Shelby Skies

Above is a picture taken of our sky here in Shelby just a few minutes ago. Looks very menacing, doesn't it? The weather is nearly 80 degrees. Hard to believe we had 10" of snow just a couple weeks ago.

I started thinking about our vegetable garden for this spring. That reminded me that I didn't get out my tub of hyacinths to put on the front steps. I hoped I wasn't too late. Then I went down to the area where we keep all our out-of-season pots and gardening stuff. These beauties were growing under a tarp. They were already fully grown, but they were very light green and all hunched over. After a couple days in the sun, the blossoms opened, and lovely hyacinth-laced aromas flow into the house every time the front door is opened.

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz. I wonder where the flowers is? There are two pink hyacinths, but they are leaning so far towards the camera that they got cut out when I cropped it--then I couldn't figure out how to uncrop it!

Hooray for spring!

~Joan

Perming Rachel's Hair

This AM I did something I thought I'd never do...I gave a permanent...to one of my own offspring. If you only knew how strange that idea (let alone reality thereof) is to my psyche.

I have never given a perm before, but I CAN read, so I figured we'd wing it. Below is Rachel before I gave the perm. She slept with ("those stinkin'") curlers in to achieve this look. Sleeping on curlers is not optimal, so she would like to avoid it in the future! Those curls would have disappeared inside 30 minutes, even if we hadn't washed her hair.




Below shows after I got all the rods in. Tedious, but certainly doable...

If you've had your hair permed, you know the drill between the above picture and the next one. Curling lotion, timer, timer, timer, timer...the key is determining how long the solution needs to stay in. Too short and you just wasted a lot of time. Too long, and you look like a Brillo pad. We wanted somewhere in between. It looks like the eagle has landed!

Here she is after the neutralizing solution was applied, rods were out, conditioner was in...me, oh, my! There are a lot of steps involved. I'll post a picture later of her newly curly dried hair. She's out on the porch right now, reading while it dries.

Hope springs eternal...

~Joan