October temps

It's an incredibly lovely Sunday morning.  The weather has settled into it's Texas Fall mode with mornings in the low 60s and high temps in the mid-80s.  Perfect temperatures.  Now if we would just get a little more frequent rain, it would be ideal.  The rain last weekend wasn't enough to break the drought of course, but much of Dallas looks green again.  That's a nice plus.  My sister in the high country in Colorado got about 10 inches of snow last weekend when I was getting rain.  I'm glad I'm not there, although the Fall colors are gorgeous, from the pictures she's sent me.

Today is a beautiful day here.  It's still cool right now, totally blue sky, bright sun.  I'm taking advantage of not having to be anywhere today to do a bunch of puttering.  Plus Sunday's my watering day, so I've been out watering the lawn and starting to cut back some of the dead shrubbery.  Amazingly, a bunch of green is showing in the interiors of those shrubs.  Looks like most of them will make it. 

My car is fixed.  It spent 3 days in the shop and is all back together now.  I'm happy about that.  The rental I had was a BRIGHT red Chevy Cobalt.  Not a bad car, but it doesn't handle like my Subaru.  I was glad to have my car back. 

Friday at work I might as well not have gone in.  Computer issues made the day less than productive, although I did attend three meetings I really needed to be at.  Given I had three meetings I suppose my day would have been fairly disrupted anyway.  The computer issues revolved around missing files.  I've spent this last week working on several PowerPoint presentations that I have coming up, and like a good girl, I saved and closed them before I left Thursday evening.  Friday morning they were gone.  Along with two excel files I had saved and four file folders full of files I had created recently.   After a minor panic attack and major ranting, an Information Systems guy came to my office to tell me that they were migrating things to a new server.  My stuff wasn't gone, I just couldn't access it.   They predicted I'd be able to access it again in, oh, eight hours or so.  *laughing*  Talk about your mixed emotions.  Vast relief that I wouldn't be required to recreate files from scratch, relief that I didn't need any of those PowerPoints on Friday, vast irritation that I couldn't work on anything current.    Life on a computer network, ne?

Anyway, not much going on.  Just thought I'd put in a picture of my pretty red roses.  The yellows are blooming too right now, but aren't as big and full as the reds.  This may be my shortest blog post ever, but that's it for today.

Amateur Auto Mechanic

My poor car.  It takes a fair amount of abuse from me.  Not that I purposely abuse it, but I drive long distances and I like to drive fast.  Almost two weeks ago now I had an unexpected meeting with some road debris.

I was commuting to work at 5:30 am and in fairly heavy traffic for that hour.  I was traveling "above posted speeds" in a group of cars three lanes across and several deep and I was moving along next to an 18-wheeler.  All of a sudden he threw up a large piece of road debris of some sort.  It came at me too fast to really tell what it was and I had nowhere to go.  Just the luck of the draw that it happened to come at me.  So I hit it on the right front (passenger side) bumper and ran over it, and my car started making 'unusual' noises.  Damn!  Was my thought.  (okay, it was more colorful than "damn", but you get the idea).

I worked my way across traffic, took the next exit and looked for a street light (not much out there where this happened).  I got my trusty flashlight and went to look and originally thought I was dragging the debris.  A big chunk of stuff was dragging and rubbing on the front tire.  I tried to pull it loose and discovered it was attached!  It was part of the undercarriage of my car.  So I twisted it around and stuffed it back up in there and drove the rest of the way to work.  The car didn't overheat or lose gas or make any more unusual noises except it was (and is) very loud when I accelerate.  When I left work, there were no drips or fluids under the car, so since I had to fly to DC the next day, I put off taking it to the shop until I got back.

Turns out that piece of debris ripped my engine shield off the bottom of my car and loosened or damaged other pieces.  The good news is that it missed my fog light and headlight on that side, and it looks like the front bumper (which wraps the whole front of the car) can be salvaged.  Tomorrow I'm taking it to the shop to be repaired and renting a car for the three days they will have it (hopefully only three days). 

So where does the amateur auto mechanic come in?  Friday as I was leaving work I approached the car and thought "what the hell?"  A large piece of the undercarriage on the driver's side was hanging down to within about 2 inches of the pavement.  I got down on my knees (thankfully I wasn't wearing a dress) and determined that it was fairly solidly attached and then drove the car home that way, carefully skirting any road conditions that would cause the car to bounce.  When I got home, I waited for the car to cool down and then laid down on the ground and got under it to see what was going on.   I even got under the car on the passenger side to see how the same piece on that side was attached.  Scarily, it's not attached.  That's apparently the broken piece that I stuffed back up in there and it's just sitting in there!  Anyway, when I pushed the hanging piece back up into place and looked at it by looking in the wheel well over the tire, I found a place where the hanging piece has a hole that matches up with a hole on another piece of the car.  So I found a nut and bolt (almost too small so I put a washer on it to make sure it doesn't come through), and bolted the hanging piece back up in place.  I have no idea if it's intended to be bolted there, but it's working fine, and I have my car to get around in until it goes to the shop tomorrow.

You can see in this slightly fuzzy picture, the shiny new nut and bolt holding the piece in place behind the edge of the tire (lower left corner of picture).  I have a tendency to try to fix things myself, although I admit I usually leave car things to real mechanics.  I needed to be able to use the car this weekend though.  Desperation is the mother of invention.  I know it's "necessity", but in my case it was desperation.  I had to be desperate to try to tackle car stuff.

So that's my car saga.

On a bright note, it's raining!!!!!!!  And the sunshine girl is dancing for joy.  It's amazing how good a mood I'm in without the sun being out.  We need it so badly.  My roses are loving the nice temperatures and with a little help from me watering and now the rain, they're blooming like crazy.  Pretty.

October and Cooler Temps

How about that?  My weather fixation continues.  Actually, I just like sunny Sunday mornings.  It was 56 this morning when I went out to set my sprinklers.  Brrrrrrrrr!  I haven't felt 56 in a long time.  It's supposed to stay like this for a little while.  High 50s to low 60s at night, mid-80s during the day.  Beautiful weather, but no rain in sight.

I have seen rain though.  Both times I went to Washington DC in September it was raining there.  I wish I could have brought it back with me.  Still, even with water restrictions my lawn is looking pretty good.  The break in the heat will probably save it, although the same can't be said for many of the trees in the area.  Flying into Dallas last Friday, everything looks brown, and maybe half the trees are brown rather than green.  You can tell there's a serious drought here.  It looks like mid-winter rather than early Fall.  I'll have to cut back all my dead shrubbery out front and hope to find some green in the center.  That shrubbery is usually green all year.
The cat kids are fat and happy.  I found a pet sitter for them this year while I was on the long vacation and had her come in every other day.  She worked out perfectly.  Only Addy came out for her, but at least Addy got wet food every other day.  Addy didn't lose weight while I was away like she has been for the last couple of long trips.  You can see from this picture that neither of them is in danger of starving, but I didn't see the usual, Addy-dropping-weight-and-Zoe-gaining that I often see when I'm gone long periods of time.  Here they're taking an early morning drink at the patio birdbath/cat watering hole.

