Plant Shock

If you are bored reading about plants, please note that Sheila has finally updated her blog.
It's only been... What? Two-and-a-third months?!

I think I might finally be just about over the Bronchitis. I probably had it for a good 3 weeks before I went in, but when my breathing took on the sound that an old fan makes when it's shut off - I figured it was about that time...but first I went to the Chinese buffet and had seafood. No allergic reaction to accompany the breathing difficulty already brought on by the Bronchitis, so apparently God still has some plan for me. I'm still lost as to what this plan might be, so instead I played in the garden.

So... as I work on my Outdoor Living Area (as my old crew from UPS calls it) I'm doing a lot of learning on the fly. I've found that it's not a good idea buy a bunch of plants before you have a spot prepared to plant them, and I've also found that when having a patio and gardens and a few hundred feet of looping paths, it's a good idea to finish a section rather than jump around to whatever area amuses me at the moment.

Yesterday was hot. While I was feeding the mosquitoes they couldn't help but sweat on me.

So I got to thinking that maybe I should try for a tan this year. Like, normal people tan - not just the tan head, neck, arms, and legs with Pasty White Boy feet and torso.

So I took off the hat and shirt and put on David's old flip-flops (bought him a new pair for the D.C. trip) before I watered the plants. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but apparently it was a little too much for a couple of the newer, less established plants to take in - for when I turned around, some of them were looking all flat and lifeless.

I think I heard them scream in horror a little bit.

But as I said, it was a really hot day... so I figured there was a chance they maybe suffered a mild case of sun-stroke, or perhaps were just teasing me about my Edward-the-vampire-glowing-by-daylight whiteness.

Either way, I figured the best thing to do was dump a little cold water on them. And so I did... and thankfully all but one or two came out of it.


I made a trip up to Willmar to get some more hoses and connectors but came back with those - plus another Bleeding Heart, 2 more Speedwell, 3 Salvia, and 6 more Asiatic (or maybe Oriental. I confuse the two.) Lilies. (All but the Salvia are planted.)

When I got back from Willmar, I hooked up the trailer (new tire and lighting wiring installed last Thurs) and made a trip up to the compost pile for some grass clippings to use as mulch. I'd use my own grass clippings, but the mowable part of my yard is too small...and I had a bit of a dandelion issue this year.

When I reached the compost pile, I found that some nice person had dug up a whole lot of their Iris plants and disposed of them for me to bring home.

So i did.

But there are a lot, so I gave a box full to one of the guys from work and tried to pass off more to mom and dad. (No luck there.)



I'm trying to be careful to not wreck the natural beauty of my property with all the plants I'm putting in, but I can't help but wonder if the plants I buy are considered a weed in some other chunk of the world. That being said, if anybody who reads this would like some Solomon's Seal, Lily-Of-The-Valley, or Engelman Ivy - I have an abundance of it. In fact, going by the prices they ask at the nurseries, I'd guess I've probably "weeded" out over $1,ooo worth just this year!

Oh yeah. Got some Purple Iris for you, too. And there's a grass that I bought that I could give you. I recently looked at the label of one in a nursery, and in the spot where it has "spread" it said "indefinite" - which is a nice way of saying, "This shit is a weed as far as you're concerned. You can't honestly be considering buying this to put in your garden. Why would you put grass IN your garden? You should be taking grass OUT of your garden!!!"

At any rate, I now have transplanted this grass to several other locations and still have the original plant in the original spot. I give credit to the guy who came up with the notion of potting up "Native Grass" (weeds) and marketing it as "Naturalizing". They saved themselves the hassle of actually having to learn anything about flowers and still cashed in on the deal. However, if I wanted the Naturalized look, I wouldn't be spreading Weed-N-Feed across the dandelion patch!



Aside from the grass-weed, I moved several of those clumps of Sedum from where they'd been growing wild since before I bought the place. At least, it sure looks and feels like Sedum. I'm going to feel really stupid if it's not.

One of my neighbors has Giant Poppies in his gardens. He has given me permission to stop by and get the seed pods when the plants are done flowering for the year. I sure hope the opium farming doesn't interfere with my meth lab and chop shop businesses. :)

(Shhh. Maybe the police will stop by and tear my house up. Yay! New carpet!!!)


Getting late. Got another day of donating blood ahead of me so I better get some shuteye.

;) <- (not sure if that's shuteye or if I just have long, beautiful lashes.)

Later!

Y.M.E. (Part One)

When I read a book (if possible) I like to read the whole thing straight through. I didn't read the Harry Potter series until after the last book came out because that would require waiting to get to the end. (Not that I ever jump to the end to make sure the book has a happy ending... I just like to read the whole thing from start to finish.)

I guess my blog posts work the same way. I have 3 unfinished posts between this one and the last published one, so apparently if I don't finish them in one attempt I won't finish them at all!

