Random Thursday 6-5-14

June is one of my favorite months of the year.  We had such a long, drawn out winter here in the Upper Midwest and a fairly cool spring, but now that June has arrived, it feels like a different world. Like when the Wizard of Oz movie changes from black and white to color.  Everything is so lush and verdant green!

My yellow irises opened this week!

Remember getting out of school the first part of June, when it seemed like the summer stretched out before you with so much fresh potential?  If you were like me, you followed your whims for a time.  Sure, there may have been swimming lessons and babysitting jobs, but whenever possible, you slept in 'til late morning, went for walks or bike rides when the spirit moved you, hung out with friends and talked about everything and nothing, hit the tennis ball against the house (and tried not to break the windows), played "horse" basketball (and tried not to break the yard light on the garage), watched Match Game and The Gong Show, walked the dog, painted your nails, pored over Teen Magazine, Glamour, and Cosmo (shhh...), and wrote in your diary in a rainbow of Flair pen colors.  Maybe next month you'd start sewing your back-to-school wardrobe, but not now.  Now there was dreaming to do.

Well, I still sort of feel that way come early June.  Sure, there are things to be done, but they can wait a bit.  This is the time we longed for back in January, February, and March.  No more heavy coats, no navigating snowstorms.  We move about the world more freely and less encumbered.  And now it's here!

Not much sewing has been happening this week, except for piecing together a quilt backing.  But when I'm not working part-time Job #1...

(Working from home, pants are optional.)

or part-time Job #2...

I've been making my way through the third book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon.  

I haven't been able to get the audio version for this book from the library, so I am just reading, reading, reading.  It's is a thick novel, and I am not a speed reader, just enjoying the journey page by page.  After that, only five more books to go!  :P

In a way, I miss being able to multitask, i.e., sewing while listening to the audiobook, but then again not.  There is surely nothing wrong with sitting on the deck with a really good book in the glorious month of June.

Of course, it's not all sitting on my duff.  I walk a few miles every day around the neighborhood.  It seems the least I can do for exercise, but I enjoy it especially this time of year, with the birds and blooms, fresh smells on the breeze, the ever changing sky. 

Truth be told, though, I have been lollygagging around on Candy Crush.  It took me a couple weeks, but yesterday I finally beat level 29.  Sure, go ahead and laugh.  

I've never been much of a gamer.  I've never won a game of Scramble with Friends with my daughter yet, either.  (That's the sum total of all the games I play: Two.) I'm getting better, though, and I believe that day will come.

We had a family get together on Memorial Day, also to celebrate my dad's 82nd birthday.  Here are the siblings and I and Dad.

L-R: Darrell, Me, Dad, Nita, Russ

On Monday, Dad lost five trees in a storm, one of which came down right where we were standing for that photo.  Thankfully, the downed trees missed the garage and other outbuildings, but took out his peonies, garden bench, compost barrel, and wheelbarrow.  The garden will need replanting too, as it got washed out in the deluge.  Today the tree guy is coming to cut up the wood.  Sometime later, it'll get chipped into mulch for the path down to the pond.

Darrell and Russ entertained a request by Dad to play Galveston by Glen Campbell. They did mighty fine.

What about you?  How are you enjoying the first bit of summer when you're not sewing?

Linking to Really Random Thursday at Live a Colorful Life.