It's Sunday, guess what I'm doing today...

I'm teaching the 7 year olds in Primary. Our lesson today is about prayer. We will have stories, songs, reading from Luke 1:5-17, role playing, and coloring. I love Primary! I know that Heavenly Father hears and answers prayers, maybe not in the way we wanted, but he is aware of exactly what we need.

I looked out the window and what else did I see?

A flock of cedar waxwings eating the holly berries on our big holly tree.. They've been here all week and almost all of the berries are gone now. I think the birds have come later this year, in the past, they have arrived in March or April.

Pumpkin seeds

Monday I put the six giant pumpkin seeds between two pieces of paper towels to sprout them. On Tuesday I put them in 4" pots to grow into tiny plants. Larry is letting me use his garden spot and he is going to plant in the square foot garden. Can we grow a 500 pound pumpkin? Time will tell.

Of flowers and poetry

Spring is my favorite time of year. I especially love lilacs. The white lilacs in these pictures are from Larry's grandmother's house in Idaho. When she moved here, she brought them with her and planted them at Larry's parents' house. These are decendents of those bushes and are growing in our backyard. I love poetry, too, and I thought these lilacs would go well with part of Walt Whitman's poem, read below.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed...

In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings,

Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle--and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig with its flower I break.

Clivia

Clivia is a genus of monocot flowering plants native to southern Africa. They are from the family Amaryllidaceae. Common name is Bush lily.
They are a non-woody evergreen plant, with dark green, strap-like leaves. These leaves produce clusters of bell-shaped flowers on a stalk above the foliage. The flowers somewhat resemble those of certain varieties of Lilium or Amaryllis. Orange is the most common colour but there are also Peach, Near White, Apricot, Red and Yellow varieties.
Specimens were gathered by British explorers William Burchell and John Bowie in 1815 and 1820, respectively. Clivia nobilis became the first named species when in 1828 the Kew botanist John Lindley named it in honor of Lady Charlotte Florentia Clive, Duchess of Northumberland (1787-1866)., who was for a time the governess of the future Queen Victoria.

(taken from Wikipedia)

My clivia plant is blooming now. In the 18+ years that I have had this plant, it has only bloomed a few times. I have found that fertilizing it with African violet fertilizer starting in March gets it to bloom sometimes.

I looked out the window and what did I see?

A coyote with a squirrel in his mouth running across our front yard!