Raindrops on Peonies

Raindrops on... Peonies

...and whiskers on kittens

sing along with me, my interwebbery friends

…how I’ve missed you!

Bright copper kettles

...and warm woolen...

Okay, it’s May… in Maryland… and almost 70 gorgeous degrees F outside (21 C for most of you outside the U.S.) on this sunny Sunday morning, but I do love that song… especially sung by the ever-so-talented Julie Andrews from Nanny-Nun to the quick-witted Poppins… oh, how I dreamt as a child how exceedingly exciting my days could become if only she would float down from the sky onto our doorstep… I digress.

Peonies! I LOVE them!!! They are short-lived when you wait ever-so-patiently for them to unfurl their tightly formed delicate petals into magnificent beauty, but they are SO worth the wait! I just planted these beauties last year, so they are just beginning to fill in this season.

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My most recent bloom, the lovely Sarah Bernhardt makes her entrance!

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This Karl Rosenfield was my first brilliant peony bloom of the season.

Ahhh, yes… there are few things in life better than garden therapy… except maybe cheesecake therapy. I haven’t tried cheesecake-in-the-garden therapy yet… I think I may have struck gold there… Mmmm. And speaking of Yum!… if you want to try a fabulous french toast favorite, you can find the recipe by clicking here. I even photographed it on my peony painted plates! (See what I did there? Sometimes the tangents can lead to wonderful places… wait ’til you try it!) ❤

Heavenly French Toast Casserole

It has been a wild couple of weeks, to say the least. I finally passed my 500 face mask goal and joyfully donated 480 so far! (Insert Happy Dance here! 🙂 ) I’m now working on getting some face masks into my Etsy shop in the upcoming week, so I can earn money for supplies to donate more – the need out there is incredible! So I took a brief break to work on a few other projects and immerse myself in all things Algebra 2 to help my daughter get through her last 3 weeks of high school. All of that, along with a whole lot of Covid-stress in the midst of her ridiculously long 48-day horrific migraine, has been a one-sunrise-at-a-time process. Today we start her on a new round of meds with overflowing prayers that the migraine will finally break. So thank you, Cee, for providing this Flower of the Day topic to give me a bit of a much needed brain-break. Yeah, did I mention the Algebra 2? …it’s been a few years, let’s just say.

To all of you getting back to real life as much as you can… Be safe, stay healthy and say a little prayer for my ‘baby’ girl.

Michelle xo ❤

By the way, to join in the Photo Challenge fun, go to Cee’s Flower of the Day page to get more of the details!

On Top of the World

Top of the Hill in Ogunquit Beach, ME

This is my first submission to The Life of B Photo Challenge. This quarter’s “April Squares” challenge is a celebration of ‘Tops’, so as a nice transition from her January ‘Light’ challenge, I’m entering my Hilltop Sunrise photo taken from Marginal Way in gorgeous Ogunquit, Maine. Ahhh, how I would love to be sitting on that bench with a cup of coffee right now! This particular weekend in March, we were on a college road trip to visit a first choice university up North. It was just after the bomb cyclone had settled off the coast of Cape Cod, so the ocean was incredibly powerful…

...and on Top of the Rocks!

When you experience that kind of power in nature, it’s a reminder that there is something… rather SomeONE greater than all of us, who created this universe and is able to handle all that we cannot control… especially now in these days of uncertainty.

I especially love the third picture in this challenge with the waves crashing against the rocks and my youngest daughter is standing in the front confidently, almost defiantly… unmoved by the thunderous surf. To fully appreciate the significance of this image, you have to understand that this has been a particularly tough season for my daughter. In January 2017, she sustained a concussion during a normal PE class at school. Another student threw a basketball across the gym, that struck her on the side of the head, and dramatically changed the course of her teen years. What we thought would resolve in a few weeks, evolved into considerable loss of her vision for the next six months. Our world completely shifted as I dropped everything to adapt all of her lessons to her academic needs at home with the help of a home teacher assigned by the county, just so we could get her across her academic finish line. Once her vision returned that summer, following intensive medical therapies and treatments by teams of doctors, nurses and various therapists, at Sinai Hospital and Kennedy Krieger Institute, her daily migraine headaches began to intensify. Finally in June 2018, after 3 days on ‘migraine cocktail’ IV’s at Johns Hopkins Pediatric Hospital, she experienced her first 24 hours of migraine relief in 17 months… Since then, she has continued treatment at Hopkins, Krieger and Mt. Washington Pediatric Hospital to try to navigate her new life in the aftermath of her traumatic brain injury… still pushing through and managing the pain, still looking for solutions.

As her mother and her primary caretaker, you can imagine the range of emotions I have experienced. So in an odd way, with all that has recently rocked our world, I almost feel like I was prepared for this COVID-19 wave to hit. I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness or the impact this virus has had on individuals, our country or our world. I have simply learned how to roll with the challenges of unexpected happenings and unfolding circumstances. This is where we are… and we are all in it together. The sun will rise tomorrow, and we will start over with the new day, hopefully moving forward. And if we need to stop to take a breath, it’s okay…. take a moment… just don’t live there, and I mean that with love in my heart… Put on your fuzzy pajamas, eat a bucket of popcorn while you watch a movie that makes you laugh until you cry, then let it out, Sister… or Brother!… Let the rain… fall… dowwnnn… Then without touching your face with your ungloved hands, wipe your eyes with a tissue or your sleeve if you’ve run out of tissue… run a comb through your hair or polish that shine, slap on your good looks and step into the next day! You can do this… We all can do this… We need to do this for each other.

Sending you so much love, beautiful sunrises & healing prayers! XO