I have no trips in October, but a lot of small projects to complete.   I'm participating in a Webinar this week.  Then I have an e-learning project due, a talk for the lab techs, a presentation at journal club,  a set of chromatograms to tidy up and submit for a book chapter, a science project to help a local student with and a GC/MS assay to bring up in-house to make our ICU docs happy.  That's my list I'm hoping to either complete or get well into this month.  The GC/MS assay will probably take more than a month to validate, and the science project I just need to grow up some cells and figure out some basic stuff before helping the kid set up the project herself.  The talks and presentations should be pretty straight-forward, so they'll get done this month.  I've become pretty good at throwing presentations together.

My promotion went into effect on September 1st and all is good at work for the most part.    I had to qualify that because of 2 things:  We have a new Chairman of Pathology, and a new Chairman means lots of changes coming along.  It will be interesting to see how things work out.  The second thing is that the County Hospital is struggling right now and going through lost of changes.   I sign out test results over there, and they are working on getting credentialing up to date.  I haven't been credentialed over there previously despite signing out for the last 10+ years.  So I'm getting credentialed, and in the meantime, someone else is covering my signout duties.  At my primary job though things are going very well.  New instruments are being installed, and I'm staying nicely busy.

And that's the news for this lovely Sunday morning, October 2nd, 2011.  Or something like that.   

Weather fixation

Yup.  I'm totally fixated on the weather these days.  It's not as hot as it had been, although we did break a record by having 70 days of 100 degrees or more this year . . . so far.  I'm not totally convinced that the weather is through with its super-heat yet, but the last few days have been nice, comfortable mid-80s to mid-90s.  Which tells you how hot it's been . . . that I think mid-90s is comfortable.  I mowed my back yard and didn't even break a sweat hardly.

Thought I'd throw in a picture of my twin peach trees.  You'd never know they were once the same size. 

So the temperature has been 'decent', but we're still severely dry.  It actually rained Friday evening.  I was standing in my doorway, literally trying to will it to rain before it started.  Me, the sun-lover, trying to will rain.  It's just not normal.  It did rain though.  It was only a few hours of a pretty soft rain at my place, but I was just so happy to see moisture.  Of course, I'm still watering today since Sunday is one of my watering days.  It'll take more than that little bit of moisture to counter the effects of our long drought.

So see?  Fixated on the weather.

I survived my first work week back from vacation.  It wasn't too bad since I had cleaned out all those emails.  I'm actually mostly caught up, which is kind of amazing.  Of course, I partly owe that to the fact that the new instruments didn't get installed while people argued over who pays to run the water and power for them.  So they're still sitting waiting on installation, and I have only a few validation studies waiting for me to reveiw and sign.  Those came from the new tabletop instrument that didn't require any rerouting of systems.  Other things seem to be moving along nicely.

I interviewed medical school applicants yesterday.  This is about the fourth year I've volunteered to interview the applicants.  I enjoy it, but I only volunteered for four weekends this year since I'm fairly busy with other stuff.  I have another meeting in Washington DC at the end of the month . . . coming up fast come to think of it.  I just had a meeting in DC just over a week ago, so DC twice this month.  Keeps me out of trouble I guess.

I've been sorting through vacation trips and pictures and trying to figure out what I did what years.  I know the first long vacation trip I took was in 1993, and that was a 17 day, 7100 mile jaunt around the western US by myself with my camping gear in my car.  Then I went back to the Utah parks  (Zion Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef, Arches) for the next five years (1994 through 1998), although I didn't do all four parks every year.  In 1999, my sister Monica and I went and we went to all four parks.  In 2000 and 2001 I didn't take the long vacation, as far as I can remeber.  In 2002 I went by myself.  In 2003 and 2004 Yasmeen started going with me.  2005 was by myself.  2006 was with Yasmeen.  2007 was Monica, Yasmeen and I and that was a fun trip!  They were all pretty fun, but that one especially was.  Yasmeen went with me in 2008, and Monica has gone now in 2009, 2010 and 2011.  So although I used to go alone all the time, after Monica went with me in 1999, I've only gone alone twice.   They've all been pretty great trips, each memorable for different things.  One of these days I'll have to transcribe all my hand-written journals from those various trips into the computer, and maybe intersperse them with the pictures from the trips.  Someday when I'm bored for something to do.

Anyway I guess that's about it for now. 

Almost time to work

Yes, the summer has totally gotten away from me. And vacation has totally gotten away from me. Today is my last day of vacation, and tomorrow I return to work after three weeks off. It's going to be hard to go back, but at least this week I remoted in and cleaned out 700+ emails. Tomorrow shouldn't be too horrific.

Vacation has been wonderful. Monica and I did the Utah parks again, and even though it was a shorter trip than we usually take out there, for various reasons, it was great. We hiked Angel's Landing again, of course. The picture here is the trail near the top of the hike. We also did a hike in Bryce. Those were our only two hikes though. We skipped Capital Reef completely this year, and opted to shop in Moab rather than hike in Arches. Easier on the body; harder of the credit cards.

We did things a little differently this year in a couple of ways. Usually we take the roads up through the panhandle after Amarillo, and then take roads across northern New Mexico. It's an incredibly scenic drive . . . once you get past Raton. Nothing "incredibly scenic" about most of the Texas panhandle nor eastern New Mexico. Instead of taking that route though, this year we took I-40 straight west from Amarillo to Albuquerque and then headed northwest to Farmington. It wasn't an especially scenic drive but it was 2 to 3 hours shorter!! I really liked that! Yes, I know that interstate is going to get you places faster than back roads, but I've almost always opted for back roads to see the scenery. However, given that I've made that drive almost every year since 1993, I figured I could skip seeing it this year. And I did really like hitting Farmington in daylight and not exhausted from 15-ish hours of driving.

Another different thing we did was after leaving Moab we drove straight to Denver to visit with my nephew, niece and great-nieces. That drive was only about 5 1/2-ish hours, less than it usually takes us to get to my sister's place. Interstate again.

The weather was fairly warm this year out there. That's probably not surprising, given the national weather, and it was cooler than Dallas, which wouldn't have been difficult. But Zion hit 103 the second day we were there. Bryce was nice though. Not too cool for me, for a change. We got thunderstorms both nights we were in Bryce, which didn't make Monica very happy, as she has a pretty good lightning phobia. The days were picture perfect though, so I have to say I'm glad the rain and storms came at night.

Both hikes were great. We saw the peregrines and condors both at Angel's, but didn't get near enough either of them for pictures this year. This little guy hanging onto my boot and his friends were about all we got close enough to take pictures of. In Bryce, we did the loop section of the trail in the opposite direction that we usually hike it, and I think I like it better that way. We missed sharing the trail with the horses that way. Picture below is from the Bryce hike.

