Topiary

I've seen topiaries around at various gardens and they look kind of nice as a focal point or something. When I see one at the store, however, it always says "too expensive" for what it is, just a pruned bush, but I have one now and it wasn't expensive at all.

A few days after a neighborhood garage sale, I went out in the front yard. I rarely do that anymore because the dogs are getting too old to go for walks and if I'm going out, it is usually in the car and I don't touch the yard. This time, though, I had to go and put away the bikes and lawn spreader that I had tried to sell at that big garage sale. I had left them out hoping that someone would just help themselves and get them off my hands. My part in that garage sale was a dismal failure. My sister, Sue, is a master at them, I'm not.

I digress. Nobody was kind enough to take the stuff, but there, tossed on the lawn, was a decrepit odd thing. The pot looked like it had been shredded by a weed whacker and the chicken wire cage was just hanging onto the pot by a little wire. The ailing plant was not inside either the cage or the pot. Its roots were all exposed and dried out, but it was attached, somehow. I lovingly brought the contraption to my potting bench and proceeded to salvage what I could. New pot, fresh dirt, some "nyeting" and lots of water and I have my very own topiary! For free! I think it will survive. Somebody must have thought that my house looked like a place that would care for orphan plants. It is.

Soaked

I am cold and wet. I just got finished checking out the sprinkler system. Six of the ten lines are okay now. The other four will have to wait for a warmer day. That's a tedious job. Back and forth, from the control box to the yard carrying a screwdriver, scissors and pliers to make sure each head is functioning properly. Only had to replace two heads and clean out three. Nice to get it done, though. Chase loved helping me. He is so happy playing in the water. He is even more soaked than I am.

Ta home

Ta is home again. For a week anyway. Her flight was delayed for two hours which caused us to miss reading meeting. She called us when we were 15 minutes from the airport to say that she was just then getting on the plane in Phoenix. I guess we should have called the airline before leaving home like they always say you should. We usually do, but not this time.

I tried to call En to have her check on her computer when the flight was expected to arrive but her computer wasn't on and we didn't have the flight number and she was groggy 'cause I woke her up. She keeps even stranger hours than I do. Oh well, maybe I need a laptop.

We used the extra time to eat dinner at Taco Bell and have a coffee at Starbucks. Then I read the whole of the Taco Bell nutrition guide. Turns out that bean burritos are more nutritious than tacos. That is good because that is what I always got for Ta and En when they were little. Easier for little kids to eat, anyway. Then I reorganized the navigation system in the car. Got rid of stray markers and markers that I don't go to anymore and set new markers for the different airlines at the airport. With both kids soon to be living away from SoCal I think we will be going to the airport a lot more frequently. I sure hate to have nothing to do. Should keep a copy of Reader's Digest in the car or something. I don't have any portable handwork going on at the moment. Just don't feel crafty right now.

Ta seems excited about the internship. It is hard to tell with her, though. She is like her dad in that she doesn't show her emotions much. When we got home, she handed me all the papers and pamphlets that they gave her at the workshop in Chicago and then disappeared into the shower. Then she went out to see her friends. That is exactly what she did when she found out that she was accepted into the program, too. I'm starting to see a pattern.

In those papers she handed me, I found essays that previous interns have written and it looks like she will be having a great outdoor adventure slogging through creeks in flood stage, getting 4x4's stuck in the mud, catching, measuring and counting lizards and butterflies and sage grouse and seeing where all the sage bushes grow. All that interspersed with boring bouts with statistical analysis. She likes statistics, though. And she really liked the course she had on geographical information systems. That means putting all that stuff on a map. I think she was cut out for this job.

The first post

This blog place seems to be very easy to handle.

Ta is coming home from Chicago tomorrow. She has gone through the orientation thing for her new internship that starts next month. She will be in Idaho for 5 months. She has a week before leaving to buy all the stuff she needs like hiking boots and jeans and then pack up her car. We already got it serviced and fixed up to go. After being there about a week she will fly home and walk in the graduation ceremony at UCR and then turn around and fly back. I hope her arms hold out.

After rearranging rooms and stuff, I finally have the big room upstairs mostly organized. I even had room to make a quilt for the new baby girl of my niece, secret-agent-josephine. Well, she is not exactly new, she turned 4 months old last week. The quilt turned out very nice, it is all red flannel and red satin on one side, and a creamy soft terrycloth on the other. Very rich looking. I forgot to take a picture before I gave it to her but she promised to take one for me.See more here

I am doing good in using my new treadmill--30 minutes a day 3-4 times a week for a week now.
Today I feel like I accomplished a lot. Treadmilled, vacuumed the whole house, even the stairs, folded all the laundry that I forgot about yesterday, and spent hours in the yard planting flowers and pulling weeds. Got sweaty and a little sunburned. Da and I rearranged the family room again and I finished reading this week's US News and took a nap. I even started a new blog!

The cyst, that I had removed yesterday, itches now. Driving to the surgeon and back took up 2 hours so that is why I forgot the laundry. That and the fact that I had to stop at Home Depot to get some new flowers and then start refilling the color bowls on the front porch. Da had put the loads through the machines for me but he doesn't do folding. Then we had dinner at Mom's and then meeting.

Maybe nothing will happen tomorrow. No, I go to the airport...