10 Rather Unrelated Things

#1 
Homemade vanilla-coconut ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce.  Heaven in a bowl.

#2 & 3
A yard full of snapdragons that literally made me stop in my tracks when I first saw it.   I then had to take Matt there so he could see the loveliness as well.  I adore snap dragons.  Matt taught me how to snap their little mouths at the start of our relationship so they are special to me in that regard.  They make me think of Matt.

 

#4
A cocoon that I found in the garden.  Several of them actually.  While I was holding it the tapered, ringed end of it started to wiggle and, I confess, freaked me out so that I tossed it back into the dirt with a gasp.  I didn't know that cocoons could move like that.  I thought they were just hard, protective shells.  I wonder what it is in there.

#5
A pretty flower that Matt accidentally cut from the plant that grows on the fence while we were trimming the tall grass there. A pretty accident if you ask me.

#6
Matt playing Yahtzee with over-sized wooden yard dice which he recently got from his mom.  I think they were made by his uncle.  Matt is so delightfully silly. We still need to figure out what yard game they really belong to.

#7
A note from Matt that I found on the whiteboard yesterday.  Its been pretty hot and we've sure been enjoying having a nice, cool basement to escape to. 

#8
My $6 clothes line.  One of the few major (at least to me) shortcomings of our new house versus our rental house is that we lost the clothesline.  The new house didn't have one.  So we'd been reading up on the different styles and comparing reviews and prices.  And we'd been putting off making a decision since we had the free-standing indoor racks to use in the meantime.  Then, I found a clothesline just laying with someone's trash.  All it was missing was the actual strings.  So, we took it home and after purchasing some $6 clothes line cord restrung it.   It is currently mounted in a per-existing hole in the grass making it just over waist height.  As it happens this makes it really easy to pin to.  And I like that it spins so that I just set the basket down on the grass and make the clothesline come to me!

#9 My peonies are blooming despite the fact they got knocked to the grass by the May snow.  At least, I think they are peonies. 

#10  I like to follow Michael Pollan's advice:  Eat all the junk food you want, just make it yourself.  You indulge in the treats much less frequently if you remove the convenience factor with the result that they really become treats instead of staples.  Junk food is all the more delicious when it really is a treat...like a taste bud party explosion.  So, when I was craving greasy, delicious fries we just fried up some at home instead of running to Hardees or some other such establishment.  Cheaper, too.