This is what I was going to post about before I went on my rant yesterday.

There is a plant nursery that specializes in David Austin roses and they have a display garden, which I have been wanting to see.  It’s kind of hard to find a free Saturday (they are open Thurs-Sat), but I made time this last Saturday. There wouldn’t have been a long ride anyway because it was a rainy day.  John and I took my mother to see the display gardens.

Rosewood Gardens actually is run from a personal property. She used to do all kinds of perennials, but is now just focusing on the DA roses. 

Luckily the rain stopped and it was just wet while we were here.

There is a beautiful shade garden in the front:

Some day my baby shade garden will be as lush as this.

Right off the back of the house was a rose garden:

There wasn’t a huge display of blooms, which is probably a week away, but I wanted to see the roses and peonies together.  The nice thing about the rain? I was perfect for taking pictures.

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There is a perennial garden as well:

Interesting that I have some of the same flowers, but they aren’t even close to blooming even though her property is only 20 miles from mine. This is Baptisia and cat mint:

Her irises are still blooming and I loved this pretty white one:

There are places to sit in the garden:

I loved how the peonies were draping over the bench:

And speaking of peonies, hers were luscious!

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The blooms are enormous, too.

One of the best things? The view past the gardens:

How amazing is that? I could sit in one of those Adirondack chairs forever curled up with a book.

The owner was super, super nice, too. She and I talked roses and gardening and it’s so fun to talk to someone with the same passion that you have.  I’m glad I had a chance to go.

On the home front, Pixie has been doing a great job of keeping the squirrels and chipmunks out of the window feeder:

This little guy wasn’t scared at all. I put my camera right up the the window:

Can you hear him? Nom, nom, nom.

Sigh…

I had another post ready to go, but yet again, our country has faced more violence.  Not just violence, but a terrible hate crime as well.

And yet again, I see the flood of #prayfor(the latest shooting), and the “our deepest sympathy” blah, blah, blah, that does absolutely nothing.

This man legally — let me repeat that — legally purchased an assault rifle to commit this heinous act.

In fact, it was this rifle:

It’s an AR-15. Look at it. Just look at it.  The NRA says this is used mostly for hunting. Yeah right. I don’t know a single hunter who takes this out into the woods.

You know who actually uses this assault weapon? Let’s see, the Sandy Hook shooter, the Aurora movie theater shooter, the shooters in San Bernadino, and now Orlando. We can’t hide our heads in the sand anymore. The 2nd amendment was never meant to protect this. I would imagine our forefathers would be absolutely horrifed.

You want to have a shotgun and go hunting? Fine. I have no problem with that. And I guess a small firearm for personal protection if that’s your thing.

But who the hell needs a weapon like the above? Who needs something like this?  And did you know this is the most wanted gun in America? What the hell?!?!

We’ve got to stop the hand wringing and work stop the insanity. Write your congressman/woman. Write to the White House. Be heard more and more. Vote out the naysayers on banning assault weapons this fall. The only way shit is going to get done about this is if the people make it happen.

It’s been busy around here.  John is out of town (coming back tonight), so I have been covering his business for him on top of my own work. Luckily it’s a bit slower work week for me.

Temps have fallen. May and June have had wild temperature swings, that’s for sure. We had overnight lows in the upper 40s last night. It was in the 50s when I rode this moring:

It was breezy, too. I didn’t think I would have this riding jacket out again until fall, but looks like it is back out for a few days.

I feel like Sandra Lee doing the semi-homemade stuff. I did thaw out some slow cooker chili the other day, but today I made soup:

Look – it’s vegetables!! 😀   This obviously isn’t filling enough for dinner, so I cooked up some tortellini and added it to my bowl.

That’s much more filling. This soup is pretty good, actually. I am not a huge fan of chunky soup, but this is not bad. It’s a good quick dinner. I wish I had some good crusty French bread to go with it, but I guess pretzels will have to do.

I finally upgraded my phone. John has been bugging me to upgrade my phone since I’m eligible on my plan and my windows phone has been having issues. Not to mention that I can’t do online banking with my phone. My bank doesn’t have an app for the windows phone. For 2 years I have been asking for it. How lame is that? So, I upgraded and my new phone got here today:

It’s not the newest, but my cheap self certainly is not going to pay for that 😀

If you hear screaming tonight, that’s probably me trying to transfer stuff from one operating system to another.

