Plants Extravaganza

So it's been about a year and a half of us renovating our fixer upper home. Unfortunately for me, apart from helping out in painting walls and doors and removing wallpaper, due to my rheumatoid arthritis I don't have the strength to do much else. Jeff has done 90% of the work in this house, 5% help is from me and the other 5% is from contractors he needed to bring in to fix things he wasn't able to. Such as plumbing or electrical wiring. 

So to keep myself busy at home on my days off I decided to get into gardening. Or should I say potting. The landscape around our house was very much overgrown with poison ivy, thorns and who knows what else. Instead of planting in the ground I bought a bunch of purple pots and placed them on our deck. 

 Purple/Lavender is my favorite color so I tended to gravitate towards flowers of that shade. My oh my was I happy to find that there are plenty of flowers that come in purple! The first flower on the left is called a Butterfly Bush. It is technically a bush flower but since I planted mine in a pot it only grew so wide. It has its name due to it attracting butterflies and hummingbirds. The flower in the middle is called a Candle Larkspur and they bloomed in a beautiful Lavender color. The last picture on the right is a Delphina White Bee Larkspur. It had so many bunches of royal purple flowers on one stalk. Just gorgeous! Some of these were perennials and some annuals. The difference between the two is that perennials bloom back every year while annuals bloom just once. 

 I also bought some purple petunias. This pot held four different variations of purple petunias each blooming a different shade! I have to say out of all the flowers I've grown and the type of weather they've all endured from scorching heat, drought, downpour of rain, flooding (from improper draining on my part) petunias are the most resilient. They bounce back so quickly from each traumatic weather event and begin blooming anew. Underneath my petunias I kept some fresh catnip, I would clip off a few and bring them indoors for the cats to enjoy. Meeka loved to rub her face in the catnip while Enzo practically inhaled it by gobbling it quickly. The petunias on the right were on sale for $1. They were literally selling a pot of dirt with a sign that said petunias. Lo and behold with some shade and water they grew an abundance of flowers in like two weeks! 

 I did get flowers of other colors not just purple. I fell in love with a vine climbing flower called the Mandevilla. It is a tropical flower and you're supposed to bring it indoors in the winter but I did not because the petals are poisonous to cats and Meeka is an avid plant eater. The flower in the middle is called a Dahila. It looked to me like a pinkish-purple color and oh each petal is perfection! The last flower on the right is a Hibiscus! They also attract hummingbirds! My in-laws had a hibiscus in their old house in this enormous pot and it was basically a mini tree. In the summer it attracted so many hummingbirds (and bees)! It is a beautiful flower. 

 I'm not sure what the red and yellow flowers are. The nursery I bought my plants from was Lowes and they used to have a discount section in the back where they literally sold pots of dirt because the flowers in them died. I would buy the $1 ones and figure if I couldn't bring them back who cares it was only a dollar. With just a little love, water (and fertilizer) the flowers always grew back! The flowers in the middle are for sure Lillies, they came with the little sign still inside of the pot. Also a perennial! After the winter frost they started to grow back!

 Yes I found some more purple flowers! The ones on the left are called Salvias. I see them in a lot of neighborhoods actually in the landscaping. They are an easy flower to grow and don't really need that much maintenance or even water for that matter. The flowers in the middle are called foxglove. They looked like little bells, I would see bees crawl inside to get the nectar. The last ones on the right are Lupine and they also grew in a little cluster! I also had some lavender (the herb) but I can't seem to find a picture of it. Will update later.

 As much as I love flowers I didn't grow just those. I also bought five different variants of bell peppers and tomatoes! I grew orange, purple, red, yellow and green bell peppers! Unfortunately I found later that a Possum would frequent my garden on the deck and run off with all my vegetables before they fully grew! :(

 I had five different kinds of tomatoes I was growing but the only plant that actually grew to it's full potential without an animal running off with it were my cherry tomatoes! I was able to eat a few of those. I was also growing Zucchini, yellow Squash and Eggplant. I would see the flower blooming and then POOF it would be gone. I also had a few raspberry and blueberry bushes growing but alas they didn't make it either. :( I used to blame it on a squirrel but then I found the possum raiding my garden one night and realized a squirrel isn't strong enough to rip off my eggplant and run away but a possum surely is.

Oh and if you ever wondered how I would bring plants home, I drive a two seater coupe. The passenger seat is how I brought all my plants home! The picture on the right is one of my deck when it was half full. Oh yes. I crammed more plants onto it until there were no spots left to walk. I loved it! 

Umrah Pt. 3 2020

After our 5 hour long journey we finally made it to Makkah! We arrived late that night but it was so hustle and bustle apart from the night sky you wouldn't have known it was dark out!

We stayed at one of the hotels inside the clocktower. It was a nice landmark, whenever we ventured out to explore around Makkah we would look up and head towards clocktower if we were ever lost. It also gave the current time and the azan would bellow across the city so you could hear it no matter where you were, inside or out. The hotel lobby was filled with the smell of bakhour. It smelled absoutely amazing. That view was from our hotel room, we also prayed there the most. Although we couldn't see the Kabah it was one of our favorite places to pray, not only because not many people ventured onto the rooftop but it was so serene and peaceful.