Another different thing we noticed was that there seemed to be less people this year, in many of the places we went and on the roads. We wondered if it was because we started a week later than usual. Perhaps more kids were back in school and we were past the peak season.

In general I would say that it was another wonderful Utah vacation, with a finishing touch of getting to spend time with my Denver grand-nieces.

Today I'm doing stuff around the house in preparation for going back to work tomorrow. Plus I'm watering my lawn. The county has restricted water usage because of the continuing drought. The temps finally broke and have been lovely (80s), although we're supposed to get three days of 100s again this week. But we've had no rain. Not a drop since we had a brief morning rain on Aug 14th. And I think that was the only rain in the metroplex for the last 60+ days. So I can currently water my lawn on Thursdays and Sundays before 10:00 am and after 6:00 pm. That will help my water bill, but my lawn is going to look worse than it does. Can't be helped. I may not be able to keep it alive if we don't get rain, let along looking good.

The dogwoods succumbed to the heat and drought this year, and the holly might have also during the time I was away. I'll give it some time to come back since it's managed a previous comeback. The peach tree-lets look good still. Well, the big one looks good, the tiny one is surviving still.

That's it for now.

HOT!

Geez! I am SO over this heat. And I'm not just saying that because I just mowed my lawn. It's frigging HOT outside!

According to my newspaper July was the hottest July on record. Nice to know. What else I know is that this last week we've broken the daily high temperature every single day. 107 on Monday, 110 on Tuesday, 109 on Wednesday, 108 on Thursday and 107 on Friday, every single one a new daily record for hot. And we're now on day 36 of consecutive daily temperatures over 100, quietly creeping up on the 42 day record from 1980. *sigh* Have I mentioned that I'm tired of this heat?

I just mowed my back lawn today, which is one of the reasons I'm bitching about the heat. It really looks nice when it's freshly mowed though. It's filled in amazingly from the patchy lawn I started with this spring and in places it's really thick. You can see from this picture how nice it's looking. The front lawn is still patchy and struggling, but that saves me on days like today when I only need to mow the back and not both yards. Even though I started at 10:00 am, it was miserable mowing. This picture is actually here to show the remains of the peach tree trunk. It's splitting! Right down the center. Weird.

I started the lawn work a little late this morning because I wanted to get the inspection sticker on my car first. It's due this month and in two weeks I'll be leaving on vacation. The car's now ready to go, even if I'm not. I'm going to need to spend next weekend doing all the stuff I really don't like to do . . . dusting, cleaning bathrooms, etc. My sister will be coming here and then we'll leave from here for vacation, so I need to do a real house cleaning instead of the usual lick and a promise. I need to start pulling out all the camping gear here pretty soon also.

A funny thing, when I drove off from the car dealership this morning, I realized they had left a package of those car air fresheners on my dashboard. *laughing* I couldn't decide whether to be insulted or not. I mean, maybe the guy who drove my car out front left them there by mistake. Or maybe it's like how they always wash the car before they give it back to me, it's meant to be an 'after service' nice thing. They may not be trying to tell me that my car stinks . . .which it doesn't actually. Still, if it's meant as a nice 'after care' gesture, they should pick one that's slightly less ambiguous.

Another thing I need to do, pre-vacation, is decide whether I think Addy will be okay for 10 days if someone only comes in to put food down every 3-4 days. Or if I should hire someone to come in and put wet food down daily. Addy tends to lose weight when I'm gone and I'm wondering if she wouldn't lose weight, or wouldn't lose as much if she had the option of wet food daily. Her teeth are not that good, so maybe the dry food is hard for her. She gets daily wet food when I'm here. If I hire someone, she won't come out for them, but after they leave she might come out and eat the wet food. Decisions, decisions. Will she be more stressed by having a stranger come in, or by extended time of only dry food?

I got my Kindle. It's pretty cool, I gotta admit. I particularly like being able to buy a book and having it in my Kindle 30 seconds later. Instant gratification! No more waiting for books to ship. This is so going to come in handy when traveling.

Anyway, just random ramblings today. Think I'll go look for something to snack on.

O.O July is gone!

Whew! Time continues to zip by. The summer will be gone before I know it, especially since in three weeks I'll be off for vacation. I have a BUNCH of stuff to get done at work between now and then.

Let's see, what's going on? My big laptop died. The hard drive crashed, taking ALL my pictures with it. I'm told that it's dead enough that it will cost me big time to retrieve them, if they can even be retrieved. Those pictures are the only thing I wish I had not lost. Everything else is replaceable or re-downloadable. Yes, yes, I know. Always back up your hard drive. Everyone knows that. And I'm betting most people are like me and remember to do it after it's too late. So I'm typing this from a new computer. I did try to salvage the old one by replacing the hard drive, but it seems the graphics card was also toast, and the general consensus for replacing those is: buy a new laptop. So I did.

It's hot here. Yes, I know that's typical of Texas in July, but it's really HOT here. 29 days in a row of temperatures over 100 degrees with no end in sight. That puts us in second place as the longest string of 100 degree days, with only the infamous Summer of 1980 having more (42). At the rate we're going, we may break that record too. Despite watering my lawn and shrubbery nearly every day, they are struggling. The Bermuda grass out front is really struggling, and all my shrubs along the front of the house are turning brown. Even with water, the continuous heat is just too much for them. The house faces west so they get all the intense afternoon heat.

I was gone to a convention for 5 days and the dogwoods succumbed. Poor little things are dead, but I'll keep watering that area anyway. The holly is fighting to maintain it's comeback, with its new leaves curling up and turning brown. You can kind of see that in the small picture to the right. If we don't get rain while I'm gone on vacation, my lawn, shrubbery and little holly are all going to be dead when I get back. That's because we've not only had the excessive heat, we've had NO rain. So far they're still letting us water all we want as long as it's before 10:00 am or after 6:00 pm, but considering we're under 'exceptional drought' conditions, I can see that changing in the not too distant future.

My silly peach seedlings are still doing well as you can see in this picture. I suppose it's easier to keep them well watered in pots. The big one is about 21 inches tall now and is putting on limbs as well as leaves, and the tiny one has decided to put on new growth since I transplanted it. It's not noticeably gaining in size, but it's growing little leaves, which it wasn't before.

I'm doing weekend chores today. Since I was gone last weekend, the house needs some attention. Yesterday I was busy setting up the new laptop into the configuration I want and downloading the necessary programs etc. I like the keyboard on this laptop. It's easy to type on and you can turn the mouse pad off if you're using a wireless mouse. That's a boon for me because I have a tendency to hit the mouse pad while I'm typing, with often not good results. So so far I like it. The Windows 7 OS it comes with uses bing as a search engine though, which I had to change. I like Google. And of course I've been busily restoring all my bookmarks and settings. It's pretty close to how I want it now although I'm sure I'll find other things I need to add as I go along.

