Favorite Things Friday - Yellow Tulips.....

Yellow tulips are my very favorite flower in the world. I used to think yellow roses were my favorite, so that's what I had in my first (only) wedding. I got married the year after Princess Di and What's-His-Name, so I felt compelled to try to outdo her flowers. No one told me that two dozen yellow roses would weigh roughly the equivalent of a small tank.

Today my co-workers presented me with a very sweet birthday card and these:

I apologize that the only thing I had to take a picture with was my iPhone. (I'm not sure the photos would have been any better with a real camera, I'm sad to say.)

I also apologize that in the second picture I couldn't quite take it without the computers in the background. We are severely limited as far as attractive photo backgrounds in our school.

Not only did they get me a card and some flowers, they called me out into the hall to sing "Happy Birthday" and they made a big production out of giving them to me. When I do birthday cards, I usually just leave them on co-workers' chairs. How dull of me!

Because I have a penchant for sticking my foot in my mouth, naturally I had an embarrassing moment related to the flowers. I completely forgot my birthday is tomorrow, and when I went into a co-worker's room to retrieve a student so we could beat him about the head and shoulders suspend him for a day, I spied the gorgeous flowers and couldn't help exclaiming, "Oh, what BEAUTIFUL flowers!!!" She looked at me blankly for just a second and then said, sighing, "They're for you." I felt so stupid.

The gesture was very sweet, and the flowers are a joy. Now if I can only figure out how to get them home on my bicycle.

My First Rose.....

Hubby sometimes does the sweetest, most unexpected things for me. They are small and might seem insignificant to most people, but they are fraught with meaning for me. Like how I used the word "fraught"?

A few weeks ago, he planted a rose bush beside our front steps. I am not the gardening kind, and Hubby isn't that much into it either. He will plant some flowers occasionally, he will remind me to water the plant we got when my father died almost 8 years ago [a record for me], and he loves planting a small vegetable garden every spring, but he's not the work-in-the-hard type. I'm not either, although I'm hoping Katydid will help turn me into one. Sometime.

Hubby didn't just plant a rose bush. He planted a YELLOW rose bush. He knows that's my favorite flower. That was even sweeter than when he bought me a dozen of them for my birthday. I didn't notice them on the kitchen table, and I didn't notice when he planted the bush.

While we were away this weekend, the first rose bloomed on the baby bush.


It is by no means a perfect bloom, but I love it.



Our neighbors probably wondered why I was sitting on the ground in the front yard, oblivious of the fact that Gus was roaming aimlessly. Oh wait....he does that every day.

I hope we don't kill the rosebush.

Big Brutus would like to offer his opinion on the situation.


Back to school tomorrow. Only fifteen days left in the school year, and I am ecstatic that I will NOT be teaching summer school this year.

The weekend golfing/gambling trip was good. I brought back more money than I took, which is not how these weekends usually turn out. I'm debating about what to do with SOME of the money I brought back.

New mountain bike?

Some new cool techie toy like an iPad?

Clothes and shoes? (Nah, I can get by on what I've got for the next 15 days.)

Something for the motorhome?

Photoshop?

Decisions, decisions. I think I'll sleep on it for a while.