There is some quote I keep seeing popping up on Pinterest that says something about how at the end of your life you should end up battered and torn with make up smeared, or something to that effect. Have you seen it? I understand the sentiment, you know live life to the fullest, squeeze every last drop out of it. But after living a weekend where quite literally my clothes have become battered and torn and my make up is visually smeared, a few new gray hairs have popped up, I’d like to offer balance to that quote. There is such thing as squeezing too much life out of a weekend. I guess it’s the culmination of the end of school approaching and the end of baseball and active, social, sports oriented boys that has produced a weekend that was planned down to the very last half hour.

We’re tired, I can’t remember the last time I pushed a button on the washing machine, we are seriously out of food…couldn’t even squeeze out a meager dinner, and there is possibly nothing in our drawers and cabinets because I swear its spread all over our floors and tables. We’re out of balance and I long for a few hours to reset our house and get us all back to ‘normal’. That said, we saw our oldest hit his last triple in this baseball season, our middle run his first running race (our second for the oldest), we talked and drank wine with friends until way past bedtime, celebrated a young friend going another year around the sun, and watched energy filled neighborhood kids perfect a limeaid recipe. Oh, and we painted and painted and sealed our new deck project (more to come).

It’s a full, full life these days, which makes the moments when I can go outside and watch the changing flowers blossom all that much sweeter.
In opposition to a hurried lifestyle, I’ve been slowly tending to these hollyhocks for well over a year now. Back when I was obsessed with dying yarn with plant materials to make my fair isle sweater, I searched for plants that would yield something other than browns and yellows. In Harvesting Color, Rebecca Burgess showed that niger hollyhocks give a pretty mint green to blue color, so immediately I picked up a packet of seeds from Baker Creek. Hollyhocks, being bi-annuals take their sweet time growing and blooming, so these missed being in my sweater. But I can always think of new plans for a knitting project. I grew about six different plants and they are finally blooming!

I have them drying in bowls on my desk waiting for activities to slow down, for summer to bring on long, hot, lazy boring days so that I can watch the alchemy that happens when you transform garden blossom to dye. Have a good week friends.