morning fun

Today has been an excellent day.  I finished lesson plans for today and tomorrow last night, which resulted in some free time until early afternoon when it was time to meet my class for their daily grind.  Today we mucked around in Word, creating an overly-fancy memo.  In real life, most memos are emailed and plain.  Also, who takes time to add Word Art and graphics to a memo?  But, this assignment gave us a reason to practice the new alignment guides feature in Word 2016 and the Format.  My students also hopefully retained some idea of the traditional format of a memo (but that’s beyond the scope of what this class is about).

 

Sarah gave me a giant tray of succulents as a retirement gift.  All these lovelies just waiting to be appreciated and nurtured, but there were too many to fit into my existing succulent garden.  I ordered a bigger bowl from Amazon knowing full well the exact dimensions, but when it arrived, I convinced myself it was much too large.  The garden will have to occupy our kitchen table all winter…and it was just way too big…and where would that leave my poor African Violets for the winter?  So, last night in Lowes, I found a lovely sea green ceramic bowl for 50% off.  Life is good like that sometimes.  I bought it, brought it home, set it on the kitchen table, and declared it perfect for the task.  Just the right size, and very pretty too.

My mission, this morning, was to recreate a succulent garden – merging my plants from the old bowl with the tray of new ones, creating a magnificent masterpiece in the new ceramic bowl.  Cheerfully, I began the task, but with half of them planted, I realized the new bowl was going to be much too small.  My darlings would not be pleased to be so crowded, and how could they grow with so little space?  It just wouldn’t do, so I pulled out the Amazon bowl, telling myself there is no other way, and planted them all.  Even the big bowl does not leave enough space for what I had in mind…I was going to add many rocks,driftwood, perhaps some small sculptures.  Perhaps at some point I’ll add a tier to the big bowl to add interest, but for now, it is finished.  I do love it.

New succulent garden has been started

 

And what will happen to the new ceramic bowl?  Pansies!  I’ll plant a bowl of pansies for the porch just as soon as the greenhouse gets them in.  It should be soon!  I’m starting to see pots of mums for sale around the grocery stores.  Fall is coming.