So anyway... Here's a quick review of the nearly completed school year. I don't have a whole lot to put on here about Todd, except that he's shown some interest in joining archery and tennis next year....and maybe bowling as well...which is great news as I've really been struggling to get him involved with the athletics part of school.

The bad thing is, he's really good at sports and gets an "A" every quarter in gym (I only remember getting A's for archery and swimming) - but for some reason that I've yet to discover, he's reluctant to join.

Not that he could join anyway, as he brings home the attention grabbing upper-case "F" every quarter for band, but at least he's showing an interest. (He never turns in his practice time and occasionally skips his lessons.)

I'm really hoping that David also joins archery and bowling. The bowling part because he recently outscored one of his friends who's won trophies and been bowling for years - and the archery part because I honestly think that Todd would kick his ass... and David could really use a lesson in humility all served up nice and tidy by his younger brother. :)

Alllllllrighty, then. About David...

This year, as I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post, David dropped out of basketball to be on the Math Team and be in the Knowledge Bowl. He was oddly reluctant to ask permission to do so, but was given an enthusiastic "Hell yeah!!!".

I can't tell you right off hand how they did... and he's currently in Washington D.C. with the Regiment 212 Marching Band (the combined marching bands from Yellow Medicine East of Granite Falls and the Montevideo High School - which are both towns on Highway 212) ...and it's now midnight:35ish where he's at and probably not the best time to call him.

He was also in tennis again this year. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with the combination of his mom having played racquetball and me growing up with a ping-pong table in the basement, or if if the credit should go to the Wii game system, but the boy really seems to have a knack for the game. In fact, (I say this proudly as I just plain straight-up suck at most sports involving a ball - thus, no A's except for archery and swimming) he's Second Singles... which means he's the second best player on the team, and it's only his second year.

Of course, the down side to this is that he plays the second best player on whatever team they compete against - which often means he's paired with some really strong players. And even though he was handed more losses than wins this year, he made the other guy work for it.
(I was only able to make it to one game this year as they were mostly out of town, but at that game the back-and-forth hitting during one of their volleys...or whatever the tennis term is...went on for so long that the matches on both sides of theirs stopped to watch, and the spectators for both the visiting and home teams broke into applause when the volley...thing... ended!


OK. Gotta think now...

Oh yeah. David was also on the Honor Roll every quarter this year. (Todd? Ummm... No.)

Aside from Marching Band which I'd mentioned earlier, David also played in the Pep Band, and there's probably something else band related that I'm forgetting.

Unfortunately, the school (again - Y.M.E.) is set up with fewer time slots available for classes than we had where I went to high school, and David had to drop out of choir in order to take Spanish. (I liked choir.)


Without taking the effort to go through any of the earlier posts to see if I'm repeating myself, I'll take the chance of saying that David and Todd are often in the once-a-week, small town local newspaper. In the past, Todd is usually standing where he's mostly blocked by someone or he's just outside the frame of the picture - but this year he had some really nice close-ups of him. (One for helping with the Christmas Cookie Music Dept. Fundraiser, and the other for a Science/Invention Show.)

And back to Todd...

The kid has an incredible talent for stretching out his homework in order to get out of housework.

His class had to read "The Giver" and do a book report on it. It took him so long that I finally said, "Todd, I could have read the whole book AND done the report by now!!! Quit screwing around! I wanted to go fishing sometime this weekend!"

He said, "Fishing?"

Done. 15 minutes.


So once again I am without kids - with David being in D.C. and Todd at his mom's.
Time for laundry and for some male bonding with Dangit. (the cat)

And as I spellcheck this, I see the only part of "midnight:35ish" that's wrong is the "ish".
Guess that should have been "midnight:35 or so". My bad. :)

Peaceful

I had a decent day today. The house and the cat received just about zero attention - but even so I still got a lot done. The kids are at their mom's so there was no stream of friends wandering up, and no refereeing needed to be done.

Just me, all by myself, doing whatever I felt like doing.

I started the day by hitting some of the garage sales. I used to hit them all the time when the kids were small and I was broke.

However, David is now wearing the same size clothes I am... and Todd still has all of David's stuff... and we really don't actually need anything in particular - but I figured I'd give it a shot.

So, I picked up two sleeping bags (free) and 3 CDs ($.50 each).

Then I decided I should do something I've never done, but tomorrow I plan to pick up a shotgun for Todd and possible a computer for me, so I decided this would need to be something relatively inexpensive.

Say, like, $10 or less.

So I asked myself, "What can I do that I haven't done before for less than $10?"
Naturally, it came to me that I could lay siege to the neighbor's enormous NEW camper/with accompanying NEW Volkswagen Beetle in tow by lobbing flaming arrows into the ground near the door.

But I don't have a bow... or a set of arrows... and it sounded like a waste of alcohol.

So I ate breakfast at Subway.

Then I wandered up to the library to put in some Facebook time. A friend that moved back in junior high had sent me a message asking about some of the other people in the class. I always enjoy hearing from this particular friend as he talks to me like we're still just kids having fun on the snow hill (if we remembered our snow pants, as he would point out) but on his "wall" he talks like the hard luck, drop-out, tattoo artist that he became.

