I’ve been doing a lot of complaining about the pollen lately. I still struggle with sinus pain, a coat of muck in my throat, and a voice that gets really bad by the end of the day. I take stuff to help the symptoms, but nothing has “cured” me of my allergy woes.

But I have to tell you that the pollen that causes my misery also helps change the season and turn my side yard into a spectacular bounty of purple and pink.

When we first moved into our house we didn’t have a fence and there was grass up this hill to the sidewalk. I told Damon I didn’t want to mow the hill or the strip of grass between the sidewalk and street. I wanted to plant a ground cover and I knew what it was, I just didn’t know what the name was.

I did some research and found it was known as “creeping phlox.” I had seen it in purple, pink, and white flowers. It climbed hills, draped their lovely blooms over rocks and stone walls, marrying mother nature to man-made objects in a beauty I knew I wanted in my yard.

This particular ground cover is in many yards in our neighborhood, but none of them have the amount of ground covered that we do. Damon ordered the root-bare plants from an online source and the first year they arrived while we were on vacation. We planted them as best as we could, but out of the 50 root bare plants, only one survived. That was seven years ago, and that plant now covers about 3 feet. We have split it and transplanted some of it to other areas, but it still thrives.

For five years we added creeping phlox to the street-side hill and now we are reaping the benefits of that hard work. We always ordered bare root plants, in a variety of color. When they arrive we plant them that day, no matter how cold or late in the day it is. We have no idea what the color arrangement is, because there are no blooms. I think we figured out based on the heartiness of the greenery which ones are purple and which are pink. Somehow we ended up with a lot of purple, which blooms first, and no white at all.

I told my friend Ang. that I would post these pictures for her, to go with her star magnolia and forsythia. Spring may be a difficult season for me, but as long as I have my garden of phlox, I think I can endure.

What is blooming in your yard?

Update: I found a “before” picture!

The grown up in me is totally being squashed down by the kid in me right now. I want to jump up and down, shrieking and laughing about the fact that I have a new couch! Thankfully I have a toddler who is willing to do that for me so the adult in me can take pictures.

The delivery was smooth, though they had to take the back feet off in order to get it in the door. The delivery guys were nice, chatted with Fuller, and the dogs were locked up in the bathroom. And then whoosh, the feet were back on the sofa, their paper was signed, and I am now sitting on my new couch.

Sometimes, being a grown up is pretty cool.

It is 3:31 and Ashley Furniture has 29 minutes left in their “delivery window” to get here with my couch. I am so excited that it is coming today.

We put our old loveseat, which has served us well, on the neighborhood/ church email lists and several people have called about it, with the first one coming this afternoon to pick it up. I am very excited about that as well.

And so I wait. And wait, and wait.

Luke slides all by himself!

Originally uploaded by CrumleyFamily.

Yesterday Esther, Luke, and Ben made it to our neighborhood for a playdate/ clothing loan.

This park in our neighborhood is like an extension to our backyard. It is so close that it is nothing to say, “Let’s walk over to the park!” and it not be a big production.

Except, it can be a big production. First there was a shoe battle with Fuller. Then we needed sunscreen (which we actually forgot), we needed water for four, and we needed to wipe down the wagon so it wasn’t so yellow with pollen. Then we had to go back into the house for sunglasses. And popsicles to eat on the way over there.

When we got there Fuller and Luke took to the task of conquering the slides. Fuller finally decided that the slides were ok, especially since his buddy “Lu” was there to ride too.

Luke figured out how to get up the steps and then to go down the slide himself. He is so little you might think he wouldn’t have anything to do at the park, but that doesn’t stop Luke! He would slide, walk/ bounce on the swing bridge, and swing. I think he had more fun than Fuller.

We finally left when both kids were crying (one fell down a couple of stairs, another fell on the swing bridge and his hit head), but it was lots of fun. Maybe next time the boys will actually want popsicles, and then the mom’s won’t eat them.

Fuller is sitting and watching Mel-mo and repeating the numbers on the screen. It is pretty cool how he has been absorbing the information from Sesame Street recently. I take time to include him when I count often, which he usually does with glee. His favorite is counting the scoops of coffee beans in the morning.

