It was such a gorgeous day yesterday, it's too bad today is rainy, especially because I'm sure the rain ruined a bunch of Easter plans. I took Friday off, partly because I had to go renew my driver's license in person this year. You never know how long the line will be at the driver's license office near me. So I just took the day off, which also let me get a bunch of other errands run, besides getting my license renewed. I got all my running around and puttering outside done Friday and yesterday. It was fairly cool out, but brightly sunny and pretty once the clouds moved pout about midday Friday.
My little azalea is blooming as you can see. All the hawthorn are loaded down with buds on the verge of blooming so they're about to become gorgeous. The weather is still flirting with cooler temps (50's on Saturday morning and this morning), but Spring is definitely here.
My hummers are back! They showed up last Sunday afternoon. The little male has taken to perching on the tip of one of my aloe early in the morning. Yesterday he was all puffed out from the cold, and this morning he was all puffed out from the rain and cold, but he just perches there. These pictures of him are far from ideal since he won't sit there if I open the door. So these are taken through the window.
On Friday I bought some more african violets to take to work and another venus flytrap. I think I'll take a flytrap to work also and see if it will survive and eat the gnats and small flies that occasionally somehow manage to get into my office. So I spent part of Friday afternoon re-potting plants from the plastic things they come in, and getting them ready to take to work.
I've decided to keep the magenta african violet here at the house. It's so pretty, and Addy's too old and not agile enough to get up on the counter, so both she and it should be safe. I just like growing things. I guess that green thumb that my sisters have always had didn't skip me after all. Well, maybe not a green thumb in that I still manage to kill things I'm trying to grow. But a green thumb in that I like to grow things.
The peach actually looks like a tree this year. The other two aren't doing as well, but are also leafing out nicely. This one is in the prime spot for a peach tree - lots of sun. The other two are in shadier places and obviously don't like that as well. My mint is coming back in with a vengeance. I'll have to watch it so that it doesn't take over the garden around the patio. The little pine is putting on lots of new new pine needles too, as you can see. I'm continually amazed that that little tree keeps coming back.
Although I'm not a big fan of rain, I'm glad for it this year since we were so dry last year. I got 1.4 inches last night, which will encourage everything to bloom and grow like crazy now. From the forecast it looks like it's going to be a rainy week this week. That'll make all the plants happy. One of my tiered trees by the back patio is so overgrown you almost can't tell it has tiers. I hope my lawn service guys trim it back soon.
I saw the coopers' hawk go after one of the doves in my yard today. He always seems to hunt here on cloudy cool days - or anyway those are the days I've seen him hunting here.
I'm glad for this puttering around the house time because I have some busy times coming up. Next weekend I'm off for Chicago for business. Then home the next weekend, then I have back to back trips to Washington DC and Philadelphia. Then the first week in May I'm back to Washington DC and the second week in May I'm off to Seattle. Then I'm home for a month before I'm off again. Oh! And that month I'm home I'll be having gum surgery with some bone grafting. How fun is that? Just got bad genes when it comes to gums, I guess. Considering how good my health is overall though I really can't complain about my genes. This will only be my second gum surgery in the last 20+ years.
And I guess I'll quit there for today. Leaving with an Addy picture of course. She has to help me when I'm outside - or at least be out there with me, checking out stuff.
Finally it's become Spring around here. Late this year. We had an ice/snow storm the last few days of February-first few days of March, and since then it's been pretty much non-stop raining up until last Sunday, but it's been fairly nice since then. So I've spent the last couple of weekends puttering around the house and yard. Things are beginning to grow and bloom finally. This is my neighbor's bradfpord pear, blooming like crazy.
Last weekend I bought a couple red-tipped photinia and planted then out by the fence. Last Fall I had my two big live oaks trimmed up, and I lost a bunch of privacy from my neighbors behind me. You can see that in the first picture. Nothing between me and my neighbors but a 6 foot fence. I didn't realize how much privacy the low hanging limbs on those trees were creating until they were gone. So these photinia should grow relatively tall, and maybe I'll get some of that privacy back.
I also planted some hollyhocks last weekend so I hope they come up. And I cleaned out shrubbery a bit and cut back some crepe myrtle. I was head to toe mud by the time I finished that planting and gardening last weekend, but the rain had finally stopped, and I was determined to get some yard work in.
I also bought a little african violet for my office and on a whim, a little venus flytrap. The little venus flytrap is so small and cute, and really seems to like my kitchen windowsill. It's directions said I don't have to feed it flies - which I don't know if that means it will catch them itself, or that it can survive on photosynthesis just fine. Either way we'll see how it does. The African violet I took to work since those little plants are pretty, but poisonous to cats.
