I would love a set of these.

(But in yellow gold!)

And one of these.  haha.

And one of these!  Probably the only one of the above that I am likely to get. (At least for 18 years.)

Nature: "I hate you, pitiful human scum"

So, haha, I blogged about how nice my gardening was coming this year, and then that same afternoon, about 2 hours after I hit publish, this happened:

 This was a coreopsis that I had sown from seed.

 The pitiful remnants of my japanese cucumber plants.

 This was a mint plant.

 And my lovely hostas.  Shredded and ragged.  And I now have to live

with them like that for the rest of the season.  Nothing is more unattractive than 

raggedy hostas.

Plant Armageddon aftermath.

:(    :\    :[  :{  :O!!!!!!!

I've never seen a hail storm like it.  Our gardens are totally effed.  Man.  My heart just broke.  You should see our tomato and fava plants.  Just destroyed. My artichokes are shredded like the hostas.  I guess I will just have to wait and see what will survive.  Having a nice garden this year is pretty much out now, unless we want to buy a bunch of expensive starts, which, needless to say, I don't.  My blueberries look okay, and the three fruit trees we put in this spring look like they pulled through.  The apple was the worst, but the fig and plum look okay.

I'm a little down right now, but soldiering on.  

NEW!

One step, two steps, three steps, four

Man, sometimes I get so frustrated at the pace of my life.  It seems so creeping, crawling slow.  I think I want to live in fast forward.  And then I think, what am I rushing towards?  Death?  I'm really trying to slow down and enjoy the ride, rather than being rushed and goal oriented.  I think I'm too goal oriented and it makes me unhappy sometimes.

I've been really trying to get new designs produced, but with about 18hrs of so or work time a week, it is hard to.  I have two pairs of earrings I need to photograph and add, but I can't seem to get it done.  (Maybe because I wear them too much?  haha.  I also have a necklace with a lovely pink rose cut sapphire that is languishing away in my safe.)

These are two new designs that I've had molded and will cast in the next couple of weeks. I'm thinking palladium for the square/cushion, and 18kt yellow for the round.  I think I'm going to get a highly included but colorless diamond for the round and see what I think of that.  Once it has been cast I can carve a band to fit the curves.

New around the house:

 Well, these aren't new.  But they are really looking great this year.  I wish hostas didn't die back in the fall.  If they were evergreen I would have them everywhere around the place.

So my little flower garden is actually coming along pretty good.  It isn't as full as I would like, but I think that will take several years.  So I'm working on enjoying it as it is.  After all, when it is all full and "finished" where will I be then?  I do think that the joy of projects is in the doing, I just need to not want to do it fast(er).

Finally! We painted the door! I had been wanting to paint it forever.  I love the way the red looks.  Still need to work on the landscaping, but the red was really such a huge improvement.  The door is old. Probably original to the house (1930ish), and it looked pretty beat.

I have more "content", but I think I will save it for another post, lest my few readers be overwhelmed with photos of gardening and home improvement projects.  I finished a lovely (!!!) oval diamond ring that I want to share as well, so maybe later this week.