beating back nature.....

ok, so......i am convinced that should i neglect to weed my beds for more than a a few days....such as a 9-day vacation....my beds would be taken over completely by vines......time was when honeysuckle was the plant to rip out whenever it raised its ugly head....but this is clearly the year for vines..... thick, ropey vines....vines with thorns.....vines with pods (milkweed?)......vines that snake up the long canes of rambling roses, and hydrangeas, and.......even the dead daylily stalks......i have alrteady spent time this morning ripping vines off of the back fence....i swear they were not there yesterday.....i heard on NPR that the excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes for exceptional vines growth...as evidewnced by the huge poison ivy clumps that i must get around to ripping out with disposable gloves.....on the other hand, there is a lovely trailing ground cover that has hybernated in the boxwood oval that is peaking out from the nooks and crannies of the stones and bricks....it is from an Amish farm in northeastern Ohio.....Miss Fanny Schlabaugh gave me the original clump.....we were there with my parents, spouse and children.....visiting her father who was nearing 100 at the time....when we arrived he was out on the thresher......and he came rising into the barnyard waving his arms at my parents who had known him since the mid-50's....but i digress from the vining ground cover......which could possibly get out-of-hand and be just as pecky as the vines i did not plant and do not want in my beds......

jane austen's fight club

ok, so this link is to the youtube version of jane austen's fight club......

"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club. No corsets, no hatpins, and no crying."

book club selection gathering.....

ok, so....we hosted the annual book club selection dinner last evening......and it was preceeded by a months of property upkeep projects....like restaining the deck and latticework, relaying the brick walk behind the garage, repainting the porch, spraying for chiggers, fixing the pond lining......last night the temperature at 7:00 pm was still above 90 degrees.....so we opted to eat inside rather than on the pristine deck area....and we found a workable solution to a gathering that exceeeds the maximum of 12-13 at the table expanded with all leaves....we left the table as it was and borrowed 2 lightweight folding tables from work that sat 6 each....and so we could have accommodated 18 folks for supper.....we dined on grilled citrus marinated salmon, pasta salad, a bean and barley salad, marinated asparagus, cumcumbers in sour cream, strawberry/spinach salad, and strawberry-pretzel salad...plus jan's peppermint patty cupcakes.....we will be reading several books that i have already read....which works out well as my spouse can take his time reading those books......we selected a book that our eldest was asked to read for discussion purposes.....which means we will host the january gathering and worry about clearing snow rather than upkeep projects......

humboldt fog....

ok, so i dragged myself out of bed early to water the flower beds before driving into town to go to the farmer's market......i bought yellow tomatoes and 'bodacious' sweet corn from the only gut who appeared to be selling his own produce.....the other stand appeared to have boxes clearly labeled tomatoes under the tables......and then i popped into V-the market for the humboldt fog as promised on her facebook page.....omg.....i came close to eating it all when i got home from the stop at the aldi store.......if there is a flavor of this earth better than goat cheese i would like to know what it is......

incorrect spelling.....

ok, so.....in my dreams i was editing the headlines for a blog that looked like the huffpost......and every time a word was spelled incorrectly i would correct it....and this tedium went on and on....no action, just spelling errors...i had my fill of headlines yesterday....especially the one that i found on the clipping ripped from wednesday's newspaper by my spouse......uk student in critical condition after police tazing.....seems we know this fellow.......seems he was on the roof of a two story apartment house.....a bit out of his right mind...and the police came to save him from himself by tazing him twice...he got back up after each tazing.....and when they went to taze him the third time he jumped off the roof.....omg.....i feel great sympathy for people who find themselves temporarily out of their right minds.....it is only by the grace of god that i cling to sanity on most days...i cannot fault those who struggle with their own....

world cup......

ok, so.....we talked to our dear middle child after lunch, after church....then rather than heading outdoors to do manual labor....we settled onto the sofa for a nice afternoon of air conditioned world cup final play....which i am certain involved short naps for each of us.....i have no recollection of the first half after the group photo ops and handshaking.....and then i waited for the brilliant professional soccer moves that i have been led to believe comes with this level of play....but mostly all i saw was chaps dashing to the ground and holding various parts and screaming indignantly....well, all except the guy who got kicked in the chest.....that looked like a bonafide foul.....in my humble opinion, the dutch looked a bit meaner and rougher than the spaniards......