Woe is me. The computers at the local library are older and can't handle some of the friend's profile pages without locking up. (Moriah - This is why I never comment on your status updates anymore.)

After having locked up the computer... again ... I decided that the weather really was planning to stay cold and windy. Since there was no longer any use in waiting it out, I decided to do some weeding and plant some of the flowers I have laying around.

Even though the temp was lower than optimal, the scenery is just beautiful. The flowering crab, apple trees, lilacs, and many more of the spring flowering trees are in full bloom here. I don't have any of these on my own property - yet...except for 1 tiny lilac that I just stuck in last summer - but I do have many lilac type trees that will pop into full bloom sometime this week, and my property will be covered in white, pink, and red flowers. Nice! (Yes. I know...pictures.)

It came to my attention that some of the perennials sure do take their sweet @$$ time about showing any indication that they made it through the winter. However, Obedient Plant is not one of these.

In fact, I think they should call it Disobedient Plant. Or maybe even Downright Unruly Plant. I can't believe how much it spreads in just one year!!!

But there were other less aggressive plants that still haven't shown signs of life. I removed one of these thinking it was dead, only to find that I'd done so in error. I suspect that a couple of the others also would have come around if they'd been left alone, but I wasn't really in the mood to spend a bunch of time weeding AROUND something that might be dead.

I do a lot of thinking while I'm weeding, and I compared myself to the plants. Am I like that plant that's just kind of there but in no hurry to grow? Or am I one that's already up and already blossoming? Or is my moment of glory still a short stretch down the road?

I read a saying once that went something like..."To have a garden is to be close to God."

For me, it's more like..."To have a garden is to play at being a god." This, of course, because I get to pick and choose which plants live and which plants die. And since this was the first weeding of the year, my maniacal laughter could have been heard echoing off the canyon walls as I gleefully screamed, "Die, damn you! Die! Die Die!" as I removed the dandelions from my project.

At least it could have if there were canyon walls here. Or if I really was THAT excited about pulling weeds.

In all actuality, it really was a calm day. I even passed on dragging out the Boom Box (yes, I still have the one I bought back in 1989ish) so as to enjoy listening to the critters - the blue jays, robins, cardinals, some black birds, and some I haven't identified. I paused in my work to listen to a mourning dove - partly because I grew up in an area where there were so many of them to listen to and partly because I wanted to pause in my work.

In fact, the only interruption in my peaceful day was when I heard someone talking to someone else out on the road.

I heard them say "Push. Push! PUSH ALREADY!"

I've never actually delivered a baby, so I just minded my own business.

And then I heard the engine crank over, and realized someones vehicle must have quit.

But then I heard the man say something about "...pull up your panties..." followed by what sounded like a black woman sounding off right back at him. And since I only know one black female in town, and she's a friend, and she just happens to live the direction the commotion was coming from, I decided to investigate.

So I meandered down the path from where I was working out to the road. While I was doing this, I questioned why it was that the female was the one pushing the stalled vehicle.

As I got out to the road, I glanced toward a van at the same time someone started it. I could still hear the male voice, so I walked out a bit more to see if there was another vehicle.

Nope. Just the guy walking toward the van.

So I turned and walked back up the path.

And just as I walked out of his sight I heard him say, "That's right. Go back in the woods."

Which stopped me cold.

And when he next glanced up the street toward where I HAD been, he found that I was once again there.

And I was a bit pissy. And while I've never been in a fight, I knew that he only had his can of beer, while I had an entire arsenal of weaponry that he couldn't even see. (At this point in the story I would like to mention that I've never actually used a Garden Weasel but suspect that it's probably worthless. On the other hand, The Garden Claw Red...a registered trademark of The Garden Weasel... is not only fantastic for weeding without bending - it's also perfectly balanced like it was designed for guys who plant flowers and have fairy statues to throw at drunk guys who are verbally and emotionally abusive to females.)

Plus, I had to defend the reputation of the loner guys one might find in the woods.
I mean, really! Has this guy never seen the movie "Deliverance"?
* cue here the hillbilly banjo boy... :)

Apparently it shows when I'm pissed. I heard him say "Go." to whoever was in the van.

I thought, "That's right. Be afraid! Run from my flower power. Bitch." :)

So then everything went back to quiet and peaceful. I planted some English Ivy, some Hosta, some Columbine, four of something I can't think of the name of right off hand, and so on.

Then I went back to Subway for supper so that the day would be well rounded, and enjoyed my sub and some clam chowder and a beer of my own while sitting on my swingy thingy and watching the birds and listening to the wind chimes.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I dug up an old marble and a pair of glasses that looked a lot like the ones Sheila was wearing in her graduation pictures.

Oooooh yeah. Next time I stare someone down I'm going to be wearing those! :)

Well. It's getting late. I should get to sleep. Outside. In my free sleeping bags...