Asparagus

Hubby has been eating a lot of asparagus lately. I steam it for him and then he puts a small pat of butter on it and judging by the look on his face, yum! If you’re like me and don’t really care for it, a great way to try it and maybe grow to like it is in a gratin. I have been purchasing asparagus from Walmart for under $3.00 for 1.5 pounds and also from Aldi for $2.49 a pound.

This is the gratin recipe that I’ve used for years.

Until next time,🐝well

Hello, May!

May Day is here. May Day is a European tradition that celebrates the historic struggles and gains made by workers during the labor movement. In France, on May 1st, they celebrate Fête du Travail (Labor Day), and almost every shop, restaurant, and tourist attraction is closed for the day. People in France give friends and family bouquets of muguet (lily of the valley). In America, from the 1800s through the early 1900s, May baskets were hung on friends’, family’s, and often love interests’ doors on May 1st. Now in the U.S., not much, if anything, is done to celebrate this wonderful day anymore. I order a rosemary plant for close friends, and I also buy each of them a bar of Muguet soap off of Etsy. 

Friends, start planning your summer bucket list now because things will move quickly from May 1st to Labor Day. We’re getting ready to go on a day trip to Door County. Once we’re back home, I have my container garden, hiking, sunsets, writing, antiquing, farmers markets, YT, and more to keep me busy all summer.

Enjoy May!

🐝safe & 🐝 well.

Standing Still

Standing still and bidding farewell to April. May is, after all, my favorite of all months. One thing is for sure: time is not standing still. I need to take a minute here in my life and just breathe. One of the things that is on my mind as we close out the 1st month of the 2nd quarter of 2025 is, “How do I prepare for the unexpected better?” In the year 2020, I was reading news about what we would eventually deal with from 2020 to 2023, long before mainstream news picked up the story. I read news regularly from parts all over the world. We started to slowly prepare, and even though I would never know just how bad the situation would become all over the world, what we personally prepared ourselves for worked. We never ran out of anything and, because of our continued commitment to our health, stayed healthy. It was a lot.

Now, regardless of your politics, by now you’ve heard that retailers are refusing to pay the tariffs for goods. There have been preorders made for items generally sold in big box stores through August. Nothing that is being reported is entirely 100% accurate because people/news just don’t know. What has been said by people in the retail industry is by June, if not sooner, shelves will clear with panic, and supply will not be available for restocking. Christmas goods, usually shipped early summer, may wait at ports until someone decides to pay tariffs or the tariffs disappear. Fake trees, bulbs, decor, etc., all come from China. Toys, home decor, furniture, and holiday goods do too.

I’ve asked someone that is more organized than I feel that I am what to do. I was told to do this, if nothing else. Go room to room and ask yourself, “How many of these do I use or need for 1 year’s time?” I started in the medicine cabinet (OTC meds), then spices, any food stuffs that would be in an “international” aisle in the grocery store, electronics (back-up tablets?), toiletry items that could go up in price exponentially (makeup, shavers, toothpaste, deodorant, lotions), garbage bags, counter-top appliances, and easy to buy and store car parts for future work (we need a suspension issue fixed and front brakes; $225+tax for the parts now). We’re doing well in the clothing and shoe department. So, that’s a start. We’re thinking about $400.00 out of savings should get us these things, and then as far as these items go, we’ll be good for a year. That’s all we can do, and for right now it’s all we can afford. The worst outcome from buying these things is that we’ll be out $400.00 early on, and the best thing is that when and if prices go up or stock goes out, we have a backup or two of some very necessary items.

Let me know if you’re preparing in any way. In the meantime, I’m going to go back to taking it easy, keeping my head on straight, and preparing to move into my favorite month. I’m going to continue to enjoy the birdsong every morning, the different shades of pink at sunrise, the anticipation of fresh produce at the farmstand soon available, and the thrill that I will get when my tiny apartment garden is planted mid-May.

Until next time, be safe and be well.

Change

Do we ever get used to change. Even good change can be challenging. What about change is so incredibly hard to accept? Well, for one, it is something different to get used to. Something new to adapt to or accommodate in your day to day. Every year we have daylight savings time come and then go again. Once a year we get used to more dark or less dark, more light or less light and we lose or gain an hour of sleep. Every year we’re alive something about our mind and our body changes. Some changes early on are ever so slight, while others later on become more apparent. While you are alive, change is inevitable no matter how much you’d like it otherwise. Even though I don’t like change, I like stagnant even less.

