last day of april

ok, so.....i have enjoyed a rose blooming on the last day of april for as long as i can recall.....but not this year......a curious year for gardeners, by the way......we have been treated to a bumper crop of lunaria (money plant) which blooms tall and purple........yet i only count 12 or so iris out of 50 plants that look like they might add to the purple show...no idea why so many iris plants appear thick and robust, yet show no signs of shooting up an actual flower......maddening.....the louisisana iris that languishes in the pond has doubled in size from last year....even after i gave a huge cutting to another pond person at work.....i can count 3 potential blooms out of a plant that could easily produce twice that number.....ah well.....the star of bethlehem wild flower is a mass of white in the middle bed......and there are a handful of poppies that will burst forth red in the next few days......i just love this time of year......

it is well with my soul

ok ,so... i attended the funeral yesterday of the recently retired board chairman.....and an amazing tenor sang this baptist classic:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blessed assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

Refrain.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Refrain.

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

Refrain.

Just lovely...........

my child is horrified that i _______.

ok, so.....i was amused at a hallway conversation this morning...during which my female comrades were bemoaning the many reasons they have recently given their children to roll their eyes.....one mother admitted to following her son to walmart to picture him meeting with his dad (who is not married to my coworker) in his prom outfit over the weekend....another was enumerating the throng of family she was busing up to lexington to see her daughter graduate from UK on sunday.....and how she was unsure if she could keep them all quiet during the ceremony....this is a first-generation graduate crowd.....and everybody is coming......and yet another mentioned how she had approached a car in the back lot as she was leaving work on friday to ask if they had come looking for condoms...it was horrifying in that they were friends of her son- a high school junior.......the things that i do that horrify my own children did not make this list...and i kept them all to myself.......

an april rose?

ok, so for the past 20+ years i have been in an informal competition with my brother-in-law over who has the first blooming rose.....he generally wins....as he has so many roses.....but i have the southern-facing slope.....and this year i have a contender......if the sun shines bright on my old ky home tomorrow, stanwell perpetual may bloom......her buds are bulging enough to show me the color that awaits....cream....this rose is set bloom with a record number of buds......nearly 12.....some years in its past,unsuitable location it was lucky to see 3 open blossoms.....thankfully it has taken well to transplanting......in other less hopeful news...the county has mowed down the luneria (money plant) lady's mantle just about to bloom ,and wild phlox.....yes...these plants were stirring things up in the selvages as we drove in and out of our road.....but another week and the show would have been all over......i am curious about the sort of person that would mow down blooming wildflowers......is it just another owing assignment, or did this person actually notice the purples and blues go under the blade?......

the lord's larkspur

ok, so.....there is an idyllic ravine beside the lower door to the education building of my church.....the collective owners have allowed it to remain as nature intended....and this time of year it is abloom with purples and yellows and white.....it is separated from the church property by a fence tall enough to keep out wildflower buffs......today i was walking into church, and admiring the view, when my prayers appeared to be answered....there was a celandine (wood) poppy blooming yellow and lovely on the church side of the fence......in an area that could be weed-whacked by an un-knowing groundskeeper.......and as an added bonus, there were a few larkspur blooming at the church ended of the ravine.....down a rather steep slope...but reachable......and so after the lunch dishes were finished......i changed into my stealthiest gardening clothes.....and headed back to church with some empty pots and a digging fork to liberate those wildflowers before the mowers could do their worst.....i was practicing that little speech in case the police showed up to make their call on the fine line between liberation and downright theft.....and so i edged slowly down the steep slope ......but not slowly enough....and i slipped and slip and came down hard on my right arm.....gentle readers.....this is the lord's day so i will spare you the words i used as i ascertained the injury.....not broken!....but sore and probably bruised.....and i was getting off easy.....as if i had broken it i would have been in a ravine, out of sight.....and were it broken i could not have driven my stick-shift car to the e.r......i'd have had to walk the 3-4 blocks or so.....ah well.......and so i managed to dig up three of the dozens of clumps of larkspur.....and the single poppy plant .....and to crawl back up out of that ravine......i may have blogged that a co-worker in lincoln had already given me a few clumps of larkspur liberated from a county over.....and it could be said that i was being greedy adding more than my share of this lovely blue flower to my collection of native plants.......i will contemplate that possibility at least until my arm stops hurting....

pyromania.....

ok, so...the three of us sat on the terrace by the pond and gazed into the fire in the copper grate until...well....after 9....we are wimpy go-to-bed-early folks..... but the short time we did spend by the fire was peaceful and almost camp-like.....

