Free Stuff and Perennials

My sweet daughter-in-law turned me on to this website for freebies, www.yesall4free.com. I am awash in free samples. I will not have to buy toothpaste for quite some time! I am sitting here smelling too good with a free sample of fragrance as I write this. Check it out.

I have been mowing sites all day. My cheeks are rosy and I feel very accomplished that I have managed to combine work with much needed exercise. I figure if I am going to walk I might as well push a mower in front of me. We have tons of hickory trees and the outer shell of the nuts is scattered everywhere. The squirrels have plenty to eat all winter.....they just leave a mess. So in addition to mowing I have been raking. Most of the fire rings are now filled with leaves and twigs and ready to light this weekend.

I love the way the park looks after we get it ready for a busy weekend. We try to mow the big open spaces every third day so that it looks better than the golf course in town...even if I do say so myself! I have some favorite campers....they know who they are! One of them is a sweet little lady named Betty. I call her Nan. She is the owner of the golf cart she so generously shares with us. It was in my care last year when a child was put on it ( by his father, no less) and the child hit the accelerator and ran it under a trailer taking the top off. I was glad there were no injuries to the child, but was mortified that I had been using it and it was so damaged. I cried about it. When I finished crying I ordered the parts necessary to fix it. Nan was so gracious about the entire event; assuring me that it was no big deal. I call her Nan because the front of the cart proclaims it to be the Nannymobile.

I spent the better part of the day cleaning Nan's site of the winter debris. I mowed the tall grass, then raked and mowed it again. Our Nan loves her gee-gaws. She has half a dozen Shepard's hooks with either potted plants or bird feeders hanging from them. She has party lights everywhere and all kinds of garden ornaments. She is patriotic and Uncle Sams stand on either side of her steps, they light up at night. After I moved everything I gathered some good sized rocks, dug up a big hosta and a big clump of day lilies from my garden and got to work. I made a perennial bed around the tree on her site, strategically placing her ornaments among the plants. I found some sort of wild flower that apparently likes the shade on some of the sites I was mowing, so I grabbed my handy shovel and dug them all up. I filled one of her containers with this little plant--looks like a lily, but with blue flowers. I hope she comes out this weekend and I can't wait to see her face. I hope she likes what I did and isn't disappointed. She plants annuals every year. She can still put those in her pots on the Shepard's hooks. It was a true labor of love and most satisfying! If you are reading this, Nan.......I can't wait to see you!