Do you remember?

Do you remember the humble hollyhock?  I love these flowers and this year I have this beautiful pink beauty.  But what I really, really remember is staying with my grandmother when I was a wee one.  Because she passed away before I was out of elementary school, it was a long time ago.  She had such a wonderful garden of these hollyhocks in every color imaginable. To amuse me and the neighbor girls, in the hot summer afternoons we would go out and sit in the shade of the trees among the hollyhocks and she would fix us soda crackers with butter.  While we had our afternoon snack, we made hollyhock dolls.  With a few toothpicks and buds and blossoms, we transferred the humble flowers into beautiful "ladies".  The buds were their faces and adorned with bonnets of half-opened blooms atop full skirts of brilliant colored blossoms, they danced on the garden floor among the ferns.

Since I will be moving soon, and since I have only this one hollyhock this year, I am seriously thinking of planting these in many colors in memory of my "granny".  I have grown these before in deer country so it may be possible.  As we pack and sort through years of accumulation, I continue to collect seeds and every home I leave has a beautiful flower garden to pass on to what I hope will be an avid gardener. 

Today is my brother's birthday! He was just a baby when our grandmother passed away so he has no memories of her. But he does have grandbabies of his own now,  and as I sit on the sidelines and observe (with the miracle of computers, facebook, etc.) and although he is in Alaska, I can see that he is creating memories for those little people.  Happy Birthday Jim!

Moving

Much has taken place since my last post.  This will be one of the last posts for a few weeks perhaps.  I am not sure.  The picture above shows one of the projects my great niece completed while she was here with us.  A trip to Denver to pick her up, Frontier Days Parade, activities and a visit to the State Museum along with the crafting kept us busy.  We had friends here during that week also and then a death which came unexpectedly that week.  I took Eilish back to Denver on that Friday, our daughter flew into Cheyenne the following Monday as I again trekked to Denver for the funeral.  We spent last week with Erica doing lots of activities and in addition, her friend from Virginia was here with her husband and two little boys and we all stayed busy.  On Friday, Erica and I drove to Centennial Wy for my school employee luncheon, mostly retired teachers and then we drove on to Rawlins.  This past weekend was her 20th high school reunion and I spent the two days with one of my best friends.  Yesterday, I drove back with Erica to put her on the plane at about 10:15 a.m.

Today the home inspector comes.  That is an entirely different tale.  On the 11th of July we drove to Saratoga to get away from the activities here and take a break.  On a whim, we decided to look at a home that was for sale out of town on 4.5 acres.  It was beautiful and the price had been reduced and we decided to make an offer.  It was accepted the same day.  We came home, put our house on the market and it sold in 4 days after the first showing and counter was made and accepted.  We spent the past 3 weeks with mortgage paperwork, real estate, insurance agents, now inspectors, arranging movers etc.  We have a family reunion in California and have to be out of this home in 3 weeks.  So another marvelous adventure begins!