Glad to Just Be Me.....

When I was young my Elementary School went to the High School and watched a play...I think It was about Charlie Brown....The one thing I remember is this silly song called "Glad to Just Be Me"  It was about two people sharing what they like and learning about each other and then realizing they could be friends and still  be themselves...

Years ago in a Relief Society class the teacher asked what we would change about ourselves....I was the only person who wouldn't change anything....I was just glad to be me....But as I look at the world I feel sad for people...Young girls look at magazines and want to be thin like the models...They want to wear make so they look older...Older women want to change.... get rid of their stretch marks...They want to get rid of their baby stomach, or wrinkles.....Hide their grey hair.... Look like some young person....We can't seem to figure out in our society how to be happy with ourselves.....

Our society seems to be teaching us that we can only be happy if we change ourselves in some drastic way...We can only be happy if we are like everyone else or the majority of people....We can only be happy if we have lots of money...New cars...The right spouse....

The working mother is not as happy as the stay at home mom....or the stay at home mom is not as happy as the working mom....It's sad how we compare each other and fight with each other....I think the differences in the world are not there to make us miserable...They are there to make life more vibrant....I love to meet people who are different from me...I love to make friends with people from different cultures and beliefs...I love to learn about what they believe is true...and love to share what I like and believe....You can learn so much when you talk to new people.   I think before you can do that you need to be happy with who you are and love yourself...

When you are happy with yourself you can help others because you know yourself and you have your own rules....If I don't agree with someone I don't put them down.....I don't fight with them....I simply say "I don't agree with you...I can see your side and I can see my side and while I don't agree I can still be kind...I won't continue to talk on the subject that I disagree on...I will remain quiet.....My husband and I had a disagreement one day and I said this to him and then quietly walked away...He kept trying to prove he was correct...And I quietly said "I won't fight with you...You won't change your mind on this subject and I won't change mine...but I won't yell and scream over it.....I won't hurt you over it......So many people seem to want to fight over things...over what they know is right or wrong.....Hopefully someday we can find peace...It is sad to see people fight over opinions that won't change....We all feel we have rights to our opinions and yet we fight anyone who wants to believe differently...We need to look for ways to be kind and accepting of others and still be able to live to our own standard. 

We are all here to learn and grow...We are spirits having a human experience.....My most important job is to pass my own spiritual tests and to help guide my own family....My biggest concern is not others but myself...Am I learning what I came here to learn....Am I kind to others...Am I Loving to others.... I will not be judged by what others decided to do...I'll be judged by what I've decided to do....Perhaps the ultimate judge on the other side will be me....

God and I will sit down together and review my human life and either I will find that I made choices that were good or I made choices that were not good.  Our lives, our choices, our memories are all we take with us when we die....I can't see into others hearts as to why they choose the things they choose....I can only see into my heart, I can only judge myself....And I find that I'm happy to be me...Happy to live in my life and make my choices...I choose to be kind and uplift others...to support people who are struggling....And be thankful my struggles are not as hard as others I know...I choose to learn and study about God....My way is not the only way...It's the way that I feel is right for me.....I'm thankful for what I have found and the peace I have found....I hope others find their own peace....
G.G.

Gardening in the Morning.....

It is hot out here in Utah....If you want to garden you need to get up at 7 am and garden in the shade and coolness. Once 10 am hits you don't want to be outside.  I like to watch and see what plants will survive and thrive in this heat because those are the plants that I will try to grow more of next year.  This blanket flower is loving it...It doesn't wilt in the 5pm sun.

This was one of my favorite plants in New Jersey too.  I love watching the stages of plants, and what the flowers look like before they bloom.  This photo shows the beginning flower and the blooming flowers...

My Carnation and Dianthus plants are also thriving in the heat.  They don't ever look to be bothered.  I will definitely be planting more of these next year.  I'm thinking for trying to start them from seed too.

