Round 1 - FIGHT!

That

Sucked

Ass.

I ain' even gonna lie.

Round 1 is done.  Three more to go, but none should be as bad as this.  The woman kept asking if I wanted a break.  You could tell she didn't like my answer.  I could see the shots - they were the viscosity of rubber cement - there were three full to the brim syringes.  There was a beginning and an end.  I told her it wasn't like pregnancy - a nine month unending hangover.  This was childbirth and there was an end.  An end I could see sitting on the table next to me.  Plod on, my friend.  And so she did, but I made her laugh and she pressed the plunger too hard, too fast.  Such is my life, although in hindsight it was just as terrible as the rest.

So, sports fans, it's done.  The rest of the rounds are just shots in the arm. 

Good news, this morning we caught a cat.  The wrong cat, but a cat.  The animal control called my cell around 3 and said they were at the house getting the cat.  They reset the trap and by 5 we caught the right cat.  He's in the trap caterwaling now.  I'd be pissed, too.  I can't believe it was that easy to get him.

I keep playing in my mind how grateful I am that he came after me and not one of the children.  We were all three of us standing there together.  He had his pickings.  He picked me.  Thank God.

The morning comes early, and all will be and is well.
Amen.

Raise Your Hands!

Come on, everybody!  Raise your hands in the air if you love, love, LOVE rabies shots!!  Woohooooo!!! Par-tay!  Go, Ribbit.  It's your birthday.  Go, Ribbit.  It's your birthday.

Ok, it's not my birthday.  That would make this suck all the more worse.

Rabies shots start tomorrow.  Animal control was wonderful and came out to set a trap.  They're being very helpful.  The Dr. at the clinic I went to yesterday was seemingly unconcerned about rabies, but I called my regular dr today just to make sure the bite was in my file along with getting the tetanus shot and she's 150% convinced that rabies is an immediate risk and I need to start treatments tomorrow.

You can't make this stuff up.
I wonder if there's a rabies awareness color I can start for Keychains for a Cause.....  :)  Hey, if I don't laugh, I'm going to cry....which I did - right in the middle of class after I got the innitial phone call.  Then, as I was walking back to the classroom a magnificent senior asked if I'd be his escort for the baseball team's senior night - their last home game.  After school, I ran to animal control, back to the house for them to set the trap and then back to work to fetch the kids.  We got the student a candy bar 'flower' arangement, the kids and me a pizza and went back to my school to eat so I could get some work done and then went to the ball field.  While we were standing in the middle of the field, the second call from the dr. came through.  I had to leave the field to take the phone call.  I felt bad for the kid, but since he was in the class where I teared up, he understood, but I still think it looked bad.

I'm telling you, you can't make this stuff up.

At least I'll have a better chance of surviving a zombie attack.

The morning comes early.  Damn that cat.  Sweet gardening dreams.

Really? I Mean, Really?

Y'all don't even know the half of it. 

Before I get to the totally unbelieveable non-gardening aspect of this post, let me take a moment to tell you that the garden is growing in leaps and bounds.  I'm trying my fourth position for the peppers and they seem to be doing well.  I planted all of my tomatoes out today - six in a box and then six in pots.  As always, it was interesting since this year, even though I didn't forget to label them like last year, I think the kids got out there and moved my labels around.  The only ones I could correctly identify were the Brandywine.  The rest will be an adventure.

We're eating lettuce and radishes like they're going out of style and the beans and cucumbers are sprouting and broccoli headding and I've only pulled three cabbages with worms.  The rest seem okay for now. 

The squash in beds is doing fantastically and I couldn't bring myself to throw out some squash seedlings so I put them directly in the ground on the side of the house.  We'll see what becomes of them.  We do have some volunteers in the burn pit.  I can't believe they survived even after we fired it, but this is where we threw the pumpkins out and they look like they'll now be staking their claim to the burn pit.

They won't get any sun now that the trees are filling in, but I think it's funny how the seeds know just what they're supposed to do and get the job done regardless.

On to the non gardening portion of our show - but you've got to wait for the good stuff.

On our way to St. Louis for spring break we stopped in Metropolis, Il.  We got a guide book and went to see the antique fire truck at the station and wound up getting a very indepth tour of the facility.  They were FANTASTIC to the children.

Now, no town can be named Metropolis without it being dubbed the home of Superman and no town tauting itself as the home of Superman would be complete without a giant Superman statue in the middle of town.

And now I've seen it all my friends.

But there are times where you just look at your life and go, "Really?  .....Really?"  Such a day, for me, was yesterday.  There has been a feral cat roaming the neighborhood for a few weeks.  Around 8:00 yesterday morning, the kids saw the cat on our pool deck and asked if they could go outside to see it.  We went on the upper deck to look and when the cat started to come closer, I said to them, "You can look, but don't touch that cat.  You don't know what it will do." 