I also bought a kindle yesterday, although I bought that online and so need to wait for it to get here. I was convinced to buy one by two things: a couple of my colleagues at the convention were advocating it, and the fact that I couldn't take my newest book with me while traveling. It's a HUGE hardback book and weighs too much to cart around, and it's available on kindle. I could have been reading it on the plane. So I broke down and ordered one. I suspect I'll still read books at home, but since I'll be doing so much traveling this next several years, I figure a kindle will come in handy.

I guess that's about all for now.

Long July 4th Weekend

It was certainly nice that July 4th fell on a Monday this year. Long weekend! Yay!! Sadly the weekend is almost over now, but I think I've got time to get a post in.

It's been a very productive weekend for me, as well as a very hot one. The thermometer on my back patio read 108 yesterday and 109 today. Yes, it's in the shade, but the patio itself radiates heat, even when it's shaded. So no doubt it hasn't actually been 108 and 109 in the area, but it has been over 100 both days.

I did something new yesterday, or anyway something I've never done before. I washed my house. Yes, the house. I had siding put on the house a number of years ago, and lately I've been noticing that it's pretty filthy. So a couple weeks ago I bought one of those scrub brushes on the end of a long pole, that you can fill with soap and attach to your hose. Then yesterday morning I tried it out. It wasn't hard at all! I started with the front porch and front area around the garage door because that area is in the shade in the morning, and like everything you do outside in Texas at this time of year, you try to beat the heat as much as possible. Then I moved to the back yard and did about a third of the back before the sun got too hot. Then I quit and went in for lunch. My house is partly brick, but the back is all siding, so I knew that would take the longest and be the hottest.

Anyway, I figured I'd quit and eat lunch and wait for the sun to move over the house and enough shade to appear in the back to be able to go out and do the rest. The back is the area all across the back of the house and around the back door and patio. The same patio where the thermometer was reading 108. When there was enough shade for me to be in shade while I worked I braved the heat and went back out to finish the job. I was determined to finish it because I had a lot of odds and ends around the house I wanted to do this weekend, and that was one of them. So I started again and as I was getting into it, and thinking how glad I was that at least I was working in the water if I had to be out in that heat, a couple of huge thunderheads built up! In less than 30 minutes the whole sky was overcast and the temp reading on the thermometer dropped from 108 to 88! It was amazing. I finished the house in relative comfort, and 30 minutes later the sky was clear again, without ever dropping a drop of rain. I was a little sorry about that actually because I could use the rain. But I was really grateful for the heat reprieve while I was working. Of course when the sun came back out the temperature bounced back up to 103.

So, I would say that I'll probably never take a job washing houses for a living, but it wasn't bad. As long as you don't mind being wet and doing some manual labor. I wonder if I may discover I have some sore muscles as time goes on though, reaching up over my head and scrubbing with a long pole scrub brush. The house looks absolutely great! It was even dirtier than I thought and it looks beautiful now. Maybe I won't wait so long in between washes now that I know how relatively easy it is.

This morning I mowed the lawn before the main heat of the day. Even so, it was plenty hot out there. Even the cats are staying inside, and they usually like laying on the patio in the shade because it radiates heat. Just too much heat right now. I hope everyone thinks before using fireworks tonight, given how dry the area is.

Other things I've done this weekend that make it fairly productive include taking my car to the shop for them to replace the heat/exhaust shield, some minor shopping to get more potting soil and pots, some minor trimming of the shrubbery out front, changing all my anime calendars to the new month, basic cleaning and laundry around the house, fixing my door lock so that the deadbolt will work and transplanting the peach seedlings, which I actually did on Thursday evening. This picture is Zoe, also trying to figure out why only one tree is growing. This was before I transplanted them. I put the big one in a larger pot and moved the small one to the ceramic pot. I figure if it's going to grow at all, maybe transplanting it again will help. We'll see how it does. The holly is still putting on new leaves but is also struggling big time in the heat. I tried rigging some shade for it, but I'm not sure it's helping much. I think the only thing that will help the holly is cooler weather, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

The car trip to the shop was because my car decided it didn't want to start 2 Friday's ago. I managed to convince it to start, both before and after work, but after work I drove immediately to the dealership for a new battery. I figured I'd have them do the scheduled maintenance too and while they were doing it they discovered my exhaust shield was ripped and mangled around my exhaust pipe. I seriously don't know how it got that way. I haven't bottomed the car out or hit any road debris that I'm aware of. Anyway at that time they took off the mangled shield and ordered a new one. So this trip was to install the new shield.

I did something else this weekend which I haven't done in a long, long time. I sat down and read the Declaration of Independence. What an amazing document. Then I sat there trying to imagine the feelings of Thomas Jefferson who drafted it, and the other amazing men, all of whom believed so strongly that we should no longer be British Colonies, but should be our own free Country. They had so much courage of their convictions that they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to make it be true. Considering all their sacrifices to make the USA what it is today, I think I should try to take some of the freedoms I enjoy a little less for granted. Although, perhaps they would be happy that those freedoms that they fought for are now considered the inalienable rights of every American. Still, I think I'll try being a little more grateful.

Bye, bye, long weekend. It's been fun.

Growing?!

I swear. I totally do NOT understand green growing things. Don't get me wrong, I really like plants. I like to watch them grow and flower and especially to see them leaf out again in the Spring and put on new growth. I even like to try and grow things, but why they grow or don't grow seems to have absolutely nothing to do with anything I may try in my attempts to grow them. How did my sisters end up with such green thumbs while mine is positively black? It's a mystery.

What am I ranting about? Well, I'm just puzzled and amazed by things growing and not growing around here. Two cases in point:

Peach seedlings: On March 20th I rescued two tiny peech seedlings from my lawn rather than mow over them. I planted them in side by side pots using the same potting soil, etc. They were approximately the same size, as you can kind of see from the picture to the left, about 3 inches tall maybe. Now, check them out in the picture to the right. Three months later, one is still about 3 inches tall and the other one is over a foot tall! I've treated them both exactly the same. They get watered at the same time. I spray them both with insecticide for flowering and fruiting plants, at the same time. They get the same light and temperature. The only difference is one is in a ceramic pot and one is in a plastic pot. Really? Is that what makes the difference? I just don't know. I have another ceramic pot, so I suppose I could shift the little one over and see if it helps. I'm actually considering transplanting the bigger little tree out into the yard, but I'm a little afraid just my transplanting it will kill it. Maybe I'll wait until it's a little larger. Or until I see if the other one will survive, in case I need to try again.

Holly tree/bush: On April 2nd my friend and I planted baby dogwoods and a little holly stem in the back yard. I call it a holly stem because I don't know if it's supposed to be a tree or a bush. Anyway, as you can see in the picture to the left, the holly started out looking and doing fantastically well. But over the last two and a half months, despite everything I've tried, and all my tender-loving care, the holly has looked progressively worse and worse. The leaves finally started to blacken and curl up and crumble away. It didn't look as though anything was munching down on them, they mostly looked like they were burned. Black spots that got larger and larger until the leaf curled up and dropped off. So a couple of days ago I had just the stem and a couple twigs left. I figured I'd leave it and next Spring I'd mow it down if it was still being a stem there. Today when I was mowing the lawn, I discovered that there are new small leaves sprouting from the end of the three little branches!!!! I'm not kidding. You can see in this picture to the right. I have no idea! It just began putting out new leaves.

