Items of interest

I was thinking I have nothing to post about. Then I looked out the window and noticed this tree. It struck me that it looks very odd at this time of year. It’s a maple, covered with red flowers. The branches are festooned with “Old Man’s Beard” or usnea lichen. The tree only looks this way for a few weeks in the spring when covered with flowers. I needed new eyes to notice its unusual beauty in the slightly foggy air. It looks scraggly, but full of life.
We are already well into May. We’ve had one or two days which qualify as real spring. I planted some seedlings and then we had cool rainy weather which brought out the slugs. So I’m on slug patrol.
Here’s a project I’ve been working on. I think I’ll finish it with this round. It’s a chair pad made with Jasmine stitch aka Star stitch, a supposedly difficult crochet stitch. It did take me several tries to get the hang of it. With crochet, it’s easy to pull out stitches that aren’t right, so I continue to take advantage of that! This is made with four strands of Nutiden yarn (unspun) held together. It looks rustic, a little dingy, and a little wonky. More hexagonal than circular. But it feels very luxurious and cushiony. Maybe I’ll make another in a more pure colorway. It’s intended as a birthday present so I want it to look nice.

Last item of interest – our Tide Clock. It needs to be reset. The stubby red hand above the caption word “high” is pointing to “Half Tide” when it’s actually closer to “High.” Until we moved to Maine, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a tide clock.

It’s actually high tide
Also – I accidentally clicked on a button that changed the photo and caption presentation. It looks interesting, so I left it. (I had to learn how to change the font color of the caption because it came out black and wasn’t visible.) I’m getting much more lackadaisical about technology and trying to figure out how to get it to look a certain way on my website. I’m sure there are loads of features of this theme that I don’t know about. I’m trying to get more accepting about aging too. My mantra seems to be: I don’t know and I don’t care and the fonts are all too small. Aging demands a different way to relate to life, including websites. I applied for Social Security today. We’ll see how that goes.
Catherine~ Oh, so much of something here with the ‘nothing’!! haha
I feel that way a lot, which is why you may see so many walk-flowers-nature photos. But, you saying it here (and then filling your post with so much!), has me rethinking that perhaps another thing to consider is how we blog as we age and our daily worlds look different, yes?
Anyway, that flower cover tree is quite interesting to see, being new to me. It looks like a painting ????
The chair pad does look complicated, but I like the mixed colors, especially for hiding dirt or spills. I hope the gift is well loved. I had no idea there was such a thing as a tide clock, as someone who has always lived more inland. Cool.
Best of luck with your Social Security process!! I hope it goes smoothly for you. (((hugs)))
Thanks, Nancy. It’s good to stay in touch even though I feel “nothingness” is going on.
Tides are fascinating … and yes, my folks had a tide clock, but as I recall, they preferred using a paper tide chart that was hung on a nail. We visited Port Aransas on the Gulf of Mexico last week and I was thrown by the fact that there was only one high and one low tide each day
I’m thrown by that too! I remember feeling surprised that the tide times were different all along the coast and we couldn’t really use the chart from Bar Harbor, for example. We’re not too reliant on the tides so it doesn’t affect us that much.