You all know I love fruit!  Of course, nowadays we can buy pretty much any fruit at any time of the year in the grocery store, but there are certain times of the year where fruits taste their best.

I was sent this graphic by Shari’s Berries about when fruits are at their peak. I didn’t receive any compensation for this. I’m just passing the graphic along because it’s good to know.

Two of my favorites are in season right now, blueberries and strawberries! Has anyone every had a Tayberry?  I’m totally curious now.

It’s Wednesday already!  The weather is warming up again after that really cold weekend.  The trees are flowering now:

These smell really good, too. I am not sure what tree this is. Maybe a dogwood or cherry?

You may remember that I started my volunteer work at the Chapman Museum last month. I don’t want to just sit at the desk, so when they asked for volunteers for a tea party committee, I joined it.  The museum is going to host Victorian teas in the dining room of the house. This is the dining room:

We are planning on have a short talk on a Victorian subject in the parlor followed by a 3-tier tea in the dining room serving 8 people. That means little sandwiches, scones and then a sweet.  These will start this fall and we are going to try to theme them to the season. During December there will probably be 3 teas during the month, but otherwise once a month. Doesn’t that sound like fun? I would love to go to a tea like that 😀

There are a lot of logistics to figure out like health code issues, menus, food costs, advertising and organizing all the volunteers to work these since we need more bodies there at the same time.  Hopefully this will draw more interest in the museum. The idea is to get more people in the door, not to make a lot of money (although that would be good) – they just can’t lose money.

With the warmer weather, biking is happening again. Today I decided to take a longer ride than I usually do during the day, which means logging in to work this evening, but it was worth it. It’s really getting green now:

Freshly laid asphalt on this section, too, which is nice. The tree roots will grow under the path and push up sections over time creating bumps, so they get smoothed out periodically. This bikeway is really taken care of very well.

it was gorgeous at the lake:

A lot better weather than we had for the brunch cruise. We live in such a beautiful area. The lake is only 9 miles from our house, so it takes about an hour and a half round trip, but much closer than the 15 miles away from our old house!

I guess this isn’t just Wednesday, but these are the meals I have been eating. I am fairly in a routine and tend to eat a lot of the same meals. Sometimes when you are busy you just fall back on the stand-by meals, right? I did try a new breakfast pancake:

I used the Bisquik Heart Smart:

• 1/4 Bisquik mix
• 5 grams protein powder
• 1 tablespoon egg whites
• dash of cinnamon (or multiple dashes, I like a lot)
• 2-3 tablespoons of almond milk

Just mix it all together. The milk you can add enough to get the batter to pancake consistency. I cooked it as one big pancake 😀  Topped with the apple topping I like to make so much.

We were at Panera Bread with my folks on Sunday and instead of my usual bagel, I got the Power Oats. It is steel cut oats with quinoa:

This was pretty good, actually. Makes me want to cook more quinoa. Which we have, I just haven’t cooked it.  <—– lazy.

Lots of yogurt for lunch with cereal and fruit. I use plain Fage as the flavored yogurts are too sweet for my liking.

I am on a ground chicken train for dinner lately. If I buy a pound of ground chicken, I am the only one that will eat it, so that means at least 4 meals in the week will have the chicken:

That’s laughing cow on top. I just mashed it on there with a fork. Food stylist I am not.

If it’s not chicken, it’s usually eggs:

I think I mentioned this one before, we did a stir fry with some of these:

I cooked up some stir fry frozen vegetables and we put it on top of rice.

These were actually good for fake meat. 😀  It’s nice when John and I cook together and eat the same thing. I don’t care for the meat analogues very much (John does) and I like a lot of protein, so I still eat meat.  Not to mention I like meat, although I do eat vegetarian frequently.

It’s warmer weather now, so we walk downtown for Friday night beverages. This last time we split a flight, which is five 4 oz beers. So you only end up with about 10 ounces, but it’s fun. I don’t usually want a whole pint anyway.

And there is still the bagel.

This was from this morning. The baker ran out of regular sesame seeds, so I got a half black and half white! I think they probably gave this one to me since I’m a regular there and don’t care. It’s a yin-yang bagel.

