the couch without feeling sick, I plan on getting back to my blogging because I miss it so.

This is all a blessing and a testament to God’s perfect plan, and since winter is officially over, I’m headed out to soak up some sunshine.

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Sometimes I can just feel God smiling down on me.  Yesterday, we secured a new rental.  The new apartment is a cute 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartment.  It is full of light and sunshine.  I can’t decide if I am most excited about having a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, or a full bathtub (our current apartment only has a shower stall).

Yesterday, after I took advantage of that bathtub, I was laying out on the back porch of the new apartment drying my hair in the setting sun.  The backyard was alive with birds chirping.  The tulips in the flower beds are pushing up through the leaves that were raked over them last fall.

In the lot next door, some movement caught my eye.  For the next 20 minutes, I sat and watched two feisty hummingbirds fighting over a plum tree in bloom.  As the sun set behind the mountains, I could feel God smiling.

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I sat down to post the Carnival of Christian Women only to find the blog carnival site is down.  Hopefully it will be back up again soon.

In the mean time, check out a couple of these blogs that I love to read:

• The Inspired Room–Interior decorating at its finest
•  Inside Montana–We all need some fresh air and a bit of big sky country.
• Christian Women Online Blog–Internet Devotions and inspiration
• Her Christian Blog–a new find, and fast becoming a favorite

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Every little town across the United States has its own unique, and often surprising, history. The little town I called home as a kid never seemed like much of a happening place, but quiet little Toccoa, Georgia was the birthplace of Paul Anderson (an Olympic powerlifter during the 1950’s), the home to James Brown the King of Soul (He was actually a janitor at the local high school before he was the King of Soul), the residence of Doc Tommy Scott owner of the last old-timey medicine show and the last living member of the original Grand Ole’ Opry.

I think the greatest contribution that Toccoa made to American history came from a place under the unassuming name, Camp Toccoa. It was at Camp Toccoa, in World War II, that the very first Army paratroopers learned how to jump out of airplanes and go fight for freedom.

The funny thing is that this huge piece of history was ignored until a guy named Tom Hanks decided to make an HBO movie series called Band of Brothers.

Surprising history goes beyond just a town. Most families have some sort of surprising history. I’ll even say that most lives have some sort of surprising history when you learned that you have more strength than you ever thought you could have.

What’s the surprising history in your town? What’s the surprising history in your family? What’s the surprising history in your life?

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I just wanted to pop in here for a moment to assure all my readers that I have not been abducted by aliens, fallen off the face of this earth, or even fallen into a pit of molten lava.  I’m afraid the explanation for my silence is quite mundane.  After returning home from my vacation, I relapsed with a cold/cough.  I decided to extend my vacation for a few more days until I had completely recovered.  It’s been a week now, and I’m starting to feel human again.  Hopefully I can get back on track in the next few days.

Sunny

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I was out shopping for a few items for my upcoming trip when I overheard a woman in her mid 40’s talking to a guy in his mid 20’s.  They looked like a mother and son.  The two were out shopping for an Easter present for a girl.

The mom said, “Pretend you are a girl.  What would you like for Easter?”

Her son thought carefully about the question before shrugging his shoulders and saying, “A rifle.”

Happy Easter Y’all.

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