{p,h,f,r}, vol. 9

It's Thursday, it's Thursday, a pretty, happy Thursday! As ever, I'm linking up with Leila and her admiring followers to tell you of some small but special moments in my past week. Hop on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for more peeks into the marvels of ordinary life.

{pretty}
Our oldest granddaughter Jordan sent us this photo of her and one of her sisters with SUPER curly hair (their hair is naturally VERY straight, something they inherited from me). They followed this video: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RAPHSAPshJE to get their hair that curly without using a curling iron (they're really into being as low-tech as possible). I remember maybe 25 years ago longing to have curly hair just like Meryl Streep did in The French Lieutenant's Wife (anyone remember that film?). But long hair and mucho chemicals don't mix too well on a long-term basis so I learned to live with my straight hair. If I'd had this video to learn how to get curls, I probably would have looked like Shirley Temple through most of my 40's (not a pretty thought!)


even more {happy}
Last week I showed you a photo of the shrug I had just finished. When I saw the picture in the post, I realized that I didn't like the tie that I had made, so I made a new one that doesn't jump out at you visually and does a better job of creating the ruffles. Here's the TRULY finished project:


{funny}
I have complained that it's a real stretch to find something funny to share, since I don't have any small children around who do cute things. But this week I have something! We went to the nearest city the other day for a doctor appointment and afterwards went to a very nice restaurant for lunch. Since my eyes were dilated I wasn't in any condition to be trying to take pictures of the restaurant (maybe next time), but as we were leaving the Pirate gave me something that through my half-shut eyes looked like a flier saying that they serve margaritas at 2 for the price of 1 all day. I stuffed the paper into my purse and we left. Today the Pirate asked me what I had done with the cartoon picture of us that the man had drawn and I had no idea what he was referring to. When he said he had given it to me at the restaurant, I fished the "flier" out of my purse and realized that it was a caricature of US that one of the restaurant employees had drawn! Here it is:

We'll definitely be going back to that restaurant to get our free margarita!


{real}
I am having an unending battle with our dogs to keep them from ruining my plants. They're pretty large - maybe 45 or 50 pounds? - and they are VERY frisky in their play. And they tend to be like Tigger, bouncing a little bit too enthusiastically and accidentally wrecking things in the process. When they go too far and I can't stand any more wreckage, I have the Pirate and his crewmate (a friend and neighbor) put up a fence to keep the dogs out of yet another part of the property. So far we've got 5 fenced-in areas; 6 if you count the vegetable garden, and when I saw for that for the last week the dogs had been running around our young mango tree and bumping it, causing fruit fall (which they then took all over the property) I got upset enough to decree yet another fence. This fence will also prevent them from digging holes near a beautiful young hibiscus in the same bed (which they keep doing). Here's the evidence:

And here's what we're doing about it (palo de arco sticks to be put in tomorrow as the vertical barrier).

hopefully that will reduce the dog-related frustration around here, at least for a while.

Five Favorite (Growing) Things

May has got the jump on June in terms of things "bustin' out all over", and here are five things that I'm particularly happy to see growing:

NEW FLOWERS

Our naughty dogs do a great job of protecting our property but they get excited and push against our fence, which started to lean out alarmingly. The Pirate put guy wires along the parts that were most vulnerable, and I bought some bougainvilleas that will end up filling out all along the fence. The nice thing about bougainvilleas is that they have thorns - not terribly big ones, but enough to deter dogs - so they do double duty: keeping the dogs from the fence and beautifying an otherwise unused area.

BABY BANANAS

We're seeing more and more baby bananas on our banana plants, which means that a mere 6-9 months from now we'll have a lot of bananas! It's amazing to watch them first show up, then get bigger quickly, but it takes a LONG TIME for them to be mature enough to pick (they should be picked green and ripen off the plant).

BABY CITRUS

Some of the first things we planted here were citrus trees. Unfortunately our spanish wasn't very good at the time so we didn't know what kind of citrus they were (although we clearly had several kinds). One of them bore fruit a few months ago and we found out that it's a sour orange (a type of citrus common in northern Africa and the Arabian peninsula and other hot places). I just found some new fruits on the same tree - it promises to be prolific. Sour oranges are used in place of lemons in cooking, and have their own exotic flavor.

BABY STRAWBERRY GUAVAS

I LOOOOOVE strawberry guavas! I can eat as many as you can give me! I was SO excited to find a whole bunch of baby guavas on our guava tree (although it's still bush size).

And now for something from the animal kingdom:

BABY GOATS

Our forest granddaughters are in 4H and they raise goats. Two of the goats just had kids. The first set (goats generally have two kids at a time) was two males; the second set was two females. The girls are slowly building up a milking herd. Neighbors buy their goats' milk (it's healthier for you than cow milk, and tastes great), and one of our granddaughters has gotten into making goat cheese.

For favorites of a completely different type, go to Hallie's blog, Moxie Wife, and see all the neat things that people have to share!

