Holly'sWorld
photography, artwork, stories, thoughts, words by hcmorris77
ROAD TRIP
This was much needed…for both of us! I was supposed to work Sunday, but with me not feeling well on Friday, I got the weekend off. I need to work, but at the same time, I can’t if I’m feeling the way I do. I love my clients….but at the same time, I need to take care of myself.
Enough of that, I’m writing about the road trip! We went to see my boyfriends mother near the Chesapeake Bay. Even though it was rainy and foggy, we still had a good time!
I had almost forgotten about this house! It’s been hidden behind trees and undergrowth for years! I remember my mom talking about it, but can’t really remember any details. It’s for sale now, I need to find out more about it. I’m sure it will be torn down and something else built. It’s across the street from prospect hall, for anyone who knows Frederick.
Yes, that’s a stretch limo! Someone’s getting married!! More than likely.
We’re on 70, heading to Baltimore. You can see how overcast it is. The fog came and went. This is Saturday morning.
Some of the roads we take, take us through old farm land. These farms used to grow tobacco, not sure what the farmers grow now. It’s nice to get off the highway and take back roads!
We don’t actually take this road, it’s a good place to stop if someone needs to take care of business (uh…use the bathroom). I would love to drive down this road and see what’s there. Maybe I can talk my boyfriend into it some time. He does all the driving when we head down to the bay!
At the Bay…
The sun did come out for a while and people were out and about. I don’t know how I managed not to get pictures without people in it. This is looking up towards Scientists Cliffs. There’s a lot of fossils at Scientists Cliffs, which is why they named it that. They have found megladon sharks teeth and huge clam shells. In order to walk to the cliffs, you need to plan on catching the tide at low tide during the full moon. My boyfriend says you’re no longer allowed to walk there. The cliffs have been washing away. We didn’t walk as far as we could have. There was a party going on near where the shore line turns, we turned around before we got to them.
It would’ve been nice to be able to bring some of the driftwood home – but we would’ve had to drag it out of there. And neither one of us felt like dealing with that! They would look nice in some of my gardens.
It’s amazing – to me – how trees and plants can survive in conditions like this.
Mine will be blooming soon!!
I believe this is a tulip poplar bloom.
We didn’t spend a whole lot of time at the beach – just enough to get our fix.
Getting away was very relaxing, giving me time to think. It was barely enough time to let me relax, but I know what I need to do. The ride home wasn’t very good for me. I had a terrible headache and was sick to my stomach. By the time we got back into Frederick I had a cold sweat and could barely hold my head up or keep my eyes open. I laid down for a couple of hours and took a nice hot bath with epsom salts and baking soda and burned some sage. All three of those are detoxing/stress relievers and it helps. Burning sage is the stress reliever, epsom salts and baking soda are detoxes you can add to the bath. Soak for twenty minutes, and you should feel better.
I’ll post at sometime about care giving and the ups and downs.
SOME MORE PICTURES AND FACTS
I was sick again yesterday, so I didn’t get a whole lot done. I think it’s nerves…work knows that there is something going on. I got the weekend off, have to decide what to do on Monday. I’m thinking I will stay with my two clients until the 16th, take a week off and decide if I need to put my two weeks in at that point. Of course, come Monday if my nerves act up I’ll have to put my two weeks in sooner. But anyway…
more important stuff. Some more pictures! I did go out yesterday evening and take some pictures.
Notice the difference in the ants. The top peony has many black ants on it and they’re small. The bottom peony has one red ant on it and it is much bigger. Still not sure why, but I will figure it out. (I lazed about yesterday trying not to think too much! I did get some of my house plants outside, so that’s a bonus!!)
Some tulip facts:
- symbolic of spring (duh!)