The cat was a love bug.  It was meowing, rubbing itself on the wood, grill and house, rolling over so we could see its belly.  I then said again, "You can look, but don't touch that cat."  The cat apparently took exception to that, popped up to his feet and began slow, low to the ground, stalking me.  I was able to say twice, "The cat is stalking me - get away, " when that rotten cat pounced at me like a jack-in-the-box.  That nefarious fiend turned his body in mid air so its jaws were on either side of my shin, clung on with teeth and claws and then pushed off just as swiftly as he pounced.  I'm afraid I spouted a few unladylike words as I herded the kids inside. 

It surely hurt, but I didn't think he had gotten to do much damage because I had on sweat pants.
Right.

Those would be nice puncture marks.  I look like I got into a fight with a vampire and lost. 
Let's run this down:
Feral cat that attacks unprovoked
Cats have FILTHY mouths and claws
Feral cat
Rabies
Last time I had a tetanus shot: before I went to college - and for the sake of arguing, let's just say that was a long, long time ago.

It took me hours to find a clinic that was open, and of course both kids were unwilling to let me out of their sight, so they came with me.  The Dr. was about to go to lunch, so I took the kids for some themselves, only to return to hear that she couldn't help me since it was an animal bite and she sent me somewhere else.

We sat at this somewhere else for about two hours.  Both kids were fantastic with the exception that the girl was convinced all would be well if I put my leg up which meant her kneeling on the ground assuming the position of someone giving an offering and then me placing my leg in her outstretched arms while we were in the waiting room with God and everyone else.

Four hours, a tetanus shot and antibiotics later, I barely had time to shower before I had to leave to chaperone Prom, and as I wrote in an email to a friend earlier, I didn't get home until around 12:00 Am and couldn't fall asleep because the residual beats inside my head said 'dance on, fool!' However, being that I was not in danger falling out of my dress from either the front or the back from by dress being seven sizes too small, my sense of adventure rapidly dissipated and I achieved Dreamland which even so proved more difficult than I thought since I couldn't rest on my left because of my leg and my right arm hurt from the tetanus shot.  I'm not begruding the kids tears anymore when they get shots.

Then, that rotten cat stalked me again this morning while I was in the garden.  It followed me from the side yard, under the fence and then to the back door as I ran in the house.  The man turned the hose on it, but it came back later.  That cat had better not be rabid.  I need to call my dr. in the morning to follow up with her and see if I need to worry about that.

And yes, because I know you're dying to know, we did have one dress burst, tears in the bathroom, and blood spilled. It was A PROM, BABY!!!

The morning comes early.  I hate that cat.  Sweet gardening dreams.

Wanna Be Part of a "Flash Blog?"

A girlfriend of mine is organizing a "Flash Blog" - kind of like a flash mob, but blogger style - to highlight whale education. It's timed with the release of her first novel for which all of the proceeds go to whale education.

Here are the rules:

You must be willing to post the film about whale education

You must hold off on the post until a specified date. The goal is for everyone to post it on the same day, hence a 'flash blog.'

She's running a list of sponsoring blogs on her own website as well. If you are interested, email me at the address in the far right column by Thursday, March 29. Send me your email and the address for your blog. I'll gather a list of interested bloggers and email you on Thursday with the details.

Judging by the scope of what she's already got going on, this is going to be fun. I'm in!

Terrible Sight in Roswell, GA

A fight has been brewing for years in Roswell, GA over a man dubbed the Chicken Man and his keeping of a large number of birds on his property. He's become a local symbol of the back yard chicken movement, but in my opinion, he took his mission too far. He's served jail time, suspected that his birds were poisoned and today he was facing eviction from his property.

Apparently, marshalls were there to aid in the eviction when the man called a news station and told it to get off of his property....and then the house exploded.

You can read more about him and all of the legal troubles here:
http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/home-of-roswell-chicken-1398695.html

The battle has been poorly fought from the start with errors on both sides of the argument, and I think I've posted about him somewhere here before, but this is not the way it needed to end, or so I'm assuming it has ended being that a body was found in the house, but they haven't released whose it was.

And...We May Have a Problem.

I do think we've got a few problems already this year. All problems, however, could be made okay if my tomatoes were germinating. They're not. I'm a bit disapointed. I'm hoping they'll do so soon as I really don't want to buy transplants. I don't know if they stock the ones I like. ;(

Here's what's not a problem. This is the picture of the oregano and parsley that went missing the other day. Holy Smokes! They were nuts. I'm thinking I should have looked up how to trim them before I butchered this lot. Problem 1. I'm hoping they'll grow back.


Here's what I snagged. I only took from that one parsley and the one oregano 'bush' beside it and some off of the rosemary behind it.

I've got it drying in my dehydrator now and I'll put little baggies in the mail room on Monday - clearly labeled baggies.

If you remember, last year the man put in a pool and I lost major points on my 'woman card' for fighting him on it. I really hate summers. I need to work and the kids need to be busy 24/7. I wind up doing some pretty stupid things over the summers (215 square foot garden anyone?). Anyway, even though it didn't get finished until the end of the summer, we sure got our use out of it.

