Well, I sorted through my 80 gallon pots of dahlias and sorted out which I was planting with which. I decided to make my first double row the biggest ones, so got that 20 planted. Also planted hydrangeas at the back where it is too shady and rooty for dahlias and hope they like it better. I started these hydrangeas off of cuttings last fall of ones I already had that I thought would be good for cutting. One is pink and white and the other two are blue. So I got my 20 Bigest dahlias into the ground. No power tools here. I have the next 20 sorted into my garden cart so that is tomorrow afternoons jobs. The dahlias are looking good and most have about 1" of plant above soil line. Couldn't beleive how hard and dry the ground was! I think they will get a bit of mulch around them as soon as the ground is well warmed. We did up a wedding on Sat. IT turned out so pretty! The brides color was lavender. (Always seem to have a lavender wedding to do in May!) We used iris in shades of blue thru purple with deep purple lilacs and alliums and front and center on each alter bouquet was a purple tree peony flower with a deep dark center! T bride wanted a bouquet lilke we did last year for someone with lavender callas and purple tulips. We thought we were fine because our lavender callas had produced so many flowers last year. How naive! We eneded up spending $100 of our profit on callas. Do you know how much those babies sell for?! Then I had a pot of Garnet glow that opened at the last minute and was the same color! SO I walked around with my 8 lavender calla's going, "THese are worth over $24! Anyhow, the callas were utterly charming with white liliy of the valley, and the double lavender tulips and pale blue ribbons! This was in our church and we decided that the entry hall needed something so my Garden Partner brought an heirloom crystal bowl and we floated double tulips and lilac petals in it. It was quite charming and oh so easy! Many compliments on the flowers today! I ordered 200 dutch iris bulbs in yellow from one of our suppliers in Holland. IT is always amusing to find how they interpret out orders. These were yellow in bud, then opened out to white on ntop and golden yellow below, and now the top is blushed with blue and I think it is "Oreintal Beauty." And I have about 300 (yes, I swear they multiplied!)of them left! The alliums are blooming with them (Purple sensation and Gladiator) so we are selling them as fast as we can, and all of our subscription customers get these along with the first roses tomorrow. Weather has been quite nice so I can't complain when seeing what the rest of the country is having. I got rained on when picking this afternoon but that was rather a novelty.

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My mother was an awful cook. She fried almost everything, yet she was slender as were my sister and I. She had a 5-6 dish rotation: smothered steak (fried round steak cooked in brown gravy until tender-ish); fried pork chops; fried chicken; fried frozen shrimp on Friday nights (we are Protestant but she served fish on Friday); over-cooked, shoe-leather tough roast on Sunday; and at some point every couple of weeks, the worst spaghetti you’ve ever tasted. There was no such thing as a casserole. Green salads were rare to non-existent. I never could understand the penchant people had for mac and cheese when I was growing up. Here is Mother’s recipe: Cook elbow macaroni until it is flabby. Drain and put in a rectangular baking dish. Beat 2 eggs. Add milk. Pour over macaroni. Top with a few slices of very mild cheddar cheese. Bake until the macaroni is hard again. We had an abundance of vegetables because we had a huge garden (couple of acres) that we shared with the people who worked for Daddy. Mother did not can food, but she froze a lot of vegetables. I ate a lot of fresh tomatoes growing up. We had them for every meal, including breakfast, when they were in season. I would sneak into the garden, find a good one and eat it like an apple! Then there was fried okra; fried field corn (corn cut off the cob and cooked in a skillet with butter or bacon drippings); pole beans; yellow squash; cucumbers, butter beans (harvested when they were tiny) and crowder peas. For such a lousy cook, Mother had very high standards. Vegetables had to be small and tender. Tomatoes had to be vine-ripened unless they were being used for fried green tomatoes, in which case they had to be truly green and hard. Fruit had to be unblemished. We had no processed foods ever. I didn’t know what American cheese was until I was 23. It wasn’t that Mother was purposefully a healthy eater. She just didn’t like the taste processed foods. Mother never baked a cake from scratch, except a coconut cake at Christmas. The coconut had to be fresh (as in ”first you buy a coconut…”) and finely grated by her own hand. Her pie crusts were always from scratch and always flaky and tender. She had 2 pies she made, lemon meringue and chocolate. Biscuits and cornbread were made without a recipe and were always perfect. Mother’s best dishes were her potato salad and her cornbread dressing. I can’t make either one to save my soul. My sister comes really close on the cornbread dressing. Mother was over 90 when she died. She was living by herself in her own home, doing her own housework and cooking her own meals (still nothing processed). She did the light portions of her own yardwork but hired a really good-looking, very buff young man to do the heavy lifting and mowing. We teased her that she found things that needed doing just to get him to come to the house! I suppose my ”rebellion” is not cooking like Mother did. But I wouldn’t mind having her yard man mow my grass. 😉 ETA: My sister just sent me these pictures of Mom. She may have been a lousy cook, but she went some interesting places!

Thank you,Eld and to all you mothers on KT, have a wonderful day. Hopefully, the last two days of rain will clear up enough to have our mothers day dinner at my daughter's new backyard entertainment area.