Settling back in ...

We recently returned to Minnesota. We've been back almost a week. The weather is just perfect. The trees and shrubs are in full bloom. Mike's clematis already needed to be tied to the trellis. He cut it down to almost nothing last fall like he was supposed to, so you can image how much it has grown. This noon I stopped at the Bachman's temporary greenhouse in the Byerly's parking lot to buy a few herb plants and some impatiens. Looks like I'll only be putting these out front since our deck "heaved" this spring. Sounds like it threw up, doesn't it? We have always had a moisture problem between our townhouse building and the one next to us. They tried to fix it once with a new drain, but obviously that hasn't done the trick. We'll find out this week what the new plan is. Needless to say, the furniture on the deck is going into the garage until our deck is once again level. I'm not quite sure how many inches higher the deck is on the left, but it is definitely higher. I know this for a fact because I took Mike's level out there yesterday! Ugh!

I attended my first card-making ministry meeting last Wednesday since December. It was so good to get back with the gals. We worked on cards and tried to do some catching up. I'm working on birthday cards for boys for the church festival in August. I'll try to get my first design for that posted this week.

Mike and I listened to three books on CD while driving back from Florida. We listened first to one of John Sandford's mystery novels. We've always enjoyed his stories especially since he is a local author. We laughed when the reader pronounced Cretin Avenue incorrectly.
(Cretin Avenue runs from near my college alma mater down to Mike's over in St. Paul.) We listened to Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and Ronald Reagan's autobiography as well. Sorry, Mr. Sandford, but I am afraid you came in third this time.

Enough for today. Hope wherever you are, you are experiencing a BEAUTIFUL Sunday afternoon. The sky is SO BLUE here today, the temperature is in the 80's, and the greenery abounds.