george vs clara

ok, do...i have just gotten off the phone with my mother...who has not moved from her chair since getting the news that there are 4 pages of things wrong with her back........none that can be treated.....just 4 pages of data......and my mother has taken this like her mother clara would have......she is in a lay-down-and-die mode.....unlike her father...george would have taken this news like any other news...as just news....and he would have gotten up the next day as if it were a new day....and gone on.....i could call this man from columbus, or cincinnati, or d-ville...and ask him how he was.....and he would say.....pretty good.....despite the obvious otherwise...like being blind....my mother has chosen to see the world like her mother...and i am determined to see the world as pretty good even if i should be blind......any day you wake up is a good day.....worthy of praise.......

oriole

ok, so.....on this day i planted seeds inside (in peat pots), outside (in clay pots) cleaned out the gardening section of the garage, watered, weeded, washed the clothing worn during these tasks, and then settled into a glass of white wine and the rick steves book of italy on the deck.....not that i am going to italy......just in case my eldest who is going on a grand tour (21 days +) might want travel tips....such as stay in sienna and take the bus to florence.....sounded like sound advice to me.....as i sat peacefully...an oriole landed on a branch close enough to take in the splendor of this vibrant bird......wow...and its call is rather sparse.....a few notes rather than a string of notes.......we have seen the beginnings of an oriole nest....hanging rather than....nesting.....but it looked much too fragile for actual service.....maybe the bird has found another resting place.....i also cleaned out the pond, and fed and watered the crab that my youngest child conveniently forgets is hers......

a good story....

ok, so.....i was at our doctor's office yesterday afternoon, and as we were checking out i had an opportunity to chat with our semi-neighbor.....her family owns the party-central lake house 2 doors down....we were just enough older than this woman and her siblings that we recall them partying on summer nights....and now her eldest son has taken up partial residence there....so far no disrupting noise.......and so mentioned to her that we had not heard a peep out of her boy despite seeing several cars on both weeknights and weekdays.....and though she was glad to hear that, she assured me that our neighbor across the street would certainly have called if there was anything raucous going on....and she told of an evening in the not-too-distant past whereupon the neighbor called her at 2:00 am, and told her she and her husband better get on out here as there were cars everywhere and he didn't want trouble out our way......she had to wake up the rest of the household, as she was watching her sister's children...her sister being at a class reunion.....and so the posse arrived to the circle...only to see cars that were clearly not her son's crowd.....BMW's,Mercedes, high-end SUV's......seems her sister's reunion had moved out to the lake house for old times sake,......and it was a mid-life crowd rather than kids carrying on.....just too funny.......

8 antique rose bushes

ok, so.....i arrived home to a shipping parcel tenderly packed with bare-root own-root rose buses......some antique climbers, some english-bred-to-look-old....all to be just lovely.....the own-root descriptive is essential.....most commercially grown rose bushes are grafted....a desirable top grafted onto a hardy base.....which is usually a boring red rose named dr. huey, or worse....rosa multiflora...a rose that is such a pest in my home state of ohio that the osu school of agriculture has an office dedicated to it's eradication.....i now have rosa multiflora in my own yard...and every year i dig it up...and every year it pops in in more places than before...it suckers underground....and must just love our limestone base.......as i was digging up adequate places to plant these treasures....my across-the-street neighbor's gardener stopped to talk on his way home.....he and i are on waving basis......i wave to him as i go to work, and he waves to me as he goes home.....no clue what he does in between.....but my neighbor now has massive tulip plantings and his grass is picture perfect.....but on this day....as i yelled across the road about my new roses.....it dawned on me that he spoke no english....and so i waved toward my arbor rose.....and waved my arms to indicate that i looked forward to this year's bloom....and he waved his arms in return....letting me know that he looked forward to it as well.....ah well.....i did not get around to planting the wild larkspur......a co-worker liberated 9 plants from somewhere in lincoln county.....i am keeping them moist, but opted to wait until the cool of the morning to plant these tender plants.....i so love spring.....all is possible.....

the check is in the mail....

ok, so i read with glee that the treasure will soon send my $300...which i will turn around and spend on something for one of the children......but for the few moments it is in my hands i will wonder why our tax structure is such that we pay out only to get back...seems like a costly waste of time and money.......

