Thursday, April 12

Today is Granddaughter's birthday. Happy Birthday, Granddaughter!

Up at 7:30, so Hubbie could get ready to go to a Master Gardener meeting at 10 a.m. After he was gone, I did a treadmill session and resistance exercises.

Once I was ready for the day, I checked on Mother. She decided she wanted to stay home today, so I fixed her a lunch of Ramen noodle soup before I came back to our house.

At home, I started a pot of spaghetti sauce simmering. Just before noon, Hubbie called to say the Master Gardeners were going to tour a private garden around 1:30, if I wanted to join them. I did. Hubbie returned home for lunch, and then we went on the tour.

The man who owns the garden has worked on it for many years, and each year it gets more beautiful. It has been created on several levels of the side of a hill. Rock steps and pleasing pathways lead down to the bottom level, where waterfalls, ponds, a gazebo, and a Japanese tea house delight the eye. Today, all colors of rhododendron and azaleas were in bloom. This gardener is a master at getting the most color under a canopy of trees. I snapped lots of photos of the garden, uploading several to my social network page.

I'd turned the spaghetti sauce off before we left for the garden tour, and when we returned, I started it simmering again. Later, I sent a serving of spaghetti with sauce, and a helping of cottage cheese, along with slices of rye bread, to Mother for her supper.

Then Hubbie and I had an early supper before getting ready to go to the college library for a Friends of the Library champagne reception, and a sneak preview of the book sale. Hubbie and I bought four novels at the sale.

The reception was held in what is called the Tornado Garden...so called because it features the cross that a tornado ripped off the chapel spire in 1973. Besides champagne, nibbles were offered, including delicious hot stuffed mushrooms.

Around 6:30, we left the reception to go to the Presbyterian Church, where a Celtic concert was scheduled for 7 p.m. This unusual concert was the kick-off event of the weekend's Scottish Festival.

The concert included bagpipers, performances on guitar and violin, a singer, a poet, and a dancer. You've never heard anything until you've heard nine bagpipes in a church! But it was an enjoyable concert.

There were two types of bagpipes...small and large. The host commented that when players want to annoy people, they play the small bagpipes; when they really want to annoy people, they play the large bagpipes.

The drummer for the bagpipers, a woman we know from community theater, is really skilled at twirling the drumsticks, but tonight during her performance, her drum, which is attached to a special belt at the waist, fell off. She was a trouper, though, and continued twirling the drumsticks, even though the drum was on the floor.

We were back home around 9 p.m. Watched a TV show, and then headed to bed. It was a good day, but busy.