We had to move the horseradish bed that was nice and contained in a little 3x3 foot spread. Looks like some roots went through the soil beneath and now are popping up. Sadly I'm using that soil to fill in the potatoes as they grow out of control. I hope I got all of the roots out. It's so incredibly invasive, isn't it. These will likely get mowed down, so who knows if they'll give any good roots.

Here's the big problem....

Look again....

Not sure if these are termites or just flying ants. They had calmed down a bit right before I took this picture. They were swarming while I was out there which made me stand there stupified.

Oh well. We'll see.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams....and if my tomato seedlings would come up it wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.

Plantings, Patty's, and Other Scurrilous Activities

Ok...Plantings come first - this is a garden blog you dirty minded fools. Then and only then will we get to the information that may be considered circumspect.


Apparently I've been gone from Blogger for so long that I no longer remember how to move pictures without deleting them. Well...that'll learn me. Now that planting season is really coming to a head, I'm hopeful, more hopeful than last time, that I'll get back into this regularly. I still am at least four months behind in blog reading. I'm just waiting for summer vacation and then LOOK OUT!!!! You'll be seeing some responses on posts you made in December and go....What?


I went ahead and started my tomato and squash seeds. The way things are going right now I'd say I could direct plant these suckers now and not have a problem. I might honestly put the zucchini and zephyr in the ground in two weeks anyway. We've got spring break and we're headded to St. Louis so I think they'll fare better in the boxes than they would at their own mercy on the porch. I'm hopeful, however, that Auntie Daddy will take care of the tomato seedlings for me....By the way, Auntie Daddy, will you seedling sit?


I hilled the potatoes for the first time today. Some have sprouted and some have not. The reds seem to be taking off faster than the Yukon Golds. Right now, I'm hilling only around the tall ones, but I'll start filling the box sooner or later. I direct seeded lettuce this year which was a HUGE mistake. I'm usually drowning in lettuce by now and the ones in ground are not even the size of my pinky. Chalk one up as a point for procrastination. I did plant carrot seeds and radish seeds this week, but we had a real toad floater and I half bet any of the carrot seeds are gone with the wind.


Part of the 'Gone from Blogger' syndrome is the subsequent random deletion of the awesome picture I took of the broccoli. Envision it if you would. I'll give you a moment. Beautiful, aren't they. Thanks. I thought so too. Anyway, I was taking their picture and as I stepped back I looked down and screamed.AAAHHH!!!! This oregano was put into a pot two years ago and was pathetic. Utterly beyond pathetic. I let it die. It died like it meant it. Last year it put out some pitiful shoots and plaintively at that. Just enough so I couldn't ditch it. I had no idea it had done this. Fantastic!


Cut scene to yet another missing picture of the other corner yard. I figured if this one looked like this then how about the other corner yard that I've basically ignored. Holy Guacamole! as my daughter would say. There are three there that are going crazy. Can you see it! Yeah, neither can I because the blasted picture went MISSING and I deleted it from my computer and phone. Whatever. I'll get out there tomorrow and give it another go - more push to post more often (and make shorter posts which doesn't hurt any of your feelings, I'm sure.)


I'm thinking of drying some of the parsley and oregano - for they are legion - and putting them in baggies and then in the mail room at school....hmmm...oregano in baggies. Maybe I'll add a note this time telling people what they are getting instead of just dropping the bags on the table.


On a personal note - gardeners can stop reading now if they choose - although there is something sacreligious at the end to whet your whistle if you keep reading...


This weekend we celebrated both the boy's and girl's birthdays. With them being only a month apart - literally - and since we can't afford to mortgage our house for a birthday party twice in two months, we usually combine theirs. This year they decided on the park where they could invite as many people as they wanted instead of only two friends each somewhere else. We had terrible rain all the night before and well into the morning. We were toast. I prepared the kids for a cancelation and the sun gods smiled on us and cleared everything up to an 80 degree day just an hour before party time. Then there was the cake incident. Ah, the cake incident. Now THAT's another post. A long one. Next time, maybe.


"Cake incident" notwithstanding, the party was wonderful! Here's a picture my mom grabbed of the fam. It's a great picture. Notice the cake. There's a story behind that cake. You'd be proud of me, my friends. Very proud.


Notice as well that neither kid is looking at the camera. They're attracted to shiny things. This is par for our course.

The man played a gig last night for St. Patrick's Day with the Old School Outlaws - his Southern rock cover band and the bar had this sign hanging over the stage where the drummer was located. Seriously? Read this. How completely sacreligious. Do these people know no shame? There's not an inch of moral fiber to be found in anyone associated with that bar and the shame transfers to us by association.

Good lord, people. Sundays is plural, not possessive!! *hangs head in shame*

Auntie Daddy was gracious enough to come with us, although she didn't quite realize this band plays three sets instead of the one the other band usually plays. We didn't get home until around 3:00 AM and my knees have gently reminded me all day that I cannot dance all night no matter how much of a stud I think I am.

We sure did have fun, however.

The morning comes early. And I really do need another day to recuperate. Sweet oregano and St. Patty's Day dreams.

Hey - St Patty's Day is all about green. Man, we gardeners ROCK this holiday.