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Sending a memo to myself

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 4:17 am

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Dear Self.....at your advanced age ;), do NOT lift and carry anything that size again.

Do you know how much a rain soaked bag of shredded cedar bark mulch that will cover 3 cubic feet weighs? Huh, Huh, do you?
I don't know for sure either, Randy guesses about 45-50 pounds. All I know is this old back should not have been in any way involved in the lifting of three of them this afternoon. There was a nice young man at the garden center who helped Randy put them on the cart and then went out with us and helped load them into the truck....I really should have bribed him into coming home with us to help me carry them to where they would be used.

I guess this means I will making strawberry jam tomorrow instead of working in the yard. The Driscoll strawberries are in the stores, minus the two quarts that are in my refrigerator and we are out of jam.

Of course, that depends on whether I can get out of bed easily in the morning. If not, then I will prop myself up on the couch with the heating pad and a stack of books waiting to be read.


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I keep forgetting it is only early May

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu May 04, 2006 3:44 pm

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Things are lushing out in the garden....that's growing more lush, not bellying up to the bar in excess.
Not a lot of color yet, but the green really looks pretty, especially this morning when the sky was still a little dark from an early morning rain....a whopping 1/4 inch, but at least it was wet.













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Gnomes - two happy couples

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Wed May 03, 2006 4:46 pm

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These are the gnomes who have decided to live with me.

Maudie and her hubby. Since I let him get snowed on a couple of years ago right after he took up residence by the birdbath, he hasn't been interested in letting me know his name. Maudie is much more outgoing, giving me her name the minute I saw her. They are making their home next to the birdbath and under the ever growing hollyhock.



This is as picture of Randy and I in our gnome form. We share a bench next to the (nonworking) woodburning stove. To the left you can see Smauglet.




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Day 2 of my 60th year

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Mon May 01, 2006 8:10 pm

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Not a whole heck of a lot different than the last day of the 59th year.
Day 1 of the 60th year was spent bamboozling the 6 yr old grandson and hoping to watch the NASCAR race that was eventually rain delayed until today. I did make it to Home Depot for mulch, I really like the Scotsman brand shredded cedar mulch they carry and I went ahead and bought myself a Coreopsis.

Today was spent catching up on laundry...nothing new about that, I usually put it off until someone asks where their clean underwear is anyway.
I did get the new plant in the ground and put the mulch out on the new bed.

And I treated myself to a bowl of Neopolitan ice cream with dark chocolate syrup after lunch.

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It was just too easy

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 6:37 pm

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6 year olds are just too easy to bamboozle. My youngest grandson Nicky has been spending the weekend with us. He is a quirky little kid. Causes his Mom all sorts of embarrassment when he blurts out certain lines from movies.....at a get together at their school he starts singing "I like big butts...." from the movie Shark Tales.

Getting back to the bamboozling.
He wanted a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch today. I got sidetracked a couple of minutes and one side of it got a little dark...not burned just browned.
A few minutes later he came in and said he didn't want the dark brown part. I cut off the darkest brown, handed it back to him and asked if that was better. He looked at the remainder of that half of the sandwich and pointed out to me that it was dark too. I turned the sandwich over on the plate and said "There, now you can't see it" He said okay and finished eating.

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'Nuther piece of painted junque - picture

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2006 1:25 pm

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This piece was a platform for the birdbath for a couple of years. When I started expanding the garden area it went from place to place, each time moving as the garden grew and is now leaning up against the side of the house as decoration in the raspberry patch.

It originally started life as part of the floor of a walk in freezer unit at a small store. Randy's dad got all the pieces and used them to build his storage shed many years ago. He had this one piece left over and at some point Randy used it to put a large car engine part on to bring it home, then it sat in our shed for a few years. We were going to throw it away but my imagination kicked in and the cans of paint came out.
And the birdbath stand is the topless table now being used out front to hold my large pot of geraniums.



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A pile of blue feathers

Category: Random bulletins from my brain | Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 5:44 pm

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That's what I found in one flower bed this morning. One of the few Bluejays that hang around here was the victim of a local cat....in my yard!! Pets are not supposed to be allowed to run free in our city but since when do most people pay attention to the rules.

I know it is the survival of the fittest and if it had not been sick or injured already then the cat would not have been able to catch it. But it really hurt my heart to know it happened. I buried what was left in the Moon Garden.

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Snowflake is blowin' in the wind

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 3:23 am

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Do not pay any attention to the looks of the yard around the windmill. The picture was taken almost 5 years ago before I started gardening. I just wanted to show a better picture of the snowflake design I painted on the blades and rudder.

I was born and raised in Texas, one of a rare breed nowadays .... a native Texan. We have gotten snow in the past, I can remember a few days playing in snow when I was a kid. And we had several snow days 27 years ago, but with the climate change or something snow has become a rare event down here. But I love snow....my first most favorite day is a snowy one. Even when we have gotten snow it is all melted usually within 24 hours. I lived in Colorado for a couple of years, up in the mountains and absolute loved it.
Anyway, Randy says I am the biggest snow flake he has ever met. So snowflakes have sort of become my trademark symbol.



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They had this cabinet on sale

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:17 pm

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Randy and I were making the rounds of garage sales one Sunday afternoon in June about 4 years ago. It was late afternoon, most sellers were ready to call it quits so they had cut prices in half. This cabinet was well used, had a couple of dents and scratches but nothing really bad and it was on sale for $2.50 I needed storage for garden tools, etc and had $3 burning a hole in my pocket. (the last of the splurge money we had allowed ourselves for the day otherwise we would have gone crazy buying other peoples junque)

The design I painted on it was from a quilted wall hanging I had entered in the Dallas Quilt Show competition the previous March. The theme of the contest was Texas Wildflowers. As you can imagine everyone else took it to mean Bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrush, Wine Cups, etc. But my warped mind sometimes doesn't work that way. So my entry was titled "Well you said TEXAS wildflowers"
It didn't win anything, but then the Dallas group does tend to be a tad traditional instead of off the wall in their thinking. :)

The cabinet stayed outside where it is pictured for only one summer and had to be moved inside because the sun and heat was causing the paint to peel. But it is still well used in the backroom, just on the other side of the wall it was on.



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All of this from two roses on sale

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:38 pm

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Many years ago, before KMart left our area, they had rose bushes on sale near the end of the season. I found two white shrub roses for less than $2 each.
I left them in the plastic bag for quite a while before finally figuring out where I wanted to plant them.

When we moved into this house 19 years ago, this same location was planted with Chinese Holly. Sharp leafed dangerous plants, so the next year we started digging them up so there would be no chance of our new daughter getting one of those leaves that were like razor blades in her foot/hand/or anywhere else when she was old enough to play outside.

By the time I bought the rose bushes she was old enough to not be interested in playing with the roly-poly bugs out there anymore. So I stuck the roses there.

I have cut these babies down almost to the ground a couple of times, it takes them maybe a year to regain their bramble look. Plus, whereever a limb lays on the soil undisturbed for a few weeks, roots dive deep into the earth and the plants expand.
There are probably 20 small bushes in that patch along with the two originals. I even transplanted three to the other side of the driveway 2-3 years ago and when they became a problem I gave them away. My oldest daughter took a transplant to her backyard two years ago and the thing is almost 4' in diameter.



That's my wood file drawer in front with Zinnias coming up nicely. And in the center of the bramble is a Pecan tree planted by the squirrels, we figure we will leave it to provide shade for the front window eventually.

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