Lots of riding, too:

So that’s what I’m eating!

If you want to see a peek of how the garden path is doing, I did a post on my garden blog.

Another weekend zooming by. It was chilly and breezy, so no real long rides this weekend. I did manage to get in about 30 miles total over the 2 days, so not bad. This was the wind blowing the flag:

I ended up with chapped lips from the wind today!  I also was out in the very cold this morning. I met my mom for breakfast and decided to bike, even though it was in the upper 30s, just because I knew it would warm up some while we were eating.

Yay for time with mom!

John was away this weekend and I spent a lot of time outdoors. We had all that fencing to remove and we decided to just go ahead and list it for free on Craig’s list with pictures and description describing the condition.

We finally got a couple people that came, one earlier this week and one came today and took almost all the rest. Now we only have this little bit to dispose of.

Yay! So glad we don’t have to get a dumpster. I don’t think whatever fences they make will last long, but whatever. The funny thing? On a side note – The gentleman that came by today said he used to work for the man that owned our house. He did not have kind things to say – just like everyone else that talks about him. That guy sure is a piece of work. He also just got out of jail for skipping out on his child support payments. Deadbeat.  He did not deserve Radiance Manor.

Anyway, I like to bring my camera out when I am working in the back to get pictures of the birdies. The cardinal:

And a bonus house finch at the feeder.

Spring also heralds the return of the white-throated sparrow, which as a very distinctive song. You can listen to that here.

I finally got a shot of one with some patience staying really still.

I love the birdies!

I thought I would share some pictures in the future of the Chapman museum where I started doing my volunteering. Here is something that was donated – an old switchboard used in Glens Falls:

Could you imagine being an operator and having to work this to connect callers?? Crazy.

It’s primary day here in NY.  Is it me or has this political season felt like it has been going on for years now?  I hate it. I really do. Nothing is as divisive as politics and it’s bad when you can’t even talk about it amongst families. 

Everybody needs a nap!

Anyway, that being said, I did my duty at the primary today.

I’ll just be glad when November gets here.

On a good note, the birds have been going crazy at the feeders lately. I think they are gearing up for making baby birds. Especially the goldfinches. There are usually 8-10 of them at a time at the feeders.

The males are just about all turned yellow again. They are so cheerful to have in the yard, but dang they eat a lot!

There have been a lot more juncos as well. Not sure why.

They don’t hang around as much in the summer, I’m assuming because they eat more bugs and less seed, but I don’t know.

This was taken maybe 10 feet away? I was using my 75-300 zoom lens. It takes some nice shots.

You know how I thought I had fixed the issues with my blog? Well, it turns out my photos don’t show up in readers like feedly, so I guess I have to keep trying. Maybe it’s the theme because I know my garden blog doesn’t have that issue. Sigh. I guess I could switch to that theme, but it’s not set up the way I like for FR. Technology – supposed to make life easier!

It’s Thursday already. Geez. I feel like I’m a hamster in a wheel with the working and always having a million things to do. This is supposed to be a lighter week at work and it feels busier LOL. Trying to get up the gumption for blogging, but it’s that same old stuff, really.

I had a few comments on the new header picture for the blog. I took that when we visited North Creek last fall. the retaining walls were all being mosaiced and they are gorgeous! It’s not a finished project yet.

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I just zoomed in on the section with the bike.

The weather has been a bit warmer, so back out on the bike again the last few days. Last week was pretty chilly. I’m stylish when I go out, too. 😀

It’s still been very breezy this spring. I had a bit of a tailwind on one section going down a hill and check out the speed I clocked!

That’s 53.6 km for metric peeps. It’s a little scary going that fast. It’s always in the back of my mind that I could hit a rock or bump and go flying. I’m very familiar with that road, however. I wouldn’t go that fast on an unfamiliar hill.

We’ve definitely been getting a lot of exercise in. It doesn’t seem to make the scale budge at all, though. That’s been pretty frustrating. I have to say it’s actually kind of depressing me. I have an appointment with my GP in early May, so it’s time for more blood work again. Sigh.

I think I may have found my new volunteer mission. I will be going to the historical society on Friday to talk to them and see if I like the fit. I’ll post more about that next week.

Gotta takes pics for the garden stuff for tomorrow 😀 Nothing blooming yet, though.