matching outfits

ok, so...i enjoyed rereading about my dream from last evening.....especially the part about the matching outfits.....i freely admit to submitting my sons to matching outfits for major occasions like easter or christmas eve.....the most memorable ones were purchased in paris......blue chambray button-down shirts with squirrels embroidered on the pockets....i may actually still have one or both of these shirts, which i found simply charming......they wore these shirts with navy cotton cardigans (also purchased n paris) for montessori school photographs....school pictures are generally solo events...but the photographer immediately caught on to the matching togs and photographed them together on a safe bet for extra profit....yeah...i bought several poses because they were just so darn adorable......for the record, i have never subjected my offspring to outfits with names displayed in bright colors across the front.....as if they might forget and must look down to make sure of the spelling....upside down and backwards......ah well....if my sons keep to their plan and deny me of grandchildren...then i will miss the opportunity to recreate sweet matching garb for the next generation to remember fondly.....

christmas village....

ok, so....in my dreams i was in sunday school, and a clearly cross-dressed man with a 5-oclock shadow, blonde wig, and dress worn over shirt and slacks came in and sat down.....skip to the worship service where the guy kept cruising back and forth behind our pew, and i grabbed him by his collar and told him i'd get a restraining order.... also in the pew were my eldest children- wearing matching black cords and gray pinstripe shirts- a combo i never attempted when they were small and mamma-dressable..... fast-forward to the home scene, where my matching sons decorated the kitchen counter with a christmas village- set upon white fluffy fabric to resemble snow....and furniture had been moved around to suit their holiday residence......the computer table (actually an antique library table) was out in the back room pulled up to the sofa, that was made up as a bed for an overnight guest- no sign of the cross-dresser.....but my sons did sit me down and explained that they had made a pact to have have children until after i have passed on......what a curious dream.....especially given that i intend to live to 100.....which would make my sons really, really old meandaddys.....

feline

ok, so last evening, as i sat in the red lawn chair and took in the splendor of spring in my yard.....the cat stealthily made her away across the lower flower bed....pounced, and came up with a mouse.....and rather than continue on her stealthy way....she assumed that she would find a proud audience up my way.....gentle readers, much as i understand that cats are born to hunt and eat mice, i do not feel the need to be witness to this level of cosmic truth.....and so i left the cat to munch by my chair.....and i went back into the house....

yellow dog....

ok, so...since the neighbor dog passed away the big yellow dog that we call yellow and the neighbor calls butter has been spending more time at our house......he was waiting for me to let him in for breakfast when i went out to get the newspaper this morning.....and he often waits for me to come home in the evening...presumably hoping for a little snack to tide him over.....til he goes back next door?.....last night he hung out in the back room while the youngest watched house....and swear that this big yellow dog doesn't smell near as much like cigarettes.....which means he is not spending much time in the sidestream of our neighbor's wife....who smokes inside rather than outside.....the poor beast has not lost any weight....so it is clear that somebody is feeding him more than he can burn as he spends his workday lounging on the neighbor's porch.....

up early....

ok, so....i have to drive myself and a few coworkers to l-ville this morning for a meeting that starts at 9......our alarm clock starts playing the news at 6:30 am.....not enough time for me to get out of the door by 7.....so we set the manually-wound alarm clock for a 6:00 am wakeup call.....i am unused to the sound of a ticking clock, and so i woke up at odd times during the night to make sure that i had not overslept through clock error.....and when one suffers through fitful sleep....one fails to awaken refreshed......well.....from poor sleep and from manual labor....i tilled and sifted out weeds from my vegetable planting bed.....about 20 foot of planting space......and so my back and my wrists are in pain......i ought to be in great humor for this drive to l-ville....tired and achy on a monday morning...what a combo....

the big give.....

ok, so....we sat and watched the finale of oprah's big give this evening.....mostly to see what it was all about, and to see who won...and i must say that we decided right off the bat that female beauty queen contestant was an idiot..and if she won we would be disappointed..and the dot.com guy was a self-serving weasel..and the father figure guy was hands down the best of the bunch....so we were excited that he ended up winning the whole enchilada....he was the only one not playing it to win....but playing it to give.....having said this....i think i can happily go another couple of years without reality t.v......

ondayone

ok, so this was posted ondayone a blog where anyone can post their dreams for what the next president should do one his or her first day in office.....it was part of an article about home vegetables gardens in the nytimes...

