Monday, February 19, 2007

Spring has sprung

We lost a lot of plants due to the cold weather last month but not these. These are my tete-a-tete daffodils. They are very cheery and do a lot to encourage gardening. They are just so little and so cute even amongst the dead foliage.

The asparagus fern at the far right didn't make it but it looks like it will be a great year for the squill in the background. The snow-in-summer ground cover seems to be making a valiant effort to come back after freezing to nothingness.
We finally got some much needed rains so I scattered scads of wildflower seeds to help beautify the denuded canyon. It is supposed to rain again later this week so that will give them a fighting chance of germinating. I hope the rabbits and birds will give them half a chance. My neighbor says I was just scattering rabbit food seeds. (That black stuff is my effort to control the weeds this year.)

Missing

In other news...

Today we took Ta to the airport. She has to go back and finish up her internship in Twin Falls. Actually, we made arrangements for her to come home for her birthday a while ago but that was before she was hired for a job in the Mojave desert studying the desert tortoises. So she came for a visit and now has to go back for her last nine days.

Just so you know, always allow twice the travel time as you think you need. Her flight was scheduled to leave at 4 p.m. It takes about an hour to get to the airport so we left at 2 p.m. That leaves a good hour to get through the security and everything. Our airport is little and that is always plenty of time. Not today. Everybody and his brother and sister was traveling west from who knows where after the long weekend. But it was rush hour. They should have been going the other way. Then there were two, not just one, two four-car pile-ups on our route. One would have been do-able. We got off the freeway that was really just a glorified parking lot and detoured for a bit and got back on and then just decided to stick it out. No one was going anywhere fast. We finally got to the airport ten minutes past flight time. Oh well. We did our best.

We dropped Ta off so she could see what she could do to get back to Idaho. Da and I went to a nearby Starbucks to await her call. I like sitting in a Starbucks much better than driving around and around an airport. And why spend money on parking when you can spend it on a mocha? We were just hoping we wouldn't have to repeat the trip tomorrow.

We were very pleased to hear from Ta in half an hour. At no extra charge they put her on the next flight to Salt Lake. From there she has to go standby to Boise, which was where she had originally planned to fly. I hope that the housemate that she had arranged to pick her up will still be able to.

So Da and I drove home with everybody else and his brother but not sister. The trip home was much nicer. What should have been a just over a two hour jaunt turned into a five and a half hour ordeal. (Of course that includes a stop at In-N-Out for a burger.) Next week Da and I will drive out to Twin Falls and help her bring all her stuff home before she moves out again.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

A month gone already

I am not a good blogger. It has been nearly a month since my last published post and I don't even feel guilty. I read somewhere that the best bloggers write everyday or at least every week. If one doesn't blog at least every ten days he will quit for lack of readers. Hmmmmm...

I did write a draft of a post weeks ago but Da advised me not to publish it as I was quite irritated when I wrote it. It still sits there unpublished. The only reasons to write and publish about unpleasant things are selfish and childish. So there it sits. It's off my chest. I'll delete it someday.

But it did make me not want to post for a while. Too scary to see what can be said in the heat of the moment that might be regretted. This is not a good place to vent. I vent to Da, he is good for me. We agree on things.

But I missed the recap month of January.

So.....

The year of 2006:

January
--Da has surgery on his eye
February
--En visits
March
--I get new glasses and Da gets a new prosthetic eye
(New eyes all around!)
--I get a treadmill
(I have not made a regular thing of using it yet)
--We go to Williamsburg
April
--We go to Washington, D.C.
(I need to post the pictures still)
--We get new computers for Da and me
(I love this machine)
May
--Ta goes to Chicago
June
--Ta goes to Idaho
--Ta walks in the graduation ceremony at UCR
--En visits
July
--very hot and muggy weather
August
--I get a speeding ticket
(my bad)
September
--I make two pinwheel quilts
--I have a colonoscopy
(not as bad as I thought it would be)
--Gramma has 80th birthday party
October
--I make a triple Irish chain quilt
--We visit Springfield
--Esperanza fire out back
November
--Papa dies
--We visit Springfield again for funeral
December
--En visits
--We go to Burbank conference

What did you do last year?