See what I mean? Growing things are a complete mystery to me. Basically I think it's safe to say that anything that grows around here does so despite my efforts, rather than because of them. I think I'll stay away from the little holly, other than to make sure it gets water when that area gets dry. Maybe it will stand a chance that way.

And yes, despite everything, there are still signs of life from the little dogwoods. *shakes head* Quite amazing.

Mailbox and virus

I figured I'd better post a picture of the fruits of all my labors yesterday. I attached the mailbox itself to the post this morning and here's the finished product. Who knew it would be such a struggle to accomplish this? I hope my mail carrier is properly grateful. The old mailbox did indeed come out with one not-very-strong yank. The post on the old one was wood and the 4 x 4 was rotten at the point where it was cemented into the ground. It's amazing it hung on as long as it did. That old mailbox was hit by a vehicle at one time and probably cracked at the cement level, which I imagine is what allowed it to rot slowly since then. It definitely wouldn't have lasted much longer since it took so little effort for me to pull it out. The new post is metal so I shouldn't have rotting issues. I'm a little proud that I managed to put this mailbox in. I hope it decides to stay there. It feels solid, but you never know.

The other thing I was going to discuss this morning is: I have a cold. *unhappy frown* My immune system is really good; I'm one of those people who is almost never sick. And like most people who don't get sick, I'm in serious denial that a tiny little virus can lay me low. However, my immune system has been struggling with this damn thing for 5 days now. Last Wednesday morning I got up with a scratchy throat. It was one of those scratchy throats that could be due to allergies, or I slept with my mouth open, or a cold is trying to take hold, so I didn't worry about it too much. By Friday, my ear canals and ears were also burning/hurting, but the throat was still just scratchy so I basically just tried to ignore it all. However Friday night I slept badly, waking up coughing multiple times. So I got up Saturday morning thinking, "Okay, so now I have to admit, I have a cold, but so what? It's just a cold. I'm draggy and don't have much energy, but I'm going to put a new mailbox in and mow my lawn , etc. etc." That lasted through the mailbox post, but then I had no energy left. Last night I had more coughing bouts, and this morning I got up with a raging sore throat and aching ears and ear canals. Plus I'm losing my voice. *sigh* Five days out, and the virus seems to be winning. Today I need to mow my lawn, which I will do as soon as the dew dries up a little. And I'm doing all my usual Sunday chores, along with finishing the mailbox. I'll admit though, once I get through those I'll probably try to rest and let my body concentrate on this "tiny little virus". I hesitate to say, "at least it hasn't set up house-keeping in my sinuses and become a head cold also" for fear of jinxing myself. I'm also to the stage of considering taking something, instead of just letting the body deal with it. My immune system and sleep usually cure whatever ails me without resorting to meds. But the coughing and sore throat may need some sort of treatment. We'll see.

This weekend was supposed to be slightly cooler than last week, but it hasn't been so far. Temperatures are hanging just below 100 in the afternoon, and this morning when I stepped out before sunrise it was still 80 degrees. Not a cloud in the sky. HOT. Seems that it will probably be a hot and dry summer. My poor water bill. Still, I need to do my best to keep my lawn alive this year since it's making a comeback from late last year.

On the other hand . . . tsukareta!!!!! Damn I'm tired. This heat is not really conducive to outside stuff. I just finished mowing the back yard, and it's probably a good thing I decided the front yard didn't need mowing. Now why do I want to keep this lawn alive? Oh, yeah. It's pretty out there.

I'm going to go cool off . . . somehow. Later.

Bees and Birds

*laughing* No. This post is not about what you think. It's just about some observations and some things I've been doing around the place.

The bees first. There must be a hive of honeybees around here someplace. The little birdbath I have on the back patio has become a watering hole for the little things. This bee girl in the picture was enjoying it yesterday evening. There's always at least one out there, and usually more that that. Yesterday evening there were five or six of them taking their evening drink. The picture below shows them although you can't really see them clearly when I don't blow the picture up. It's interesting that Zoe ignores them completely, and vice versa. They buzz around when she first approaches, then everyone settles in for a sip. There's also a big black and yellow striped hornet that likes the birdbath. He's really much bigger that the yellow jackets I'm used to, but maybe they grow bigger here than in Colorado or Utah. I leave them all alone. Honeybees are important pollinators. If they want to take a sip at the birdbath now and then, they're welcome . . . and they don't drink much. *laughing*

It's really the birds that make such a mess of the birdbath. Besides drinking out of it, they like to bathe in it and wash their food in it. The birds I've seen use it this year include the big grackles, plus multiple blue jays, a couple of mockingbirds, a male and female cardinal and multiple morning doves. Occasionally I see a robin or two. This time of year when it's so hot I try to keep clean water in it, so all the little creatures have something to drink.

This morning I hung a bird feeder to the remains of the peach tree. Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to because I have cats, but I've realized that my cats are so old and fat and slow that they are seriously no risk to the birds. Now I'll have to see how long it takes the birds to discover it.

This morning I began my attempt to put in a new mailbox. The post on my old one is broken almost all the way through at the ground and it's only a matter of time before it falls over, either when the carrier pulls it open or when she shoves things into it. Plus the carrier once told me that I could really use a bigger box since I get so much mail. So I finally broke down and went by Lowe's last weekend and bought a new post and box. This morning, I began digging a hole at about 6:00 am (beat the heat as much as possible, I always say). That damn hole almost defeated me. Actually it did defeat me. It always sounds so easy in the instructions: dig a hole 20 inches deep by 9 inches in diameter. Okay, sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, the ground where I want the mailbox is run through with tree roots. I gave up attempting to dig at 9:00 am. Covered in clay-ey mud, sweating like a pig, I had managed 17 inches deep and about 6-7 inches across. I tried everything I knew of to make that hole deeper, and was seriously wishing for dynamite before I was through. And I have the blisters to prove it. So I finally gave up and modified the damn mailbox post so it didn't need to go down so far. It was also my very first ever encounter with cement, so I just hope that tomorrow when I attach the mailbox to the post, the post stays firmly in the ground in the cement where I tried to fix it this morning. Now I remember why I usually pay people to do these projects for me.

Speaking of paying people, I payed the plumbers to come and replace my garbage disposal this week. Last Sunday morning about 6:00 am I was semi-awake, rinsing out my coffee pot, getting ready to make coffee. I looked into the sink and thought: 'huh! this sink isn't draining', at the same time water began flooding over my feet. The garbage disposal had sprung leaks everywhere and was fountaining water onto and into everything under the sink and out across the floor. I suppose it just finally gave up the ghost. The house is 20 years old and I imagine it was the original disposal that was put in here.

The people at work tell me I practically have a new house since I've replaced about everything on this one. That's mostly true, but I do like this little house.

