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New plans for the front yardPosted: 14 Apr 2008 Posted: 28 Mar 2008 Posted: 26 Mar 2008 Posted: 03 Mar 2008 Posted: 04 Feb 2008 Posted: 26 Dec 2007 Posted: 19 Dec 2007 Posted: 18 Dec 2007 Posted: 09 Oct 2007 Posted: 20 Aug 2007 Posted: 12 Jul 2007 Posted: 08 Jul 2007 Posted: 22 May 2007 Posted: 26 Jun 2007 Posted: 09 May 2007 Posted: 06 May 2007 Posted: 02 May 2007 Posted: 01 May 2007 Posted: 23 Apr 2007 Posted: 20 Apr 2007 |
toni's Blog
Bad things happen in threes
Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 4:10 pm Or as Randy said about 3:30 yesterday afternoon, "and the hits just keep on a comin'" Tuesday on his way home from work, the right front tire on his pickup truck blew out about 20 minutes into his journey. Meaning he was on the side of a very busy highway changing the tire. About 15 minutes later, the spare he had put on started shredding and sending chunks of itself flying everywhere bending the fender and breaking out a light on the side of the fender. It didn't go flat and being only 15 minutes away from home, he was able to take an earlier exit and drive home on backstreets at about 10 miles per hour. He worked from home on Wednesday and Two new tires were bought on Thursday, $183.00 Friday morning was his normal everyother Friday off so we were going to start installing the wall of shutters to make my room more private. I had a load of laundry in the dryer and another one just starting in the washer when he passed by the bathroom and found water gushing up from both the bathtub and the toilet and in the process of covering the floor. Called a plumber and started taking stuff out of the bathroom....this is the only bathroom we have so while waiting for the plumber we did have to make a couple of trips to a local fast food establishment to use their facilities. Plumber arrived about 3 and cleared out the sewer line from our house to the city sewer line out in the alley. Bathroom usable again, $124.50. Saturday we had the grandsons for the day. I had made a quick trip to the grocery store, opened the pantry door to put things up to find that water was about 1/4" deep and rising on the floor. The central AC drain line on the other side of one wall of the pantry had stopped up and water was overflowing. Thankfully this was something that Randy could take care of so no repair person was called upon to provide us with yet another bill for services rendered. The shutters are still leaning against the wall and will be until at least next payday. This blog entry has been viewed 469 times
There is at least one of these, maybe two
Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Mon Sep 04, 2006 9:08 pm Isn't she pretty? She is a Common Whitetail Dragonfly perched on the lighthouse nestled in the Lantana. I think I have seen two out there. I zoomed in as much as I could, took this picture then I hoped to take at least one step closer but she caught wind of my plan and zoomed away. Have you seen the ugly little bugs dragonflies come from? I had never thought about that until I was looking thru pictures on a website trying to ID this one. Nowhere near as cute as some of the caterpillars butterflies come from. 
This blog entry has been viewed 96 times
We all slept better last night
Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:17 pm Randy got home from Chicago safely early yesterday afternoon. We have a waterbed and after 5 nights of sleeping on a hard hotel mattress I know Randy slept better last night. I do not sleep soundly when he is out of town because I am a usually a little nervous, so I slept better last night. Now poor Rambo, our 9 year old Field Spaniel really doesn't sleep well when Randy is gone. He knows that he is "on duty" more than usual on those nights. Normally he will sleep in our or Amanda's doorway or in the hallway between the rooms. But when he is on duty, he stretches out in front of the front door or is on the couch in the livingroom. His sleep is interrupted by any and all sounds outside, even the ones that occur every night and are routine, like the neighbor leaving for work at midnight. The trouble with that is then he "woofs" at the sound waking me up and I have to go check it out which makes me nervous about what I will see outside....thanks a lot Rambo : ) Then since he is awake anyway, he makes the rounds of the house to check things out. I hear him come into the room, sniff around, snort and then hear the tapping of his toe nails as he goes to Amanda's room and back into the livingroom. Yesterday when Randy got home, Rambo was sooooo happy. He got his back scratched and a peppermint. He trotted around the house checking things out. He went out back to do his business and check out the yard. Then he stretched out on the livingroom floor and in no time was sleeping so soundly that his snoring could be heard from the next room. I don't think he moved for a couple of hours. His world was back to normal so I know he slept better last night too. This blog entry has been viewed 161 times
The pitter-patter on my roof
