Time's not flying by quite as fast as it did last year, but it's still moving past at a pretty good clip. It's March already! Addy's still doing well, eating and drinking plenty and demanding attention whenever I'm in the house. And getting it too, I might add. She definitely rules the house. And occasionally she even goes outside and wanders around a bit, checking out the patio.
Two of my three peach trees are blooming. The biggest tree - the one I got the great peaches from last year - isn't showing any signs of blooming yet though. It's also the one that was cut back the farthest, so I hope cutting it back that far didn't damage it. The little tree by the back fence is fully in bloom and the middle tree will be soon.
I got my sprinkler system working on Saturday - pretty much just in time for rain this weekend. It was my lawn guys who motivated me to get the system running, although I had been thinking I needed to do it soon. They treated my lawn on Thursday and left a note for me to water within 48 hours. So I checked it out and started up the system.
My big African violet at work died finally. Between the abuse and then me over-watering it, it just gave up the ghost. Luckily I still have 7 leaves from it in little pots. One leaf is already growing a new plant as you can see form this picture. I suspect most of the other leaves will grow plants too since they're all looking healthy. I should have a replacement plant and at least one for Monica. The rest I may have to give away on street corners if they all live.
Plants I put outside for wintering over are also showing signs of life. Toward the end of last year, the little crepe myrtle that I'm going to try to bonsai dropped it's leaves and looked like a tiny dead stick stuck in a pot. I put it outside, hoping for the best, and last week I discovered that new leaves are coming out of the top of the little stick. I brought it inside for some attention while it gets going again. Now if I can just not kill it with my attention.
Another thing that's growing in my kitchen / greenhouse is a grapefruit tree! Mom and Dad always give me 12 grapefruit as a delicious Christmas present. One weekend in January when I was planting things, I threw one of the seeds from the grapefruit I was eating into a pot, and I'll be damned if the thing didn't sprout. I'm not sure what I'll do with a grapefruit tree, maybe see if I can turn it into a bonsai. It's amazing that I'm trying so hard to start red maple seeds and sakura seeds, with no luck, and this silly grapefruit seed is just growing.
Last month I went to a board of directors meeting in St. Thomas. Beautiful place! This view is from my room. Despite working most of the time we were there, we did get a few hours beach time on Saturday afternoon. I spent mine on the beach, either in a lounge chair or in the water with a rum-based drink in hand. These iguanas live on the resort premises and have no concerns about passing humans.
Coming back I had a tight connection in Miami, less than 30 minutes between flights, and somehow I managed to actually make it. They were nearly finished boarding by the time I puffed up to the gate, but I made it. Probably it wouldn't have been a disaster if I had missed it because flights between Miami and Dallas are pretty frequent, but I was glad to make it.
I thought about putting out at least one of my hummingbird feeders this weekend, but decided to wait another week. I usually put it out in mid-March. A couple of years I had hummers at it as soon as I hung it, but last year the hummers didn't show up until early April. It's been such a warm winter though. I'm going to hang it next weekend.
I think that's all the news for now.
I almost lost my little old lady Addy a couple weeks ago. She started vomiting on a Monday and wouldn't eat. Tuesday afternoon I took her to the vet, which turns out probably to have been a mistake. I thought that like last time she just needed subcutaneous fluids and a shot to break the vomiting cycle. But her kidney tests were actually normal! Better numbers than I've seen in a long time. Her amylase was sky high, which is a marker for the pancreas not functioning well. It turns out, pretty much any major organ failure she goes into will have pretty much the same symptoms, vomiting, refusal to eat, etc. They gave her sub-cutaneous fluids anyway, and an anti-nausea shot and an antibiotic shot.
I took her home but Tuesday evening she was worse, and Wednesday she was obviously hurting so much that I almost took her back and asked them to put her to sleep. There is no 'right' or 'wrong' decisions when you get to that stage. I just held and gently stroked her for long periods on Wednesday (I was out sick too) and hoped for the best. That was all she wanted - to be where I was.
