A day of thanks.....

That is how I am feeling today! In a moment, I will show you why I am thankful about some garden successes but first I want to comment to you all about my last post. I had such fun putting that entry together and then it was compounded by the great response I received by you. I enjoyed seeing a new friend stop in to say hello. So nice to 'meet' you Annie from San Diego and I hope you will stop in more often. Do you not have a blog yourself?

It was great to see a few old friends visit who I have not heard from in a while. It is good to see you back again Rhondi as well as Andylynne. I always enjoy hearing from you. A new blogger for me to visit now is Crazee4books and I will doing so as I see she is a stitcher as well as loving to read. I will enjoy seeing her work and she can see mine over at my NeedleNecessitites blog.

I felt so thrilled and amazed last evening when I turned on my computer to check my blog and talk to my mother when I found a comment from Susan Branch herself on the blog. I kept going back to see that it was really real. She was already easily included on my list of special ladies but in reading her comment, this heroine became even more of someone special to me. She is just so nice to have taken a moment to say something and then tell her wonderful thoughts about Helen Keller:

"Dear Heidi, what a doll you are -- I can tell because of all the amazing heroes you have chosen. I can hardly believe you included me in this group!!! You are too much.
I've also thought about this subject as I am so inspired every day. One of my favorites is Helen Keller. In case you don't know her story, this is it in a nutshell: Because of an illness when she was just a baby, she lost the ability to hear or see. It wasn't until she was around 7 and had a wonderful teacher, that she was able to understand what was going on around her, but always in the dark and quiet. She ended up graduating from Radcliffe, wrote beautiful books, used beautiful words and said (among many wonderful things), "I seldom think of my limitations and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times, but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers." From her my inspiration is to count my blessings every day! She dedicated the autobiography of her life to Alexander Graham Bell. That's my heroine story. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for including me in yours!!! Have a wonderful day, with love, Susan"

Thank you so much Susan!

And thank you so much to another Susan who is an online friend of mine and also left a comment that has really made my day. You are a very sweet person to say those things. I am just trying to make the best of what I have each day in life regardless of what hand I have been dealt. There is always a silver lining in each cloud if we only look for it. You yourself are an amazing lady who has given the gift of yourself to your two little boys as well as your teaching and forming children in your community and being a friend to people like me. Thank you once again for your words!


Meet Edith Holden as a rose. I had her on my list of heroines if you remember. This Floribunda or cluster rose is a very pretty pink~brown color. It will darken slightly as the rose progresses. I found this rose while surfing the net last year and found out that only one place in Holland sells them. I have a friend whom I mentioned it too and she said her mother lives in the same street as this grower. She offered to have her mother go get it for me. I planted it up in my large terracotta pot and it is flowering very prettily for me now. I left on Friday for Cranberry Cottage with the second flower in bloom but...


...when I returned on Sunday that bloom was replace by four new ones clustered together. i am so pleased I was able to find this unusual flower dedicated to Edith.


This is a real success story for me. I have always loved old~fashioned flowers like the dahlias. They are very much part of the farm gardens you see throughout Holland. Try as I may, I have never had any success with growing them myself. I put them in the ground only to find no plant come up at all. When I dig up the bulbs, I find they are gone. Just disappeared. I tried this for three years and decided I should simply give up.


This year, I decided to try them in a terracotta pot when Jos showed up at home with six bulbs as a gift for me one day. I was already excited to see that I got a plant as five of the six bulbs came up. Now I also have been able to enjoy the actual first flower blossom this week! It is like a child going into a candy store watching my first dahlia really come into being. Doesn't it look like fireworks?


Ah! Simple pleasures! It is a Zip~A~Dee~Doo~Dah kind of day!