Whimsical gardens

Fairy gardens have been vey popular around here for the past few years. Outrageously priced accessories can be had at all the garden stores plus classes. This one was designed by a 11 year old

garden totem

another one. Lots of these on sale

mutant hydrangea

lots of sculptures

this rock garden had slabs of colored glass

another garden featured Chihuly-like glass needles within

I love this planter

still peony season

favorite mailbox

lots of the gardens featured waterfalls

pretty baby bells

new to me flower

one garden had several varieties of yellow peonies

sculpture garden

One of the Moms is on the Ann Arbor Garden Walk committee and gave tickets to us other moms. Two of us were left (one Mom was watching her son's rocket launch in Florida..it did go off yesterday). Although the forecasted thunderstorms did not happen (a week so far without rain), the temps were in the mid-nineties by afternoon. Very hot to be traipsing around. Fortunately most of the gardens were heavily shaded though as I have mostly full sun here in the middle of the meadow, not useful for ideas about 'sun' gardens. Lots of ferns and hostas (boring to me).

There were 7 gardens featured and a very crude map on how to find them. Some were in areas I have never been before. Each house had something  to sell: glass pretties, perennials, garden totems, fairy garden supplies, silk scarves). One house had 2 acres of very elaborate gardens. How does one find time to tend to so much? I assume they hired people.

We stopped for a nice lunch after a full morning of touring. In the afternoon, it became impossibly hot. It had been in the mid-70s when I had gotten up to run very early that morning but somehow a cold front (without rain!) came through last night so it was in the high 40s when I started my long bike ride this morning.

On Friday, a former colleague came to lunch. A lot had happened to the two of us in the long period since we worked together so we had plenty to catch up on. I harvested some of my Swiss chard to put in a quiche and mint and lemon balm to put in a salad. Every day I rip out lots of mint and lemon balm (and creeping thyme) and it reappears.

Steve went to Maya's soccer game. She finally got the idea that she was to go after the ball, not just keep the other girls company. She had a break away dribbling fairly skillfully down the field. Unfortunately in the wrong direction....

Meanwhile back at the ranch

Note the tongue protruding from Ms. Hummingbird. We must have 6-10 hummingbirds now battling for exclusive rights for the 3 feeders. Fun to watch in the evening

lupine

roses

love-in-the-mist

hydrangea

love their masks

I saw a group of 10 flying towards our tree

yeah I see you This varmit now knows how to climb the chains from my roof that have feeders on them

delphinium

Daniel's report about his  field trip. He is 6

My long awaited DNA test came in. I am not Jewish. That missing quarter or eighth is mostly Eastern European, which I am assuming is Polish even though they were German speakers. They even identified 3 probable 2nd cousins, one having the last name of my Grandma, so I assume his grandfather is one of her brothers. I never met the brothers and certainly not their children or grandchildren. The biggest surprise is that I have a fair amount of Scandinavian genes.

When I spent those 6 weeks in Italy, the locals were very interested in ones background. They knew I was not Italian (like most of the students). Saying Sono Americana wasn't enough. They wanted to know about the genitori.  They guessed I was Danish as I did resemble the big, blonde, ex-pats that lived in town. I said, no, I was German (I didn't know the Italian words for Irish and Scottish). As a child, one grown-up insisted I must be Swedish because that's how I looked.

Well Scandinavia is close to Poland. Also, my English relatives come from Yorkshire, which was regularly invaded and settled by Vikings. Presumably these Vikings were responsible for the simplification of English. Old English had all the genders and cases that German had. The Vikings weren't going to use all of that and stuck to non-gender speech and did not use separate cases. That you Vikings, my probable ancestors.

I am mostly 'western European, a big catch-all for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Northern Italy and Northern Spain. They do separate out Great Britain and Ireland, which I have ancestors from both. The Irish component was  much smaller than I thought but my Irish great-grandfather had a French mom.

This morning, a Cooper's hawk was chasing one of the sparrows for a meal. Couldn't see if he got him. Later I found him or his mate sitting on a branch over the road I run on near the nest, which is now almost impossible to see through the vegetation.

After a week of unbearable heat, it has been cool. Between huge rains, I was able to get my long bicycle ride in Sunday. So far, I am up to 745 miles this season. Allie was informed of her sisterhood and keeps looking expectantly at her mom's belly for signs of life.

I am cooking stuff for an old work friend coming to lunch tomorrow harvesting some of my Swiss chard, mint and lemon balm.

I went to my cooking class. A young mom was there in remission from a rare form of leukemia (hairy cell). Other than that, I have been watching Maya, gardening and buying even more stuff.

One of the moms son is an aerospace engineer responsible for a rocket launch of a satellite. After many delays, it was supposed to take off right now. I was given a link to a live feed, which worked all day but not now as the rocket is probably being launched. The mom in question went down to Florida to see this happen.

