Choice Morsels

For Mama Kat Thursday, I'm going to do a series on "Memories from Grandma's House," highlighting some of my more amusing memories of visiting my Mom's Mother, whom we called, "Grandma Robbins." (Since we had two grandma's, we identified them by last name.) This was Grandma's Robbin's  house in Mantorville, Minnesota. It's the house Mother grew up in, her and her 6 other siblings.  This how it looks now. (photo from Google Earth.)  But back in the 60's, it still had white wood siding, old fashioned ceiling to floor glass windows, lots more green shrubs close to the house and more trees in the yard plus an old barn on the other side that served as a garage with a big garden next to it.  It was a huge house, old in the 60's when we were visiting. Downstairs had a kitchen with a bedroom behind it that Grandma and Grandpa used, a bathroom, a informal dining-family room with a wood stove, a large formal living room with a a...

Today's Mama Kat prompt this weeks said,  "Did you Garden this year? Share  the fruits of your labor." It's been a terrible year for gardening. Far too wet.  Despite that, one Bell pepper in my veggie bed managed to survive and not just survive, it thrived. We were out of town for two weeks recently and when we came back---ta-da, it was loaded with green peppers!  Not a bit of labor went into it aside from planting it. That's the beauty of peppers. On Another Note... Today was the first Thursday of the month lunch out for my Yoga fitness class. Six of us went today, all of us between the ages of 50 and 75. Two of the ladies are retired nurses and I used to be a Air Force medic, so we started trading amusing medical stories, particularly about baby births. There's always funny stories about baby deliveries. Our Yoga instructor talked about her second child being a full-breech and that she elected to have him by Cesarean.  I to...

The Mama Kat prompt I'm doing today is, "Share a Memorable Day at Work." I worked at a flower shop for many, many years. I was a floral designer (the person who makes the arrangements). I have to say that I remember more bad days, then good, but there was one really extraordinary day when a lady came into the flower shop on a day I happened to be working, looking for fresh flowers for wedding reception table arrangements. As Mother-of-the-groom, buying the flowers for this was her contribution to the wedding. She told me the wedding colors were "teal and brown," and she wanted to know if it was possible to get any "brown colored" flowers? Well, I can safely tell you there are not many fresh flowers that come naturally actually brown. What's called brown is often a bit more on the light tan-orange side. Then I had an idea. I remembered we  had a chart of Gerbera Daisy colors available from our local flower wholesaler and one of them wa...

The Mama Kat blog writing prompt for today was to turn a photo of myself into "something spooky" using the Halloween tools & effects at an online photo shop, like Pic Monkey. I prefer to use Ribbet.com, instead of PicMonkey.com, since I'm a Ribbet member. I used their tools to "spook-ify" my photo. The two companies offer fairly comparable services and they share an interesting back story, one I happen to know: Once upon a time there used to be one fabulous online photo shop called Picnik.  I loved Picnik. Everyone loved Picnik. I was a member of Picnik for a couple years, but Picnik belonged to Google and Google decided they wanted to do something different with it.  So, in 2012, Picnik was shut down. There was much wailing and a desperate blank in the way of an online photo shop on that scale of easy-to-use excellence for a good while--a year, perhaps two. Then "Pic Monkey" appeared, founded by "the same guys who created Picni...

Today's Mama Kat is to share, "A Back to School Memory."      The scent of autumn was in the air and golden rod was in bloom when I started school in 1963.  I wore a dress, since dresses were what all girls wore to school back then, and carried a red & black plaid book bag, such as the one pictured.       I carried all my books back and forth to school everyday. Initially, I don't recall we could leave books in the our desks and I remember not enjoying how heavy trundling that loaded book bag back and forth was.  At some point in grade school, we had assigned desks and could leave our stuff there. I think desk styles changed maybe, though I can't remember. I do remember I wasn't carrying that thing back and forth in 2nd grade. 50's/60's Book Bag      I would wait for the bus at the end of the driveway and on this particular day I recall going sitting at the very farthest back seat. The bus's next stop was at ...

The challenge today was to look over photos from last July and pick one to write about. I discovered on nearly this exact date in July 2015, I featured this photo of one of my melons growing in my garden: It's an Amy Melon, which is basically a Golden Honeydew. The outside turns bright yellow; the inside is white. Of course, I had seeds left to use again this year: Here's my 2016 Amy Melon! It's quite pretty in the late day sunlight and quite a bit plumper then last year. Because I have pests that will bore into the melon from the ground underneath, I put old cat food or tuna cans under my mine. This one is actually sitting on a large tuna can. It got too big for the cat food can, LOL. And a bonus Melon photo: My sister, Pat, who lives in Indiana, set up a whole new veggie garden space and yesterday sent me a pretty shot of two Cantelope's coming along nicely in her bed: **** So, what's growing in your neck of the woods? Thanks...

The Mama Kat prompt topic for today is: " Describe how you celebrated Labor Day Weekend. " Hubby and I celebrate our wedding anniversary most Labor Day Weekends, though our actual anniversary date is Sept 4.  Some years, it is Labor Day. It moves around. The long holiday offers lots of time for eating out and other fun activities! View of one part of the Pier Park extravaganza. So Friday , we started off our weekend driving down to Pier Park, which is about an hour drive east of us in Panana City Beach. It's a massive shopping & restaurant complex, what I call a "outdoor mall," and includes a small amusement park in the center, which was expanded this year. We went there to have lunch with two young Air Force guys, who lead the singles Bible Study at Tyndall Air Force Base, at the Red Robin restaurant at Pier Park. (Their Nav Staff leader is presently deployed and so we meet to encourage them.) Then Saturday was lunch & a m...