A Little Shrine to Mary

Some blog friends have asked about my little wall shrine dedicated to Mary, so here are some photos of it. 

The little vintage statue is from Italy. I think the statue has a very sweet face. The round crown tells us this is a depiction of Mary at Fatima. As a child, I got the Jiffy Pop inflated popcorn container a bit confused with Mary's Fatima crown. 

I very much wanted my mother to buy a Jiffy Pop! I was just fascinated by it. We made our popcorn in a large saucepan. It involved a lot of wiggling of the pan on the burner, an occasional lift and shake with the lid firmly held, and then quickly getting it back onto the burner for more wiggling and sliding. There was always some scorching involved.

I do think that popcorn popped the old hard way tastes better than microwaved popcorn, though, or air-popped popcorn. 

I am at the rock-collecting, tile-collecting, and wood-buying stage of my outdoor shrine. In the meantime, I enjoy switching out the decor on the shelf shrine. The candle to the right was just added from the Easter Vigil this year. The loyal tigers are always present, however. They think they are guarding her, but shhhh...she is guarding them!

Note to my non-Catholic friends: We are not worshipping Mary. We are venerating her.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

As Evening Falls on Easter

I have not been around the blogosphere today yet. That is my treat for this evening! It has been very active at church, and I was there since Holy Saturday at 7 p.m., with a trip back home to check on husband and pets and shower and drink something since I got very dehydrated. I wanted to attend as many Masses as possible, the Easter Vigil, and the special Rosaries we were saying long after midnight. 

Outside the building, wisteria is beginning to bloom! Its unmistakable scent mingled with the incense last night at the bonfire, and so today I went looking for it after noon Mass. 

As to our bonfire, even though it was very scaled down due to the wind, we got terrified for our Bishop, although he seemed unaware of his danger. But our padres, our altar servers, and our deacons kept him safe, each one grabbing at his loose vestments as the wind whipped them around near the flames. At one point a bunch of sparks flew out and hit him right in the chest, and we all cried out, "Wooooooo," and "Ooooo" and "Noooo!" but he continued on, unperturbed. 

The wisteria was around the side of the church, climbing on a screen built to shield the air conditioners from sight. There was a huge golden bumblebee trundling about on the wisteria. It made me think of children finding the golden egg at Easter egg hunts. This golden bee was guzzling nectar and maybe loading up on nature's golden treat, pollen. I was so pleased to find this fine, fat bee, and the reason is at the end of the post!

I hope everyone has had a peaceful Easter. As I get older, that is my favorite wish for others: Peace in their hearts. I like to sit in the church when it's dark, and just feel the peace wash over me. The banks of votive candles shimmer in the gloom, and the sanctuary lamp (red tabernacle candle) burns steadily. Our cathedral is the only one in the area still open 24/7, a point of joy for our priests. 

A few days ago, one of the priests mentioned to me that he thought a yellow dress would suit me for Easter. I was very surprised, but tickled at his idea. Yellow, shall we say, does not suit everyone, and I wondered where in the world he got that idea, as his color sense seems to be zero. I looked in vain for a modest yellow dress, locally and then online. But I found a pretty yellow blouse and paired it with a black skirt, and felt it made me look like a bee, ready for spring!

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly 

Maundy Thursday

Above: A photo of a bit of the stained glass windows at church. The pieces of glass are about an inch-and-one-half thick! I hadn't realized stained glass was that thick. Since it's spring, I tried to capture mainly the pastel tones. The church is dark and somber during Holy Week, making the windows even more striking than usual. Today is Maundy Thursday. The birds are valentining, the buds bursting, but within, all is very still and quiet.

I love to roll out obscure words, and my everyday speech is peppered with them. I know it's odd, and that I'm odd, but to quote that wonderful philosopher of the ages, Popeye, "I yam what I yam." I told something my father used to say to me in an earlier post. Now I will tell a very quick story that my mother told about me: When I was three, she rebuked me for something I did, some behavioral misstep. And she said I looked at her and said, "I am what I am." The End.

