Many Thanks to Mickie!

I followed Mickie’s advice, and didn’t prune my hydrangeas until it was nearly springtime, and this year they are just full of blooms!

And here are my day lilies:

I am still trying to keep up with the garden. Did I tell you that I was invaded by gophers this year? I got some really good stuff at the nursery, and it really seems to be working. They killed two roses, but one looks like it is growing a new little branch on it. And they killed my star jasmine that I have had since I moved here 30 years ago! But star jasmines are pretty easy to replace. Also, Lori recommended Edmunds’ roses, and I got two climbing ones. Both have bloomed already and I am looking forward to making them climb over my arbor.

Did I tell you that a bear climbed over my chicken fence and split a 2X4 in three pieces? Jay came and replaced it. And Kevin told me to put cans on the fence. So of course I have a million diet coke cans and that’s what I used. No chickens were harmed by the bear, but he sure did try to pull the wire off of their coop!

Happy Easter!

I decided to go out into the garden and take a few pictures of the garden sprouting. We have gotten so much rain for the past few weeks!

Daffodils!

One of the Japanese maples. The pots that are on their side is because they are probably root-bound and they take in too much water. I’ll have to work on them.

The first tulip:

A pretty heuchera:

I had to remove one of my Japanese maples because it was not doing too well. So I planted this one. It was one of the easiest holes I have dug! Most of the time the ground is just full of rocks.

And my bridal veil bush and my flowering almond bush:

 

During the Coronavirus

If you want to see what I’ve been doing during the stay-at-home, click on over to https://debbyquilts.wordpress.com. Here’s a few of them:

Its been raining and snowing here, so not a lot of work is going on in the garden. I do go out and work on it when its not raining. Oh, and because I can’t meet my egg customers, I took 15 dozen eggs to the Interfaith Food Bank here in town. My chickens are laying a LOT of eggs!

I also joined Amazon Prime so I could watch all my old shows of Mr. Monk!

And now I’m off to read some new spiritual books that I got and then I will start on my next wool appliqué!

Merry Christmas to All!!

Merry Christmas to All! I hope you have a lovely day. I bought a real tree this year. I could get more ornaments on it than my little fake tree.

And look at this picture. That is me when I was about 29 years old with all my dogs surrounding me!

Magical Colors in the Garden

This tree always surprises me. The color that it turns seems unreal to me.

Here is a close-up of the leaves:

And here is one more Japanese maple turning orange (seen through the dogwood tree.)

We’ve had so much rain that most of the leaves are now falling off the trees (yay, rain!) My tree guy came and topped both the flowering cherry and the apple tree. I bet I get a lot of apples next year 🙂 Oh, and he also chopped down that poison oak and the little tree that it was climbing. And then I drowned it with some super concentrated weed killer.

Next I will be pruning some of my trees, and planting all the bulbs that I got from John Scheepers! As soon as it stops raining 🙂

Took a couple more pictures today. Two days ago this big maple was still green. Its funny to me how the color can change so quickly with just some rain and cold weather.

And then I took a picture of my cherry tree, so you can see how much it got topped.

Noah’s Birthday

Baby pictures of Noah:

2 Months old:

4 months old:

This past Saturday Noah turned 10 years old! Since it was Saturday and his trainer has a class on that day, I drove over at the end of the class and took some Apple Hill donuts over. I am very appreciative of all the work she’s done with Noah, and also a couple of her helpers that worked with Noah. Of course, I forgot to take pictures over there. So I took a picture when I got home. Noah had just had a bath, but the picture doesn’t look so much like that.

When I took Noah to a special vet to be neutered, I asked how long these dogs lived. She told me that many times they escaped and were hit by cars or other terrible things happened to them. Noah has surprisingly never tried to escape from my yard. He has occasionally run off when I leave the gate open, but he always came back. Noah is slowing down. He still takes walks with me, but he usually walks behind me. Of course he never picks up sticks on our walks. But he does still enjoy barking. And he does enjoy sleeping most of the day!

A little rant: this bit with PGE turning the power on and off is getting VERY old. I am very glad that I got a generator this year, and that my neighbor Tom has been very helpful in giving me advice on how to keep it going. I wish it would rain a BIG rainstorm.

And here’s a few pictures of my garden. Its also very hard to water the garden when they turn the electricity off (I have a well, so I run out of water frequently.) Today at the gym, one lady told me they filled their bathtub up so they could flush their toilet–brilliant!!

Carnation:

Rose:

Petunias:

And one more new thing. I am going to have my contractor put the fence all the way around my whole yard. Please don’t ask me how much it is going to cost! I have a large yard, and I was even shocked at the cost!

Oh, one more new thing. A friend gave me her mom’s Keurig. I never thought I’d want one, but I do love it. The only thing is that I think it might be old and it gets clogged up frequently. So Keurig sent me a 25% off coupon, and I bought a smaller Keurig. Then I researched what kind of water to put in it, and they said Distilled water. Walmart has a lot of water on sale, so I bought 10 gallons of distilled water!

Just a Few Little Things to Show

This is the biggest news. Every since I’ve lived here, I had CATTLE gates. Yuck. So one day I asked my contractor if he would be able to build gates and a partial fence. I just loved this round gate that I found on the internet, and he also built a trellis in front of it so I can get some climbing roses and put them there. I want to get Queen Elizabeth roses, but the climbing ones are hard to find. Anyway, I love the fence so much that I am going to put the fence all the way around my yard eventually. Also, there is welded wire on the outside of the fence so Sophie can’t get out and skunks can’t get in! You can also see the little patio that I had built. Sadly, I haven’t used it much yet.

I hardly ever remember to take a picture of Noah right after he has his bath. Isn’t he a handsome dog. He’s going to be 10 years old in a couple of weeks!

This is just Chloe and Sophie trying to get me to feed them. They were barking at me, but I didn’t get that shot.

And my new baby chickens are just about grown up. I have four blue laced red wyandottes, 2 Black Astralorps, and 2 Barnvelders.

The babies are still afraid of most of the chickens, so I was surprised when I saw this picture of one of my Dominique chickens up there with the babies.

And that’s about all the news that’s fit to print.

Applying for Medicare

I Know! Its hard to believe I’m this old. But I will be 65 in December, and so I had to start making preparations. It made me very nervous. But there is a guy at the UC Center that has helped me with health care over the years, and he told me last year to call him in September.

In fact, I had already received my Medicare card, and I didn’t even know it because I was a little afraid to look at that piece of mail.

Anyway, this guy told me exactly what to do. Turns out my supplemental insurance from the UC system will only cost me $40 instead of the $340 I was paying! And he did advise me to sign up for part D (medicine.) I was pretty sure I wanted to do that, because my mom did not sign up for it, and now she has to pay $50 extra every month…

So I got a little confused about how to do that, but then I saw you could sign up online. Oh, and let me advise you—READ ALL THE INSTRUCTIONS ABOUT YOUR PASSWORD. I about gave up on getting a password until I looked over and saw there were MORE instructions about the password. So then I tried signing up for the basic medicine (part D) which said it was $12.90. But then I filled out the whole questionnaire, and at the end it said I had EnvisionRxPlus, and it did not say how much that cost! I tried calling them, but I did not have the number they wanted so that didn’t work. The next morning, I tried live chatting with medicare, but they also couldn’t help me. Then I finally saw that they had a website. Went on there, and sure enough, the cost was $12.90…

Anyway, looks like I am set, and I will have more choices than ever, according to the UC guy. I also found this interesting article talking about if you even need supplemental insurance with Medicare.