riding for reading

ok, so.....my eldest child blogged his way across america last summer.......62 entries give or take.....with the blog hosted by the local newspaper....at some point after the ride was finished, the paper took down the blog.....which made the links to the blog broken, and made the actual content of the blog inaccessible.....phone calls and emails to the newspaper asking for access to the content by the author have produced no results....sad to lose such a valuable piece of writing and scrapbooking.......and then yesterday, while i was whiling away my lunch hour catching up on my favorite blogs on google reader......i saw riding for reading as a blog that had not been recently updated.....and there, drawn up into that site, was the entire blog, pictures, verbal descriptions and all.....and so i have copied and pasted my way through 160 pages of blogged memories, tidied them up a bit by downsizing the photos a tad...and downloaded them onto my thumbdrive......the days are not in actual order, and the end is somehow in the middle....but i will leave the final editing to my child when he gets back from his latest ride.......

true

ok, so.....i was driving back into d-ville with errands plotted out for minimum carbon foot printing, when the song that was playing just before ATC was scheduled to come on had a lyric that almost brought tears to my eyes....'so true'......and i missed my friend gail so very much at that moment.....she who often described realities as 'so true'...or just 'true'.....and she has been gone for so very long...or has it been just the other day......i last talked to her on my birthday.....but i cannot remember which birthday it was.....

stain.....

ok, so......i spent the afternoon staining the latticework that hangs below the deck.....mostly because now that the deck has been restained, the latticework looks grungy.....because it has never-ever been stained....and because i have a planting scheme for the bed beside the under-deck gate.....i figured i might as well go ahead and stain that entire area before i planted the new things and before the existing roses grow back from severe pruning......and so i managed to get all but the higher parts....and i found myself in a curious daydream as i dabbed down the long strips and across the counter-ribs.....even more curious is my reluctance to record the daydream for posterity...suffice it to say that gardening was involved.....

a moment of feline amusement.....

ok, so...on this freebie day-off i started out early with the mid-summer weeding, removal of dead day lily stems, etc....and i ventured outside the fence to weed out the wild shrubberies that want so badly to grow between my boxwoods.....and 'all the sudden' as we like to say in these parts...i noticed that the dog had strayed off and so i called out to him with several extra-loud rounds of Buddy,Buddy,Buddy......but instead of the dog running obediently my way....the cat sprang out of the underbrush and came scurrying to me.....i decided to reward her with a little morsel of leftover porkchop out of the refrigerator......one must reinforce such loyalty......eventually the dog came home, but he missed out on the treats....

zones.....

ok, so.....i appear to forget from sunday night to saturday sometime midday that our house is temperature and time controlled to maximize comofrt while we are home and/or sleeping to save fuel when we are not at home and/or sleeping......and so when i try to take a nap on saturday or sunday afternoon i wake up almost feverish only to recall that the daytime temeprature upstairs is way higher than the evening temperature....this is not huge news, gentle readers......just a window into my current state of confusion...

torn....

ok, so recap my life for the past 4 weeks.....i discovered the day before we were to travel to our middle child's college graduation that she had not submitted her tax return...and soon after figured out that she was not taking her medication....and since that day i have been granted power of attorney, and have taken over her finances, cancelled credit cards, confronted the shysters who were soliciting repetitive charitable donations......tripled her loan repayment for early payoff....and entertained her nightly with supper and observed medication dosing.....and felt that she was really getting back to 'usual'.....and then the letter came today from the state folks advising her that she had failed to submit medical reports that supported her continued driving liberties....and that is where the angst comes into play......i was with her when she renewed her license....and nobody mentioned a medical statement.....and i have seen every bit of mail she has received in the meantime...and i have seen no request for a medical statement....and so i am torn.....this would be the perfect excuse to take her keys.....but then again...she is so much herself these days it seems wrong to take the keys without an exhaustive study of the facts...so i will call the state folks on tuesday, and take her to see her doctor, and suggest an evaluatuon of her skills before i relingiqush her license.....

sick and staying home.....

ok, so...i was up at least four times in the night....lost count....and i have decided that sick time is for staying home when one's body is out of sorts.....and so i am getting ready to go back to bed......