I must have heard that on Popeye. But I didn't like cartoons as a child; the way the characters were drawn, defying the laws of physics, always upset me. I can remember trying to get my legs to spin around as depicted on many cartoons, and trying to get my hair to move in that strange, undulating way of a Disney cartoon princess's hair. And to this day, Gumby makes me feel ill, off-balance.

Anyhoo, my love of archaic terms - well, that's why I always use the old terms for many things, especially holidays. Today is "Maundy Thursday," or Holy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper, the day that Christ gave us The Lord's Prayer, and so much, much more. 

I am always moving things around on my indoor shrine. I like to move some pieces to a little nook at the corner of my bedroom window. My shrine is to Mary. I have a very old statue of her that is guarded by a fierce-looking china tiger family (told you I was strange). I keep the statue guarded, but the Holy Cards I like to rearrange. This is the "nook shrine" today, with one of my favorite Holy Cards and some sand verbena in a Cracker Barrel restaurant maple syrup bottle. Reduce, reuse, recycle! I will dust the shrine nicely and show it off in a future post.

But THIS I will show off now! This is the incredible giveaway I won from Rugs and Pugs <---Link!. If you haven't visited that delightful blog, you are missing out. Rug hooking (wool!), cross-stitching, pug-loving, wit, wisdom, and beauty, it has it ALL. Go ahead, click that link, go see! 

Wherever you are and whatever your beliefs, if any, I hope you are having a lovely Maundy Thursday!

The Flower of the Family

My father used to have a joke he liked to tell. He would say that I was "the flower of the family -- the bloomin' idiot."

My family was exceptionally intelligent, except the baby of the family -- me -- lagged far behind them. In my family, the intellect was the be-all, end-all. My siblings had extraordinary intelligence, as did my parents, especially in the areas of mathematics and music. I have no real talent for either one, although I tried very hard to do well in those subjects and please my loved ones. But I never pleased them!

I do feel I have a special gift, however: I am transported by beauty. Sometimes I feel like my heart will burst when I see certain flowers or hillsides or paintings; or the way the light goes through a vase at sundown or a leaf at sunrise, or through Champie the Chiweenie's ears anytime, making him look like a dog with bright pink petals growing from his head. Note to Champie: You are a handsome, handsome lad, my fat and faithful friend, and you wear those petals well.

Here are a few more "purloined pictures" (thank you, Joanne from Cup on the Bus) from the little park I "accidentally" found myself in after accidentally scaling a rock wall (at MY age!) and accidentally avoiding detection by sneaking about. I was NOT the only one to enter this off-limits park, however; a well-known ne'er-do-well character wearing a black mask (over its eyes, not its nose and mouth) was there before me! Yes, the paths were covered with paw prints of raccoons! 

Hope you enjoy. Three kinds of crabapples and some other pretty plants like quince and redbuds were also blooming. Some are not in sharp focus; I was too busy trying to sneak to concentrate.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Free "Spring Springing" Cross Stitch Chart!

Here is a little free chart (see link below with color charts, symbol charts, and key) with two versions based on both my Jumping for Joy design and a good friend's primitive bunnies (used with permission) that she stitched long ago. I hope you will enjoy stitching it, if cross stitching be your hobby! It is easy enough for a beginner to stitch, too, for those who may be interested in taking up cross stitching. I am unhappy with the date, as I noticed it is off-center. "Free, and worth every penny," as we say. I flipped the top flower motif for an alternate version. The alternate version just has the color stitches shown, not a symbol chart also. I have run out of time because Spring Break is over for our school, so it's early bed and back to work tomorrow. Out of time to play, BOO! 

Use this LINK <--- so that you get the PDF of this chart. It's stored on Google Drive and that is as safe as things get on the internet!

I hope you all have a great Monday and a great Holy Week. We had a fantastic Palm Sunday Mass, very moving. Our priest, several of the Knights of the Altar (altar boys and girls), and deacons put on a spoken-word play. Our priest has a really great voice.