What will this flower be??? I'm reading a book called "Dandelion Wine"  By Ray Bradbury, it's from my sons AP English reading list...Here is a great quote I found..."Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher.  Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the Peonies, Socrates Force-growing his own hemlock.  A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.  As Samuel Spaulding, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul'....."

I love going out to the garden and thinking, and listening to hear if God will reply....To sort out my week and let things go as I weed, and trim and prune things...

I admire my hard work, and look at the small patch of beauty that I helped to create...Time seems to slip by slowly....I enjoy watching the bugs that live in the garden....Do they think kindly of me for providing this space for them to wander about...

The beginning stages of the Cone Flower....Cone Flowers and Daisies seem to be fine in the 100 plus weather we are having.  The nice thing is they come back every year too. They are the tall plants in the back of my garden.

I was so happy yesterday to see this flower.  This is one of my Black Eyed Susan vine plants that I started in the house as seeds.  That it survived the move from the house to the garden and is now flowering made me so happy!  Some of my little seedlings did not live.

This is the Ice plant that takes up a huge amount of my garden by the sidewalk....It is slowly creeping out of the garden and into the lawn...It loves the heat......

A view of the garden from the sidewalk by the house...Still have forks in there as the cat seems to still want to wander into my garden....My Mum plants are getting big, I'm glad fall is still far away...  I'm also glad that this year I'm taking more time to enjoy my garden.  One interesting thing I have realized is that last year on June 21st I spent the morning in the garden and took photo's and blogged about it....It must be that June is when it gets hot out here and I begin to garden only in the early morning.  I'll have to go look at the photo's from last year and see how things have changed....
Have a great day.
G.G.

Throw Back Thursday....Elle's Giant Marigold plant....I mean Sunflower plant.......

Way back when my kids were little we would go to the public library for story time each week, they had a story time was about gardens and flowers.  After listening to all the stories the project was to plant some seeds....We brought home our little cup of Marigold seeds and took good care of them. We were so excited that the Marigold seeds sprouted and we had little baby plants to put in my garden.  Back then I wouldn't be able to look at a seedling and say oh that's not a baby Marigold plants.   It was so exciting for my Daughter to watch these little seedlings grow...And at some point I realized I did not have Marigolds in my little garden..  Instead we ended up with two huge Sunflower plants.

The plants grew all the way up to the bottom of our porch roof.  I can not find the photo of my daughter standing next to them when they were full grown but I know I have one somewhere....It was so much fun....We were never able to grow Sunflowers that tall again.....Those must have been some special seeds.
Hope you had a great Thursday!
G.G.

Busy Family Meals.....For those who are not great at cooking and have no time!

So one thing I have been trying to do and kind of failing at is finding meals to feed my family that are simple, and easy...The one thing I say about my life is that it is inconsistent...I never have a week where I work the same shift every day...I never have every weekend off....One day I'll be getting up and going to work at 5am in the morning and getting home around 2....The next day may be an 8:30 to 5 shift and the next a late shift.....This makes preparing meals hard!

One meal that my family likes that is real easy is Campfire Sloppy Joes......I'm not a big bread eater and so I put mine on plain bread, but you can use hamburger buns...Then I had some chips and potato salad too...

Here is the recipe
1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
1 medium red bell pepper, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced ( you can use the already minced garlic from the jar)
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 can (8oz) baked beans
6 kaiser rolls, split and warmed
shredded Cheddar Cheese
first brown ground beef, onion, bell pepper and garlic 6 to 8 minutes in large skillet over medium-high heat, stirring to break up meat.  Drain and discard excess fat. Transfer beef mixture to slow cooker.
second combine ketchup, barbecue sauce, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar and chili powder in a small bowl, add to slow cooker
third add the baked beans, stir well to combine. Cover;cook on High 3 hours.
when done place sloppy joe mixture on rolls and sprinkle with cheese.  makes 4 to 6 servings.
Enjoy...
G.G.

Sedum....New to the garden and a good drought resistant plant.....

The newest addition to my garden is Sedum...You can buy these blocks of plants at the store.  They are a type of ground cover that doesn't grow tall and doesn't need a lot of water.