- can be divided into about 150 varieties, with more than 3000 naturally occurring or genitically cultivated varieties worldwide
- takes 20 years to go from the beginning stages of cultivation to your local florist’s shop
- have a wide variety of meanings: love, in general
- red tulips = true love
- white tulips = I’m sorry
- purple tulips = royalty
- multicolored bouquet – compliment of recipients eyes
- symbol of the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation
- the most expensive flower at one point of history, in the 1600’s were more valuable than most people’s homes and cost almost 10 times what an average working-class man earned in a year
- known for bold colors and beautiful shape – are almost perfectly symmetrical
- tulips are edible; during ww2, tulips and tulip breads were often eaten by those who couldn’t afford other foods, can be used to replace onions in many recipes, even used to make wine
- Netherlands are the largest producer
- “tulip” name originated from Persian word “delband” meaning turban
- “Tulip Mania” – during the 1600’s, people in the Netherlands traded tulips for their value and the flowers actually ended up causing what some say is the first economic crash likely due to the bubonic plague
- related to the lily, part of the Liliaceae family which includes lilies, onions, garlic and asparagus
- “Queen of the Night” – deep purple tulip that appears black in some lights (I think I have one)
- information from teleflora.com
Who takes pictures of dandelions?! I do!!!
I really need to get this out of here!
Sorry this is short and sweet – again. My boyfriend are going on a road trip today and I need to get ready to go. I’ve got more…lots more.
SOME PHOTOS
Not sure what I’m going to write about today. I work all day today… it’s going to be a long day.
Here’s some photos I took yesterday and this morning with my new camera.
I didn’t realize until late last night that I’ve been spelling azalea wrong.
The ants on the peonies down the lane are different than the ones up closer to the house. The ones up close to the house are black, as this one is red. Not sure what the difference is, accept maybe different environment. I’ll have to research that.
As I was walking around I saw this on the ground. It’s getting to the point that they’re starting to fall of the bush. They still smell good, just getting late in the season for them.
When I was weeding the garden yesterday, I noticed the lily of the valley. They must have been transplanted with the peonies a few years back. I’ve still got a bunch of them in one of my other gardens…where the peonies used to be.
I want to fix this plow up and display it better than just propping it against a tree. It needs to be sanded, painted and wood handles added. It does look nice there…
This picture was taken before I finished weeding. I’ll be sure to update when it’s done.
After weeding…all I need to do now is mulch it. Won’t get to that until next week sometime.
This is the next garden I’m working on. The tree is a sage…I believe a bee balm sage. But I’m not exactly sure. I was told it was a Russian Sage, but thy have purple blooms. This one has white/yellow blooms. I actually have two of them.
I like taking pictures of the center of flowers. I feel that they get overlooked sometimes. Can’t wait til more of my flowers bloom!
Same picture, just a different crop.
My tree frogs are back! I’ll be posting about them in a future post. This one loves to come up on the deck in the morning and say hi to us!
Sometimes it seems like he poses for my pictures. We started noticing a couple of years ago – the pool might have something to do with it.
A LITTLE SOMETHING OFF THE WALL
I was digging through some of my photos and found this…it’s from when I was homeschooling my son. It’s labeled “fire proof balloon” – part of a science project we did. I’ll have to look it up, because I have since forgotten how we made it fireproof. What ever it was, it worked.
I hope you enjoyed today’s post. I also hope you can feel that I really enjoy doing this.
“I don’t want to be a poo poo girl, I want to be happy flower child.”
– Drew Barrymore
Azalias
It’s been a long, busy day. After going to the store to do our weekly shopping, I weeded the garden that I started mulching yesterday. In about two hours I got it weeded. I would normally go out and get it done first thing in the morning, but we wanted to get the shopping done first. But that’s not really what this post is about.
It’s about azalias. We have plenty of them and they’re huge.
In 2006 (give or take a year) I started putting coffee grounds on them. Before that, they weren’t knee high.
Back when this was taken, everything was small. Even my son, he’s about 4 years old in this picture!!!! My beagle, Gracie, passed away in 2008.
