All posts by verily sherrilee

Directionally challenged, crafty, reading mother of young adult
2026, animals, Family, holidays, home, pets

Memorial Day with McGee

29 Comments

YA really needed a puppy fix over the weekend, so yesterday we cajoled Jacque into lending McGee to us.  We picked him up in the afternoon and had him for about three hours.

There was a short walk up the block (it was pretty hot and he has little short legs) and then hung out a bunch in the back yard.  He was very well behaved for a puppy – no romping in my plants, no barking, no chewing on my toes.  He did find a good stick:

It was interesting to see him taking in all the new stuff in our city back yard.  Here are the things that McGee was momentarily afraid of:

    • the fire pit
    • birds flying near the bird feeders
    • the birdbath
    • the grill
    • the wind chime

Here are the things that fascinated him:

    • planes
    • the birdseed under the feeders
    • my neighbor Don who was clearing up after grilling
    • the boxer who poked it’s head out the car window and barked (friendly bark)

We pulled out the kiddie pool and lifted McGee into it twice, followed by the application of treats.  He didn’t actually seem to mind the pool but didn’t want to tarry and wouldn’t jump in on his own.  YA thought maybe it was too big a jump for him (until we moved inside and he felt quite at home jumping up on the sofa) but I think maybe the water was too chilly.  There was some tug-of-war and he was very willing to chase a toy when YA tossed it but bringing the toy back is not in his toolbox yet!  We had YA-chasing and some zoomies as well.

He didn’t stop moving the whole time we had him… Jacque, I assume he slept well last night?

How did you spend YOUR Memorial Day?

 

 

2026, Family, gardening, home, Nature

Memorial Blooms

39 Comments

The iris is my favorite flower; I have always loved them.  It’s probably an inherited trait; I’m pretty sure it was one of my mother’s favorites.  To be honest, I don’t know for sure as my mom was never a flower planter.  She did like to do yard maintenance but didn’t add shrubs or flowers in any of the homes we lived in.  She did however take us kids to the Missouri Botanical Gardens every year, always during the time that the iris gardens there were in full bloom.  That can’t be a coincidence. 

Alice Hahn Goodman Iris Garden (photo credit: Heather Osborn)

I have iris planted all over my yard, front and back, and in a wide variety of colors.  The iris in the header photo is the first to bloom this season – I don’t even know the name of it.  It was supposed to be an orange variety but when it came up the following spring it was this startling white.  Gertens actually credited me for them so not only are the gorgeous, but they were free.  Two of my favorite things.

Of course this year these blooms are bringing my mother to mind so today I am remembering her and thanking her for infecting me with the love of iris!

Any blooms you’re remembering today (literal or metaphorical)?

2026, Business, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Food Foolishness

16 Comments

There’s never any warning.  Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer doesn’t have a set schedule – without any notice it shows up in my Inbox.  In the olden days (back when the dinosaurs roamed the planet) it would appear in the snail mail box.  It’s the same document these days but I have to admit that I enjoyed relaxing with a cup of coffee or tea and leafing through the hard copy.

But this is not a rant about the death of print.  I swear.  It’s more a rant about how YA and I are completely helpless in the face of this flyer.  It’s unbelievable; we are both completely drawn to the new (and probably never-to-be-seen-again) products that are featured.  A little bit like the seasonally colored items that I can’t stay away from.

The theme of the flyer and the seasonal items this time is “strawberry”.  While I love fresh strawberries and I practically live on my strawberry jam, I’m not otherwise a massive strawberry fan.  But YA is.  And there are certainly lots more items featured in addition to the strawberry-laden stuff.  We made a list and I headed out.  Managed to find everything on the list with the assistance of a customer service gentleman who went to the back and found two items that were out on the shelves.  Here is a partial list of what I came home with:

  • Pickle Potato Chips: these were primarily for YA – she’s also a fan of Pickle Pizza at the fair.
  • Parmesan Tapenade: I love all kinds of tapenade, so this looked promising. It made a great pizza topping on Tuesday.
  • Potato Cheese Stix: like it says.  Cubed potatoes, mixed with cheese, frozen on a stick.  YA says they’re pretty good.
  • Spicy Taco Sauce: This turned out to be a great sauce for the afore-mentioned potato-cheese stix.
  • Strawberry Gummy Bears. Completely for YA.  I never even liked jujubes when I was a kid, so no gummies for me now.
  • Turkish flatbread with cheeses, spinach and onion.  In the freezer section – can’t wait.
  • Spicy Spuds. Another freezer options – spicy roasted potatoes.
  • Oat Bites. There are two kids – PB&J and Raspberry. Bitty little muffins with filling.
  • Strawberry Snickerdoodles. I might try this although YA will probably eat most of them
  • Garlic Salted Mixed Nuts. They also have little garlic toasted chips in the can.  Quite nice.

