I opened up my email this morning to find one entitled “My Little Helper” from my mother. She had sent a sweet picture of her oldest daughter (that would be me) at about 20 months old. Just a few months younger than little Gloria now. Here is the message and picture:
Once upon a time I had a sweet little helper that was every bit as cute as your little helper. She grew up to be a beautiful lady with many talents. Here is what she looked like once upon a time.
Tee-hee. I was so cute. What happened?!
It is time for me to do SOMETHING about our pitiful front flower bed. For the first two years we were here, I planted some cute little bubblegum pink azaleas. The first two summers we were here were also record breaking droughts, so now there are only a couple of azalea twigs left. (This is out of 10 total, with 5 being replanted after the first year.) There is yellow lantana in the front, but of course it isn’t up yet and dies down during the winter to make it look completey empty and lifeless.
As of now, I have narrowed it down to the idea of perhaps putting some small gardenia bushes there-because we don’t have enough carpenter bees living in our porch rails-or some small white azaleas yet again.
I’ve contemplated boxwoods (no flowers), nandinas (poisonous berries and more of a fall display anyway), and cactus (they’d survive a drought!).
I might have to look around some more. Sigh.
For those of you who might not know, we do cloth diapers around here and use wool covers beautifully and graciously crocheted by Grandma. The colors readily available aren’t all that exciting sometimes, so I learned how to dye my own with Kool-Aid and food coloring.
I began with just one color per skein. Then Gloria picked out these cute little colorful sandals and I just HAD to dye some yarn to match them. So, I played with my little scraps until I had the closest I could get and ended up with the following:
Two skeins hanging up to dry.
One skein wrapped around the shoe to show the matching colors. I didn’t do as well on the red, but it’s acceptable. The trim is some pink already at Grandma’s house.
The other skein put into a hank to show the mix of colors.
Group shot just for fun. (Don’t worry, Mom. I put them into balls after this to minimize the tangling and knotting.)
My little helper. She saw the camera and wanted me to take a picture. Who was I to argue? She even smiled.
I will be putting up pictures of the finished product in a few weeks. I am really proud of the things that Grandma makes for us. I probably don’t tell her thank you often enough.
April 2, 2009 10:26 am | 