Category: Puttering Around The House | Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 3:40 pm We have two large pecan trees on the north side of the house with several limbs that hang over the roof. There are pecans up there but for the most part, they are either hollow or the nut meat is complete dried out from the lack of rain again this year. There is a chance for some of the still green ones to ripen successfully tho. So sometime in mid August we started hearing - thump, rattle, rattle, rattle, clunk - as the pecans fell onto the roof, rolled down to the edge then landed on the hood of whichever of our vehicles was parked at the head of the driveway. That happened every once in a while, not often enough to be an irritation. But late last week I started noticing that the frequency of the landings was increasing and that the pecans landing on the hood of Randy's truck were not whole but broken open. And the thumping and rattling of the pecans had been joined by the pitter-patter of tiny feet. Being way too early for "the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there" I knew it was not his reindeer I was hearing on the roof. I did some sleuthing around yesterday, spying into the trees and saw squirrels up there. They apparently are picking the pecans, peeling off the outer husk, biting thru the shell and either dropping the inedible ones or eating what they can and dropping the shells. Since the number of "tree rats" up there varies, sometimes the thumping noise is infrequent. But when several decide to have dinner together the noise level rises. The hood of the truck is almost completely covered with pecan parts and you can't walk down the driveway without hearing the familiar crunching sound with each step. Last edited: Fri Sep 01, 2006 4:31 pm This blog entry has been viewed 194 times
I know I said I wouldn't do it
Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:33 pm But I gave in and bought some plants this morning. I used to have two Feverfew, a young Rosemary and a large pot filled with red geraniums on the front porch but no amount of watering during August could keep them alive. I took Amanda to college this morning and stopped by Calloway's Garden Center on the way home. Not much variety this time of year, but a lot of the plants were 50% off....not the ones I wanted mind you, but a lot of others. I decided to get three different Lavenders and another Rosemary. I like to keep Rosemary by the front door. Couldn't find geraniums so I have a large Fernleaf Lavender in the large pot, with three Sweet Potato Vines to fill in around the edges. The other Lavenders are Sweet Lavender and French Lavender. If we get any winter weather, I can take the pots into the backroom for protection. Then next spring I will transplant them into the garden. I am thinking about going on a garden center shop hop this weekend to find some end of season bargains and get more perennials. We have probably three more months of weather warm enough for things to establish themselves before any chance of cold temps. This blog entry has been viewed 121 times
It Was my Turn
Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 10:33 pm Frank's rain dances finally paid off for my yard. Around 2 we got 1/4" in the large rain gauge, around 2:30 we got another 1/4" of rain....then a little after 4 the massive, dark clouds moved in again and we got another 3/4" of rain. For a total of 1 1/4" of rain....more than we have gotten on my yard since May 8th. There are still thunder rumbles out there but it has gone far north of us now. The rain barrel is full and will be used on the Fig tree tomorrow. This wonderful wet stuff came too late for about half my plants but I think I can hear a lot of singing and dancing from the survivors. This whole area still needs at least 16 inches and a return to normal rain fall to end the drought, so I do not hold any false hope that the situation is improving but at least for now my yard has rain. The massive High Pressure system that had been hanging over us since early May has disappeared so there may be more rain in the area thru tomorrow. The high temp for today was only 96, so the streak of consecutive 100+ temp days ended yesterday at 19. So far it looks like the total number of 100+ days will have also ended yesterday at 42, putting this year in 7th place for number of 100+ days. And the most important stat of all is that the rain today ended 111 days with no more than 1/4" of rain on my yard. This blog entry has been viewed 90 times
This is soooo Nicky
Category: Grandson Stories | Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 3:29 am preface.....Nicky is 7 and just entered first grade, he definitely marches to his own drummer!!! I got this email from Lisa this evening and thought it would perk everyone up..... "Mrs. Griffin has an incentive plan called "caught being good" and to her class she gave the example of someone dropping their pencil box and whoever helped pick it up would get points for being good. Points = candy. So Nicky and his little table mate hatched a plan that she would drop her pencil box and he'd help clean it up, then later in the day he'd drop his and she'd help clean up. He said that was the only way he'd be caught being good. Ingenious!" I wrote Lisa and asked her how the teacher figured out what they were doing. Her response was..... That's the best part...he told his teacher of their clever plan this morning This blog entry has been viewed 139 times
