Blooming!

Everything’s bursting into bloom here. The  honeysuckle grows wild and the smell is intoxicating! It’s all over the bank on the high side of the driveway.

I’ve had a hankering for meatloaf for a long time and I bought a toaster oven at Goodwill for $3. So yesterday I put the oven on a little table that’s in the garage, plugged it into an extension cord and made my meatloaf. The oven timer is only for 10 minutes though! So I had to set a little kitchen timer for 9 minutes and reset the oven timer…6 times. I sat in my lawn chair right in front of the open garage door, with my trusty fire extinguisher at my side. Just in case the oven was faulty, I didn’t want to burn down the garage!  But all was well, and the meatloaf turned out great. While I was sitting there, there was a little animal parade. First a fat opossum came squaddling across the driveway and into the honeysuckle. No time for a photo of him, but I did get a photo of the next guy, a little Eastern Box Turtle. He was headed straight for the garage so I redirected him to the strawberry patch.

And oh, the strawberries! There’s a LOT of them, and they are starting to get ripe! Can’t wait, though Jenni told some of the neighbors they could have some, so I don’t know how many I’ll actually be able to get. A guy showed up yesterday with a BIG bag but they’re not quite ripe yet…….obviously he has big plans to harvest a lot of berries though. 😦 And I didn’t realize that turtles really like strawberries. Now I have more competition for them! Every time I see a berry getting red, there’s already a big chunk taken out of it.

And finally, the water lilies in the pond are blooming. First were some yellow ones, and now pink. Very pretty!

I made homemade Greek yogurt! I used a thrift store find, an insulated stainless steel coffee carafe to incubate it. I bought a quart of organic whole milk (in a glass bottle!) but after I had it on the stove, I realized my digital thermometer does not work. It was steaming but the thermometer only read 112 degrees! It’s supposed to heat to 180 degrees, then cool down to 110.  I had to just guess, but apparently it’s very forgiving, because it turned out to be really delicious! I made it speak Greek by straining it through paper coffee filters.

Yesterday I got an email from my bank that a transaction had been denied…..someone in Utah was trying to use my debit card to buy something for $69.95! Thank goodness Wells Fargo has a good fraud detector system, but I had to cancel my card and get a new one in the mail…..what a hassle! I’ll have to change to the new card number at a bunch of websites where my card number is saved, and for recurring payments. Ugh!

Am I the only who’s been getting Facebook Friend Requests from people you don’t know? It’s always middle-aged men, and when I go into their FB page, they don’t have any other friends. Why me??? Just my luck to have a bunch of friend requests from loser men who have no friends.