Tea and Roses

Today one of the local nurseries (Osuna Nursery for the curious) partnered with a local tea room (St James Tearoom) to put on an event combining tea and roses. 

I decided to brave the high winds and airborne dust that are so prevalent in Albuquerque in April and see what was to be seen.

As to be expected, there were lots of lovely roses - such as

And then there was

The tea was as yummy as the roses.  They served tea (of course) and a number of food items.  Two that I tasted were cucumber sandwiches and lavender shortbread.  I LOVED the lavender shortbread.  It was not only yummy but fun as well.

After having tea and admiring the roses, I wandered through the rest of the nursery since I love to see all the blooming plants.

I have long been a fan of dahlias.  Here's a pretty yellow one.

And I loved the color of this little pansy.

I'm glad I didn't let the weather deter me from having a fun and colorful time this afternoon.

Papillon

Continuing My Efforts

Since April 24th is normally the last day of the season where we might possible have a late freeze, I decided this is the weekend to continue my idea of having a thyme lawn. 

So far, the first plant, a wooly thyme, seems to be hanging in there.  Always a good thing with my iffy green thumb.

On Friday I went by a couple of locally owned nurseries to check out their supplies of thyme.  At the first one I went to, no luck.  I couldn't find any thyme in their herb section.  I asked one young man who worked there.  He did not know and said he would find out.  Thirty seconds later, he had obviously not asked and was back to what he'd been doing before I asked - straightening up the tomato plant display.  I then located another employee and asked her.  She informed me they had just planted the seeds for their thyme plants and I should come back in a week or so.  Umm, no thanks.

I went to another nursery right down the street.  They had some larger time plants, but the tag said they would grow slightly higher than I wanted them to.  Their smaller plants were the same variety as the larger plants, except for one tiny pot containg an Elfin variety that looked rather sad.  No thanks, again.

I finally went to the nursery I had gone to a couple of weeks ago.  They had a MUCH better variety including 2 types that only get about 2-3 inches tall.  I got 2 pots of each variety and came home.  I need to think about exactly where I want to put them and then it's transplant time.

It should not be such a hassle to find a common herb like thyme.

On the other hand, it's kinda fun to walk up to a complete stranger (at a nursery) and ask them, "Do you have thyme?"  It has such a nice existential/metaphysical feel to it.

Papillon

Hooray!

I think the final, final, final period has been put on my water leak.

I think the leak had gone on for several hours, possibly days, before it finally bubbled up in my bathroom and headed down the hallway.  That's because my water bill (received this week) was about half again higher than my normal water bill.  Payable, but still .... Yikes!

Yesterday I called the water utility and politely asked if there was any possible way of having the bill reduced.  The nice young woman on the other end of the phone said certainly!  All I had to do was drop off a copy of the bill from the plumber to prove that the repair work was done.  Off I went to city hall and dropped of said copy.

The powers-that-be then looked over the bill to make sure everything was OK.  This morning I got a phone call letting me know that my bill was reduced by about 40%.  Woohoo!  It just goes to show it never hurts to ask. 

Feeling good!
Papillon

Ah, Yes...

Well, another bit of the great 2011 water leak has come up.  I got my monthly water bill.  It looks like the leak most likely started in late March because there was a slight up-tick in usage.  It wasn't enough of a change to make me really sit up and take notice.  I'm sure when I got March's bill, I just put it down to my taking longer showers or something similar.

However, April's bill is when the monthly usage really goes off the charts.  I'll bet the leak was fairly active for a while before it finally got around to leaking through into the house.  Ah, well. 

I can't be too unhappy because the leak kicked me out of my rut of hoping there wouldn't be any more leaks and got me started in the right direction of fixing the problem and stopping the opportunities for future leaks.  Giving me much needed peace of mind.

Onto related thoughts - here in New Mexico, rock lawns are very popular due to the lack of moisture.  (After all, Albuquerque is located in a high desert area - low rain and high altitude.)  For those who are not familiar with rock lawns, instead of grass lawns we have front and back yards where black plastic is laid over the bare soil and then several tons of pea-sized gravel are poured on top and smoothed down into a thin, uniform layer. 

