Chasing the Cruds Away

Thursday morning, I had a horrible headache, which is really uncommon for me.  By Thursday night, my throat was itching, and by Friday afternoon, I had a fever.  Yuck.  I came home Friday and slept from 7:00 that night (even skipping dinner!) until 8:00 the next morning.  And I STILL woke up feeling like I needed another good 12 hours sleep.  Fevers always make me tired.

I spent Saturday morning at Bean’s baseball game, which was nice.  The weather was beautiful and it felt great to be outside in the sunshine.  My fever came back around 2:00, and I spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping again.

BUT SUNDAY!  Oh, Sunday, you treat me right.

I woke up Sunday feeling slightly better.  No more fever, which meant I had a little energy back.  I went to church and taught this great Sunday school class that I’m in the middle of teaching.  It’s on the Apostles’ Creed and it’s really lovely.  I’m enjoying the class (it isn’t my normal Sunday morning crew) and am meeting some really sweet people who show God to me in their conversations and in sharing their hearts.  You can’t ask for more out of Sunday morning, can you?

By the time we came home, we had errands to run that I hadn’t been able to get to on Saturday.  Our first top was this new hardware store in our neighborhood called The Orchard.  It was the cutest!  We picked out a pretty mandevilla plant for our backyard.  I was also looking for some Confederate Jasmine because it has  strong smell and our backyard smells a bit like poo poo (dogs… oy…).  The jasmine will be in stock in 10 days, so I’ll go back in a few weeks to get that.  For now, our little mandevilla is doing great!

(Daisy was a big helper. She chased all the lizards away. Good dog.)

Chris planted this cute little satsuma orange tree in our backyard in honor of his granddad, who has had huge satsuma groves in his yard for Chris’s whole life.  It took us about a year to find it, though, because last summer there was a terrible citrus blight in Florida and it was almost impossible to find any citrus plants.  We finally found one at the end of last summer and Chris has been taking care of it all year long.  It is doing great and really loves the back corner of our yard.

He also has been growing a pineapple for about a year now.  He cut the top off a pineapple we ate last spring and then set the top in water for several weeks until roots started to grow.  He planted this in a pot and kept it inside all through winter, taking it outside on really sunny, warmer days.  This spring, he moved it outside and repotted it just last weekend.  It is doing great!  Her hair is getting long and thick, which is a great sign.  My mom says you can put half an apple down in a pineapple plant and force a pineapple to grow.  Chris’s granddad says he has done the same thing before.  We haven’t tried that yet, but might later in the summer.  For now, it’s just hanging out on our deck, soaking up the sunshine and loving life.

Since that’s really the only plant we have out there, we have decided this spring/summer is when we will start adding some plants and flowers to our backyard.  Our mandevilla is the second.  Gracie also bought some sunflower seeds to plant next weekend.  It has always intimidated Chris and I to plant anything.  We don’t really have a good eye for landscaping, and so we have always just kind of left the yard alone.  But we decided this year to throw the landscaping idea out the window.  We’ll just plant stuff and see what grows!  A little of this, a little of that.  Much more our style, anyway.

Sunday afternoon was spent outside in our backyard, laying out, playing in the pool, planting things, repotting things, watering things, and just generally loving on God’s creation in our very own backyard.  And by late Sunday afternoon, my cold was all but gone.

I love being outside.  I love being in the sunshine with my people.  I love playing in the water and drinking iced tea.  I love chasing the dogs with water hoses and cutting into the season’s first watermelon (we saved those seeds to plant, too!).  My body must like those things, too.  I’m a lot like my plants, I guess.  Just put me in the sunshine and spray me with water every now and then and I’m a happy, healthy girl.