There were several other things, including a six-pack of San Pellegrino; we splurge on this a couple of times a year.  None of these items were necessary and neither of us had a plan for any of it, although I did get a pizza dough while I was there, thinking about the tapenade.  I’m of two minds about this silliness.  One the one hand, it was a lot of money for nothing that we had a plan for.  On the other hand, it’s food; we have to eat regardless of the absurdity of the food items.

Tried anything new (food or otherwise) the past couple of weeks?

2026, books, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons

Is It Summer Yet?

27 Comments

In looking for my packing list on my pc last night, I found a Word file titled “From Books I Like”.  It’s only a couple of pages long and I would not have remembered that I have this document if I hadn’t stumbled upon it.  It has a few quotes from books that I’ve read; one of the quotes is that wonderful metaphor about the town from The Egg & I by Betty MacDonald that I’ve written about before.  Then there are two other quotes from Michael Perry’s Off Main Street.  One is another transfixing metaphor….

“Summer is a seducer.  After bundling through another tight-lipped winter, after enduring the mounting frustration of spring’s titillating dance of veils, we gape as summer comes sliding down her blazing ecliptic like a woman down a banister.  She laughs with her head thrown far back; she throws her hands high in the air, releasing fistfuls of butterflies.  She belly dances through the cornfields until the dust rises like a charmed snake, hanging in fat curls, leaving you cotton-mouthed.  She makes the fox pant, she drives the hawk to think air.  Weaker creatures curtain themselves away to complain.”

Fairly appropriate as I’m enjoying the beginning of spring/summer this week.  My major gardening push is done so now I can enjoy my yard without massive effort.  Bird feeders are full, hummingbird feeders are out (although I haven’t seen any hummingbirds yet).  YA and I have new Adirondacks in back as one of our old ones gave up the ghost a couple of weeks back.  Windows open.  No fans down from the attic yet although I have had my overhead fan going a couple of times in my bedroom.  Did my twice-a-year laundering of  my bedding and allergy covers.  Swapped out my spring/summer wardrobe for my winter one.  Aaaaahhhhhh.

Of course, unearthing these quotes on the pc makes me wonder if I have other files like this started and squirrelled away.  Suppose I’ll have to take a look one of these days!

You enjoying anything in particular this week?

 

2026, Food, History, Kids, Mysteries

Condiments Muscle Memory

36 Comments

Muscle memory is an amazing thing.  On Saturday, YA and I had our next-door neighbors over for lunch.  Just veggie burgers and corn on the grill.  At the last minute, we decided it was a little too chilly to eat outside, so I set the table inside.

I set out seven little bowls in the kitchen.  Onion slices, tomato slices, pickles and Boston lettuce to get started.  Just as I started to squirt ketchup into the fifth bowl, YA walked in and immediately said “what are you DOING?”  I told her I was putting the condiments in bowls and she pushed back with “WHY?”  It took me a few minutes of standing at the counter, looking at the bowls before I realized why I was about to put ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise in little bowls.

When I was growing up, condiments went into little bowls. Not just for when we had company, but all the time.  Even when we had dinner at my Nana and Pappy’s on Saturday nights, condiments went into little bowls.  In fact, if condiments ever went on the table in their bottles, it was called “pinkert style”.  It wasn’t until I was in high school that my mom told me why.  When she was growing up, they lived a few houses down from the Pinkerts.  Apparently the Pinkerts never put their condiments into little dishes… they always just set the bottles out willy nilly.  So it turns out that my grandparents calling that “pinkert style” was actually quite pejorative – I never knew.

While I almost automatically put out little bowls when company comes over, YA and I do not do this when it’s just the two of us.  Of course, YA and I eating a meal that requires condiments on the table is fairly rare.

On Saturday I put out the bottles; I really don’t need to be the third generation getting little bowls dirty in the name of shaming some family up the block from my grandparents!!

Any habits that have come down the generations in your family?

