On a day like this....

It´s this  time of the year when a lot of birds are chirping , tweeting and singing. 

You can hear them early morning in our area and sometimes throughout the day.

Ahhhh, this suffering of having bad weather!!!
 Yes, we are confronted with bad weather since days. But, the farmers 

need the rain. Only thing is... too bad that it´s so cold and the  

flowers of fruit trees are being damaged by the unrelenting frost

We must go out rain or shine everyday to walk Lily....yes, on a day like this we must!

But such walk with the dog gets us to move, go out into the fields to have fresh air 

and at the same time collect wildflowers for my vases. 

And it´s on a day like this when the weather is cold and rainy that I´d rather stay home and do a 

bit of cocooning, enjoy hot tea or coffee and read a novel,  do crafts  and many more. 

On a day like this, I arrange wildflowers I collected from the dog walk...

And on a rainy day like this, the flowers tend to shy-away from blooming.

Poor tulips in my garden could not open-up because it´s cold...

The petals were devastated from constant rain...
I feel sad for these tulips because they already started growing nicely when it was 

warmer last March and beginning of April. Well, there is a german saying that goes like this :

"...April, April, er macht was er will  "  

April does whatever it wants.. meaning, the weather in April is unpredictable, 

sunny now, rainy the following day and frosty the next...! 

Have a nice weekend !!!

Simple Joys of Life

Hello friends!

I hope your weather is fine and not as crazy as ours, it´s so cold here 

in Vienna at almost  0°C in the morning.... it was even snowing  yesterday !!! 

In many Aprils ago, as far as I could remember, we were already 

sweating,  wearing shorts and T-shirts at this time of the month and 

enjoying the sun gardening in our backyard.

And because there weren´t much to do with this kind of weather, staying home

is the safer solution except that we have to walk Lily rain or shine.

Walking Lily gives me the chance to pick flowers ...any wildflowers that 

are available in our path..

 The 1st pic above shows wild lilacs I got from one of my walks with her.

I thought of putting them in those three blue bottles and arranged in

a row... do you love this style of arranging flowers?

And oh!.... those are mineral water bottles from our fave chinese restaurant in 

Southern Spain.  I love its pastel blue color so I brought them along to Vienna.
 I think that this is an amazing color contrast to the beautiful shades of the  

lilacs, know what I mean?!

These beautiful inexpensive ceramic eggs were found at the Saturday 

flea market for just a fraction of a cost. Hubby and I collect them.

.

 

The other day, I decorated this dull wall in the kitchen with some vintage plates
I've been keeping for a long time..the one on top right is actually
an oil painting of fruits  from hubby´s grandma.   I temporarily included it 

to complete the structure of the display until I find a ceramic plate 

that matches the whole scheme.

The figurines were made out of salt dough and are souvenir we got in Cyprus.

This week,  I also cooked this super yummy and delicious chinese  

noodles called Pancit Canton. It is always a mainstay of food at home and it 

tastes much better than the ones delivered right at your door. 

You can get my recipe here. 

These blooms were the first wildflowers I picked along a field near the 

golf course in our area.. I´m not even sure what the name is, 

I tried to google its name but I didn´t  find anything. 

Would you know how this is called?

Also this week, I started a new quilt that I ´ll be making into
pillowcases... I´ll keep you posted on the progress...

And lastly, because we didn´t have the sun and it´s still 

raining in our area, this tulip is still not opening since 4 days! 

We´re still waiting, waiting, waiting for the sun!

TGIF is coming up, enjoy your weekend!

Thanks for being here!

Linking this blog at:

Feathered Nest Friday

The First Lilacs of Spring 2017

They are just too early to bloom this year. It must have been the mild
weather that we´re  experiencing the last two months.

As far as I can remember, they come around the beginning of May, 

right on time before Mother´s Day.

We are lucky to be living near the borders of  Vienna and the Marchfeld Area in

Lower Austria were so many lilac bushes are available. It´s  where the 

Marchfelder farmers planted some of these lilacs in a row as blockers for 

harsh wind that could destroy their crops.

Lilacs would look lovely in any vases .... in the above photo, I used a 

crystal vase that made the blooms look elegant... whereas, the ceramic vase below

enhances a more rustic garden look...

I think I will have more reasons to gather more of these amazing flowers   
and make more beautiful arrangements. 

More updates will surely come along the way, I´ll cross my fingers. 

I hope you like the lilac arrangement I made for this blog.  

Thanks for dropping by !

xoxo,

Mercy

Linking this blog at:

Feathered Nest Friday
 

The Potted Tulips - Spring 2017

The buds finally opened last weekend after a row of stormy, rainy and cold 

three days that ended last  Friday.

Tulips are my fave Spring flowers because they are very easy to 

maintain and they always come out so beautifully!