This weekend I re-potted things that needed it. I re-potted the peace lily into a bigger pot since it had so over-grown the pot it came in. I also found a nice plant stand for it. It likes that location in the sun room, but it had really gotten too big to sit on that coffee table. I also re-potted the little venus flytrap into a pot from it's little square plastic container.
I put out my hummingbird feeders two weeks ago, but haven't seen hide nor hair of a hummingbird yet. They're late coming through this year, but that could be because things are just barely starting to bloom here. My flowering quince and the bradford pears were the only things that had bloomed until this week. This week the redbuds are blooming, and my azalea and indian hawthorne are showing lots of buds. So once things start blooming I'm hoping the hummers arrive.
I just love Spring when everything starts growing again, and it's green and flowers are blooming. The peaches are leafing out nicely now and the russian sage and the roses are all putting on new growth. The buds on the little pine are bursting into a tree-full of new pine needles. All the trees are seeming to leaf out basically overnight. My live oaks have been dropping their old leaves like snowfall with the growth of the new ones. My lawn service guys left three large sacks of leaves for the trash people to pick up this week.
Yesterday I checked out and programmed my sprinkler system. About time to turn it on for the year, so I needed to make sure it was working as it's supposed to. I'm glad to see green grass coming up also, rather than brown dead grass. Although I grow grass for Addy during the Winter, I won't need to grow Addy any more grass now this year. She can find it outside.
And that's pretty much the yardwork report for March. I won't have as much time to do garden/yard stuff in April since I'll be traveling some. I'll leave today with a picture of that last snowstorm, since I'm so happy that stuff is gone now for the year.
This is definitely the time of year when living in Texas makes the weather interesting. It's about 28 degrees outside and everything is covered in about 4 inches of snow. Last Monday we had an inch of ice and sleet. And a week ago it was gorgeous and in the mid-70s. I'm not a fan of cold weather and frozen precipitation, but luckily in Texas it usually doesn't last long. And then we get those wonderfully warm days. I'm more than ready for the wonderfully warm to come for the year and stay.
So most of the pictures in this post are from the last two weekends when I had the house opened up and it was mostly beautiful out. For shock value, the last picture in the post is what it actually looks like outside today. Anyway, my flowering quince was in full bloom as you can see, and the honeybees were going to town on it. It might have been their first meal this year, but they were really swarming it. I took pictures of them go about their honeybee business.
I also discovered that the Russian sage I planted either is dead or goes dormant for the winter. It's just a few dead-looking stubs sticking up where I planted it. I'm hoping that it went dormant. We'll see if it comes back. The Texas sage keeps it's leaves year-round. Another surprising thing is the moss in the pot with the little pine tree. The tree is definitely dormant and dead-looking, but the moss is bright green and seemingly thriving. Of course, today it's buried under a little mound of snow. I'll be interested to see if it's still green when the snow melts.
I got out and trimmed back all my roses on Valentine's Day. Then I trimmed the peach shrubs into forms resembling trees. Then I sawed and cut up all the branches and generally cleaned up the patio area. Two of the peach trees now look fairly tree-like. The third one was harder because of the way it grew, but I trimmed it up as much as I could. This last Saturday was the same beautifully warm temperatures as on Valentine's, and I again got out puttering in the yard. Then Saturday evening I re-covered my aloe out on the patio and Sunday the temperatures plummeted from mid-70s to well below freezing.
Monday I didn't go to work. I have become less likely to risk life and limb, and car, to the nasty weather when we get ice. It's actually not the road conditions that make me stay in. It's the massive number of crazy people out of the road. By Tuesday the roads were relatively clear and I drove in to work, but the morons were still out there, both the morons under-driving the conditions (10 mph on the freeway is unacceptable), and the morons over-driving the conditions (the bridges are icy! don't approach them at 80 and slam on your brakes). Then Friday it began snowing around 10:00 am and was still snowing when I left work at 4:00. It took me about 1 1/2 hours to get home, and my commute is usually 30-ish minutes. At least I didn't have to be anywhere today.
Monday while I was home I watched the birds at my feeders on and off all day. I had a Cooper's Hawk hunting the little birds out there! Big, beautiful bird of prey. He probably stooped on the feeder about 8 times during the course of the day. He may have caught one dove, but I think he came up mostly empty. The shrubbery around there is prime for little birds to scatter into, and the patio where the feeder is hanging is a little bit tight maneuvering for a bird that size. The birds would scatter and hide for awhile, and then come back. And he'd try again. I got some pictures, and this was about the best one. They didn't turn out good, but he wasn't exactly trying to hold still for the camera. I couldn't decide whether to be happy that the little birds were escaping him, or sad that he wasn't getting a meal.