Eat the View
Roger Doiron at 2/7/2008 3:56PM

Announce plans for a food garden on the White House lawn, making one of the White House's eight gardeners responsible for it, with part of produce going to the White House kitchen and the rest to a local food pantry. The White House is "America's House" and should set an example. The new President would not be breaking with tradition, but returning to it (the White House has had vegetable gardens before) and showing how we can meet global challenges such as climate change and food security.

taking notes

ok, so.....i sat through the sermon alone today, as my spouse and youngest were taking their turn watching the under 5's in the nursery.....but i entertained myself by taking notes in the margin of the bulletin, much in the way our middle child used to take notes or draw buildings......my personal goal on this day was to take down the numerous country names that would be dropped by the annual guest speaker for a group that gives out bibles.....as per usual, the speaker asked us to pray that his group be allowed into muslim countries so that these folks can be 'saved'.....which seems a rather intolerant message in an age when we need to accept those who believe differently that we do rather than expect those people to change their fundamental beliefs....for the record, he mentioned 20 countries, though i think i missed a few as he rattled toward the close of his message....i should emphasize the his part, as only men can belong to this group....their wives may belong to the auxiliary......a curiosity that women are somehow not equipped for the passing out of bibles....

sunday morning....

ok, so...i got an baby shower invitation today in the mail....no news there.....but it is the time and day that struck me as incredible....sunday morning at 11.....gentle readers....folks in our neck of the woods are in church in that time slot.....or should be, as the locals are apt to comment....We are in church in that time slot unless we have a really good reason not to be....and the weekend in question boasts several good reasons to think about our options.....our middle child will be home for a brief interlude between college classes and a francophile internship.....and there is the possibility that the eldest will be home as well.....not a chance that we would drive north several hours for a baby shower on such a day.......better send a gift with my regrets now and move on.....

fake muenster....

ok, so.....i am proud to live in a cheese family....the collective we just love cheeses of the world....and would have a difficult time narrowing down the list of favorites...both everyday cheeses and special occasion cheeses.....i happen to prefer meunster melted on meat.....or eggs....it gets nice and oozy, yet clings where-ever it was placed....muenster had a supple texture...just the way cheese should be.......and so imagine my surprise when i opened up a newly purchased package of muenster...and the slice crumbled as i lifted it off of the stack.....gentle readers....muenster doesn't crumble....and then there was the tart taste....what?...muenster is mild not tangy.......and then it dawned on me.....this was not really muenster...rather sliced cheddar with the edges dyed to make it look like muenster....a travesty!.......not that i have anything against cheddar.....it is still CHEESE.....but when i buy muenster i expect the cheese to be muenster.....i may write q quick note to the aldi people to let them know that some of their customers are not so easily fooled.....

the fire pit.....

ok, so....last father's day i bought my husband a copper fire pit- the kind that is a copper bowl of sorts that is held up by a 4-legged castiron ring. The fire can be contained somewhat by a castiron mesh handled lid....the whole contraption looked really neat at the store.....but as these gifts go.....we were experiencing a drought and a no-burn rule came along soon after the gift was given...and so the gift has languished unassembled in the garage for all these months.....i did decide yesterday that i could figure out how to assemble something so simple.....and after i placed it on the terrace by the lilypond.....i had no choice but to drag out the chairs and table that occupy this space seasonally....and while i was in the mood i dragged out a few more chairs that allow a tired gardener to sit and contemplate the majesty of carefully cultivated nature....but i digress from the firepit.....i gathered together quite a pile of sticks and small logs...and not only built a respectable un-lit stack inside the pit, but a reasonable stack beside it for backup....and after dark i made my way out there armed with newspaper, matches, and a glass of wine.....i managed a lovely fire after only a single match, and sat back to enjoy the peaceful surroundings, the stars.....and waited for my family to join me.....but the youngest was distracted by network television....and my spouse was mowing my mother's yard on the riding mower that had headlights.....and so by the time i had gone through both the first stack and the backup sticks....and the fire had burned down to embers.....i opted to dip my empty wine glass in the pond, put out the remaining coals....and go back into the house.....only to find that the deck door was locked....so i ambled around front...to find that the front door was locked as well...seemed my spouse had walked in the kitchen after mowing and looked out toward the terrace ....after i had put out the fire, and had figured that if i wasn't there that i had gone to bed.....how funny......next time we will coordinate our fire for a non-mowing evening.....

rodents in polyester suits....

ok so i heard the npr review of this book awhile back....and i was unable to locate the particulars on google because i was searching for squirrels in polyester rather than rodents in polyester....my mistake....the book itself deals with sex....but it was not sex per se that was so intriguing about this book review, but about the research done into sexual matters by an egyptian scholar, who was especially interested in how polyester enhances sexual pleasure......and given that he was doing this research in a muslim country, he opted to use rats wearing polyester rather than humans wearing polyester for his experiment.....i would say.....only in america but i cannot because this happened in egypt.....