The lobby of the hotel we were staying at changed their flowers every few days. 

This was the first view of the Kabah, it was gorgeous and beautiful and oh so amazing. This is my fourth time performing Umrah but I have to say each time you lay eyes on the Kabah you can't help but feel immense joy and happiness. I appreciate it's beauty more and more each time I come to Saudi Arabia. 

 I tried to take as many pictures with Ammie and my khalas as I could! Drinking zamzam water, walking 10-20k steps a day and being able to pray before the Kabah was just magical and I felt like we were all just radiating! We had a similar schedule to the one we had in Medina, wake up, pray Fajr, eat breakfast, take a nap, pray Zuhr, explore, pray Asr, shop, pray Maghrib, explore, pray Isha, go to sleep!

I was the photographer of this trip and took quite a few pics of Ammie and her sisters but Ammie made sure to take a few of me too! I wore socks with my slippers. One tip is to definitely make sure you have socks and comfortable slippers! As much as the workers around here sweeped and mopped the floor, visitors would trash the place and leave litter (it made me so mad) but your feet would get sticky and dirty, socks kept your feet clean and warm. I brought a lot of old socks so if they got ruined I could easily toss them in the bin. 

I have an extra shawl wrapped around me because I was helping my Khala hold her purse (she would put everyones slippers in a plastic bag inside her cloth purse/bag but walking was difficult for her and carrying a heavy bag (we also put our prayer rugs in there and bottles of zamzam water) so I would carry it for her but she worried someone would steal something from there as we were performing Umrah/Tawaf so I wrapped my shawl around her bag and my purse. It also kept me warm! We tried to stick together, sometimes I'd lose Ammie or my Khalas but we would always meet back up when walking back to the hotel. 

To be able to perform Umrah three times like we did we first had to leave the area. We would take a short bus trip down to Al Taneem, Masjid E- Ayesha. It's a beautiful mosque and one home to several kitties! 

You can see just how ecstatic I am to find a cat sleeping inside the Masjid. Outside of the mosque I found even more cats and kittens hanging out. They were so cute! I wanted to take them all home.  

 While shopping around we came across this coffee shop called Jeffries! I found it hilarious because Jeffrey and his family own a donut shop. I told him he's in the coffee/breakfast business overseas too! Haha.

This is an interesting photo! The skies looked different on this day and a few hours after I took this picture a swarm of locusts appeared! They were huge hopping/flying cricket looking grasshoppers. I have to say the workers did a fabulous job of picking them up and sweeping them away. They were so big a lot of women (myself included) did not fancy them sitting on us while we prayed. 

Ammie and my Khalas have relatives in Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah so he came to pick us up and take us for some shopping and exploring. We saw camels on the side of the road! They were so cute and were in all different colors. I even saw an Albino one! My cousin told us they belong to a herder. 

 I have to say Pistachio is my favorite flavor. Pistachio ice cream, pistachio donuts, pistachio coffee, pistachio smoothies. Anything and everything in that flavor is the best! It's too bad you can't find it as common in the United States, specially not in Missouri. I also picked up different snacks from the market they were so good I should have gotten more! I feel like snacks overseas are the perfect consistency of sweet and salty. In the United States everything is so coated with sugar, fried in sugar, baked and glazed in sugar it honestly is too much. 

Insh'Allah can't wait to visit next time! 

Umrah Pt. 2 2020

We took a few day trips to visit different sites in Medina. I love visiting historic landmarks and masjids. We were able to pray inside a few of them, Ammie made sure to get an Urdu speaking tour guide so my Aunt's could understand what was being shown as well. He was very informative and we learned so much!

This is a masjid at the foot of Mt. Uhud. Hazrat Ameer E Hamza R.A. Ghazwa E Ohad

 Outside of the Masjid there were women and children selling birdseed. We bought a few bags and fed the pigeons. They were so pretty in so many different colors. 

This is Masjid Qiblatain, it was so beautiful, it's nice to see that they make the women side big enough to house all the women during prayer. I feel like in the United States, specially on Jummah (Friday's) it gets so packed that there isn't any room for women and they spill out into the shoe area, walkway, bathroom hall. I enjoy going to the masjid to pray, see the different architecture, say hello to the locals. 

There was a woman who was handing out little clippings of a flower or herb she grew in her garden. It smelled absolutely amazing. Even though I don't speak Arabic (apart from a few phrases) she recognized I wanted a little clipping too and gave me one. I was able to keep it alive for two days in my hotel room. :)

Jannat al-Baqi is the oldest and the first Islamic cemetery of Medina in the Hejazi region. It is located southeast of the Prophets Mosque, which contains the graves of some of Prophet Muhammad's family and friends. 

After a few wonderous days in Medina we headed on a 5 hour car journey to Makkah. We stopped by a rest stop for gas and came across a Tim Hortons! Hands down the best donuts ever. They had such delicious flavors such as Pistachio, Rose, Maple, Strawberry. Their coffee is also so good and Ammie got a bag for my younger sis.

The mountains were absolutely stunning, our driver said there's baboons you can sometimes see on the road but unfortunately I did not see any. I also fell asleep during the car ride.