I'll have to mow the back yard tomorrow. The front isn't growing so fast, but the back is still growing like crazy. I was going to do it this morning. *laughing* The original plan was to put in the mailbox post and then mow the lawn before it got too hot. After the mailbox post, I had zero energy left for mowing, so tomorrow it is.

Anyway, that's all I have to say today, so until next time!

Memorial Day Weekend

I am in SUCH a good mood. I really like 3-day weekends, and especially since I've been traveling so much. This weekend I've been puttering around the house and yard, cleaning, mowing, trimming, just generally catching up on all the house/yard stuff that's been on hold for most of the month. Add to that, it's sunny outside, if a little windy and hot. Sun always improves my mood.

The temperature hit 100 yesterday afternoon by my thermometer. I was out mowing the lawn by 9:30 yesterday morning, so it wasn't too bad and the wind helped make it not quite so hot. We had three days of rain last week so the lawn was in dire need of a mowing. The picture here is a good indication of what my backyard currently looks like. I have a multi-colored lawn these days. The green-green grass on the right side of the picture is thriving St. Augustine, and you can see on the bottom center of the picture where it's sending out runners to fill in the bare areas. The blue-green grass to the left and wrapping around the St. Augustine on the top of the picture is Bermuda grass. And the yellow-green patches are weeds that the TruGreen people have sprayed and are slowly dying. Altogether that makes it fairly colorful out there, but I'm happy that the grass is filling in and the weeds are going away.

The little yellow rose that I planted 2 years ago is much happier this year. It's put out multiple blooms this spring and is also putting on some height this year, so it may survive after all. The red rose bush is thriving as always. Both bushes are between blooming sprees right now, as can be seen by this picture. The two little peach seedlings I rescued from the lawn and the little dogwoods are still hanging in there. With this heat already I'll need to remember to water everything regularly if we don't get rain. I really like growing things, or I should say 'attempting" to grow things since I'm just usually fairly bad at it.

Yesterday when I was mowing I was rescued by my neighbor two houses down and across the street. It was the first time we'd met, even though he and his wife have lived in their house 22 years and I've been in my house 10 years. Not very social are we? I've seen him come and go, and before yesterday morning what I knew about him is that he drives a corvette and keeps his lawn neat. He turns out to be a really nice guy named Eric. Anyway, what happened was that as I was mowing the front yard, a dog came by. He wasn't a big dog, about medium-sized, looked like a cross between a pit bull and a shepherd, but maybe pit bull size. He started following me as I mowed the lawn, and kept getting around behind me where I couldn't see him. Pretty soon I was afraid to turn my back to him because every time I turned to look at him he was rushing at me with teeth bared. I tried to yell and stomp at him to frighten him away and he would just snarl and growl and rush me again. So I stopped mowing and went to get a water hose to try and shoo him off, but he went on down the street when I quit mowing. I started mowing again and he came back and stood in the driveway watching me. I was afraid to turn my back on him so I was mowing a strip, backing up and mowing the next strip. About that time, Eric came over with a big stick in his hands and the dog went on down the street. I talked to Eric for a little bit about it and he said he'd keep an eye on me to make sure the dog didn't come back, as he'd had trouble with that dog before. He went back home, I started mowing, and the dog came back!! 10 minutes later, the police pulled up, Eric came over and the dog moved down the street a couple of houses. Eric had called the police since the dog was so aggressive. I talked to them for a bit, then went and mowed my back yard. When I finished and came back out I picked up my mail, saw Eric and talked to him again. He said there ended up being three police cars and two animal control vehicles. They didn't catch the dog, but they did locate his owner and ticketed him for the dog being loose, etc.

So I had kind of a freaky experience. I'm not normally afraid of dogs but this one was pretty aggressive. Maybe he doesn't like lawn mowers, but I don't know why was he rushing at me growling, teeth bared and tail between his legs. *shivers* I'll take cats any day. A deranged cat may do some damage but probably won't be able to kill you. You really can't say the same about a deranged dog. Well maybe you can say it about a deranged Pekingese or Pomeranian, but are those really dogs? Anyway, it's nice to have met my neighbor and to know that another one of my neighbors is a good person who will watch out for me. For the most part, I've found that to be true in this neighborhood.

I guess that's all for today. I threw in the prerequisite cat picture. As you can see, they're also chilling today. Lying in the open door (it's not yet hot) in case anything they need to know about should happen outside, but basically cat-napping. I'm going back to puttering around the house. Maybe I'll even break down and dust - my least favorite chore of all. We'll see. I'm not sure if I'm in quite that good of a mood, or maybe it's that I'm in too good of a mood for dusting.

Finches this year

This year the finches arrived and claimed the nesting box out front before the swallows returned to the area. I got to watch baby finches grow up instead of swallows. I will say that it wasn't as easy to watch them as it is to watch the swallows. Swallows are bold and the adults will dive bomb you if they don't like your proximity to their nest. The young will hide, but not to any great extent. The finches on the other hand are scaredy-cats. The female will fly away at any tiny sound and the babies hunker down into the nest and become invisible at the slightest provocation. None-the-less, it was fun to watch them.

I almost didn't have any babies birds at all this year. One afternoon right before my traveling started I came home and when I was walking back from the mailbox I glimpsed something brown hanging from the nesting box that isn't being used. I walked over to see what it was . . . and this bad boy in the picture was about a foot away from a tasty meal of finch eggs. This is a small rat snake, maybe about 2 1/2 feet long. What I had glimpsed was the part of him looped below the box. I'm not sure which of us was more startled when I stepped onto the porch and turned to see him there. At any rate, I spoiled his meal by making him go away. No, I didn't kill him, just convinced him to leave with a long stick and persistence. Then I quickly got a step stool, climbed up and took pictures of what was in the nest so I would know what I had just rescued. Then I quickly left the nest to Momma Finch. Surprisingly, she came back immediately after I left. This next picture down is the finch eggs that were in the nest. It still amazes me how close they came to being snake food.

I managed to get one sort-of picture of the young finches. They were very adept at hiding, not at all cooperative like the young swallows. Although I did see them fairly frequently, all I managed to catch in a picture was a little beak, top of the head and a beady black eye. You probably can't see that in the small picture below, but this was all I could do. They were VERY skittish. They've all flown now, which also amazes me. The young birds grow up so fast. It's been just over three weeks between when I took the egg picture and when they flew away.

My poor peach tree is dead. The growth that was on it two blog posts ago, broke off in the high wind a few days after that picture, and there's no other growth. *sigh* Too bad. I suppose it's time to buy a tree to put back there. I'll have to do a little tree research I guess. A couple of the small dogwoods are still managing to survive. They look terrible, but they're hanging on.

