birthday week

Last Thursday was my birthday, my 65^th. I usually take the day off as a personal day but since I took the day off the previous Monday to hang with my brother and sister and I was planning to take last Friday off to go to Brookwood with my sister and some other ladies, I had to be available for questioning while Marc did the sandblasting on the cabin in the mountains panel. Which we finished.

Brookwood is a residential facility for the mentally challenged. It's a beautiful place and the residents live in group homes with a house mother. They refer to their residents as citizens and strive to give them dignity and worth. Brookwood is supported by donations and by the work of the residents. Their main business is a wholesale nursery. They have large greenhouses where they propagate and raise the plants for sale, a ceramics shop and a concrete shop where they make things to sell in the gift shop and in the retail greenhouse and grounds. 

They also have a very nice restaurant and being appointed to work in the restaurant is a high honor to them. 

They also have, since I was there several years ago on a garden club field trip, a new very nice art gallery. 

It's a very classy place overall and I bought a red hibiscus, a gardenia, a bougainvillea, and my sister bought me a beautiful pot of maidenhair for my birthday which would have cost twice as much at any of the nursery's in the city.

I spent most of Saturday and Sunday working out in the yard though I didn't get anything major accomplished. I mixed up a wheelbarrow full of compost and potting soil and repotted my desert rose which was busting out of it's second pot and got the maidenhair in a bigger pot, collected the gone by poppy seed heads and pulled out the dead plants, dug out the grass and weeds out of another section of the old vegetable garden and planted some tall orange cosmos that bloom in the fall, and got an armload of ferns planted along the shady side of the house. Doesn't seem like much for two days worth of work.

Late afternoon yesterday, my daughter and son-in-law and the three grandgirls (the grandboy was at work) came out to visit. Jade had made me a birthday cake and they had candles and a princess kit with a tiara and a wand and earrings and a banner which was meant for someone much smaller and younger than me but I donned it all anyway.

 

The other thing I did connected with my birthday this year was apply for Medicare so for the first time in my life, I have health insurance and an affordable supplement.

Well, my eye appointment is in a couple of hours so I guess I'll find out if I need glasses other than the drugstore magnifiers I use to read.