A Retiree´s Sublime Sunday

Hello dear Hivers!

A career end is a milestone that I reached and closed a chapter as a corporate slave, lol! An officemate asked how I will spend my time by not thinking about numbers. Oh well, I am a hardcore crafter of projects for my home and even made semi precious stone - jewelries, bed quilts and handquilted bags, pillows to sell on Etsy parallel to the time when I was working. It was my way of de-stressing myself from the job. When I was still working, I had more time to attend to my hobbies, although I worked in the office full time with a very stressy job and lots of deadlines to tackle. I do not know how I accomplished those at times when I still had to do the household chores, perhaps it has something to do with age! I was younger then (sigh!).

Blogging is not new to me, I have been a blogger since 2011 (Google). Had to stop that Site way before I joined Hive years ago. Now, I am engrossed with blogging in the Hive platform and do less of other projects.

One of my hobbies....wildflower arrangement

I have intended the following days to be my lazy week after a hectic timeline of so many things to get done, food shopping, various errands, doctor's appointments, get prescriptions. You know those housewives' endless chores. I am done with my internist to have my yearly health check up particularly the heart, nothing to worry about as everything was fine after an ultrasound and echocardiogram last week.

When Retirement came...

I kinda take it all at a slow pace now. I do not need to wake up before 8:00 AM and need not hurry anymore to take the specific bus so I could get the Metro train to the city center on time. My working hours had been flexible and I was the 1st person to come to the office and shut off the alarm by 7:30 AM. And because of the flexible time, I could go home earlier before the rush hour.... coming home had been fine, just kicked off the shoes, relaxed and a cold apple cider would be just!

Nowadays, the only hectic thing is when I drive somewhere to make errands. I hate road traffic because it is boring to wait for the traffic light to go green. The car is necessary where we live since most of the stores, supermarkets and malls are not in our vicinity. The nearest supermarket is about a kilometer away from our complex. The infrastructure in the city is perfect but it takes time if you are in a hurry for an appointment.

The small hobbies.....

The container garden is what makes me busy this season, sometimes it´s those little miracles that make one happy. For instance, I have two Basil plants planted in pots and one of the two has white flowers blooming. I found these lovely tiny flowers amazing as I have not seen such blooms before....

Basil flowers

...and then, I discovered something below this basil plant..... a growing mushroom! It's been raining in our city the last few days. Maybe because of high humidity, this mushroom simply popped-out of the soil. I am amazed at this, because it goes to show that small miracles can happen anywhere.

wild mushroom under the basil plant
...and while I was inspecting the blackberries (that do not get black until now) , this spider came out of the blue and even played with my fingers, it's kind of a tamed one and did not run away to hide. He might have observed me in my daily plant watering routine.

Harvesting the potted Tomatoes and Peppers

I was overwhelmed at how many Beefsteak tomatoes I harvested. There were plenty this season compared to that of last year. This pepper is a new variety I tried this year.

I had to pick all the ripe tomatoes and decided to use them for the tart I was making.

The tart is the easiest to make because I have a ready-made puff pastry most of the time in my fridge. And so I made use of the harvested tomatoes as well as the dried plums and baked them last weekend. The recipe will follow in a separate post coming soon.

And while it was more than 30°C the last few days despite the rain, I made an ice tea to go with the tart snack. It was refreshing and only a cold drink with plenty of ice cubes can really quench my thirst.

When I am on the road, I stop once in a while to enjoy some beautiful flowers, be it wild in the fields or in the front yard of the Pharmacy in our area. I enjoy the beautifully blooming flowers that are placed on the external sill of the window of a house. There are many along the road.

The flowers enriched our souls and make it happy and you´ll go on with your day having a warmhearted spirit, at least I experienced this.

I went to the old district where we lived before and passed by the Old Danube last week, and sat a while to enjoy the view. The blue sky´s reflection on the water is good for the well being of the beholder.

Many thanks to @c0ff33a for initiating this lovely community!

That's it for today.... until then, stay safe and see you around!

GIF by @gremayo

All images are owned by the author, @mers