I bought 3 trays of these plants to see how they do...What I didn't realize is that the tray has a bunch of different types of Sedum.  It will take me awhile to figure out what kinds I have.  What I like is that they are a type of Hardy Succulent and so they don't need much water.  If I had my way my lawn would have more of these plants than grass.

Along with the Sedum I have more hens and chickens...I keep trying to transplant the babies and get more but they seem to die...Not sure what I'm doing wrong.  Hen's and chickens remind me of my mothers garden..She always had these...And I'm sure one of her friends had given her them as they can make lot's of little chicks..

I love trying new plants out and seeing which ones will survive and which ones don't...Summer is starting to get hot and even though I'm good at watering some plants just cant take the heat...While others like these sedum plants seem to love it.
G.G.

# Throw Back Thursday....I miss the lazy days of summer.....

To me summer should be slow and lazy....Like floating down a river....The days are longer and they should go by slowly...there should be no rushing in summer....

Time should be spent pondering life, fishing,swimming,resting.....

When the kids were young we spent a few weeks every year in Vermont camping, and hiking...there were no computers, video games and very little television watching...Just tents, open fire pits, and roasting marshmallows...

The rest of summer was spent at the local pool.  There was no schedule, no place to be...We got up and slathered sun tan lotion on and walked the 1200 steps (we counted every year on the first day of the pool being open) to the pool....Swam till lunch or until you were blue because the water was so cold...played games...Then walked home.

On the weekends we would get up late....spend time lounging around the house and then around 3pm we would drive down to the beach...Get dinner...And play in the waves....And then watch fireworks.......There was no rush...It was all about going slow and feeling like you had been gone for weeks...

Life was so simple when the kids were little and I stayed home....

My favorite thing was collecting sea shells...My husband would watch the kids and I would look for sea shells...

My life with young kids was all about keeping them cool and happy....making goggles fit just right and getting ice cream treats....Our biggest task was reading books so we could win prizes at the library...

Now life is fast....Days zip by....It doesn't matter that it is summer....It is speeding by like a bullet train....The pace just won't slow down...Appointments and work take up the days.....There is barely time to rest let alone enjoy a book or day at the pool....

Oh to walk the steps to the pool again....To spend time listening to the waves of the ocean...Perhaps on our vacation we will be able to capture those moments...but my fear is that vacation will zip by......and then it will be time to send the kids back to school again......
G.G.

Spring flowers at Temple Square in Salt Lake City Utah....One of my favorite places to go to take photo's of flowers....

Every spring my husband and I go to Temple Square to see the spring flowers.  While it is not as big as the Thanksgiving Point flower garden it is just as beautiful...And it's free....

I love to see all the different colored tulips in the spring..And the Pansies...The nice thing about the Temple Square gardens is you get all the spring flowers together...

There are flowers everywhere....I'm always looking to get a perfect flower and Temple photo.  I'm trying to put together my favorites so that I can have framed Temple photo's around my house.

All the flower beds are taken care of by volunteers....And they change the flowers at different times during the year. 

I love the poppies, this will make a great card...That is what I usually do with my photo's I make cards and send them to people...

Giant tulips..How cool!

This is a Periwinkle plant...I would love to have this ground cover around my house....They are for fond remembrance...They had a whole hill covered with this...Someday my back yard will have more of these plants in it!

There is so much beauty packed into this area.  There are places to sit, and you can go into the visitor centers and learn about the Mormon church and how they built the Temple....

If you are in Salt Lake City in the spring you have to walk around the gardens.  The last photo is the place I always try to photograph every time I visit.  The sun just wasn't in the right place to get a good photo of the lady dancing with her children.  Some day I will get this shot perfectly....You can buy one of these framed in the book store for $165.00....But I'm sure one day I'll get one that I can frame on my own...Well I do have a few that I love and soon will be framing them....
Hope you enjoyed looking at all the flowers...
G.G.