The hawk isn't around today, but I have a bunch of doves about there, probably a dozen. It's a mixture of morning doves and white-winged doves. It hasn't gotten up to freezing yet today, so the doves tend to like to huddle on the patio, even when they aren't foraging under the feeder. And of course the usual sparrows, finches, juncos and cardinals are out there. Occasionally I see a blue jay.
Addy is still doing well. I have to put a picture of her in my posts of course. She did fine with the new pet sitters, but I'll be glad to have my regular sitter watching over her on the trips I have coming up. March is pretty clear, but I have three trips in April - to Chicago, Washington DC and Philadelphia. Then I have two trips in May - to Seattle and back to Washington DC. Then I have a trip to Paris, France in June and a trip to Atlanta in July. And this is just my President-elect year. Next year when I'm President will probably be worse, trip-wise. So I'm really glad Addy's health is looking okay for a cat-kid that's 19 years old.
Anyway, this isn't the latest in the year that we've had ice and or snow here, but I'm hoping it will be the last this year. I'm really ready for warm and green and growing things. Not only am I not fond of cold, I'm not fond of dead-looking plants. Plus, I know I put my hummingbird feeder out in mid-March last year and had a hummer right away. So I hope this is the last frigid weather we'll have and it'll begin being growing season soon.
This is just a quick post today, to be able to post some cool pictures I took. I had a business meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico the first week in February and just got around to looking at the pictures today. This first picture is the view from my balcony, looking out on the Atlantic Ocean. Gorgeous!
The business meeting was good, my first board of directors meeting as an officer. A couple of the directors were missing, but I think overall this will be an outstanding group to work with this year. The new directors and officers had to come in a day early for orientation, so I was early enough to take half a day and explore Old San Juan with one of the new directors. We had a blast, and walked our feet off. There are two old forts, one of which, Castillo San Cristobal, is a national historic site run by the US National Park Service. So we walked all over that, then walked to the other fort, called El Morro, and walked all over that.
I ended up getting much more exercise than a normal work day. It was uniformly beautiful, pretty much everywhere we went, and the food was amazing. I also ended up learning a few things about Puerto Rico, like how far it is out into the Atlantic. I always thought of it as Caribbean, which it is considered, but it's hardly even in the Caribbean Sea. There's also a weird feeling I got a couple of times because Puerto Rico feels so foreign sometimes, like Spanish being the native language, yet you see regular mail boxes and delivery vehicles and the National Park Service, etc. So it feels American and foreign at the same time.
The other pictures in this very short post show the little guard houses at the corners of the walls, which are called garitas, and the forts are famous for them. We also took a tour of the Castillo San Cristobal and went into the dungeon, where the figures of ships were sketched on the wall with a charcoal mixture by a sea captain prisoner back in history. Then we went over to El Morro, pictured here. And lastly, when touring El Morro, we came upon two large iguanas taking advantage of the beautiful day. This was one of them.
As usual, time is zipping by. I'm totally unable to keep up with it, or catch up with it.
Today I began writing the post with the good memories of Zoe. I got a little ways into it before I started crying again, but I'm getting better. I also realized that that good memories post may have to be longer than just one post. There's so many wonderful things to remember about that silly cat-kid.
So anyway, I didn't come near to finishing it, and decided to save it for later once I started crying. I actually have nothing to blog about today. It started out to be a gloomy day this morning, but the sun's out now. I got 1.2 inches of rain yesterday, so that was nice. I've been trying to get pictures of the birds other than sparrows and house finches that hang around my feeders, but they aren't cooperating. The chickadees, juncos and wrens are too schitzy to hold still for pictures. I took several million pictures trying to catch one of the little Carolina wrens that hang out here. Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I took a lot. The pictures in this post are the ones that sort of came out. Little bird was puffed out since it was chilly outside.
I also took some new pictures of the Addy cat-kid. She's still doing well, but I'm a little freaked about leaving her for 4 1/2 days this coming week. Yes, I've become a paranoid parent. But also she hasn't been by herself overnight for an extended period since Zoe died. And also my regular pet sitter is out having surgery so I'm trying a new pet sitter. So I'm a tad nervous. I'm sure she'll be fine, but I'm still a tad nervous.
I'm going to San Juan, Puerto Rico on Wednesday, coming back on Sunday. It's for a board of directors meeting. Let's hope I remember to take my camera. It should be a nice trip, and a nice way to start my duties as pres-elect of my organization. This is the only semi-exotic location we'll be going to. The other meetings I have this year are in Seattle, Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago and Philadelphia.
I was going to clean house this weekend, but I was totally unmotivated to do it. I blame the gloomy weather, although I probably should blame my basic laziness. I have managed to start and keep going on an exercise program this last month though so that's some good news. Unfortunately that will be disrupted by all the traveling I'll be doing. I'll have to work to keep at it between trips.