I have never been fond of rock lawns, although it has meant I didn't have to mow the lawn.  Several years ago I heard of an idea for a thyme lawn.  So I've decided to start one of my own.  Where the plumbers had to dig the trench to lay the new main water line from the meter to the house, they had to remove the plastic from that area.  I've decided to start my new thyme lawn along that trench and then expand it slowly across the rest of the yard.  It should ultimately be pleasing to the eye and also pleasant to smell.  And I'll never have to mow it!

So far I've just got one plant put in - a small woolly thyme.  It's listed as a ground cover and is a nice green grey.  I'm not sure if I'll use more than one type of thyme or just bung in several varieties.  I'll have to think on that a bit.  Now that warm weather's here, I do need to remember to water it regularly.  If I recall correctly, it should help the effort by spreading out a bit on its own.

Papillon

Random Things

My plumbing project came to an official end this past Monday (4/4).  When the plumbers were working on my house, they had to go into the attic crawlspace.  The panel giving access to that area is made of drywall.  The original panel was original to the house and due to its age was rather fragile.  A corner was accidentally broken off and the plumbers said they'd replace it.  Unfortunately, they were busy with other people's leaks during the last week of March so we scheduled for panel replacement on Monday the 4th.  The plumber showed up a bit late (he called and let me know) due to yet more leaks elsewhere, but I now have a new attic access panel.  As the plumber was leaving, I said, "you guys did a great job and I really appreciate it, but I hope I don't see you for a very long time."  The plumber smiled and agreed with me.

Since then things have gotten back to normal.

For those who don't know, I belong to an informal quilt group that meets once a month.  Sometimes we quilt, sometimes we don't.  We've known each other for the better part of 20 years and always have a good time when we get together.  This year we decided to have a group project.  For that, each of us brought in a yard of 'mystery' fabric whose identity was hidden in a brown paper sack.  We each drew a sack and now have to make a project of our choosing using the fabric and employing a log cabin block of our choice for the pattern.  I've been working away on my project and have now gotten the top about 95% done.  The design is done and now I just need to decided on what to do for the borders.  I think I'll use my mystery fabric (turquoise background with a brown vine design) as a narrow inner border.  I'll put a wider border on the outside.  I've been looking for something in a nice chocolate brown on brown.  I found one that was close but didn't really quite make the cut (pun intended).  I've seen some lovely tone on tone fabrics, but not a lot in a nice deep brown.  Rats!

Anyway, here's a picture of the top as it stands so far.

I call it 'A Cheerful Heart'.  It's based on a pattern in an older quilt book that I have.  I'm not doing the pattern exactly as shown in the book since it involves doing applique flowers on the bottom point of the heart.  One, I think the flowers make it look fussy.  Two, I hate, hate, HATE doing applique.  It makes my neck muscles tense up just to think about doing applique.  So, I won't, I won't, I WON'T!

Now that I've got that little tantrum out of my system, I'm off to surf the net.

Papillon

Putting a Period on It

The plumber came by for the (hopefully) final time today.  It really wasn't a truly plumbing related visit.  During the 're-pipe the house' project, at one point the access panel to the attic crawl space had a large corner broken off.  It was a piece of wall board cut to fit the opening.  Since it was original to the house, it had gotten rather fragile with age.

I really didn't expect it, but the plumber offered to fix it.  I, of course, said OK.  Originally, the plumber said he'd bring the replacement sometime late last week.  He got busy and couldn't make it. 

We scheduled him to come by this morning.  Shortly before the scheduled time, he called and say he was running late.  He arrived and I now have a new access panel for my attic crawl space.  Plus, the plumber got to pick up the tape measure that one of the workers had left behind.

Win-win all the way around.

As the plumber was leaving, I said, "Don't take this the wrong way because you've been very nice and very professional, but I hope I don't see you again for a VERY LONG TIME!"  He smiled and agreed with me.

All in all, it's nice to have everything back to normal.

Papillon