I think what I dislike the most about change is it’s abruptness. It seems to push its way in, without asking, and makes itself at home regardless of whether you have the time, or patience, or money for it at all.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing a change in my day to day lifestyle. I’ve gone from working ten hours a day at a remote job to no work. I’ve gone from being employed at a great company for almost five years to no longer employed due to reasons that I’ve yet to fully understand. Having taken me almost two full years of job searching and countless interviews to get this job, it is beyond stressful imagining what it will take, and how long, to secure employment this time. It isn’t that I am not good at my job. I was good at my job. I was so good that I was put in charge of five other employees and instructed to train them to work as efficient and independently as I was working at my job. So, this time around my job search includes the work experience that I have had up to February 2024. Unfortunately, it also includes having to say that I was permanently laid off, let go, fired, whatever fits, and that has been a problem. Through no fault of mine own, other than accepting a position and being in my probationary period, I was let go. Upper management decided to make changes and in some departments, due to contracts being cancelled, all probationary staff were terminated. My co-workers are o.k. sitting on unemployment until it all gets worked out. I, on the other hand, am not. I was just beginning to start saving for a home and newer car, two things that we absolutely are beyond overdue looking for and then purchasing. The changes that I’ve been going through, the what if’s, the adjustments, have been terribly difficult for me this past month.

Not all is lost, I do get an unemployment check every week. Even though it’s less than half of what I used to earn, after taxes, it is absolutely better than not making any contribution at all to our household budget.

I’d like to start back to selling items full-time on eBay, but eBay took my top seller status away because I don’t make money anymore for the site, so until I can earn them a lot of money most of what I am selling is never ever seen in the search. Which is so disappointing to me, but not the first time that I have dealt with it in 25 years of selling on the site.

Even though I spend a fair amount of time creating videos for YT, it remains a hobby. You need a lot of views to make money. I enjoy making videos. I always have–even when I wasn’t making a penny doing it. The videos that I spend a lot of time making, just don’t seem to get a lot of views. I’ve accepted it and have decided to enjoy making my videos and not worry about it. I make about $30.00 a month and get a payout every three months of $100.00 and for now that’s how things are going to stay. I could change it if I took on collaborations, accepted all the free stuff companies want to send to me, and took the advice of some other YT’ers and had click bait titles, trauma after trauma, and added some spicy content or was a much more interesting person than I am. But, that’s not who I am or ever will be–so, I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing and leave it at that..

Blessings,

xoxo

“Your life does not get better by chance; it gets better by change.” — Jim Rohn.

Easter on the Farm & Free Easter Coloring Pages

for the kids or grandkids!

Here

Easter Sunday in the 70’s –growing up on the farm.

Happy Easter!!

People seem to think on the first day of spring, or at least by Easter Sunday, that winter should be finished. That isn’t how I remember things growing up on the family farm in the 1970’s. Oh yes, there was an Easter or two, where we could wear our new spring dresses and patent leather shoes. But many times, Easter fell at a time when our world was filled with snow and cold. And then the most asked and answered question would be, “How will the Easter bunny get through all the snow?” He always made it—that’s for sure!

Prior to that day, I would have watched any and all of the religious programming on television put on by our father for our viewing pleasure–Billy Graham, Robert Schuller, and Oral Roberts. Oh, our dad loved his Evangelical preachers. My most enjoyable part of any of what showed up on television at this time of year was Jesus of Nazareth, which I still watch to this day, some 50 years later. Before the big day, mom would shop for all our favorites, including beef short ribs or sometimes ham, which were meats that she really knew how to make. Of course, her Easter table always had scalloped potatoes, sometimes scalloped corn, carrots, peas, and store bought buns warmed up. What we had for dessert escapes me now. Often times, especially when I was younger, our grandparents would be our dinner guests. Supper would be leftovers from our Easter meal, and Dad would be able to take an extra long nap in his chair.

And yes, we got Easter baskets that usually held a hollow chocolate bunny plus a big cream egg (fruit and nut or cherry) in a box, and mom would hide jelly beans all over the dining room and living room. It never took me long to find most of them–same places year after year (window sills, desk, and table) lol. Mom seemed to really enjoy making holidays like Easter and Christmas special for us.

My earliest memory of Easter was when I was 8 years old and had written a letter to the Easter bunny. Low and behold, when I woke up, he had answered my letter with muddy🐾 prints and a basket of goodies. Easter time growing up is a wonderful memory for me and one I reflect back on each and every year as the holiday arrives. Though we didn’t have baby chicks or bunnies on our farm, springtime was a time of renewal on this special place. The land after a cold, wet winter was renewed and ready for new crops. The cows began calving and our barn cats began having kittens. The first flowers I would see and smell were my grandmother’s tulips—she loved the red and yellow ones. All of the spring rains, longer days, warmer days and nights, and the return of the robins and whippoorwill are all things that I think about when I remember all of my Easters on the farm. 🐄 🐰🐤 🐱