I did something naughty today. I snuck into a closed park to take photos of the crabapple blooming there. This is an open-air park few visit that has been closed for over a year, due to "COVID." The lure of the spring blooms was too much. I had to miss them last year. Even if a person lives to be 100, that's just 100 times to see crabapple blossoms. This photo shows the old and the new: Last year's shriveled crabapples, and this year's promise.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Lilac-Violet Cactus Welcomes Spring in the Desert

 

Before showing off the "unicorn cactus" as I like to call it, here is my favorite kitchen decoration. These little chalkware chickens are always on display. The hen was painted by my son while I painted the rooster, when he was very little. I love children's artwork and handwork. Their creations are so open, so fresh! 

I had to mail some seeds that I sold, so I stopped by the landscaping at City Hall, which is downtown like the post office. Spring arrived within a week: Trees that were bare last week are fuzzed with green this week.  Ice plants have dozens of blooms and have plumped up. The agaves (above) are stretching out. I think the center of the agave looks like a little dolphin face. And the prickly pears are barnacled with buds.

I am very partial to these lilac-hued cactus, called Santa Rita prickly pears. They are a very unusual spot of pastel color in the landscape. In winter and early spring they are lilac and purple with aqua; by late spring and summer they will turn more a pastel blue gray.  In the landscape, they are striking. I wasn't the only one taking photos of them; in nearby Old Mesilla, tourists had phones in hand, taking photo after photo of the violet-hued prickly pears that line the famed La Posta restaurant's parking area.

I know many of you are still awaiting spring to truly show herself! But when it is over 100 degrees here (37 C), you will be having the last laugh as everything dries up in the heat!

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Your Favorite Smell, Garden Surprises, Desert SNOW in March and Printable Spring Tags!

Well dearies, here we have some free digital speckled spring tags to download and print out. I was thinking of speckled eggs, and flowers, and decided to combine the two. As always, please use the link, because Blogger compresses and resizes images posted and then they don't print properly. TO GET A GOOD LOOK at the tags to see if you want to download them, RIGHT CLICK and choose "Open link in new tab" and that will make the little magnifier appear.

You can download from Google Drive (safe) from this LINK <-----

Amazingly, it snowed today here in the desert -- on our mountaintops. It sprinkled some cold rain on the foothills and in our valley, the Mesilla Valley, where the Rio Grande is and where the chiles, onions, cotton, and pecans grow.

 

The mountains are the Organ Mountains, so called because the tall granite outcroppings (locally called "the needles") looked like organ pipes to some, probably homesick settlers who had left such heavy instruments behind. I can't really imagine the grit that the people had who moved here, the ganas, as they say in Mexico. All these g-words, basically meaning the desert pioneers had guts.

Update on my community garden plot: Whoever had this plot before was a blue-ribbon gardener. I thought I was going to have to amend the soil and dig a lot to prepare the bed. But no! My very first shovelful of soil showed that not only was it already amended, but it was PLANTED! With strange bulbs, pushing up to the surface! And the bed has different mints including apple mint, big mounds of what turned out to be the best-smelling lemongrass ever, other herbs yet to be figured out, and I don't even know what-all. Some heirloom tomatoes, too.

I gingerly poked in a few seeds of sunflowers along the western side of the plot, for shade. And put in a few pumpkin seeds (bush pumpkins) and some Korean Melon seeds that were given to me by a fantastic gardener in a seed club we're in. But I didn't dare dig anything. I just made little holes with a stick.

Those with mint-phobia, don't worry. In the desert, mint cannot take over your beds. They are limited by the extreme dryness and easy to keep in bounds with watering methods.

I am most excited about the lemongrass. I haven't grown it before. I gave it a good haircut and the little blades are already coming up from the roots. I think it's one of my new favorite smells!

What is your favorite smell? Does it vary by season, as mine do? 

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Flowers You Can Eat

When I visit other blogs, my mind buzzes with ideas for posts. So many memories are recalled, or ideas are sparked, when reading about the lives or thinking about the thoughts of others. Today I saw so many words of wisdom, whimsy, and wit! Maybe that's what the "www" in the blog addresses meant today. Even when the subject matter was weighty, the thoughts sparkled. I even did some screenshots because some of the posts were very valuable, I felt, containing memories of the past, or strategies for improving one's life, by quieting and decluttering the mind.