I give up
Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Wed Aug 16, 2006 3:36 am Even with watering everything early in the morning and again late in the evening I can not keep anything alive. Plus I can not justify watering plants when there is a distinct possibility that water restrictions could very soon include how much we can use for household needs. I guess I could say, "oh well there is always next year". But after going thru weather almost this bad last year (had the drought but not the heat) that is what I said last Sept...I really thought that everything would return to normal and all my work would survive this year. Most of my plants are perennials so there is hope that they will return next year, what remains to be seen is whether it will be worth it. This blog entry has been viewed 111 times
No power so we left home
Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Tue Aug 08, 2006 8:33 pm Sunday afternoon the wind really started kicking up, the lights flickered then everything went out. The so called storm was more flash than substance. We got about 30 minutes of really strong winds, a nice lightning show, some dark clouds and less than an 1/8th inch of rain. Since the temp outside had already hit 100 for the day, the inside temp quickly climbed to match the outside temp. We took Rambo with us and headed for Dunn Brothers, the coffee shop we really like. Sat outside watching the clouds swiftly clear out, the wind come to a complete stop and the sun come back out I had called the power company before we left to report the outage but after a couple of hours at the coffee shop the power was still out. We called Lisa to see if they were home and headed up there. About 8 pm the power was still out. Since we had already planned on going out to my Mom's on Monday, we decided to head out there and spend the night there. Lisa volunteered their spare bed for Amanda and Rambo and then she could stay with the boys while Lisa was at school. We called our home number several times on the way out to Ranger. If the power had come back on then the answering machine would come on...but nothing. Our last call being just after midnight as we pulled into the motel parking lot. But sometime between then an 8:30 a.m. when we called again the power was back. The only food casualties in the freezer was the ice cream and the brine shrimp and blood worms Amanda feeds her fish. We called Lisa on the way home last evening, we could see some storm clouds that appeared to be over Dallas and she said it had been raining a nice steady soaking rain for almost 3 hours. And the sudden hard rain had caused some flooding in Dallas. BUT GUESS WHAT!!! Almost none of that had happened on my yard. We got a whopping 1/4th inch. She is barely 10 miles north of us and the flooding was about 20 miles south of us and we were bascially high and dryish in the middle. Temps are returning to their usual hovering around 100 again for the rest of the week. This blog entry has been viewed 82 times
Grandsons, Knitting and a small candle
Category: Puttering Around The House | Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:20 pm We have been enjoying the company of our oldest grandson Austin, (10 1/2 yrs old) for the last week, but he went home today. The youngest grandson Nicky, spent a week with us last month, he turned 7 yesterday. After they leave, the house has a stillness to it that is both comforting in it's "back to normal-ness" and lonely because it is so still now. I have certain movies and recorded TV programs that I call my knitting shows. They are the ones that I know by heart since I have watched them so many times that I can enjoy them without having to watch every minute of them while I concentrate on the knitting project at hand. LOTR, Rosemary and Thyme among several others. But after posting in the "What's Cooking Tonight" forum that we had our version of the sausage sandwiches we heard about in the Tom Baker Dr. Who programs, I decided to dig out the 13 tapes we have of those episodes and start watching them again. I really need to knit myself a Dr. Who scarf now. Have any of you watched the episode of Monarch of the Glen that Tom Baker was in....I almost didn't recognize him. I lit one of my homemade votive candles yesterday around 2 p.m. It was in a votive holder inside a cast iron pot in the kitchen and I forgot about it last night. It burned all thru the night and I didn't notice it until about an hour ago when I smelled something vaguely familiar in the kitchen and realized that little votive was still burning. Boy, I make really good candles. Most store bought votives burn for 6-10 hours this one is in it's 26th hour and still burning....just barely but still burning. This blog entry has been viewed 72 times
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