The onions or bulbs I got last Fall were supposedly a variety of pink 

shades and  they should be so.... but oh, what a surprise!!!

the pop-up blooms are red and yellow tulips :-)))

I always keep each of the packaging after the bulbs are set in soil ... 

Anticipating what I planted the following Spring. 

Oh well, lessons learned, I will give care the next time I buy new packs.

The potted ones were 20 bulbs in a pack. And  

I planted  them so closed to each other so that the tulips will stand 

side by side as if they are in a huge flower vase. 

I think I achieved my purpose of having a huge bunch of tulips, 

as if they are really in a huge vase!

 They may not  be my fave pink ones.... but reds and yellows 

are just as beautiful !!! 

Thanks for taking the time to be here today!

Have a nice start of the week!

Linking this blog at:

Feathered Nest Friday

The Spring Chores - 2017

Happy Women´s Day everyone! 

Hope your day is fine and enjoyable!  I was telling my Bffs  that since it´s our day today, 
a shoutout for a relaxation for all women  should  be done around the world.  
Relax and put aside all stress, take time off to really,  really enjoy the day, go out with 
girlfriends, go shopping and use hubby´s credit card. LOL!

We deserve that, don´t we?!

My day today started with food shopping. We normally get fresh food every 
Thursday, but I have  important appointments tomorrow, 9th of March, 
so we did it today rather than Friday.

As we are moving towards Spring, we have been cleaning our
backyard the last days. I couldn´t believe that we´ve had so much fallen leaves 
and branches!  The ones that were left behind before we left for Spain have 
been the wild vines that were still green by end of September.

         

At any rate, now is the time to get excited!  Last Fall, I planted a mixture of 
big tulip bulbs and Allium. I´m so happy to see that their sprouts are now coming 
out and so are the other plants and the evergreens. 

Ako´s yellow rose bush is also thriving anew and  has many new branches at this 
time and oh so green! It´s amazing that this plant is very robust after 22 years. Each year,  it bears
plenty of  clusters of light to dark yellow flowers.  Can´t wait to see the first  blooms
 ´cause my vases are now waiting to be used for the bouquet arrangements.

The honeysuckles ( I have a pink and an orange)  are now slowly filling the  
rose arch. They normally bloom around May/June.

We´ve had beautiful blue skies the other day when we walked Lily in this wooded area 

near our home. We love walking in this place because Lily often meets other dogs 

more than her size and she´s loving it!

She´s  outsmarting bigger dogs by simply barking at them when
 they come too near  her nose or her butt!!! :-))) 

Of course, it´s like a predomenantly surprise attack on her part. The other
 dogs are simply careful...they never know what Lily´s
 going to do  next !!!

Oh my , I was surprise at what cravings can do to a person. We didn´t have the apple

tart for so long... good that there were apples left from last week´s 

food shopping and that prompted me to begin the process of baking.. I grab them all 

and started peeling!!!

 "Pronto"  the tart was quickly baked!!! 

Hubby said, this was the most delicious apple tart he has eaten so far

(from all my bakings) Ngek !!! 

This week , we went to visit hubby´s Oma and Mom in this cemetery..
The Grinzinger Friedhof ( 19th District , Vienna) is  the most famous cemetery in the city 

where  the rich and the famous are resting. Oma was not rich but was just lucky to have 

gotten hers in the 50´s. 

That´s all for today. 

Hope to see you here again
Thanks for taking the time to visit!

The DIY Garbage Bin

When you´re getting older and would like to do a DIY project like mounting a garbage can kit, 
you might find it hard to do such a chore. I,  for one,  haven´t been active myself in the last 
two years. I used to do a bit of carpentry works just like my dad. 

The other week, I drove to Ikea ( I have no affiliation whatsoever)  to get a new garbage 
container for my kitchen. There were not much  choice, and  I found only two options: one 
was a galvanized can with cover that you have to open and close manually.... and the other one, 
a hard black plastic that has a white base  that can be  attached below the sink. It´s with a 
telescopic metal that you can simply take in and out and this is 

what I chose and  will be talking about in this post.

The kit was easy to install if it wasn´t for that limited space under the sink where 

you have to move and screw everything in place. So I did everything myself 

and had to prove to hubby that I can do it alone. 

After a while, everything has been mounted and of course, I was happy 

and proud that I have done it without help,... Later in the evening, I had an abdominal 
muscle pain and couldn´t explain what the pain was about. I began to get scared!

                                                                   

I dropped dead on that afternoon doing the mounting... I found out that the muscle pains have 
been from the DIY work of the never ending bendings here and there.
The next day was a disappointment, I found out that I forgot to put two screws 

to make the base stable  .....hhhhhm, typically me!

I was damming it because I had to unmount my work and start all over again. 

Thank God, the muscle pain subsided a bit and I repeated the work today, 

I couldn´t be happier!

"... if the boys can do it, the girls can do it, too.." !!!

Thank you for dropping by!