thirtysomething...

So, it’s my birthday month! Would you believe that we are still in jeans and long sleeves here in the UK. It is also still wet. Not much different than the weather when my in-laws visited. I can’t imagine what June 21st, the first day of summer and my birthday, will be like. Did I mention my birthday was June 21st…

Every day here brings something different. When I picked our house in Headcorn, I liked that it had a nice little yard. It was small and green with a little boarder around the edges where we could plant various flowers. When spring started, plants started popping up all over the place. Most of them looked like weeds to me, so I asked this gentleman from church to come over and point out the true plants. Would you believe the only weeds we actually had were dandelions and grass!! Unfortunately, I couldn’t pull out the dandelions, because Drew, my cousin Emily and Lance’s son, actually has a strong bond with these little yellow thingies. When they visited in April, everywhere he travelled, he had to pull up a few handfuls for the road. How big is Drew? THIS BIG!

So, before I jump back to the plant kingdom, I need to set the scene. I’m sure you have heard us mention that we love traipsing off through the country on footpaths. I’m a little more adventuresome than Dee. He is always like… Can we really cross this fence?, Stay on the path, Don’t pick the flowers, Stop feeding the sheep!... jeez you would think he was my Dad. Anyway, our last adventure took us out through this huge crop field where the crop came up to our shoulders. It is a yellow flower called rape, yeah I know. They make a sweetner out of it…I think. (Ed. Note: Check the banner at the top, that's Rape.) Anyway, at the end of the crop we had to walk around another field. Well JD, our good friend from Charleston who is staying with us for a few minutes, make that months, starts whining about how he can’t walk through the field because these plants have stingers that really itch. Of course, Dee and I ignore him and keep going. JD is in shorts and we are in jeans.

So back to our yard, these wild plants, not weeds, start coming up all over the place. I’ve been so excited waiting to see what happens. You wouldn’t believe all of the different varieties! Please don’t ask me to name them. It really does look like we are on another planet! So tonight I’m out there picking some flowers to make an arrangement for the dinner table. We have this vine that has gone in multiple directions and climbing up all over the place. I bend down to unravel it and the plant it was around BIT ME! You wouldn’t believe how much it hurt. There were no stingers or scratches. Three hours later my fingers are still hurting. I went back to try to find the sucker, but I couldn’t figure out which one it was. So sorry JD, you really aren’t a wuss.