This morning I went out and trimmed up the shrubbery out front. It was looking a little raggedy. We're finally getting some periodic rain, so my lawn's beginning to look like a lawn. One of the most amazing things is how strongly the St. Augustine grass is coming back in the back yard. Granted the yard is still about half weeds, but at the end of last year I had two sickly-looking patches of St. Augustine left, in opposite corners of the back yard. The patch down by the fence has spread out and up to the peach tree and continues to put out runners across the bare areas. The patch up by the house is also spreading. And both patches are dark green and thriving. Sugoi. The Bermuda grass in the front yard is still struggling, but beginning to fill in. Apparently early rainfall is really important to Bermuda, less so for St. Augustine.

The cats are being furry leeches. They really hate me being gone for extended periods, and become really clingy when I get back. If I sit still for a minute, they're right there to get attention. Like right now. Zoe is making my leg look like I've been running through briers, trying to get me to stop typing and start petting her. Zoe is not the brightest cat in the world, and despite years of trying, she doesn't get the concept of sheathing claws. When I'm wearing jeans it's no biggy, but with shorts on she's guaranteed to get my attention. *laughing* Yes, yes. Time to call this a short blog and go pet the cat.

Traveling

Here it is as promised . . . my next blog coming in mid-May. Well, okay, mid-to-late-May. So many things have happened that it's hard to know where to begin. I think I'll devote this blog to the traveling.

My travels have been good, but I'm really glad to be home for a while. I started on April 30th with a 7:30 am flight to San Diego. Or so I thought. Being obsessive-compulsive, I called the airline before leaving the house and they had canceled that flight because of "lack of a flight crew to fly it". So they had re-booked me on a 9:00 PM flight. No, no, no. I worked with them to get a 5:30 pm flight which wasn't what I had wanted, but better than a late flight. I went to San Diego for a 5 day review course and had originally wanted to arrive early enough to do a little sight-seeing, which obviously didn't work out. San Diego is a gorgeous place and the weather was just lovely. But of course I spent 8:00 am until 8:30 pm in the review course while I was there, so that aspect of it was a little wasted. *rueful sigh* Still it was a great course. I had a blast giving the lectures I did, especially the evening case studies. The participants were exactly that. Very interactive and questioning, which is a teacher's dream class. As an added bonus, I met some really great people along the way. And I did get to spend lunch hours soaking in the sun and ambiance. Plus I had this really outstanding view of San Diego Bay from the balcony of my 7th floor room in the hotel. The picture above is right about sunrise. Overall, it was a very fun and productive trip.

Then May 5th around noon I left San Diego and flew to Charleston, SC, arriving about 11:15 pm, which put me at the hotel around midnight. I was surprised to find that they didn't have a room for me . . . which probably translates into, they gave my room away, even though I had notified them that I would be arriving late. They ended up putting me into a suite and moving me the next day when a room came open. I didn't really care. I was so tired I would have slept on a couch. But the next morning I had no hot water in their fancy suite, which I kind of DID care about. So that particular downtown Charleston hotel is not high on my list of favorite places. The meeting was good though. It was my second Board of Directors meeting and the meeting and the post-meeting socializing were both very good.

Then I flew home on May 8th and on May 11th I flew to Berlin, Germany. Hmmmm. Well the flight was scheduled to fly on May 11th at 9:00 pm, but since we were delayed 3 hours by storms, I think we technically actually left the ground on May 12th. Very luckily for me, I had a four hour layover in London Heathrow, so I made my connection, unlike a lot of people on that flight. I arrived in Berlin around 7:00 pm on the 12th, met a friend for dinner and then slept for 12 straight hours, getting up in time for the Opening Ceremony of the Congress I was attending. The Congress was great. Great speakers and talks, and again I met some really cool people as well as hooking up with some colleagues I don't get to see very often. The Congress Dinner on Saturday was a boat tour through Berlin on the Spree River. The boat tour was a blast although it would have been better for sight-seeing if it hadn't been raining pretty solidly. You can see from the picture above of the Oberpfarr that taking pictures wasn't very productive. Still, the boat was enclosed, so the trip and the company were lots of fun, and the food and drinks were superb.

Monday May 17th I flew back, arriving about 8:00 pm and I've been trying to catch up ever since. Basically, the trips were good, the meetings were good, the people were great, but I'm really glad to be home now for a while. The only real regret I have is that I really had no time at all to do any shopping . . . at any of the places where I went. *sigh* Maybe in the future my travels won't be so clustered within a two week period and I'll be able to spend a little extra time sight-seeing and shopping.

Rain! Yay!

Yes, it's true. I'm happy about the rain. As a general rule I'm not all that fond of rain. Considering our serious lack of it this Spring though, I'm pretty delighted when it happens these days. So even though it's overcast and generally gloomy outside, I'm glad it rained last night and hope we get a little more today too.

As you can see from this picture, that one spot on one side of my peach tree continues to grow. I don't think it will be enough to save the tree, but I'm kind of glad to see that fairly exuberant growth, if only in one spot. The little dogwoods continue to struggle to grow also. Believe it or not, they're not dead yet. I put a frame with a black plastic bag to protect them from the late afternoon sun. It's not pretty, but for now it seems to be helping a little. At least they're still marginally alive. Now if the frame doesn't just fall and crush them, maybe they'll live. I've also been spraying all my growing things, including the peach, the little dogwoods and my roses. Something is seriously munching down on them all.

I have a group of grackles (is that right, "group of grackles"? 4 seems too few to be a "flock of grackles") that spend a lot of time in my back yard. These guys are big! They're known variously as keel-tailed, boat-tailed or large-tailed grackles. There's a big blue-black male and three brown and black females, all with yellow eyes. The male was doing mating show-off stuff for the females for quite a while yesterday. I don't know what they're eating out there. They find good size bugs of some sort in my lawn and then they like to bring them to the bird bath, drop them in and then fish them out and eat them. Washing them off? Whatever the insects are, they seem to have a fairly hard shell because the grackles have to work at eating them. 17-year locust (cicada) grubs, maybe? I never would have guessed that there would be so many out in my lawn. I wish the grackles would eat whatever is eating my peach and dogwoods. Hmmmm. This morning there are two males out there, so maybe it is a "flock". The pictures of grackles in this post are borrowed from the Internet. I'm particularly bad at taking pictures of birds. This picture is the male and the picture further down in the post is the brown and black female.

The cats watch the grackles and make little cat hunting noises, but don't go after them much. Both my cat girls are getting older and stiffer and, in Zoe's case, lazy. I suspect that when the grasshoppers come back this year, Zoe will go after them. She loves chasing grasshoppers and other small creatures that try to escape her.

I've been trying to get organized for a trip that begins next Saturday. It's a nine day business trip and I have to be professional the whole time. I've been figuring out which suits, which dresses, which semi-casual, and which accessories to wear with which outfits. I'm doing this so I don't take extraneous stuff. Usually I pack thinking: "I'd better take this outfit too in case I decide I might want to wear it." I'm just not going to have the space to do that for 9 days of professional travel to opposite sides of the country. So I made a Table, and the rows are: day, schedule for that day, clothes (more than one set if a change will be necessary given the schedule), shoes, accessories for each change of clothes. I've been filling the table in and making sure I have everything and it doesn't need to go to the cleaners first.

