Greetings from the Frigid...errrr...South.

I know I know...typical Stack...don't post for MONTHS and then post too much.

No excuses...I must bow to my nature...some call it a muse...I'm just inspired in spurts and there is nothing for it but to write when I WANNA and NOT when I don't. Movin right along.

So, I don't know if anyone else noticed but this has been a CRAZY week, climate-wise. Seriously on Saturday and Sunday, we girls were out hooping in the very warm weather...short sleeves...Monkey-Face even had to change into shorts and sandals...she, apparently, has hot feet.

Monday we went to a friend's house and it was your standard February jacket/jeans weather...but we played outside...with bunnies...and horses (more on that in the next post)...

Now we KNEW it was going to get cold and we were going to have some "Wintry Mix" precipitation...which, at least since I've lived in Texas means some mixture of water and ICE...it's always got ice in it...sometimes big ole hail...sometimes little crystally stuff...but ICE is involved. But I was not prepared for what we got.

It SOUNDED like being in a Sonic ice machine...(to those of you outside of an area that Sonic has stores...I'm sorry...and they have the best ice ever...it's teeny tiny little barrels of ice that are fabulous for chewing). When the storm rolled in it actually rattled and sounded like the house was being pummled with those itty bitty chunks...and then we could hear it sliiiiiide off the roof. Very interesting. And LOUD. I was up, pretty much the whole storm.

So I got up KNOWING that we were going to have piles of ice and frozen stuff all over...I mean, this is not my first rodeo, y'know?

Yeah.

I was wrong. What we actually had was an ice rink...a HUGE, impenetrable, thick, slippery ice rink.

AND it was CaCaCaCold...it sat at about 18 degrees most of the day and dipped to 12 degrees by my bedtime. (To those of you who live in Colorado, or Canada, or Wisconsin who are thinking, "18 Degrees is nuthin, ya big baby...it was -23 with a wind chill that made it feel like -207"...I have this to say...if you CHOSE to live in Colorado or Canada or WISCONSIN...you bought your ticket, baby! I live in the SOUTH and the south has done me wrong this week. There.)

So what did that mean? Well, Bubba stayed home...he has a laptop...easy enough.

And the girls played...



Check out the frozen rings left by the hoops...very cool...


I think the most fascinating thing was that WE made no impact on that ice...no footprints...no noticeable trace of where we went or fell (ehem)...

So that was Tuesday, right? Well Wednesday stayed REALLY cold...Bubba started getting a little stir crazy...SO...using salt and a pitch fork, he hacked his way to the concrete on his side of the driveway (tossing the extra chunks onto my side of the driveway...who says chivalry is dead?) and managed to get OUT and buy us Chinese food for lunch, for which I was thankful. And Thursday, he actually went to work.

But wait, there's more.

This morning, we woke up to this...


Yeah...easily 6 inches of snow by 8 am and prolly closer to 8 to 10 now, at 4 ish...on TOP of 2 inches of ice. Um...Bubba was grounded again.

But the girls played...


And I STEPPED in it...just for you, dear reader...I'm a giver...


But I can't say that I've had the best attitude about it. For some reason, just KNOWING that I can't go anywhere makes me REALLY want to. It's possible I need to work on contentment. I do find myself saying, "Ah...that's pretty"...but I have ZERO desire to play in it...brrrrr.

And the other irritating part...it BROKE my little green house...that I put out not expecting REALLY freezing temperatures to last for days and days...


And I can't tell through the iced over plastic if anything survived cuz I'm afraid that unzipping it will REALLY break it...and release whatever magic heat might be in there so I'm forced to take pictures through the frost...


It LOOKS kinda green in there...of course so did my aloe plant that I accidentally left outside during a frost a couple years ago...it looked really green...until it melted...and then it sorta looked like an olive colored octopus...it did not survive.

At this moment, it's warmer than it has been all week...a WHOPPING 26 degrees...I might even consider taking off my second pair of socks...it's THAT warm. And there is stuff dripping off of the roof that I can only assume is water...but I'm not really getting my hopes up.

See ya around...

A Plague of One...

The weather has been a little cooler here. With a couple of good sized storms behind us, I think it's probably safe to say that our days of 100+ degrees are probably finished for 2010.

With the cooler weather comes the WANT to be outside in all of us...it's kind of like "spring fever", only for fall...or nearly fall.

So we've been outside a lot...hooping...watching the clouds...and checking out the wildlife.

We have watched the wonderful aerial displays of dragon flies every night. And there haven't been less than a dozen at any given time...and one time I counted twenty-three. It was a little nerve-wracking right at first because they are HUGE and get really close to us...I think that we must scare up bug life that they like to eat because they come out every time we are out there.

And then there are the grasshoppers. They are EVERYWHERE! We have this little bug pop-up tent that the girls keep filling up with grass hoppers and then letting them go, and then filling it up again.

So catching a grasshopper isn't really that big of a deal in our yard...but check this out...



Not impressed? How 'bout this one...