So she didn't eat from Monday through Friday, although she continued to drink water. I tried tempting her to eat with everything I knew, but no go. Saturday morning about 2:00 am, we were both laying there awake and I was contemplating taking her to the vet for the final time. Just drinking water, she was losing strength and could barely totter around the house. I was carrying her around. As we lay there, she got up and headed for the cat box. I got up and put down fresh wet food and tried again - carried her to where it was. And she ate it! Not a lot, but she voluntarily ate for the first time since the previous Monday morning. So I started putting small amounts of dry food on the bed with her and fresh wet food down regularly. Over the course of the last week, she's steadily been increasing the amount of food she's eating, both wet and dry, and she's steadily gained strength back
I don't know why but once again she's come back to fairly stable. She gets around the house as well as she has been this last year, and doesn't seem to be in any kind of discomfort except for her usual arthritis. And she's 21 years old this month. I know she won't live forever, so I'm incredibly grateful to have some additional time with her. If she didn't keep beating the odds, it might be easier to think that she won't keep on doing it.
The quince is in full bloom in my back yard, about a month before it bloomed last year. And the honeybees are happily going to town on it. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see a bee in the middle of the flower in the center. Nothing else is blooming yet. I had my peach trees cut way back so they may not bloom for awhile. Yes, I broke down and paid someone to do it. It wasn't that expensive and it took him an hour to do what would have taken me most of a day. I did finish trimming back all my roses and cleaning the vine out of the quince myself though.
My african violet at work is still not looking good, although the center is still holding. I now have 6 leaves from it planted in soil though, so hopefully at least one of them will grow a new plant. Hopefully more than one, so I can give one to Monica too. I've also planted two other violets for her, a frilly purple one and a regular purple one. I still need to plant her a cutting from my maroon violet.
On other "growing things" fronts, various flowers continue to bloom in my aerogarden that has flowers in it. I like it because I love blooming things. I'm not even sure what these flowers are that I have blooming. I just like flowers, so I planted several different kinds. the bad news about that is that not all of them grow at the same rate. That means I am cutting back the fast-grower a lot to give the other access to the lights. Oh well. I'm still getting flowers.
The other aerogarden, which I'm using to try to sprout some stubborn tree seeds, is growing a couple of little pines but not much else. It's more in the nature of an experiment to see what I can get to grow in an aerogarden. As you can imagine form all the things I've been planting lately, my kitchen counters look more like a greenhouse than a kitchen. Good thing I'm not much into cooking. I currently have more plants in this house than I've had all together since . . . actually since ever. Most plants ever. Some of them will go outside when the weather warms up for the year, but then some of the plants I have outside will come in when it gets hot, so I guess it balances out.
That's all for today.
Hah! Surprised you, right? Didn't think I'd post again so soon, I bet. Actually I'm kind of surprising myself, but I do want to keep up with this blog more this year.
2017 is starting out good so far in most ways. I'm sticking to my exercise schedule, despite having pulled a muscle in my lower back some time last week. So I'm sticking to it a bit gingerly this week, but I'm sticking to it. And the diet thing is better. I actually have fruit and veggies in my house. Definite moves in the right direction.
Work is going well too. My new faculty member continues to be awesome, and I'm nearly caught up! Yes, that's correct. All those many things I had on hold because of association duties last year, are almost all done. And the book that I'm senior editor on is at the printers! What a chore that was. So I'm quite happy with work and how it's going.
There are two things I'm less happy about.
One is that I lost my renters on my old house. They left at the end of the year with no notice. So they don't get the deposit back, but the deposit won't cover the repairs on the house. It has to be completely repainted (which should be happening this weekend) and the carpet has to be replaced (which I've arranged to happen as soon as the ordered carpet arrives). There are also lots of other more minor things like the kitchen faucet needs to be replaced, doors need re-keying, fence in the back needs to be repaired, plus general cleaning, etc. Luckily my agent is dealing with all this (except I went and did the carpet arranging) and just sending me the bills.
There are two good things about this. The best one is that my agent does not think the house will be empty long. He says the housing market is good for rentals and we don't have much competition. The other good thing is that an honorarium I got for speaking last year arrived this month, and it is enough to cover a big chunk of the repairs. So the timing on that was perfect. I do hope it rents quickly though so I'm not paying two mortgages for very long.