*laughing* People who know me would just say that I'm always this anal-retentively organized, but I think I'm usually not on trips. Other things in my life (especially things I collect) are organized to an extreme. I can hear my friend arguing: "Oh, yes you are this organized on trips!" *throws up hands in surrender* Tabun ne. I've already admitted I don't do spontaneity well. At any rate, I should be ready for the trip by next Saturday.

I thought I had seen a swallow already but I suppose it's a little too early for them still. They should be back soon. Instead, there's a pair of house finches that I think are nesting in the old swallow nest. They're certainly hanging out there a lot, but they scram pretty quickly when I open the front door. Well, so did the swallows, but they hovered around unhappily until I left. The finches just fly away. I don't know whether I want the finches to nest there, or want the swallows to displace them when the swallows return. Actually I don't know whether the swallows can displace them if they decide to nest there and are already nesting. I guess I'll see. Birds are so interesting to watch.

Anyway this is short today and I won't be posting again until probably after mid-May when I get back into town and recovered from travels. More when I return.

Spring?

Yes, yes, I know. Texas doesn't really have a Spring as such. We may get a few days where the weather is fairly pleasant before we dive headlong into summer. This year has had some weird weather. We got no rain at all in March, so I've been watering my lawn to get it to grow. We have already had a few days that hit 90, and then this morning it was 50, with a forecast for 41 tomorrow morning followed by 80s during the day. Typical ups and downs for this time of year I guess. I could wish the temperatures were a little more consistent. Of course periodically in the blog I feel required to post pictures of Addy and Zoe. You can see how my lawn's struggling by this first picture of Addy. She likes to lay in the grass and so here she is, mostly surrounded by weeds. You can almost see her saying, "This is less than acceptable!" This pic was about a month ago though. The grass is finally starting to grow up amidst the weeds. I've even got some St. Augustine runners coming back in areas that were totally dead or weed-covered late last year. I'm delighted to see them. There may be some hope that St. Augustine will take over the back yard again. I'll be a little more proactive if I see chinch bugs out there again, now that I know what to look for. Last year when the St. Augustine started dying, I just waited for the Trugreen people's normal scheduled visit. The front yard is slowly coming up Bermuda.

The weather vagaries this year are clearly demonstrated by following my attempts at growing things. Of course I probably can't blame it all on the weather. I've never had a green thumb, despite having two sisters who can grow anything and everything. One of those sisters brought me some little dogwoods and a small holly from east Texas, which my friend and I planted in my back yard on April 2nd. The holly will probably live. If it does it will be due entirely to it's own hardiness. I can't say the same about the dogwoods. They looked fairly good the day after we planted them, but have gone steadily downhill since then. This first picture was taken the morning after they were planted. Not too bad, I thought. Then the wind blew hard that whole day. The next morning before sunup we had a major storm. It was like all the March rainfall we didn't get in March hit us within about a 2 hour time period that morning. Plus I got hail. Needless to say, the little dogwoods didn't do well. Then for the last two weeks it's been windy and warm with no rain, and yesterday it was 60-mph-gusts windy. There's a picture further down in the blog on the right where you can see what the baby dogwoods looked like this morning. Poor things. And those cracks in the ground are not due to dryness. Water runs off out there right now. From the looks of them, it's pretty amazing that they're still alive at all. So even though I'm still trying, I'm not expecting too much from them. Truthfully, I didn't pick the best spot for them. I know dogwoods like the protection of other trees so I put them close to the fence where the neighbor's tree hangs over. Except, I had that tree cut back so it's not hanging over. And that spot gets late afternoon sun and heat right now. The poor little things have sun-burned leaves, and also I noticed this morning that something is eating them! I sprayed them, so hopefully that will help. I'll keep hoping they somehow make it. I may also go to Home Depot or Lowe's and see if I can find some sort of something to place out there to block the late afternoon sun and maybe some of the wind from hitting them for a while.

The peach seedlings I transplanted into pots are doing well, and so are my roses. So I'm not totally incapable of growing things. *laughing* Although I probably shouldn't speak too soon. They could all still curl up. The peach tree itself continues to struggle to survive also. Some of the budding limbs came off in the strong winds we've had, but at least one area of growth is now looking like true limbs rather than a few leaves. You can see how it's doing in this picture. So the peach continues to try to keep growing.

Seriously, anything around me that grows . . . it's due entirely to it's own ability to grow and thrive. I have the exact opposite of a green thumb, whatever that may be. Black thumb, maybe? But I do love Spring and growing things. I'm not so happy when things are dormant and skies are gray.

I thought I'd better get a blog post in because I'm about to start some traveling. The first two weeks in May are hopeless. San Diego for 6 days, followed by Charleston for 3 days, back here for 4 days, then Berlin for 4 days. Can you say jet lag? I suspect that by May 16th when I get back home, I'll be TIRED. Still. I enjoy the stuff I'm doing, and my colleagues. The traveling will be worth the meetings and the socializing. These are all people and associations I'm fond of working with and for. Then the third week in May I start teaching my Summer Biochem class. I've already started putting that together and updating lectures since it starts so close to when I get back from my travels.

I had a period of time in March where my stomach was seriously bothering me, almost all the time. I've had reflux for years, but this was the first time I couldn't control it with antacids. (well, it wouldn't be me if I didn't discuss my medical issues at some point in a blog). So the Monday that I was hurting all day and had been for most of the weekend, I gave up home remedies and made an appointment with my doctor. The upshot is, I probably have an ulcer (very positive test for H.pylori), so today I'm doing the antibiotic therapy. Hopefully this will clear it all up. I also had a sonogram since the pain was in a gallbladder-like position. The sonogram showed a possible cyst or polyp in the gallbladder which we'll follow up if the antibiotics don't work. Easy fixes first, I always say. Actually I'll have a follow up ultrasound in 6-ish months even if the antibiotics work, just to make sure. If the antibiotics don't work, my Doc wants to follow up sooner.

Here's the prerequisite picture of Zoe in one of her favorite places, inside the coiled up hose. I'm not sure why she likes that but she does. This year the birds are disrespecting her as much as ever, but she never gives up trying to be the mighty huntress. She's a little more handicapped this year without the overgrown peach tree to hide in. Hard to believe that tree went from massively overgrown and healthy last year at this time to barely, maybe surviving this year. Interestingly, I found out peach trees are difficult to keep alive anyway, having a relatively short life span for a tree. The life span for a peach is 10 - 20 years and I've been in this house 10 years now. So I suppose my little peach tree's demise is not entirely my fault. It may have just been it's time. I guess I'll see if I can grow some more from the little seedlings, and in the meantime consider what type of tree I might want to replace it with if it completely dies.

My weeds in the backyard need to be mowed again already, but I'm not going to do it yet. The front yard doesn't need it, and the grass in the backyard (what there is) needs to grow some more before I cut it. I'll just have to struggle getting the mower through the overgrown weed areas when I do mow.

I guess that's all for now. Later!