2026, animals, Family, Gatherings, Nature, Uncategorized

Zoo Happiness

15 Comments

Neither of my folks liked crowds. Long lines, throngs of folks – count them out.  I’ve never been sure why I can take lots of folks but whatever propensity I have, it has been handed down to YA. 

The two busiest days at the Minnesota Zoo are always the last Saturday and Sunday of their very popular Farm Babies program.  They have all kinds of activities and music out at The Farm and there are always plenty of babies; this year baby cows, llamas, goats, lambs and piglets.  YA and I had other things going on for the first four weekends so it was this past weekend or no Farm Babies program until next year.  We’ve been to the last weekend of Farm Babies before but it was even more crowded than we remember. 

Of course, almost everybody was a young family with kids (and those proverbial strollers – I promise I’m not whining about strollers, despite the photo above).  It was, however, truly amazing to see the number of strollers, especially when they were “parked” in several locations.  Wow!

YA and I have different modus operandi at the zoo.  She will walk at my pace but doesn’t always stay right at my side if I dilly dally.  I am more than able to stand and watch a moose do basically nothing for 10 minutes but if I do this, sometimes YA will wander off to see something else.  Conversely, she can pet a baby cow forever.  On Saturday, there was a restaurant chain sponsoring a scavenger hunt.  There were three stations that you had to find and have you little map stamped.  I thought it was a hoot but YA didn’t want to play (this was when she went off to pet that baby cow).

One of the projects in the Activity Barn was making homes for mason bees who apparently are solitary bees that don’t live in hives.  I thought this was very interesting and I let the volunteer tell me everything.  When I was done there, I found YA petting goats.  The one time we were perfectly synced was when we got hungry for lunch! 

Toward the end of our day we stopped at the Service Desk – I wanted to ask when Llama Trek was going to open and to find out if the snow monkeys (whose exhibit is being re-vamped right now) were still here in Minnesota or if they were hanging out at a different zoo until their habitat is finished.  The guy behind the desk was talkative and I’m not even sure how we got from the snow monkey habitat discussion to the Kodiak bear who broke the window at the zoo several years back.  Or how the zoo has multiple possible plans for adding new bears now that there is only one left. 

As we were leaving YA said “I didn’t think he was ever going to stop talking.”  I laughed and said “I could have stayed and listened to him talk about the zoo all day.” 

I guess it’s different strokes for different folks.  But neither of us were bothered by the big crowds!

When was the last time you visited a zoo?  Any favorite zoos?  Zoo animals?

2026, Family, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

YA Cave

35 Comments

Claustrophobia, agoraphobia, hydrophobia, hemophobia, acrophobia, Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.  There are a LOT of phobias out there.  Luckily I’m only stuck with two that occasionally bug me. 

Acrophobia bugs me the most.  I don’t like to take the escalators at the Mall of America.  I don’t like to stand near the edge of anything and a couple of those tall tall buildings in London did throw me for a loop.  Three weeks ago, my next-door neighbors got a new roof and after a couple of hours, I had to take my book and move downstairs because watching them work out of my bedroom window was giving me the heebie jeebies.

My claustrophobia is milder and mostly manifests in my deep desire to not be underground or in a cave.  Oh, and I don’t care much for curtains – give me a good valance any time.  I’ve passed twice on the underground river at Xcaret in Mexico and doing the big cave on Gibraltar really got my heart going.  I even stopped reading the Anna Pigeon series after a book set in a cave.  Ish. 

YA doesn’t have a titch of claustrophobia and years ago hung curtains in her room in addition to window shades (I am NOT a window shade kind of gal).  Yesterday a package got delivered and she swooped on it immediately.  Curtains.  When I asked why she needed new curtains she said that her shades had started to curl on the edges and she decided black out curtains would be better.  Black out curtains.  I’m not making this up.   If she only pulled these curtains during the night, when we have a lot of ambient light from living on a county street, I could kind of understand, but like her previous curtains, these have been pulled shut 24/7.  It’s dark in there.

I’ve never wanted a cave of my own so it’s hard for me to get her desire for one, but it’s her room so if she feels the need to have a grotto of her own, so be it!

Any fears you’ll cop to?  Do you like serious darkness for sleeping?

2026, Art, Business, Gatherings, Uncategorized

A Crafty Friday

35 Comments

Crafts shows are a favorite of mine.  I love to see all the stuff that people make and it’s fascinating that other people buy all this stuff.  The Arts & Crafts show at Canterbury is huge – not normally my favorite kind of craft event, but I’m fond one particular vendor so I wait in line, cough up my cash (I get two discounts – one for being old and one for getting a coupon ahead of time).   