reichter unknown....

ok, so i was awakened this morning by what felt like a burdensome beast bounding across the back deck....the house shook, and the drawer pulls rattled back and forth for a bit....and then it was over, and i went back to sleep......and thought nothing more about it until the lead radio piece was about the earthquake in central ky....no reports on the reichter scale.....could not have been much more than a few points....but enough to count.....

grass

ok, so.....we were forced to mow our grass this evening despite all the tender new shoots, because the established patches were tall enough to be seen from space if not by car-traffic who take note of neighbors with un-mowed lawns.....and now that the playing field is even....the new shoots look so shabby and thin and wispy compared to the grass that somehow survived the drought......my spouse contends that the new grass will fill out as it matures.....but that knowledge does little to diminish my prevailing sense of failure at the art of grass-growing.....i suppose what i really wanted was to dig it all up and lay sod....the cheater's lawn...the already green and full and lush roll-it-out lawn.....but given that i still have children in college and a travelers addiction to feed.....i am in the grow-your-own mode...no matter how long it takes.....

word twist

ok, so......my first email message of the morning was from my new zealand connection on facebook, letting me know that she had challenged me to wordtwist...yet another intoxicating on-line word game that features words i have never heard of which makes me feel bad about myself on some days....but do not feel badly for me just yet, as i managed to find a word that used all of the letters (expects- or something close to expects) and i scored a 25 point bonus....wow!......as for my other passion scramble....i am daily humbled by my lack of obscure words.....and have broken 100 only once.....and given that my current band of local scramble playmates are basically brilliant folks, i can either quit playing or put up with frequent losses.......line on-line has its ups-and-downs....._

the mourning dove

ok, so.....the mamma mourning dove was gone from her platform when i got home from work....and the broken egg shells remained on the pavement below her arbor roost.....seeing the 'nest' without her sitting upon it was troubling.....doomed to failure.......and as i strolled my planting beds...i could hear the mournful cry of the mourning dove....i am certain that the mamma mourned the family that was not to be.....

broken eggs....

ok, so....when i went up to the road through the rose arbor this morning to retrieve the newspaper.....i was saddened to see 2 tiny eggs splattered on the concrete below....and surprised to see mama mourning dove still sitting on her platform....possibly unaware that her task is now futile....there simply was not enough nest to contain eggs.....poor bird.....

pope-on-a-stick....

ok, so.....i can remember another time a pope came to washington dc.....i had just finished graduate school (1980), and a dental intern and i drove to d.c. to see the sights....we slept on the floor at my old high school boyfriend's apartment....and his new girlfriend (being catholic) had recently dragged him downtown to see the pope.....and people were selling popes-on-a-stick.....and i regret not asking at the time exactly what that gift-item actually looked like.....must have been the template for bobble-head pope.....those who keep track of these things may recall that this same dental intern was a rabid u of l fan....and we spent a lot of time in d.c. in sports bars watching u of l play on the 'big screens'......big for 1980.....u of l did come through that year, by the way.......and i recall that aspect of the trip with much more clarity than i remember the pope being in town.....

37 degrees....

ok, so the temps reportedly dropped to near-freezing last night.....this low is not an issue form of our blooming trees....in that they have already bloomed and it is too late for the emerging bloom to burn off.....the lilac is just emerging....and i am a bit concerned about that bush/tree....which has bloomed poorly for years due to late freezes.......and then there are the boxwoods, which literally freezer-burned last year to the point that all new growth had to be trimmed off to get rid of the unsightly dead plant matter.....ah well....the daffodils and grape hyacinths looked un-phased by the cold-snap.....

money

ok, so....i spent an entire work day in f-fort learning about how one budgets public funding......and i must say that i am still a bit glazed-over .....the dropping of dollars into specific slots on a spread sheet is something i must do, or i would not subject myself to such torture......or rather....pretend to drop dollars....as the actual allocations will not filter their way down to me for a few more weeks....so i learned what to do when the funds arrive weeks before they arrive.....the time gap large enough to essentially erase any memory i might have of this day.....business of usual, i am told, when one works for the state.....the best part of the day was the drive to and from.....my assistant who traveled with me knew a back road route that avoided the main f-fort traffic...and the winding road down toward the kentucky river was aglow with the white of dutchman's britches on the right hand slope.....a spectacular display of wildflowers.....