The other thing was something that happened this week at work. An IT guy repairing my computer on Monday was bumping into my big African violet which has been blooming in that corner of my desk for almost 2 years now. Tuesday morning when I came it, it was lying on it's side! I re-potted it, but even when I left on Friday it's not clear whether it will survive or not. The center seems to be holding it's own, but all the outside leaves are drooping and I've been removing the increasing number of leaves that are obviously not going to make it. I hate to admit, I have put about 10 leaves from that plant in water, to make sure I can restart it if it doesn't survive. The two pictures here are two angles on it's poor damaged self from Thursday and it looked about the same on Friday. We'll see what it looks like when I go in to work on Tuesday. The African violet picture earlier in the post is one of the other ones in my office - blooming happily.
I haven't done any yard work beyond cutting back the roses on New Year's weekend. Last weekend I was "stove up" as they say, with my back problem, and the weather was sucky. This weekend the weather continues sucky - drizzling or raining and temps hovering around 50. Maybe I'll try the inside chores I didn't do last weekend due to the fact that mopping and sweeping doesn't work well when you're back is bothering you. We'll see how motivated I am - or am not.
Addy continues well. I hope I am able to make that particular statement for a long time yet in each blog post. Hang in there, baby.
That's all for today.
Time's not flying by quite as fast as it did last year, but it's still moving past at a pretty good clip. It's March already! Addy's still doing well, eating and drinking plenty and demanding attention whenever I'm in the house. And getting it too, I might add. She definitely rules the house. And occasionally she even goes outside and wanders around a bit, checking out the patio.
Two of my three peach trees are blooming. The biggest tree - the one I got the great peaches from last year - isn't showing any signs of blooming yet though. It's also the one that was cut back the farthest, so I hope cutting it back that far didn't damage it. The little tree by the back fence is fully in bloom and the middle tree will be soon. 
I got my sprinkler system working on Saturday - pretty much just in time for rain this weekend. It was my lawn guys who motivated me to get the system running, although I had been thinking I needed to do it soon. They treated my lawn on Thursday and left a note for me to water within 48 hours. So I checked it out and started up the system.
My big African violet at work died finally. Between the abuse and then me over-watering it, it just gave up the ghost. Luckily I still have 7 leaves from it in little pots. One leaf is already growing a new plant as you can see form this picture. I suspect most of the other leaves will grow plants too since they're all looking healthy. I should have a replacement plant and at least one for Monica. The rest I may have to give away on street corners if they all live. 
Plants I put outside for wintering over are also showing signs of life. Toward the end of last year, the little crepe myrtle that I'm going to try to bonsai dropped it's leaves and looked like a tiny dead stick stuck in a pot. I put it outside, hoping for the best, and last week I discovered that new leaves are coming out of the top of the little stick. I brought it inside for some attention while it gets going again. Now if I can just not kill it with my attention.
Another thing that's growing in my kitchen / greenhouse is a grapefruit tree! Mom and Dad always give me 12 grapefruit as a delicious Christmas present. One weekend in January when I was planting things, I threw one of the seeds from the grapefruit I was eating into a pot, and I'll be damned if the thing didn't sprout. I'm not sure what I'll do with a grapefruit tree, maybe see if I can turn it into a bonsai. It's amazing that I'm trying so hard to start red maple seeds and sakura seeds, with no luck, and this silly grapefruit seed is just growing. 
Last month I went to a board of directors meeting in St. Thomas. Beautiful place! This view is from my room. Despite working most of the time we were there, we did get a few hours beach time on Saturday afternoon. I spent mine on the beach, either in a lounge chair or in the water with a rum-based drink in hand. These iguanas live on the resort premises and have no concerns about passing humans.
Coming back I had a tight connection in Miami, less than 30 minutes between flights, and somehow I managed to actually make it. They were nearly finished boarding by the time I puffed up to the gate, but I made it. Probably it wouldn't have been a disaster if I had missed it because flights between Miami and Dallas are pretty frequent, but I was glad to make it. 
I thought about putting out at least one of my hummingbird feeders this weekend, but decided to wait another week. I usually put it out in mid-March. A couple of years I had hummers at it as soon as I hung it, but last year the hummers didn't show up until early April. It's been such a warm winter though. I'm going to hang it next weekend.
