Tuesday, May 30, 2006

End Of Month

Towards the end of each month I like to spend some quiet time looking over what we did and how things turned out.
I reflect.
I keep a journal for each month. In it I write our comings and goings, ideas and plans. We have a program of living. With 68 different categories we have full lives.

We have some sort of event every day.
Usually a quick fun thing.
Today is one of my friend's birthday.
I sent a card and a morning blessing. In her honor we will eat Strawberry-Rhubarb pie. My husband enjoys the daily events!


Each month has a theme. May was all about butterflies. I had butterfly things all over the house. My new book was a butterfly field guide. I began a butterfly host garden. I have all sorts of ideas on how we can learn more about
butterflies and will continue to work up my butterfly things all year.
The end of month for me is a time to see what worked and what I can do next year to make our month even more enjoyable. I look to see what did not work out too. I build year to year so the months are always evolving. I decorate each room of the house each month. I write down what I did so next year I can open the journal read what went where and do that again or decide on a different arrangement. At least I have a beginning. I like to have all the decorating done by the first of each month. Not always can this happen. Sometimes I have to wait and decorate after the 31st!
Usually something will come my way each month that is truly spectacular. This May it was the May Pole. All month I was entertained by the ribbons.

The May Day baskets were a great idea. I want to do these again. Not only did they line the front walk and looked charming but also I had a nice gift to give to my visitors. I did 25 of them so I had some left over for graves on Memorial Day. Next year I want to do 30 baskets. We decorate 25 different graves and every year I am trying to make sure I have flowers from the garden.
Since the peonies were finished and the lilies just budding I did not have many flowers to decorate with.


The baskets were in bloom and pretty.

Many of the graves we visited do not have vases so the baskets worked out nicely.




I also want to do the wheat again next year. I did up sheaves of wheat for the graves of the men folk.





Adding more types of feeders to the feeding station made for hours of fun bird watching. The heat and dryness was the hardest part of the month with watering taking lots of time and resources. Glad I tucked some lettuce under the peonies. The spinach was trying to bolt (go to seed). I was pinching out the tops in hopes the temperatures would cool down a bit and the entire crop would not be lost. We decided next year to plant the spinach and lettuce earlier, in late March rather than late April. We will plant again in September for an autumn harvest. I need to be sure and save some seed for that. So if the spinach does set seed early at least I will have seed for September. We have had a few spinach salads with fresh strawberries. I made a note to plant more strawberries too. This means I will want to enlarge the strawberry bed in the Fall.
Once I am ready the monthly bins come up and I begin packing things up. I clean each room and decorate for my next month.
We call this, "switch-a-roo".

Today was switch-a-roo! May is packed up and back in the storage room. House is all clean and June is up and running! It took me ten straight hours but now I am ready. I still have the May scrapbook to do up and June cards to make. I have a small pile of paper to organize and June's Daily Events to plan. Tomorrow I will celebrate the last day of the month.
I will write in the June journal
any changes I did this year.



I have some adjustments to make here and there, the flowers to cut for the vases, some linens to iron and the photos to bring up. I am almost ready for June.

June is all about
Dragonflies and Damsels!
It shall be fun.

4 comments:

Saucy said...

I just loooove theme decorating. For me, May was about celebrations and flowers. Yesterday I did a switch-a-roo and put summer candy in my glass jars for June. I blogged it, come over and have a look. Someday I will blog my dragonflies for you. I like your happy blog.

Q said...

My pie crust recipe uses solid shortening. I have yet to make it with a soy product. I shall work on this. Come next fall, when I bake again, I will post a recipe. I have been buying my pies at Nature's Pantry. Organic and yummy and easy! I do think I will bake pies again. Used to make them all the time. Between now and Fall maybe you could look for a nice pastry blender, if you do not have one. Mine is an old one. Makes all the difference when mixing the wet ingredients into the dry.
Maybe one of our visitors will have a recipe for us.

Anonymous said...

Sherry - I had no idea blogs could be so creative. The only blog I have ever looked at was Andrew Sullivan's blog. Your pictures were beautiful as well as the thoughts expressed. Will follow it through my "favorites". Jane Taylor

Q said...

Thank you Jane,
It is fun for me to share our simple ways. We laugh and enjoy each day. So happy you also are enjoying "Corner".