Sometimes I am easily confused...Are you?

Now I'm not the brightest bulb on the porch (a fact I've readily admitted on more than one occasion) but these days I feel like I'm spending inordinate amounts of time just scratching my head in puzzlement. Do you ever feel that way? Friday morning, I received an email from a local scrapbook store inviting me to a "Midnight Craft n' Crop" at 10:00a.m. (and silly me, as I always thought that was mid morning). Apparently I don't have the whole concept of time mastered nearly as well as I thought I did. 
I made the simple dessert in the above photo last Sunday for dinner at my parent's house (it's sinfully delicious and very easy to make, by the way, by layering ice cream sandwiches, cool whip, and chocolate syrup as many times as you feel like it...yum! ;o) Anyway, I found myself pondering the label on the syrup bottle:

Is anyone besides me confused by the phrase, "Genuine Chocolate Flavor"? As opposed to what? Fake chocolate flavor? How can you fake a flavor? Wouldn't that be some kind of oxymoron? I dunno, maybe I'm just losing it...if I ever had it in the first place, that is).

Of course when I got to my parent's house, I realized I wasn't the only one who was sometimes confused. My Dad expressed similar sentiments over the reasoning skills (or maybe it's just reading skills) of a local home improvement store's employees following a delivery of roofing materials. Duuuuudes, seriously?

On another note, I guess I won't be doing any gardening for awhile (we are, of course, pretending I had big plans to do so soon - Ha - not). I walked out the door the other day to find it occupied by four very hungry little birdies peeping and cheeping away. I believe they are Wrens. Can you see the dried grass just barely poking out from underneath my hand rake and pruning loppers? Although I have to admit I don't appreciate the bird poop in the garage, I just haven't got the heart to disturb them, so I decided to try to take pictures of them every day (or as often as I can remember to ;o) It's fairly difficult to get good photos, as it's dark underneath there and the zoom is having trouble focusing. I managed to get this one, which I thought turned out rather well (another happy accident!)

I am absolutely delighted to announce the addition of two more victims [so sorry] er, volunteers at Epic Farms. The first is Ann from over at Scrap, Edit, Snap. This photo is of Duke, her Westie, and the apple of her eye - isn't he cute? (I'm sure he's probably looking over her shoulder as she works; he keeps a pretty watchful eye on things over there). Ann has graciously agreed to loan us her assistance with any digital dilemmas we may be facing: she has some bodacious skills with Photoshop :o) She's what I've dubbed a virtual volunteer, as she lives hundreds of miles away. I have to tell you, though, her help is extremely important to us no matter where she is geographically. In fact, she is this very minute helping us with a supersecret fund raising idea. Thank you Ann!
The next is slightly shorter and definitely closer. Her name is Abby and she came out and worked for a few hours Saturday morning helping us get the meeting area ready for the concrete man (who is coming next week - Woo!)

To be honest, the "before" photo is probably closer to a "during" photo (but who says that?) The Jasmines - Confederate and Asian - were running completely amok and the back side of the house had almost disappeared under some serious jungle growth. Word to the wise: should you ever decide to plant a species of Jasmine, figure on some major excavating equipment should you ever have the need to remove it. Even Tilly couldn't get it all out (OY!).

Of course all work and no play makes volunteers just run away, sooooo....

We played around with the horses a bit (and maybe got just a little silly in the process ;o) Thank you for your help Abby!

 Have a wonderful week everyone, and don't forget to have some FUN!