I was looking at flash cards the other day and I couldn’t find any that were just numbers. They have the alphabet, which we already have, but no plain numbers. There were plenty of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division cards, but no numbers.

He certainly has grasped the alphabet, which we still work on daily, and now his numbers are coming a long. It gives me so much joy to see him learning. I can’t wait until he starts to read.

I’m trying to take into account everything I have to do today and seeing where I will be shortcutting to make sure it all gets done. I am still a suffering fool with the allergens so I am praying that the overcast nature of the sky will bring down the rain that we need.

Yesterday Fuller and I washed my car so that it magically went from pine pollen yellow back to white. It was the second time that Fuller has “helped” me wash the car and this time he got into the task with full gusto. At times he was a two fisted washer- holding a rag in each hand.

By the end of the wash, he was soaked from had to toe. (Pictures laster, I promise.)

Anyway, it is going to be another busy day, so I have to make a list. Other online friends of mine put their to-dos on their blogs and since I can’t find my notebook, here I go:

Continue Reading »

Damon just told me to stop talking because my voice is horrible. The air quality in Chattanooga is “unhealthy” and my white car looks yellow now, since it is covered in pollen.

Allergies have been my bane the last few weeks, but as the types of allergens shift so do my symptoms. And I don’t think all the outside time the last few days have been so great either. So I am dealing with a throat coated in yuck and a voice that is irritating to hear.

But I will persevere, power through, and hopefully kick this out the window soon.

For non-exertion activities, today I finally finished uploading all the pictures of the playground build to Flickr. You should check them out, because it too is an activity that doesn’t require a lot of exertion and won’t affect your breathing.

I took a sponge bath of mineral spirits this evening. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t pretty.

The last day of the playground build was all about finishing touches and shellacking every inch of exposed wood. Since Damon worked so hard the last three days, he watched Fuller while I took foam brush in hand and helped with the ginormous task of shellacking.

I am not a very neat painter. Shellacking isn’t that much different than painting and I ended up with a lot of it on me. Which leads me to the sponge bath of mineral spirits and sawdust to scrub the shellac off my hands, fingers, arms, and legs.

I took this picture near the end of the day. If you look closely you can see parts of the playground in the background. You can’t see all the dirt, but trust me I was dirty, sweaty, and tired. But I was (and am) so happy that this playground was built and next week we can take Fuller to burn his energy off on the big slide and swings.

This experience was amazing, and I promise to tell you more about it later. I need to go to bed.

It has been a long three days. In our family Damon deserves the most pampering because he has been the hardest working. Fuller and I go to the playground site and hang around, taking pictures, eating food, offering drinks to workers and we feel wiped.

I think a lot of it is the heat. It was 84 degrees when we came home at 6:30 this evening. Very, very warm. I am afraid that Fuller got sunburned, despite my sunscreen efforts on his chubby cheeks.

I kind of became the unofficial photographer of the playground build mainly because of the sheer volume of pictures that I have put up on Flickr. I have a lot more on our computer, so if you see our Flickr sets and think, “That’s a lot of pictures!” just imagine what we didn’t post.

I wanted to pass on that if you are following our playground pictures that I have divided them up into separate sets:

PreBuild
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

That is all for now. I have to go get Pizza because Damon was expecting pizza for lunch. And the burgers from Captain Jack’s were very good, but apparently D really, really wanted pizza. And he deserves what he wants. He has worked very hard.

This is the tower in the toddler area of the new playground. A lot of people showed up yesterday to work, and today they need 200 or more volunteers. This is truly a community effort and it is so much fun to watch!

I was going to help today but my childcare fell through. Since Fuller isn’t potty trained, he can’t go to the free childcare at the rec center. So in about 20 minutes I may start calling around to see who can watch Fuller.

The group also needs more tools, especially generators. If you are reading this on Saturday and think you can help… come on over. They are taking anyone who walks up to the registration table. They have an awesome tool cataloguing crew, so your tools will be returned to you. And there is plenty to get done. Tomorrow is the last day!