Word of the Day

Banomaly - A banana free of bruises and other discrepancies. Any specific bruise found on a banana.

Woodticks! You don't even have to go out in the woods to find them. HTP and I were out this morning, clearing leaves from the flower beds on either side of the front door. Actually, most of the heavy work was done by HTP. I was on "Don't step on the flower/plant!" guard duty. OK. I was down on my hands and knees, carefully de-leafing the more delicate plants so HTP wouldn't stomp them. To him, all that little green stuff was weeds. But you can't have a flower garden without flowers, don'tcha know. HTP was manning the power leaf blower/sucker...on sucker mode. Believe me, the leaf sucker works a lot better than a rake (a rake in the hands of HTP). At least this way my flowers (most of them) survived. After we'd completed the two gardens, I'm the one that ended up with two woodticks....embedded. That makes three for me this spring. Embedded. I stopped counting the ones that I caught before they glombed on. I'm not sure how many woodticks HTP has on him. Of course, he wasn't down on his hands and knees so maybe he didn't get any. We still need to remove the leaves from the side gardens and back gardens. We have a lot of flower beds. Oh well...next week. We'll work on it again next week.

We've been getting a lot of exercise since we got here to The Lake. Yesterday, HTP roto-tilled my vegetable gardens. Me? I dug out the spring weeds and roots that had decided to fill my raised beds. Then, after getting the gardens roto-tilled, I mixed composted manure into each of the beds....hand-mixed. Then, I started a prepped another little garden area that will be safe within the chainlink of our vegetable garden area. Deer. So far the six-foot chain-link fencing that surrounds my vegetable beds had managed to keep the deer out. Chipmunks? Not so much. So...after prepping all the vegetable beds, I planned and planted the vegetable gardens. Tomatoes. Seven with cages. Italian peppers. Twelve? I love fried Italian peppers. Zucchini. Three different kinds of cucumbers. Four different kinds of green beans. Lettuce. And onions. I didn't get any woodticks after planting the vegetable gardens.

I still have to plant five more white pine trees. I still have to do something with my geraniums from last year. They look ridiculously leggy. They aren't pretty. I think I'm going to have to transplant them into new containers and pinch the heck out of them. Then...I need to plant my Earthboxes. I haven't decided what to plant in them yet. I want to plant them and put them out on my deck but I can't (put them out on my deck). We're having the deck stained this year and I can't put plants out on the deck until the guy decides that it's dry enough outside to stain the deck. We need rain but I hope it holds off for a bit. Oh well...I suppose I can always plant the Earthboxes and move them onto the deck later.

HTP and I are celebrating Mother's Day tonight with my Mom and my sister and her husband. Tomorrow morning we'll be heading off to The Big City to celebrate Mother's Day with HTP's side of the family and MC Daughter, D Buddy, and #1 Son. I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to blog tomorrow so....


Happy Mother's Day!



Murphyism of the Day

The VCR Rule

The most expensive model feature on the VCR never gets used.

Noteworthy Quote of the Day

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you've had a baby. That somebody doesn't know that once you're a Mother, "Normal" is history.