Happy Birthday to Me!

My favorite part about my birthday is the good excuse it gives me to do something for my mother. Since I was 16, every year I've made it a point to do something for her on my birthday. She's the one who did all the work getting me here! I also like to do things for my other family members. This year I'm giving a gift to each of them. The gifts range from MP3 players to books to stuffed animals. Mother's will be a new pair of Skecher's Shape Ups! For my father's gift, I had a hard time choosing between this Water Wheel Table Fountain and this Spinning Ball Table Fountain. I personally liked the Water Wheel one better, but I settled with the Spinning Ball one since it looks more like something you could, you know, drive your Jeep on. :D He loves natural fountains. That one looked much more natural to me.

I've wondered before, why exactly my birthday would happen to fall right in the dead of the winter. Maybe it's so I can have a little spark of sunshine during the cold months. My parents, especially my father, were thrilled to have me as a "tax deduction baby" and the last baby of the year in my area. :) Anyway, so I'm having a happy birthday being so thankful for my parents and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Snow!

Remember those pansies I told you about last week? Well, look at them now:

This is our first snowfall of the year, if I remember correctly. Since my friend thinks snow is just the greatest, I won't comment on how I feel about it. ;)

It's Been Raining...

And raining, and RAINING!

I was glad for these pansies that came to brighten my day. It has been raining for a LONG time now. I don't even know how long it's been. All I know is that it hurts, but we need it! Here in the desert, we don't get rain like this hardly ever. I'm surprised it's not snowing. I took this picture from my window. I don't care to be out in the cold. :P Anyway, how's life for everyone? :)

Missing My Morning Glories

I don't know how anyone else is feeling, but I'm missing my morning glories. They were SO lovely. The old dead vines just got torn down. Here are some pictures from a few months past. I think you'll agree that these were BEAUTIFUL!


I love how they get a little star on them and the center almost glows.

They are bigger than you'd think.


So while I'm feeling rough with the cold getting to every joint in my body, I can rest with this assurance...it's springtime somewhere! :D

My African Violets

I sure love flowering houseplants. African Violets are so much fun for me on my plant shelf. They just love it there. Here are some pictures of them.

This one is really flowering well right now. I don't know if I've ever seen this many flowers on an African Violet at once:


This one flowers such glittery white flowers that you fall in love with it in an instant:


And this lady is just getting ready to throw out a bunch more flowers I'm sure!


Here they are all together on my plant shelf with there little flip flap friend:

I wish I wanted to tell you all about these lovely ladies, but my wrists hurt so I'm too lazy to make myself type. I hope you enjoy the photos anyway. :)

Gardener at Heart

During my long absence I got to spend some time with a dear friend of mine in the hospital. If you've ever spent much time in the hospital, you know that you get to sit...a lot...and do nothing. While I was sitting there doing nothing, I decided to decorate my Styrofoam cup. I love drawing on Styrofoam. It grabs the pen tip and the ink just glides out so gracefully. It's easy to make it look nice. Here's how my gardening cup turned out. :)




Oh, and I own the copyright on that! :D

New Forever Stamps

I went to the post office for stamps. I was impressed that they finally did something cute with their forever stamps!

Now they just need to come out with some that have different kinds of flowers on them. :D

Papaya Leaves

At last, the long awaited post! I said I'd show you close up pictures of my papaya leaves. Here they are finally!


I don't know about you, but I think they're beautiful! Hopefully my next posts will be a little closer together. ;) Thank you everyone for your kind sentiments. Check back soon!

Where has Missy Been? - Diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis

So you're probably all wondering what became of Missy with her lovely gardens and houseplants. We've had some pretty good rain storms and the cold has set in here. Along with rain and cold comes Missy's reminder...achey bones. Around here we don't get a lot of rain, but when we do everyone is so glad! I am too...when I can think past the pain. When I heard rain drops and started crying a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to do something about it.

I consider myself an emotionally strong girl, generally, so when tears come, something really is wrong. I have an aunt who is a Registered Nurse. She also has a BlackBerry. I got on my BlackBerry and sent her a message telling her that I was taking the highest recommended dosage of ibuprofen and it wasn't even taking the edge off the pain. Her reply? "You need some very expensive testing." Nice of her to be honest, right? I'm always fretting about how much things cost. After giving it a few days thought and only feeling worse, I decided she was right. She told me to look a few things up on the internet. My symptoms all matched up with what she told me she thought I had: Rheumatoid Arthritis. Click on the picture below to read about it on MedicineNet:



A 21 year old girl doesn't just accept that she has a chronic debilitating illness like as if she'd just been told that the cookie jar was empty. It's a big deal! I finally scheduled an appointment with my local doctor. She's a really nice lady. After listening to my symptoms and feeling my joints she said, "She's got to have it."