For my daughters (in law)

How blessed I was to have obtained not one, but two daughters in the same year;
To become part of a family that contained other females;
To be brought face-to-face with my own inadequacies;
To be given opportunities to learn how to be a better woman

Teaching by example, they have demonstrated
Grace, in serving others rather than being focussed on their own desires
Patience, in their responses to demanding and whiny children (and the strange behavior of husbands)
Warmth, in reaching out to other family members when we are prickly or remote
Open-heartedness, in sharing their vulnerabilities and seeking prayer or counsel
Dedication, in their devotion to making a home for their family
Encouragement, in providing opportunities for their children to learn to be confident and virtuous

What more could a mother (in law) ask for? Truly God gives exceedingly abundantly more that we could ask or think. Happy Mother's Day!

{p,h,f,r} vol. 5

It's Thursday, and time to link up with Leila and family for
{pretty}

This is our granddaughter Jordan with some pillows she made for a daybed on the patio outside our guestroom. She's an excellent seamstress at age 16. Both the maker and the pillows are pretty!

{happy} AND {funny}

When our "city" family visited recently, our son took his two younger kids to the beach to play. Plenty of "happy" here! And since I figure that you probably don't really need to see yet another picture of our goofy dogs, this will have to serve for FUNNY as well.

{real}

Our closest grandkids live 1200 miles from us. Our other grandkids (and our home base in the US) are 1800 miles away. We're still trying to figure out how to be a part of their lives when we are so far away. This blog is one of several ways we're trying to fill the gap of not being a regular part of their lives.

{p,h,f,r} vol.4

{pretty}

I was inspired to create a home altar by the photos that Sarah posted at her blog Faithworks. The wood statue was carved by my mother-in-law, who was one of my favorite people. The papers in it have the names of people I'm currently praying for. The framed picture is Our Lady Untier of Knots, which I love. The altar still seems to be needing something (flowers? candles?) but I suppose that the right things will present themselves as time goes along. I'm up for suggestions if anyone has any!

{happy}

We just had this area of our property fenced in so the dogs will stop digging up plants, and I immediately went out and bought 3 fig plants to put in there. I love mission figs, and I'm hoping that by having 3 plants the birds will leave at least some of the fruit for us!

{funny}

Our son (the one who lives in the forest with his family) decided it was time to turn over the soil in the vegetable garden in preparation for planting. So he took his excavator down there and REALLY did a thorough job!

{real}

The Pirate and I were reviewing our storage situation the other day and it became evident that having a single drawer to keep my yarn in is no longer an option. In our last house I had an entire wall of storage as well as a whole closet for my yarn. Most of that yarn went to my forest granddaughters when we moved (they all knit). But of course a yarn addict collects yarn wherever she goes, and I've bought yarn down here without having any specific project in mind. Unfortunately I've only been able to find one type of yarn in the entire state (knitting isn't a major activity here in Mexico). It's acrylic and polyester, fingering weight (which makes sense since it's really too hot down here for heavier weight yarns). Fortunately the colors this yarn comes in are DELICIOUS! Thus the excess yarn. I'm hoping that the Pirate will take pity on me soon and make some dividers to turn part of our bedroom bookcase into a yarn storage area.

For more lovely links, get thee to the LMLD blog:

5 favorite things, vol. 2

Wow! I almost missed this link-up - somehow I thought that the 5 Favorites happens on Thursdays. So, deep breath, think hard, what 5 favorites do I have to share today?

1. DUPLICATE STITCHING
This is such an easy way to add color to a purchased sweater! It doesn't require any mental attention, unlike a lot of knitting and crocheting.


2. MY WOOD COOKSTOVE
This is exactly like the stove I had and loved when we first moved to the forest in 1970. That stove is long gone but I found this one last year (just a few miles from where I lived when I had the first stove) and we brought it back home to Mexico with us. Is this the coolest outdoor grill you've ever seen, or what?


3. POMEGRANATES.
Pomegranates have been my favorite fruit forever and we actually have our own pomegranate trees which are producing right now! We got about 10 pomegranates in March and as you can see we'll be harvesting more soon!


4. PALO DE ARCO FENCES.
Palo de arco is a type of bush that has lots of straight vertical branches, and it's used a lot down here for all kinds of things (a lot of the old ranches have houses and other buildings made of it, chinked with adobe). I love the look of a woven palo de arco fence. We spent most of our lives in redwood country, and I love old redwood fences, but there's something about the peek-a-boo look of woven fencing that is especially lovely.


5. OUR GRANDDAUGHTER JORDAN.
It's such a treat to have her with us for 2 whole months! God is really using her to open my eyes to lots of blind spots. Here she is with the Pirate (aka my dh).


Thanks Hallie for hosting this link-up and muchas felicitationes on your squishy new baby! For more great lists of five, go visit Hallie at Moxie Wife.