I'm Alive & Getting Better Daily

****I have my video uploading to YouTube right now, so come back tomorrow to see what you probably came for.  :)  Masculine Cards Part 1.  This post is another personal update, but so feel free to skip it, or just scroll to see pictures of our yard.
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Hello my creative friends.  I am so sorry to have left you without updates.  I've been pretty sick and ended up in the emergency room.  If you are my Facebook friend you can read there to find out more.  Thankfully I am on the mend now and I am really hoping to be able to start stamping again soon.  Do you know the torture of having a box of new goodies from the brand new Stampin' UP! catalog sitting on your table for over a week and you can't even go through it.  That tells you how bad I have been feeling.  

In case you are wondering I have been diagnosed with vertigo.  Many serious things were ruled out and it looks like it all started with allergies that built up fluid behind my ears that wouldn't drain.   Add in dehydration and passing out and vomiting and you get the basic picture.  For several days I could not sit up or walk on my own.  Today I have been able to sit up and pay bills on the laptop.  (oh joy!)   Next step is to be able to walk around and water my flowers, then if I can sit up and bend over my table I will get back to the creativity I love.  (Oh how I wish my lilac quilt was finished so I could have been wrapped in it all this time, but I digress.  I'm just happy that I will be able to finish it soon.)

As for driving, I am not allowed to do so until a week after my symptoms are gone.  Good thing I have a permit driver for emergencies, but I think it's safer for both of us to stay home.  I figure if I can't drive, then I can't do "chores" so I am letting my teenagers attempt to keep the house running while my dear husband is at work.  They have been good about checking on me to make sure I am still alive and have plenty of water, juice, soup or crackers.

Would you like to see what I was doing in our yard before I got sick?  Here is the last thing I was working on before I started getting too dizzy.  It's driving me crazy that I haven't planted the rest of those flowers and spread the bark, but at least the weeds are pulled, the plants are placed where they will be planted and the tree is trimmed.

All of us helped with added a border of salt and pepper rocks along our fenceline.  I was getting dizzy at times, but I thought it was just the heat and sore neck/back muscles.  I promise to be smarter about all this next time.

P.S.  Ignore the yellow/brown spots in the grass.  Mostly that was the weed-n-feed killing off the clover and weeds.  ;)

Our late blooming dogwood is in full bloom now.  It's so pretty and should keep blooming through the 4th of July.  :)  That means I can go out and enjoy it as soon as I feel up to wearing something besides jammies.  LOL  This is in our front yard.

Another area I had been working on was extending a flower bed in the backyard near our pond.  It too was coming along nicely.  I still need to plant flowers, but the raised bed will make that easy as soon as I can bend over without falling over.  :D  I had to put in some stepping stones for the dog.  He kept walking through the my plants and knocking them over where the stones are now.  If you can't beat him, figure out a way to get around him.  :)

Did you spot the roses?  Yes, I have a sunny enough spot for some tea roses.  :)  Hopefully.

Thank you if you stuck through all this and looked at my pictures.  I think you can get an idea of how much yardwork I had been doing and why I "may" have pushed myself a bit too hard.  In addition to this there has been weeding and flower planting along the roadside/mailbox area, another flower bed around in front of the house that had been overgrown.  I pulled weeds, trimmed plants/bushes/trees and planted new flowers.  Then I added bark.  I still have 2 more flowers to plant in that bed and it is done.    Our pond/waterfall area was a mess.  I pulled weeds and pruned around the waterfall.  All 4 of us pulled weeds around the pond edges.  Dear husband did so much weed eating/weed whacking.   We laid down paper and some crushed rocks around the back of the pond area to keep the weeds down.  Now we are trying to decide what to put on top of that gravel looking stuff.  Debating between the same rocks we have in the front yard (expensive option), red lava rock (pretty, but not flip-flop friendly), and bark (cheap, but has to be replaced often and weeds like to grow in it so it is more maintenance.

I am sure this is more than anyone other than my closest friends and family wanted to know about our yard and my medical issues, but it is helping me to write it all out.  I promise not to overdue it.  An easy promise to keep since my body won't let me do very much.