Nature certainly helps me readjust my attitude. 

If you look at the photo above, in the upper right you can see a bit of my car. I just HAD to have that color, "Black Cherry Pearl." Umm-hmmm, really smart choice for a car in the desert...nope...

At the end of our block in Texas, a house had an absolutely fluorescent pink redbud. Our cattycorner neighbor had a very old, very tired redbud, too, but it had a darker tinge to its blossoms. I should have asked for a twig from that hot-pink redbud, and propagated it.

Here I have found several little "wild" redbuds, at a small medical center. Did you know that redbuds are also called "Pea Pod" trees? Their flowers are edible, as are their "pea pods" and the seeds inside. 

I think the flowers would look pretty in a salad! Or atop some guacamole. 

I have noticed that with most "edible" flowers, you would not want to have seconds...maybe they are acquired tastes...nasturtiums and violets included, although I used to love "sugaring" violets and putting them on cakes. Oxalis (rabbit grass) flowers are delightful, if you love sour things!

But...it is Spring Break here, and so the school is shut, and I am busy having the old-lady version of a slumber party. My slumber party involves actual slumbering! I stay up late to catch up on the blogs and search for new ones, look at stitching and crafting videos on YouTube, and make myself a cup of decaf coffee to enjoy. Then I stitch while "watching" some British mystery or documentary about ancient times, or read a favorite book. I am re-reading "A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska: The Story of Hannah Breece." I am sure someone would want to "cancel" Miss Breece today, and her book would have never been written. But I love it, not only for the lore, but because it is exceedingly interesting, especially when paired with the copious footnotes her great-neice included in the book. What an incredible saga of an older lady in the frozen frontier!

As the clock ticks on, I almost feel giddy that I can read as much as I want! When I get sleepy during my "slumber party," I doze a bit, then awaken and read some more, or even stitch a bit more, then snooze again. It is so delightful to know I can sleep and awaken naturally, with no intrusive alarm.

Do you have your alarm set to a pleasant sound, or to something that will startle you awake? I have a sweet alarm of twittering birds. 

As always, thank'ee for stopping by.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Early Spring Blossoms Abounding

I am somber today, thinking of several new blog friends who are undergoing trials and tribulations. They are good people, and it seems so unfair that they have these burdens on them. But it is as St. Paul said: "Who can know the mind of God?" 

Some bloggers are also right in the danger area of the bad storms and tornadoes we are having. "Tornado Alley" has shifted since I was young; many in Eastern states have been in peril.

Back in autumn, I predicted a severe spring, with winter hanging on. The signs were there.

My mind is all over the place in this post. Just a little tired, I guess.

In gardening news: The bottlebrush trees that I thought were dead have poked up some little new branches from the roots. In fact, it seems all of the plants I thought were gone, are not. I gave the courtyard a good soaking when I got home from work.

The strangest garden happening is that the winecup is putting up yellow buds. These are deep magenta blooms, thus the name, winecup! What is happening, with these yellow-petalled buds? The leaves are deep green!

I hope that near or far, these blooms bring a little bit of sweetness to your day.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Free Printable "Love, the Easter Bunny" Tags

Maybe someone with a little one could use a tag or two "from" the Easter Bunny. 

I am from a very large family. There were so many children that each child was able to dye only one or two eggs each. It was so disappointing if you created a "bomb" egg. That's the dull army-green/gray egg you get if you put the egg into too many colors of dye.

As always, remember that Google Blogger compresses large files, causing them to print the wrong size or too grainy. Use this LINK <--- to download the original-sized file from the Google cloud.

Thank'ee for stopping by.

Kind regards,

Olde Dame Holly

Happy St. Paddy's Day

When St. Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland, I think I know where they went...

These signs are prevalent in our parks and museum areas! This one is in front of a playground.

We always must "watch where you step" here, especially in spring when the warmth enlivens the snakes. One county over is the rattlesnake-bite capital of the world, and we have plenty here, too. Of course, they are just living their little snakey lives, so I wish them no harm!

Happy St. Pat's Day! I will wear green today for sure, begorrah!