missing wildflowers...

ok, so i came back yesterday from the wildflower walk at the refuge eager to look around our wood lot to see just which wildflowers are blooming in our little habitat.....i was somewhat surprised at how few overlapping species we have in common with the south-end of the county.....yes, we both have toad trillium, and dutchman's breeches, and stonecrop sedum....but we have a profusion of shooting star that was nowhere to be seen in forkland, as well as wood hyacinth, star of bethlehem, money plant (lunaria) and saxafragia......there are a few more that i have failed to look up in the books after all of these years....a white flower with a cut-leaf of some sort that seems to bloom early enough that i miss it almost entirely.... a curious disparity for such a short distance bewteen

wildflower walk

ok, so.....my daughter and i rallied to get ourselves up and dressed and down to the wildlife refuge for the wildflower walk.....and were stunned to have a crowd of 40 souls also in search of flora....to manage the throng the organizers wisely split us into two smaller groups, and we set out on opposite ends of the trail......i found myself trailing directly behind a woman that i did not immediately recognize, but identified before i said anything callous...and i found myself editing my commentary.....making certain i did not mention such key words as husband, mowing, neighbor, gunshots, skunks or extended courtroom drama for example.....we were looking at the toad trilliums that were along and in the path.....and i almost mentioned that i have to remind my husband when he mows the woodlot to be careful not to mow them down where they have spread from the stand of trees.....this dear woman's husband was gunned down by a neighbor while he was out mowing the lawn, later to claim he was trying to shoot a skunk......this incident happened several years ago, but it is not something easily forgotten......she brought up her late spouse as we walked, at a stopping point i noted a buckeye tree, and she mentioned that her spouse had lived in ohio for a time......but i digress from the wildflowers.....we saw lots of wild phlox, and wild ginger, and a yellow poppy that i have never before seen....and dutchman's britches......and twin-leaf that flowers white......and false rue anemone....which i voiced was a mean name for a flower....to call it false...and suggested that we call it alternative rue anemone instead......i lovely outing, that ended up lasting 2 hours......and now out to my personal wildflower refuge to mulch more beds.....

buzzards

ok, so.....my spouse and i walked three laps around the loop after supper....and amused ourselves by the buzzard-count......at least 18 if we take both our counts and average them between those we saw in trees and those we saw circling above.....18 buzzards?!.....are they passing through or here to stay?....we see no sign of actual carrion.....thankfully.....but the specter of weeks and weeks of buzzards is troubling with or without a decidedly dead food source.....

rain

ok, so....s mighty storm blew through sometime in the night.....i resisted the temptation to look at the clock to check the time.....if it were nearly time to get up i would have a hard time going back to sleep.....the plants i moved need this rain need this rain....yeah, i did spend significant time laying down the seep hoses....only to find that water in seep hoses either doesn't run uphill very efficiently, or i have kinks that keep water from making it to the end of the line.....trying to convince my spouse that we need a spigot that comes out of the ground just below where the water line comes in from the road......hooking seep hoses up to a spigot at the top of our property will allow the water to seep downhill.....brilliant idea, i say......for days when there is no rain.....

birds....

ok, so there is a mourning dove who has nested in my rose arbor....and i have taken to walking out to the road for the morning paper by way of the driveway so as to avoid disturbing her.....she is platforming rather than nesting, i suppose, because what she built appears little more than a flat matting of organic matter...but she seems determined to sit there.....and i will give her due distance......we have an unusual number of turkey vultures in the area......it is not unusual to gaze across the creek and see a dozen or more birds in a single tree......a bit ominous......as if they know something we do not.....i was in the habit of checking on the cat, just in case....but i have yet to see them engaged in actual carrion activity......as for the rest of our little bird friends....we keep the feeder well-stocked so they can catch up nutritionally after a harsh winter......the goldfinches appear to be especially vibrant this season.....there is a single bird that may be partially deaf, blind or other wise disabled.....as we see other birds force it off the feeder....and on a recent occasion my spouse was able to walk right up to the feeder when that bird was eating without the bird moving a muscle....poor thing....life is tough enough without your friends keeping you from a good meal.....

