Month: February 2023

So much pink

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

In other garden news ( I know… I hope to have something else to blog about soon): I really, really want to have a lot of bougainvillea in my garden. So when our neighbor was cutting his back, we asked for some branches to take cuttings.

If they all root (that can take 3-4 months!) we will have plenty of bright pink in our garden. But to be completely honest, I have never done this before, so just hope one of them will grow up to be a big shrub like our neighbor’s.

I collected the flowers to dry them. They are supposed to have some medical use (need to do a bit more research on that), but I also really like the color. It will be fun to have a jar of them around.

What I did this weekend

~ Maggie ~ 3 Comments

(Gosh, it’s so hard to take pictures from exactly the same viewpoint. But it’s close – watch that branch that crosses the horizon to the right of the middle of the picture. Anyway, you get the idea.)

Yeah, that was much needed. I’m far from finished, but it’s a big improvement. We can see our banana tree!

This whole area was pretty well maintained last year. But then we spent the whole summer in The Netherlands and it rained a wole lot and I was sick and exhausted most of the time after we returned. So yeah, it’s a mess. But I’ll get it clean. Someday.

Back at it (hopefully)

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

Oh hi! Sorry for disappearing on you. I was very determined to keep posting three times a week, but when I realized that all my posts would end up with just me whining about feeling sick, I decided to not do that.

Yes, I was sick again. Or maybe, still sick (I’ve been on and off since September), I don’t know. I had a fever this time, though I’m not sure how high it actually was. I did temp myself and it was quite high for about 10 days, but then I bought a new thermometer (the old one was falling apart and the battery was dying) and that one displayed completely different (lower) temperatures. So weird, but T. had a technological explanation for it, so I now believe the new one. And just like that, I’m fever free. But still very, very tired. I did some garden work over the weekend, but today I just can’t get my body into action and that is so frustrating. The fever was a good reason to rest, but now I feel like I’m just being lazy.

Anyway, this is exactly what I didn’t want to do. I’m going to try to get back on the bandwagon and post garden pictures and things like that (knitting? yeah, that would be fun – I seem to have lost my mojo though), but if I don’t… well, you now know why that would be.

Wishing you all a great week!

An uninvited guest

~ Maggie ~ 2 Comments

Well, yes. That’s one of my garden gloves and it’not empty. It’s kind of silly, we know to always shake out our shoes or garden clogs before sticking our toes in them (our scorpions aren’t deadly, but their sting does hurt like crazy). But it never occurred to me to check my gloves.

Luckily this glove started moving when I picked it up, so I didn’t stick my hand in it yet. You can imagine I dropped it immediatly (I may have screamed).

And then it took me ten minutes to get that lizard out. They act dead when they feel threatened, so poking with a stick didn”t work. I was too scared to pick the glove up with my hands (some of these lizards have a nasty bite), so I used my long handled but very blunt pruning shears and accepted the risk that I would cut off the finger of the glove.(I didn’t). After a few shakes the lizard dropped out. It ran off so fast that I couldn’t take a picture of it to complete this story (how rude!).

Oh my… that was an exciting start to my day!

I found it!

~ Maggie ~ 4 Comments

I finally found the library! Yeah, I know that sounds silly, but they moved in the summer (when we were away) and I just couldn’t find the adress they listed on the website (google maps isn’t all that acurate here). But two weeks ago, I suddenly saw them, right at the side of the road I drive on almost weekly, because it connects the two supermarkets I go to most frequently. That’s so great!

I usually get books on alternative medicine or regional history and stories from the library. They have a lot of books in their collection that are no longer for sale.

What I took home with me this time, top to bottom:
– in the 60’s a priest asked local people for stories about the past and lore. He wrote them all down without comments or analyzing. His books are such a great source!
– a book about menopause. I’m still trying to figure out some facts about that.
– the first book of our famous island herbalist. I bought the other one, but this one is out of print. I have borrowed this many, many times and I’m slowly copying the information in my notebooks.
– a book about the healing powers of water. Could be interesting if they don’t go over-the-top with the spiritual stuff (that’s an extremely fine line with me)

I think they also have a good selection of fiction, but I read a lot of novels on my e-reader, so I’m never really checked those out.
Since I know people will ask what fiction I’m reading: I’m on a Morgana Best binge – if you like cozy mysteries with a bit of paranormal, you should check her out. I just finished 18 (!) books in the Kitchen Witch series and now I’m binging her Vampire and Wine series. I also read Practical Magic and it’s prequel Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman. Yeah, there’s theme in my reading these days 😉

Things that make me happy

~ Maggie ~ 7 Comments

I’ve been wanting to make a post like this for a while, but I really hoped to get a list of ten and I never got that far. Oh well, baby steps. Three is good too.

One: Tea. Tea in general, but this tea is very good. And yes, drinking that specific tea means… let’s just focus on the good stuff, okay? (part of me wants to whine about being sick all the time, but I’m trying to keep myself from doing that – and isn’t this a sneaky way to do it anyway?)

Two: The birds are back! We stopped feeding them because they hardly ate any of that sugar (they are called sugar thieves for a reason), but I guess there aren’t as many flowers anymore. It’s so fun to watch tem.

Three: The sky. I know, I’m a broken record about this. But it’s true. It’s so beautiful, Sometimes I forget to look, but when I remember it always makes me feel so much better.