Azalias love acidic stuff. You could put pine needles around them, but I save them for my blueberry plants. Coffee grounds have a lot of acid, even spent grounds. I just save the grounds we use to brew coffee and dump them on the azalias. I put them on my holly trees and hydrengea too – when I think about it.
the more they stay the same – Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
I can hardly believe how much things have changed around here. But it’s bound to happen!
Sometimes, these area get forgotten. Last summer, I thinned out the hosta growing near the top of the photo. It was growing under the deck.
When I was cleaning out all the vine from the azalias along the lane, I pulled this up by accident. It was a branch that had rooted itself. I cut it off and replanted it near the elm tree along side the lane.
Looks like bare dirt, but it’s not.
Some azalia facts:
- also known as “Royalty of the Garden”
- nectar and leaves are highly poisonous; in the past see as a death threat if given in a black vase
- need acidic soil
- info is from “Ten Random Facts
“Minds are like flowers; they only open when the time is right.” – Stephen Richards
MULCHING THE GARDENS AND THE MOWER SHED
Mulching the gardens
It’s going to take me some time to get the mulching done! I’m feeling under the weather today…sick last night and not feeling up to par today. It’s kinda drizzly today, and I was supposed to work today, so I wouldn’t have gotten much done anyway.
Working by myself is long and tedious. But, on the other hand, if my boyfriend had been home I may not have gotten as much done as I did in the amount of time I did. In two hours I got four loads spread out in one garden.
It is very relaxing for me to do this kind of stuff. As long as I don’t feel rushed.
I used the tarp to help me spread the mulch. I initially only intended to use it in the wagon. Upon getting the mulch down to the garden, I thought it would be a lot easier to pull the tarp out and kind of roll it into the garden, rather than using the shovel to transfer it. I probably got it done in about half the time.
I’m about half way done in one garden. Got two more to go, plus some of my holly trees. My boyfriend suggested we do the trees as well. It would look nice to have mulch around the trees…I have, I think, 6 along the driveway. It would be nice, at least, until the trees fill out.
You can’t really tell it here, but there’s more garden to the left of the picture. It’s kind of in an “L” shape. As I get more accomplished, I will post more pictures.
This garden has azalia, iris, peony, daffodils, wildflowers, ornamental grass, and a cedar tree. Some animal or bird brought the grass and cedar tree. When I was spreading the mulch around I noticed a tiger lily. There’s also supposed to be gladiola, I think I need to dig it up.
The Mower Shed
Oh, the mower shed!
When we moved into this house, my dad put up a temporary shed. This was in 1990. It lasted til 2015…kind of.
It had a tin roof and had rusted through. In order to get the mower into the shed, you had to lean over to the side. If you bumped it, stuff would come crumbling down.
(I know I’ve got pictures of the shed before it was torn down. I’m getting a new external hard drive delivered tomorrow. My son is using the one I have now for his xbox 1, and I don’t have the energy to deal with it right now. When I get it, I will get all my stuff off of it and let him have the old one.)
When dad started working on this in 2015, I had just had surgery done and wasn’t allowed to do any heavy lifting, mowing, driving …pretty much nothing. I had my ovary removed and was cut for the second time from my bellybutton to my pelvic bone. Details of that is for another story. He knew I couldn’t really do anything to help.
You also have to know, he was legally blind! He could see, but not much and colors were off (what would be green to me or you would be purple to him). At this point, I don’t know who took him to get the supplies he needed. I don’t remember. It wasn’t me because I couldn’t drive. Maybe we got the supplies before my surgery, so it was there when he decided to start. (That seems plausible.)
The play house needs to be torn down at some point. It’s not really safe to go up there. I’m hoping the shed can be saved – since it only a couple years old.
It took him a little longer to finish the project than it normally would have and I worried about him the whole time he was doing it. (He used the table saw while legally blind – he’s been doing this stuff since he was a kid. He knew what he was doing – no major injuries! Wait til I tell you about cutting trees after the ice storm in 2014!!) Near the end, I was able to help him a little bit. Not as much as I would’ve liked to but some. It was at this time I almost sat on the snake I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. (BLACK SNAKES)
If you haven’t read the post, I almost sat on it when taking a break. I heard some commotion behind me (I was almost sitting down), stood back up and looked and there was a snake!