6 years.....

ok, so...the following paragraph began this blog 6 years ago today.....

my middle child has a chant that he utters from time to time- mean mamma, mean mamma..... there is a certain cadence to it that defies description, and sometimes a little dance as well. i think that i will make up my own chant and dance to be done in tandem with his performance. i will ponder the details and get back to you tomorrow...

i never did come up with that chant and dance sequence....i figure i still have plenty of time....

grass!

ok, so.....i arrived home early enough this evening to water the grass and my new planting bed......and lo...there were fine threads of grass emerging ever so tenderly from the soil underneath the straw......life is good.....

b-ball.....

ok, so i stayed up til 11:30 pm watching the last b-ball game of the season.....i knew when kansas hit a 3-point shot with 2 seconds to go to tie the gamer that memphis would lose in ot....so i went on to bed.....i had grown kinda fond of memphis in the round of 8......especially with the hyphenated fellow douglas-roberts....one rarely sees hyphenated anybody in the sports world......a nice touch.....but sadly neither that poor fellow nor his teammates could hit the broadside of a barn last evening.....

unbloggable.....

ok, so the details of my last 72 hours are, alas, unbloggable........not even recorded in the secret blog for posterity......somebody smart once commented that the better part of life is just showing up.....sometimes showing up can reap rewards.....and sometimes showing up can get a person in trouble.....enough said....

places to go; people to see.....

ok, so....yet another week in public health......lots of small projects that i must get out of the way before i tackle the budget.....all work and no play for the mm these days....

expecting the unexpected...

ok, so...today was a day of the unexpected....though as a semiprofessional worrier i contend that there should be nothing unexpected......just that which i failed to anticipate.....the day started out with the snake in the grass......not exactly grass......more like grape hyacinths....but still...one does not expect to see a snake in 50 degree overcast weather...it was thicker than my thumb....and though striped did not strike me as a garter snake....yeah, well....it did not strike me at all because i leaped backwards to the walk.....the snake did not move.....it just slithered into a comfortable coil....and stared at me through the single visible eye.....yikes.....these days even the snakes have attitude..... i ceremoniously moved the pile of coiled seep-hoses from the porch to my planting bed after retrieving the youngest from town mid-day.....and the most embarrassing surprise was in store.....coiled hose does not easily UNCOIL.....and so with audible cursing i resorted to pinning down the conundrum hose with rocks and bricks in places where there was not enough ready soil to dig it under.....quite the laughable scenario......followed by the next of my failings....i under-estimated the number of bags of mulch required to bury the hoses......by this time i was in no humor to drive back to the lowes knee-deep in mud to buy more.....will swing by after church and before lunch with grandma to buy more mulch...at least those bags that will fit inside the trunk of my car.....my garden is a money-pit when it comes for mulch.....one can never have enough of the lovely brownish/black stuff......and so i dragged my sore and sorry body inside to clean up and start the rest of my day afresh.....and think about supper.....pasta salad sounds good....and while the water came to a boil, i started in the slicing of the vegetables....and....gosh-darn...i tried to cut off a finger slicing up baby carrots....never saw that coming.....i am losing my touch.....

hard work

ok, so.....i did go back down the road with my digging fork, and selected 6 sweet rocket plants growing so close to the road (in the public right-of-way) that the cars would have eventually smashed them down.....and i slipped them into a plastic shopping bag, and strolled innocently back around the circle with my fork over my shoulder.......and 'all the sudden' our neighbor (who has been working on his house for years and years) came ambling out from his porch and laughed as he asked me 'what on earth have YOU been stealing?"......and i showed him my ill-gotten plants.....and suggested he do the same before they are ruined and useless to no one.....it was a good laugh....this morning i moved 12 rose bushes from questionable locations to my new bed....most lacked adequate sunlight, or were in overgrown spots.....i have just gotten back from the lowes, where i bought 5 bags of mulch- the limit to what can be shoved into an accord trunk that is not quite empty......and i am heading back outside to lay down the seep hoses in the new bed, then mulch over them......i have a long list of garden projects, but i will be happy if i can get this one job done this afternoon.....so that i can shower, and sit back and enjoy what remains of the day.....

up early

ok, so....i tried to sleep in and did not manage to sleep past 7:15......figured i had best get up and get something done.....after a few cups of coffee walked out the road and back with my spouse.....a lovely morning for a walk, and well-timed.....lots of wild flowers coming up on the right-of-way that banks up toward the farm.....i plan to head on back there with my digging fork and a few plastic bags in a little while.....mostly sweet rocket.....which would look really nice in my new planting bed.....which appear to be perfectly positioned in front of the bay window in the guest room/retirement suite. I cannot say that i planned this, but at some point i will live in this room and be grateful for the lovely show of color....