Update: finally got into the live feed. I did not miss the launch as it did not happen. From the website:

2200 GMT (6:00 p.m. EDT)

SCRUB! The persistent gloomy weather at Cape Canaveral this afternoon will keep the United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket from flying today to deliver a classified U.S. national security satellite into space.
A combination of rain, clouds and lightning meant it was unsafe to permit the triple-barrel rocket launch during its lengthy opportunity today. Liftoff of the NROL-37 mission is rescheduled for Saturday at 1:51 p.m. EDT (1751 GMT). Forecasters say there is a 60 percent chance of acceptable weather then. Over the next couple of hours, the 235-foot-tall rocket will be safed and its 465,000 gallons of cryogenic fuel and oxidizer drained back into the launch pad storage spheres. When the rocket does fly, it will carry a top-secret payload to orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency responsible for the design and operation of the country's fleet of spy satellites. Experts believe the payload is an eavesdropping spacecraft that will be launched into a circular geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles high to perform intelligence-gathering on terrorist networks and adversarial nations for U.S. warfighters and policy-makers.

Shaking the family tree

My rhubarb harvest, about 25% of the stalks. This yielded 6 cups of cut up pieces, enough for 2 crisps

I took this crisp to my relatives stopping at a store right before their house to get caramel ice cream

my cousin loves to collect bird carvings, particularly of crows. She must have had close to a hundred

her husband has a variety of carved Great Lake fishes made by a local artist

My grandma painted this years ago. My aunt, my uncle and my cousin all had her paintings. I assume my mom had some too but I did not have access to her house due to a mentally disturbed squatter living in there

My 95 year aunt looking very much like my mom. Her voice is very similar too. She shows very little signs of ageing. Very sharp and mobile

Me and my 92 year old uncle. Still quite handsome but now is lost in a cloud of dementia. My aunt was the oldest of 7; my uncle was baby #3 and my mom #5. My mom's younger sister, #7, is still alive and doing well

Steve and I made the 2.5 hour drive to the west coat of Michigan to Spring Lake, both a town and a lake-like body of water. It turns out my bicycle ride will begin on its northern side in Fruitport. It actually is the mouth of Michigan's biggest river, Grand River. My cousin lives on one of its many inlets. It is just a short pontoon boat ride to Lake Michigan though she prefers to take her boat to a quiet bayou to just sit on her floating island reading and drinking beer. Her condo is full of many collections: carved birds, carved fishes, antique miniature sewing machines, antique dolls, big clay jugs. She has a sewing room with 3 sewing machine, a huge loom and lots of other equipment I couldn't identify. She makes many quilts and wall hangings, which were on the walls along with her mother's paintings and our grandma's paintings.

We went to pick up her mother, my 95 year old aunt who was 6 years older than my mom. I wanted to find out how much did she remember about my mom growing up. But by the time my mom was a teenager, my aunt had long since disappeared. Mostly I learned more about my aunt, how she butted heads with her mother. So why did my mom leave home and school at 16? Still a mystery.

My grandma loved babies but didn't have much use for older kids. Just on to the next baby until she outgrew that child. then just have another baby. My aunt as the oldest, observed this over and over and thus wasn't a big fan of Grandma especially as she felt compelled to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, her mother-in-law moved in when my mom was a teenager. Grandma hated her and left her care to my mom and her younger sister. Maybe that is why my mom left. I must talk to the younger sister at some point. My grandma was a musician and an artist. What she didn't feel like doing is feeding her kids and taking care of them. She presumably grew some special lilies for my mother's wedding. Unless she had a hot house, it would be hard to have lilies bloom in mid June here ( I might get some lilies by the end of June). At any rate, my father's mother, who had planned the whole wedding, probably would not have used them anyway. I see no lilies in the photos.

My aunt is an amazing picture of health with skin of someone younger than me even though she is out in the sun (and has a good tan). She does not need a walker and strides quite quickly. She has a slight tremor and has difficulty focusing her eyes on small objects due to macular degeneration but otherwise is quite alert and sharp. My mom must have gotten the short end of the  stick in many ways. She was lost in a large family of strong personalities and I feel, forgotten about.

We went out to lunch in a bakery based café. There is a huge artisanal coffee roaster nearby whose coffee was featured at the café. They had a fairly innovative menu for being out in the boonies. I had fejoda, a Brazilian stew. We took home a freshly baked apricot scone and a huge brioche.

Then on to my uncle's. He was doing fine until a few months ago. Now he has congestive heart disease and dementia. He no longer remembers me. I told him that I was my mother's daughter (his sister). Oh, how is she doing?

How do I answer that? In the past, he knew she had died. Do I want to remind him of that? I was told to tell him the truth. He just shrugged. His own wife had died last year.