The lines are pretty intense so I get their pretty early.  It’s good people-watching in line.

The vendor I like make quilted objects – I met the mother/daughter duo years ago at the State Fair.  I ordered some oven mitts from them and the entry fee to the fair is cheaper than the shipping that’s why I went this year.  I also wanted to check out their inventory of a couple of other items because they are closing their business at the end of the year.  Marie is 84 and ready to retire!  I got my mitts and some toilet tank toppers and a couple of table runners since it’s the last time I’ll be seeing them.  They gave me the last two popcorn bags for free, since YA and I adore those. 

Of course, as long as I’m there, I wander through and look at everything.  This year I ended up getting a couple of dip mixes – they tasted good sampled w/ pretzels.  I also stopped and got some fudge from a vendor I’ve purchased from before.  The Turtle Sundae fudge is very good.  Tried the baked cheese guys this year (won’t do that again).  AND, I got a massive bag to popcorn… a combo of kettle corn and caramel corn.  Normally I don’t get popcorn like that but from where I was standing in line (for almost an hour), the popcorn stand was directly in my line of sight and when they let us in, I was just pulled right to the stand.  Took me six days to finish it.

Without Marie and Stanna, I won’t be going back to this Arts Fair.  Not enough vendors that I’m that interested in.  I’ll still do my Rubber Stamp event in July though and if they have a popcorn vendor, I’ll be all in!

Any arts/crafts events you’ve taken part in?  Any vendors you gravitate to?

2026, Family, gardening, Nature, Seasons, Weather

Spring Yard Disaster

27 Comments

As of yesterday afternoon, the biggest part of my gardening year is over.  Clean-up from the fall, spring weeding, mulching, flower baskets planted and veggies planted in the bales.  Phew!  

It took way longer this year than usual.  Part of this was the weather.  We had spectacular weekends but then I wasn’t following through because Monday – Friday was too cool.  I do not like to garden when I’m cold and I certainly don’t want to wear a coat out there either!  Then the mess from the fall was much bigger than usual.  And all my fault.  A triple whammy, in fact.

My gardening season came to an abrupt end the day after my birthday last August, when I blew out my first knee.  Then right about the time I might have gotten to some fall clean up, the other knee went.  That meant that apart from some watering (most of which YA took care of), I didn’t do ANY fall clean up.  No dead-heading the late summer flowers, no cutting back peony stalks, no raking (although YA is a little bitty bit).

The second problem was last year’s mulch.  For reasons that pass understanding, I chose big chunky wood chips last year.  As we were spreading them about last spring, I was thinking I’d made a mistake, but it didn’t become clear how obnoxious these wood chips were until we were cleaning up this spring.  They didn’t seem to have broken down at all and were a mess to work around/with.

Then there was the Creeping Charlie fail.  Normally I do a great job of weeding the Creeping Charlie menace but last summer, I was busy in July, thinking I would just do a big push in August.  But, then…. well, you know.  My nemesis ground cover didn’t give a fig about my knees so there was way more weeding needed this year on that front before the mulch could go down.

I’m feeling quite relieved… there will, of course, be plenty of gardening going forward, but not the three/four hours a day grind we’ve been going through.  Time to enjoy!

When was the last time you “shot yourself in the foot”?

2026, Family, home, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Power Washing Premonition

23 Comments

For quite some time, I avoided Hudson & Rex, a Canadian tv show about a cop and his partner, a beautiful German Shepherd Dog.  But I’ve gotten hooked; it shows on a couple of different cable stations so when I find it showing, I’m all in.

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that one of those two stations plays a few ads A LOT.  One of those is about a power washer.  You know the kind where some guy says “after using this, I threw out my old power washer”.  Blah blah blah.  I mute it a fair amount.

Imagine my surprise when a box was delivered yesterday and I came downstairs to find YA assembling a little power washer.  It isn’t the power washer from tv (thank goodness); she bought it with award credits from the merchandise side of her company’s business.  No money actually changed hands.

She had it out yesterday afternoon, doing the side of the garage and the driveway where we had all the mulch piled up for the last couple of weeks.  I guess it works pretty well; she informed me of a couple of other projects she is thinking about. 

I’m glad she likes to take on these kinds of projects because it would never have occurred to me but I am a little spooked that the tv seemed to predict the power washer entering our lives.

Any cleaning projects lately?