restless nights

ok, so....the storms that came through every hour last night really through a wrench into my sleep cycle......up at 2...up at 3....up at 4 and again at 5.....no dreams to recall because i doubt that i slept deeply enough to activate that part of sleep.....no worries....the storms were mostly rain, with thunder far enough off to be a backdrop rather than a focal point.....so at this very moment it is all i can do to muster the gumption to go on upstairs and get dressed for work, because what i would rather do is to go back to bed.....and get some uninterrupted sleep....

it was a dark and stormy night.....

ok, so.....the rain has been steady all last night, and all of this day....and all of this evening, and appears destined to go another night before heading on......my first remark to my loved ones, as i dragged my sorry self through the door this evening going on 7:45 pm that i had earned my keep from all whose deep pockets pay my meager salary.....each county (3) and each university (1)......a tremendously productive day.....my diabetes class...scheduled over the lunch portion of the day ....had 14 persons...remarkable for a pre-registration that listed only 2 names....and my thursday clinic had kinda forgotten that i cannot see clients while i am teaching a class...and they kept paging me as to having a chart ready while i was in the midst of a 2 hour presentation in the conference room.....a class that staff actually ushered people to in person......ah well.....we did drugs and tobacco in my eku class.....and i did share all of my good stories about both.....sorry....no lsd flashbacks to disclose......but i did have the horror of dropping by an apartment in college on a date where an entire bale of marijuana was being cleaned and repacked for distribution......seems my date WAS a distributer.......i suspect he is in prison somewhere at this very moment, as he was unapologetic about how he was working his way through college.....ah well....nobody asked about the inhale thing......so we will never know if bill and i have anything in common......so......i am fed and bathed, and drinking my decaf tea...and wishing i did not have to go to work tomorrow.....the rain is beating against the window....should be a great night to sleep long and hard.....

nearing a major milestone....

ok, so...now that april is in the air.....i realize that i am nearing the anniversary of this blog , which began on a whim in april of 2002....i have just searched back to that first entry.....i have it pasted in a safe place until the big day.....it was this first entry that set the name of the blog in ....stone?......not quite the word i am searching for......i stopped to read a few random blogs from the winter, and then the fall, and then the summer and spring of 2002.....i was catering then.....so many blog entries related directly to cooking/transporting/serving/whining.....hard to believe that anyone could start a blog and not keep it up.....i find typing out my thoughts so cathartic.....ah well.....april 9 is next wednesday.....might just have to crack open dome bubbly......just don't tell my baptist friends.....

satallite radio

ok, so.....i learned today that we have a sat phone/radio.....and i learned how to use it in an emergency.....wow.....i also learned that i have to make some sort of plan as to who gets immunized (prioritized) against whatever in case of an epidemic.....this is huge for the queen of worst-case scenarios......these folks have me totally outclassed in terms of just how bad they can envision......i may never sleep again......but then again.....i have found that the worst things that i imagine never happen...it is the things that never crossed my mind that come along and i deal with them as they arise....and all turns out adequately.....and so i will not devote too much worry time toward the depths that evil could sink........

no fool like an april fool....

ok, so.....it is getting late and i really need to get on with my morning rituals and attempt to make it to work on time....but it just occurred to me that this is april 1st....and i had an overwhelming wish that i was in paris, and buying those little chocolate april fool's fish......or maybe i was just wishing i was in paris, and the fish make it a safer story.....

scramble.....

ok, so.....i have fully admitted that i play scramble with my eyes half shut in the morning... with my coffee.....the urge to take one's turn is just too great.....and alas, the discovery that some brilliant foe has beaten you by one single point is hard to take, even with one's coffee at hand.....realistically, this person could have beat me with more than that one point...why show off it with more than it takes to win?....ah well.....a game disappeared overnight because the player teaches school (out of d-ville) and has obviously been very busy...i am playing with my bro-in-law and his 2 sisters all at the same time.....which is like herding cats as the youngest sibling lives in new zealand and plays at very odd times.......and i am in the midst of play with a far-flung friend.....and i am very much hoping that her brilliance with language does not otherwise transfer to finding english words on a 5 x 5 screen!......i need to win on occasion to keep hope alive......and given that i cannot play during the day.....facebook is still blocked by the state o'ky......i have to get my thrills in before and after work.....at this point i have only broken 100 once, and only made it to the leader board on a game that lacked players......i so enjoy this game because it feels as though it has the potential to keep my brain agile......and this may come in handy when my brain decides to follow the lead of my aching/aging bones......