We left to do some sight seeing. Steve and I had stayed in nearby Grand Haven years ago on a Sunday. A good portion of south west Michigan had been settled by puritanical Dutch (leaving their liberal, fun loving brethren behind) and they enforced 'blue' laws for everyone. I had asked where I could buy wine. Oh we would have to go to Muskegon County (fortunately not far away) for that. Later we ate in a restaurant that had a note on the menu that although the powers that were in Ottawa county had forbidden the sale and consumption of beer and wine on Sunday, they had forgotten to mention mixed drinks, so we could have that. When my cousin first visited the county wanting a beer, she was told she needed to buy a mixed drink instead. So she randomly decided upon a Long Island ice tea not knowing until she was almost comatose that it contained 5 shots of alcohol. But things have changed in Ottawa county so we can drink (useful as we will be there on a Sunday night in 5 weeks).

We returned to my cousin's for some of the crisp I had made and some Nicey Spicey beer from Short's (they are beer collectors  and have a refrigerator just for that). It was a nice time. My aunt will try to find some childhood photos of my mom. I had seen only one and have no idea where that is. We (I) had planned to stop in East Lansing for dinner but during a moment's inattention , Steve blew by the exit. Oh well, I still had my apricot scone.

Peonies please

Mountain laurel. A bit early for it here

This mountain laurel was more open

lots of rhododendron too

The Arb's peony garden contains the most varieties in the US

These are only a small bit of the many photos I took yesterday. I haven't even looked at Steve's (he has the good camera). It was a good day to go.

Finally it is raining. and presumably it will stop in time for my long ride tomorrow morning. We watched Maya's soccer game. the girls were 15 minutes late getting there even though they live only 2 miles away. Organization is not Maya's dad's strong suit. Maya continues to be totally clueless in the game

Again, I gardened this afternoon. I was going to get my nails done so my relatives on the westside of the state that I am visiting next week don't think I am a total slob but I ran out of energy.

Life around here

Chipmunk fell into our pond. Steve did rescue him so he would live to raid our feeders

I now have white, yellow and orange roses

lots of these

tulip poplar Not in our yard

Clay boar head mounted in our family room to remind me of the boars I ran with (from!) in Italy Went back to get the matching cat today

This lupine survived the winter. In the past, I couldn't make them last more than a month

After 4 years, finally I have a peony blossom of my own. I have a red blossom plant that hopefully will bloom last year. I used to have 3 huge bushes full of giant white very fragrant blossoms but they were destroyed when we needed to have the ground dug up to stop a leak. They do not transplant well and died.

I saw my first newborn fawn of the season this morning galloping weakly behind its mom trying to escape me on my running road. The drought continues though we finally had an hour of heavy rain the other night. Two weeks of dryness! I try to keep things watered.

Today Steve and I went to the Arb to visit the glade that has the rhododendrons, azaleas and mountain laurel. Photos tomorrow. Then on to the peony garden where the blooms are at their peak a week early from last year no thanks to the persistent sun and heat though today was a comfortable day to walk due to low humidity. Then on to get some coconut bubble tea. And then on to the resale shop to get the matching cat head. They had moved it so I assumed it was gone but as Steve stood in line to get this fancy globe (his idea), I saw my cat. Yay!

My friend, who is fighting graft versus host disease, had enough energy yesterday to go out to lunch with me yesterday and then take a walk around her neighborhood where I saw the tulip poplar. It is cottonwood season. These things burn my eyes. Then on to visit another friend.

So the material they test for genetic defects are not fetal cells. Rather it is free floating DNA from the trophoblast. It accounts for 2-6% of the DNA found in the maternal blood, which sounds like an amazing amount given the size of the embryo versus the size of the mom. This test has only been on the market for the past 5 years.

Best Mother's Day present

These size NB monkey shoes were in my Mother's Day gift bag. who could they be for?

These tiny shoes might fit my new grandbaby but probably not. In my family, we waltz right through the newborn sizes and start at 3 months.

Josh and Julie's baby currently is the size of a large raspberry measuring a whole 1.87 cm from crown to butt, less than an inch. He/she has a strong heartbeat, which is why they feel it is somewhat safe to tell some people at least. The baby is due in early January.

New test that they did not have in 'my' day: at 10 weeks, they take Julie's blood. In it will be a few cells of the baby's, which they will study. From these few cells, they can tell if there any genetic defects along with the sex of the baby. The test takes 2 weeks to complete so in less than a month, they will have a lot more info.

Presumably fetal cells stay around for a long time. Do they have any effect on the mom? There are some autoimmune diseases that women get much more often than men. Are these foreign cells behind them? And there may be some benefits. Fetal cells have been found around tumors fighting the cancer cells. My question is since Allie's cells are still floating around, how do they distinguish the new baby from Allie.

Must consult the internet....