That is my kid's toe. Surely just the whim-wam factor has to impress a little. I mean, I'm not afraid of grasshoppers...I've even caught them...but to let it crawl around on me...(shudder)...no THANK you!

So she found this beast today...and they made best friends. Did I ever mention that Beanie's middle name should have been Doolittle?



But I did have a little bit of vindication...

After a few minutes of this...



and then THIS...


She also got the whim-wams...and had to find a new place for her friend...a new place that was not TOUCHING her. WOO HOO! I'm not the only "girl"...I hate being the only "girl".

Maybe it's only a grasshopper...but it sure puts a new pin in "plague of locusts" for me.

See ya around...

The Garden...

Bubba and I couldn't really be called gardeners. Quite frankly, if it were completely up to Bubba, we'd have grass right up to the front door...he'd mow it once a week and not look at it again until the next time it needed to be mowed. I'm a wish-I-was-a gardener. I LOVE to read about them...visit them...look at them...PLANT them...but then I just sorta want them to grow and leave me alone and look pretty when I want to look at them.

But I WANT to be one. I WANT to have one. I sorta have this little dream in my head that we could use a garden to be more self-sufficient one day. To those of you who know Bubba and his aversion to things that are now growing or ever have been grown in or near the ground...STOP that giggling...this is MY fantasy...and you never know, we COULD save money growing green beens, snow peas and lettuce...My fantasy really DOESN'T include Bubba EVER eating eggplant, squash, beets or any type of green except iceberg, I promise. But I digress.

Anyway, for the last two years I've had a pretty good (if I do say so myself) little garden. Last year there was a little herb garden in the back under tree house part of the swing set and we had one 4' x 4' other little square foot garden of...well, can you guess??? That's right, green beans.

Also for the last about 5 years Bubba and I have been saving up for some outside stuff for the house...we wanted planter beds in the front...we still want a patio cover on the back and Bubba wants the sun-shade screens and I want honest to goodness outside funiture...heaven SAVE me from the sling back beach chairs that I keep buying.

This year in spring, my dear sweet Bubba, the one who would rather MOW than bother, purchased for my pure joy, stone planter beds for the front of the house. They weren't much to look at in the beginning...I did take pictures of the yard all covered with stone and dust but I can't find it right now.

I REALLY should have taken these pictures about 2 weeks ago when the Cosmos weren't all gray and spent...still look at my glorious garden...



Here are some more pictures of those cosmos...every single one of them grown from cast off flower heads...Not thinking too clearly, I'd been dead-heading directly into the garden. It rained the entire time we were in Colorado seeing the new baby and when we got back over 40 new cosmos plants had grown. I only saved about 20 of them and of that 20 we lost a few to replanting...but MAN do they bloom. It's funny because the little potted plants that they came from really only had 2 or 3 flowers at a time. These plants from seed went CRAZY. At the height of their bloom, a couple weeks ago, I counted 13 on just ONE plant...Now they are a bit spent...we haven't been dead-heading and it's been dipping into the 40s at night, so the leaves have lost their light green...but they are still so pretty...



The extra blooms on flowers from seed seem to be a running theme in my garden this year because these two marigolds ALSO came from seeds. I swiped (with permission) a couple of dead flowers off my neighbor's marigolds (again, little piddly things) and look what they have wrought. I've personally never seen such a bushy marigold with so many blooms as this first one...the second one is smaller...we transplanted it when we transplanted the cosmos and it had a harder go of it...but it still is bigger again by half of the parent plants...



I also discovered that natural remedies work in the garden, too. When I got my planters I KNEW I wanted to grow roses...and not those overblown knock-out roses that everyone grows. Nope, I wanted real and true, cut-em-at-a-five-leaflet roses...more tea roses than hybrids, but if they had the right shape and smell I wasn't terribly picky. The lady at Lowes practically CALLED me a fool and told me I'd better stock up on anti-fungals because once the summer hit I was going to have to dose them every week or so for black spot. "Hmmmm," said my California-city-girl self, "We shall see."

Well Ms. Lowes-lady was not entirely wrong. We did get black spot...and on my favorite peachy rose, too. But it didn't happen until the end of September. When I saw the black spot, I cut that sucker right down to the ground. I'd already been using Peppermint Castile soap and water mixed in a spray bottle for aphids...that works great. I didn't have any commercial anti-fungals but I did have Oil of Oregano in the house (great anti-fungal and all around big dog sickness buster in natural healthcare) so I put a dropperful into the half-full bottle of Soap/Water mix and sprayed everything down really well. And then I kept checking. I'd noticed a couple leaves that were infected on two of the other roses and had sprayed them too, but hadn't cut everything off of them.

Anyway, here is the original rose. It is working beautifully on re-growth, no black spot to be seen...and there isn't any on any of the other roses anymore...no aphids either...I love it when I manage to do something that works...



And here are just some random shots around the garden...be warned...you might see a kid or two..(or ehem, three, if you are counting)



Anyway...so hmmm...guess I at least LOOK like a gardener this year...as long as you don't look at what became of LAST year's gardens...



Just SAD...

See ya around...