That’s the finished shed. It now has a tarp on it that can be rolled up and a TON of tools. My boyfriend brought a bunch of tools when he came here. It’s almost overcrowded in there. Actually, it would be if I hadn’t moved stuff to the other side. The building used to be a playhouse. Now it’s storage…my boyfriend and I are renting a dumpster this summer or fall and getting rid of a lot of stuff. I moved some of the tools under the playhouse just to get them out of the way. (There’s really no room under there either.)
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow” – Aubrey Hepburn
NEW CAMERA
I was going to make today’s post about azalias. I got a new camera on Sunday and it took me way too long to download the pictures to the computer.
Way too long!!
For what ever reason, my computer wouldn’t recognize my new camera. I finally had to go into the controls and add the camera that way. I was really getting frustrated, but I finally got it done. I couldn’t add the photos like I used to with my old camera, or even my boyfriend’s. Totally different!
Oh, well… at least I figured it out.
All the pictures included in this post are from my new camera. I still need to play with it and get used to it. It’s a canon eos rebel t6 – what I had before was a rebel xs. The rebel xs gave up the ghost and it was cheaper to buy a new one than to have my old one fixed.
Sometimes images like this work, sometimes they don’t. It all depends on who is looking at it. One thing I learned at Shepherd University is that not everyone is going to like all your photos all the time.
My next purchase is going to be a macro lens or fisheye lens. I can get a lot closer to my subject, with a sharper image. I like the photo above, very abstracted. With the macro lens, it would be sharper. (The wind yesterday could have had something to do with my images not being as sharp as I’d like them to be.) Kind of mysterious…
I think I actually will get grapes this year!!! When I took this picture, I didn’t realize there was a bug as well. I have no idea what kind of bug it is, but I had to include it.
My next post will be about the azalias. They’re absolutely beautiful this year! Last year we got too much rain.
Sorry this is another short post, gotta go get laundry done so I can get to work on my flower gardens!!
-if you have face book, check out Holly’sWorld (If you haven’t already). I post pictures and updates there.
SHORT AND SWEET
At least I think it’s going to be short and sweet. I have a blog I’m working on, but I think I’m going to save it for tomorrow.
It’s been such a busy weekend, and I really didn’t get anything accomplished (in reality, I’m always busy). I think I’m dealing with caregiver burnout. I know I am. My first thought when I woke up this morning was “I have to work tomorrow.” Not a good sign. I’ve cut back on my hours (was working 20-30 hours a week, now 22 – just picked up 8). My Sunday client is in rehab, so I’m back down to 17. I honestly think it’s time for me to focus fully on my photography and writing, or move on to something else. I know I can do it (photography), it’s what I went to school for. Photography is my thing, and so is writing…usually. I know I’ll get through this, I just need some time.
So, What is caregiver burnout?
Some common signs and symptoms are:
-having much less energy than normal
-seems like you catch every cold, bout, or flu that’s going around
-you’re constantly exhausted, even after taking a nap, break, or sleeping
-you neglect your own needs, either because you’re too busy or you don’t care anymore
-your life revolves around caregiving, but it gives you little satisfaction
-you have trouble relaxing
-increasingly impatient and irritable
-feel helpless and hopeless
I’ve been dealing with most of this for a while (a couple of months), that’s why I decided to cut my hours back and start focusing on my photography. I probably shouldn’t have agreed to pick up the extra hours. But I did.
I went to school and got my BA in photography.
I love what I do as a photographer!! I’ve been passionate about it (and art) since I was a teenager. Maybe even since I was a child.
I’m going to end this here, hopefully on a positive note.
I really just wanted to let you know that I have been working on a post, just won’t be posting it til tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow.
“Let’s save tomorrow’s troubles for tomorrow.” – Patricia Briggs, Raven’s Shadow
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