Peaceful day

A quiet day at home can be so ephemeral. But, I feel as if I got lots done today while still taking time to relax and enjoy the moment.

After the morning rush of making o-bento and getting my husband out the door. I took a quick look around the yard to enjoy the May flowers. 

            I've grouped some reds together in planters and they are looking pretty.

I was actually hoping to get this amaryllis to bloom out of season at Christmas but there was no such luck. It certainly is pretty now, though!

Hey, there's a first bud on this morning glory! Last year I planted just one morning glory and it certainly didn't thrive. In fact, it only put out a couple of blooms before dying off. I think I moved once too many times after transplanting and that seems to have been a no-no. This year, I've tried 3 different colors of morning glory. Two of them were labeled as "unique" so it will be interesting to see what happens when and if they bloom.

We opened up a new space this year for some transplanted garden plants. Here we put shiso, goya, morning glories, parsely, basil and a mini tomato. The basil already looks smaller than it did the day we transplanted it! :-(

I moved bearded iris plants around some months back and unfortunately there have

 only been a few bloomers this year. This one has come on later than the others that had different sunlight conditions.

This area looks cheerful now.

This particular rose has done really well this year. It had one very long floppy stem that we tied down horizontally in the winter and that caused it to put up lots of new flowering stems this season. It doesn't hold its petals long, though.

Rainy Season will be here soon enough, as evidenced by the hydrangea starting to show color. With rainy season comes mold. Mold. MOLD...

For now the fine days of May still reign, though. Although the forecast suggested there might be afternoon rain or even lightening and hail, a gentle breeze and a clear blue sky encouraged me to do several loads of laundry this morning anyway. First, there was the daily load to hang on the line. As things still looked as if they would dry quickly today, I started washing wool sweaters to put them away fresh and clean until the autumn. I ended up doing 11 sweaters and they all dried quickly! Scratch that job off the do-to list. I'll still need to get some non-scent moth protection packets to put in the closets and drawers as I discovered that I was down to my last little packet when I started putting the sweaters away in the late afternoon.

The entire bath, walls, tiles, and so on also got a good scrub this morning, too. It's a prime spot for mold so a pre-Rainy Season scrub hopefully will discourage some of the early nastiness from appearing once the humidity cranks up several notches.

While I was sorting sweaters to decide which to wash today, I also moved my summer and winter clothes between closets.

I got the kitchen sink scrubbed down, too. By the time those jobs were nearly completed it was noon. As I was brewing a pot of water for a cup of tea with lunch, I spotted the first centipede of the season crawling around on my lace curtains on the kitchen window above the sink. So, my cup of tea was put off a bit longer so I could splash some boiling water around the window frame and hopefully I got the centipede in the process. They are one of the nasty critters that I really hate in the warm/hot months as they do have a poisonous sting. I'll leave a spider alone in the house as I figure it will hunt and kill other insects but a centipede needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible!

As I folded up the big pile of laundry when 2 p.m. rolled around, I discovered an interesting documentary on TV about the Rolling Stones. Keeping an eye and ear on that I also started to arrange some fresh flowers from the yard as the I discovered the gentle breeze was turning into enough of a force to knock down the lone iris that bloomed this morning and was whipping my roses around pretty good too.

Yes, it was a nice day! 

To top it off I made inari sushi for dinner. 

The predicted rain is finally pelting down heavily now. Cracks of lightening proceeded it. There's nothing like enjoying the comforts of home during a rain storm.