She ordered a bunch of tests and told me to take lots of things. Now we're waiting for the results in order to know what to do next. In the mean time I have good days surrounded by bad days, I have bad days with bits of good mixed in, and good days with bits of bad mixed in.

You know how it is when you go to the doctor? You almost feel like it made things worse, but really, why did you go to the doctor? Because it wasn't getting any better, and just because you went to the doctor doesn't mean it's suddenly going to get better.

So how does an avid gardener and houseplant lover keep up with a hobby like that when they can barely get around? Let's take a spin around my bedroom.

When my wrists don't hurt too bad, there's nothing stopping me from reading. I have a little collection of gardening books and magazines in my bookcase:

You can probably guess my hobby by looking at my dresser. Butterfly Thermometer/Clock, Flower Vase, Rose Lamp, Rose Clock, Flowery Jewelery Box, and a Little Hand Crafted Birdhouse I made once:

I'm learning Spanish, and I don't see why I can't mix it in with what I already enjoy. Thus, I got this Spanish book on the Life Cycle of the Earth Worm:

And my Calendar with beautiful flowers every month:

First glance at my bookcase would make you think, 'Yep! This lady is sick!':

But, I haven't lost sight of the things I love which is shown by these plastic Cosmos hidden amongst all the pills (And yes, I need to dust!):

I also have my beautiful plant shelf that I've shown in other posts. My bedroom looks very "gardeny" as a whole, so nope! It's not going away any time soon. Rheumatoid Arthritis or not I'm still a gardener at heart!

Yes, I've accepted and rejected the diagnostic about 150 thousand times in the last few weeks, but I still have the old reminder, pain. I've been so glad for things like Ibuprofen, Tylenol Arthritis, Lavender Oil to soak in, and all my wonderful friends and associates. I looked back in my old chats with my co-workers. I was mentioning my knees in April of 09 and talked about my achey bones through the winter of last year and into this year. It was interesting because I kind of felt like it was a little "all the sudden". Apparently, it was not.

Papaya Again!

I thought you might be interested to know that my Papaya grove put up a few more seedlings again. Have I mentioned that this is an amazing plant before? Here's a picture:

Say CHEESE! the Lazy Way - Lazy Ladies Grilled Cheese Sandwich

I got to wanting a grilled cheese sandwich but I was too lazy to do it right. I invented this lazy lady's way of doing it. First I toasted 2 slices of bread:

Then I buttered one slice:

I put it butter side down on the the plate and added a nice thick slice of cheese:

Then I added the other slice of toast and buttered it. (Ok, so I really used margarine, but it would have been BETTER with butter!)

Next, I microwaved it for 30 seconds. (I didn't dare take a picture of the inside of the microwave, it's WAY too dirty!)
It was just right at that point:

I cut it in half and enjoyed my easy, stretchy, yummy sandwich! :D

Another Guessing Game

I don't know how well everyone else enjoyed my last guessing game, but I thought it was great fun. Here's another one. Can you guess what this is?

After everyone has had a chance to guess, I'll tell you what it is on Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for guessing! :)

My Tree is Climbing Out!

If anyone sees a Hairy Tree on the loose, it's probably mine because mine is trying to climb out of it's pot! This is an example of when to re-pot a plant. Look how innocent he looks just sitting here on my desk:

Take a closer look:

He's climbing out! Someone once explained to me that you know to re-pot a plant when it starts pulling away from the sides and pushing up like a cake does when it's done baking. I hadn't seen it until this one. When you see these roots you'll see why it's pushing up:

See how huge the roots are? Here's another look:

One last view of the bottom:

So it looks like a new pot will be on my list of things to pick up when I go in to town next. :)

Crayon Art

A few years ago, I did this Crayon Art from a picture my sister took. The picture is the trees up our walk way at work. Here's the original photo:

Here's the Crayon Art I did:

I know it's not the greatest thing ever, but I love crayons for art. Crayola is the only brand to buy. I have a big box of something like 300 crayons which I need to get out more often. Silhouette pictures like this one are my favorites. Do you draw, color, paint, or do art of any kind? I'd love to see pictures of them if you do. You could post them on your blog and leave me the link here if you'd like. :)

Flowers Galore

I took a few more pictures of the top tier of that garden I posted a few days ago. Here they come. This is Aster, Daisy, and Vinca:

Here's the pink Aster with Vinca:

This Vinca is SO very pretty to me. I fell in love with it at the nursery:

Here's a close up of the pink Aster flowers:

And here's a close up of the purple Aster flowers:

I might be playing favorites, but I sure think I have the prettiest garden there is! :)