Hollyhocks and Haircuts

Our parking lot gardens are blooming!

Seven or eight years ago, someone bought a hollyhock for the parking lot gardens. The original hollyhock was planted right in the middle of the parking lot without any nearby structures. Our original hollyhock has been joined by many new friends. Other years, I have pulled out seedlings but this year, I have done less community gardening while concentrating my energies on our own balcony. It is amazing how our hollyhocks have changed colour!

The original plant was a medium pink.

Time marches on during pandemic times. My social bubble is quite small. My husband has been ill for two years with sinus infection/allergy/breathing issues. Depressed and without energy, he sits in the recliner almost the whole day. My daughter is working for a union of whom 90% have been laid off or terminated. Employed in hotels, airports, college cafeterias, the workers will soon have exhausted their recall period and may not receive severance. The third person in my bubble is a friend
whose husband has terminal cancer.

Unhappy times are part of life. No one passes through life without sadness. We can find beauty in the world around us and appreciate those pleasures that we can enjoy. Last week, I had my first haircut since February.

after my haircut

Have you ever bought something after reading a blog? I have read The Vivienne Files for years.

I love playing with accessories to make new outfits. When Janice showed how to base a capsule wardrobe on a bracelet, I was excited. Right now, pinks and mauves are my accent colours. I ordered a bracelet from Fierce Lynx Designs, a small New Brunswick company. My bracelet, Lilac Dreams, is sold out but there are many other bracelets in colours to suit any wardrobe.

I can wear my bracelet with summer pink/mauve or with grey/teal in fall.

I've been reading a lot. Friday, I'll be picking up my August choices from Hager Books. Once again, I've chosen 3 fiction and a nonfiction book. Of the books that I have read lately, I would recommend

Circe by Madeline Miller and Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. Circe, the enchantress who Odysseus visits on her island, is presented from a feminist point of view. Nymphs and lesser goddesses were exploited by gods and mortals. Small wonder, Circe transformed shipwrecked sailors 

into pigs! Washington Black is the tale of a Barbados sugar plantation slave who travels to the Canadian North, to London and finally to Africa in search of natural specimens and a missing friend.

There's lots of travel in my reading if not in my life right now.

I am enjoying my tidy desk.

It is almost the August long weekend. We have very sunny warm weather right now.  Tomorrow, I will go to pick up those new books. Happy week-end!