Joining the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter for another edition of Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real.
{pretty}
Here are my little girls having a visit with Our Lady after Mass on Sunday. Our church had the May Crowning on Mother's Day, and it is so fitting to honor our Blessed Mother in this way on this day. Pretty girls, pretty dresses, pretty hats, pretty flowers, pretty crown. Beautiful devotion.
And here are some of my handmade Mother's Day gifts from my girls: a beautiful bookmark from Anna, a spiritual bouquet, and a framed Jemima Puddle Duck ATC* from Mary Rose. She made Mrs. Puddle Duck for me because I was fond of a similar card she made recently to trade with a friend. The funny thing is I used a Jemima Puddle Duck rubber stamp to make Jonathan's birth announcement so many years ago, when I first became a mother. Little interesting connections like that always delight me. Also delightful are the exquisite monarch butterflies made by Lydia-
And here's a close up of the cool butterflies and my card from (you guessed it) Lydia. The monarchs are hand painted and cut from paper and they have tiny wire feet so I can hook them onto things for decoration. Lydia is quite amazing with a pair of scissors and a paintbrush.
{funny}
After posing for our traditional everybody-on-the-couch Mother's Day picture someone had the idea for us all to pose with books. Not just any books of course, but nine copies of The Fellowship of the Ring. Note that these nine were carefully chosen so each person has a different style book. And no, that is not all of the Fellowships we have in the house. We're just slightly Tolkien obsessed around here.
Funny is also getting a new flower bed for my Mother's Day gift. Fellow gardeners, I'm sure you understand.
Michael bought me a new birdbath for my Mother's Day gift, so naturally I had to have a nice spot for it. As it was Mother's Day, he just obligingly asked how big I wanted the bed and did I want an ellipse?
And knowing and loving my scientist husband as I do, I naturally said yes. And I naturally knew how he would get out string and a stick to mark the foci of the ellipse. The stick is one focus and the tree is the other, and he grandly walked around with his string marking out the perfect shape.
And here we have my new elliptical flower bed! Knock Out roses were on sale this week, so I fetched two of them. The new bed seemed like a good place for St. Francis who was getting lost in some overgrown shrubbery and so we moved him here and dubbed it the St Francis Garden. I put in some seedling annuals too, and it should look very nice in a month or two, providing everything doesn't get eaten.
{real}
And speaking of things getting eaten, you know you haven't worked in the vegetable garden in a long time when you finally get in there and inadvertently find a nest of baby rabbits!
How's that for real?! Lydia teased me a fair bit, calling my fenced in garden a 'rabbit hutch'. Harrumph.
But the little babies were safe as I'm no Mr. McGregor. I explained it all to Mrs. Rabbit and told her I knew all about her babies and that her secret was safe with me.
Here she is demonstrating her if-I-sit-very-still-and-don't-bat-an-eyelash-that-lady-will-never-even-notice-me pose. Have you ever seen rabbits do that? They sit stock still while you get closer and closer and closer until sproing! You finally get too close and they shoot off like a rocket.
And that is a bit of a summary of my Mother's Day week thus far. We do like to refer to it as the Octave of Mother's Day. So far we've had cheesecake, strawberry shortcake, triple berry coffee cake, lemon blueberry scones, and an iced cherry almond ring... You do celebrate the Octave of Mother's Day too, don't you!?! Give it a try - it's like practicing for the very chocolate Octave of Father's Day next month.
*Edited to add: ATC stands for Artist Trading Card, which is a 2.5x3.5 piece of artwork created to trade with other artists. We are hosting a swap of Marian artwork for the month of May for artists of all ages - you can read about the details in this post. We'd love to have you join!
