Trends

When you've lived as long as I have, you've seen your fair share of trends. Every generation thinks what they come up with is the latest and greatest, however, these days I think trends last a shorter period of time than ever, don't you? Viral one day, gone the next.

After my last post, as I had to go to the dry cleaners anyway, I decided to get smart and head into Ross to see if I could find some new shoes for gardening. When I began taking photographs in earnest, I discovered that my sandals didn't always cut it in some of the places I roamed. After an intensive search to find something other than tennis shoes I found my beloved Pr!vos made by Clark. Thinking about trends, I remember when the first velcro tennis shoes came out and my boys loving them so much. Of course, they were young. Now, they wouldn't be caught dead with velcro, but the same can not be said for their Mother. The new shoes were perfect, somewhat stylish, comfortable and slip ons with a modest velcro strap. Blushing here....

I began wearing them everywhere and if you can believe it, I got more compliments on those shoes than any pair of shoes I've ever worn. After several years of this I noticed they began looking not so spiffy any longer ; I had to resign them from public wearing. A gardening shoe was born!!

Is it any wonder that my feet got so grungy?

Ross had just what I was looking for--a slip on and cheap, as in $12.99. When I think of the money Bill and David spent on the trendy Ed Hardy clothes it makes me cringe!! I'm pretty sure this means the Ed Hardy craze has passed.

Silly me thinking that someone would notice my poorly kept nails at the funeral. That would have been quite difficult in the crowd of hundreds, as in maybe 700? It was pretty incredible as I knew it would be; when someone young dies there are many, many guests, including bus loads of fraternity brothers from FSU.

I'm wondering if I witnessed some new trends at the funeral. (see link to story about him)

• Shorts and flip-flops
• Guests arriving 45 minutes into the service
• Barely audible singing despite massive crowd
• Video presentation
• prayer read that a friend sent on facebook
• talking about hits to the Caring Bridge website (15,000)
• clapping after each person gave their remarks
• standing ovation for the deceased

and that my friends is when I made my exit. Note to friends and family: when I die, a standing ovation will be quite unnecessary even if it is trendy.

To go along with the new shoes, I finally began using the beautiful garden gloves given to me by Jane, Tom's mom, from Kew Gardens. I don't know about you, but when I receive such a nice gift, one from a ROYAL botanical garden no less, I find it hard to mess them up. Finally caved and am so glad that when I put in three trays of plugs early yesterday morning, my hands remained very nice and clean.

The back yard grass, such as it is, has given us fits. Despite new sod when we had the pool done, the area has looked ghastly for a long time. Much of what you see is the dirt I spread over the new plugs, hoping for a miracle!

I never left the house yesterday between gardening, photography, cleaning and a little painting. I don't know why, I just felt like getting out a few canvases and seeing what I could do with them. I used water color paints which I know probably isn't what you are supposed to do however, what the heck, I'm no painter which means rule breaking is a given.

I had this blue, green and white thing going which even I could see wasn't enough. I kept putting colors on, using the straw on the right to smear and, in general, mess with the paint.

Purple!! Too much purple! Looks like purple fish in the sea! After watching the Gehard Richter video I posted a few weeks ago, I've been intrigued by his scraping technique. Scraping is my word, he may call it nudging the paint for all I know. In an effort to use what I have in the kitchen I found this handy little tool from the Pampered Chef which allows you to scoop up a bunch of chopped vegetables at once. Great for making chili! And as it turns out, not so bad as a tool for making art.

Now that was fun. While it and another one, much wilder, were drying, I mowed the grass and all was right at the Peck home. Except for Bruce's absence of course....

Besides the paintings, I was working on a photograph of --surprise, surprise, some daisies!! As if I don't have enough in that category. Eventually they made their way onto my desk to keep me happy while I'm blogging.

After supper I crawled into bed to continue reading a new novel by Julian Barnes who is the polar opposite of Anne Tyler, that's for sure. According to the critics, I should be enjoying the book more than I actually am. Happily, while out today, I picked up Anne Patchett's new novel; I have high hopes.

Before I got to the library however, I stopped at an estate sale on the newer part of our street. Talk about trends, you should have seen the wallpaper still hanging from the early 1970's. An elderly couple made it their home for the last nearly forty years with what appeared to be few changes throughout that time. In many ways it seems sad to see whole lives of possessions sold off that way, don't you think? At least in this case, the folks are still living, just moving to be closer to one of their daughters in Arizona. It took all of about two weeks for the house to sell to a young family with one child and one on the way. Slowly but surely, the neighborhood is changing demographics.

Despite what I said about it being sad, I am happy to have found some fantastic Vera napkins which appear to have never been used. Cost--50 cents.

I can never see anything Vera without thinking of my own Mom which makes me wonder what will remind my children of their mother when I'm long gone. According to this , Vera began doing art work at her kitchen table in 1947. How about that?

So I didn't get the manicure done the other, instead a heavy work out with scrub brush and soap had to suffice because Helen was off for the day. I'm calling right now to see if I can become more presentable before Bruce returns although don't expect me to come home with trendy blue nails....