My resolution to get the finances under control is . . . uhm . . . shall we say, struggling. I'm not shopping as much, but I'm still shopping. Still, if I can have the determination to lose 30 pounds and keep it off for a year now, I can get the finances under control too. Just a matter of getting serious about it.
Speaking of shopping though, I bought a little Fitbit. It's fun. It keeps track of your steps throughout the day and how many flights of stairs you climb. And if your wear it to bed, it keeps track of your sleep - how long you sleep, how many times you wake up during the night and when, how many times you were restless during the night and when. It's interesting. The goal they want you to shoot for is 10,000 steps a day. Well I work a desk job mainly, so my personal goal is 5000 steps a day. I can usually make that. Plus I take the stairs to the cafeteria, etc, so that helps. I've gotten 8,000+ steps one Sunday and 9,000+ steps, also on a Sunday. That's probably because I usually run around doing chores on Sundays, plus I exercise on Sunday. For me, it's not so much how many steps I take, it's more that it keeps me conscious of getting up and moving around. I pay more attention to how active I am.
I have roughly a dozen mourning doves under the feeder outside, squabbling over the seeds. They had better be careful. That many at a time tends to draw little birds of prey to the area.
I guess that's about all today. Later.
January 2015 is well under way, and it's COLD outside. I may have mentioned that I'm not fond of cold. And today it's cold and gloomy, so twice as bad. But I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's not sleeting or freezing rain or snow. Just cold and gloomy.
I have a new group of birds at the feeders. It's not my sparrow swarm from the summer, so I'm only having to fill the feeders about once a week these days. But I looked out yesterday and I have a couple of these guys on the feeder. American goldfinches! I didn't even know they came through here, but I'm glad they do. Pretty birds - even with their winter coloring. And not very schitzy. This one sat and let me take many pictures, so I posted several.
I also have some black-capped chickadees hanging out, and some dark-eyed juncos, and of course, the mourning doves, a pair of cardinals and an occasional blue jay. The juncos are definitely ground birds. They forage in the yard or under the feeders, but I never see them up on the feeders. And they are hard to get pictures of because they're very schitzy, as are the chickadees.
I'm actually glad to see the birds around. After I had both my big trees trimmed up and all the low branches taken off, it seemed like the birds all left the area. Of course that could be partly due to them migrating around that time, I suppose.
I have been having trouble with a smell in my guest bathroom. I've looked everywhere and cleaned everywhere and finally decided it was an animal that crawled under the house or into the walls and died and I'd have to live with the smell a while. But that was back around the end of September and I still have the smell, so I was about to call plumbers out, afraid maybe I had another leak under my foundation. I was talking about it to my friends at lunch last week, and one of them said, "google it. Maybe it's something you can fix." So yesterday I googled it, as "sour smelling drain". One of the suggestions that came up was to run hot water full blast through all your drains at once for 10 minutes. Something about trapped gas in the drains coming back up in drains you don't use a lot, and I rarely use that guest bathroom. I figured it couldn't hurt to run water in all my sinks, etc, for 10 minutes, so I did it. The smell is gone. I'm serious. I've had that smell for 4 months, and I fixed it by running water for 10 minutes. Amazing. And on top of that, I almost had a plumbing call too. Guess I'll use that bathroom occasionally or at least just run water in there at times.
I have all my aloe covered against the cold, but I'm kind of afraid of what they'll look like when I uncover them. This has been a pretty extended cold stretch, dropping down to freezing or lower at night and just barely making it to the low 40s during the day. Plus they're not getting any sunlight covered up like that. I'd uncover them if it would stop freezing at night. Oh well. They're pretty hard to kill.
My little pine looks dead, unless you look closely at the fat buds waiting for Spring. And the little peach trees have dropped all their leaves. I'll need to do serious trimming on those here pretty soon - whenever it's warm enough for me to get outside. I don't want to leave it very late, because I want to trim them back while they're the most dormant. And trim all the roses too of course, but it's going to have to be a heck of a lot warmer than it is right now for me to get out there. Did I mention that I don't like cold?
Addy's still doing okay. Still maintaining her health pretty well and demanding a lot of attention. I am meeting some new pet sitters next week. My current sitter is going to be having cataract surgery and I'm going out of town for a Board meeting the first week in February, which happens to be when she'll be out with her surgery. So she recommended a service and I'm meeting with them this coming week. So far, from their website and talking to them on the phone, I like what I see. I hope I have as good of luck with them as I have had with my current pet sitter. Even if I weren't a paranoid parent, I'd want someone to keep a good eye on Addy while I'm gone, at her age.
So that's all. Not much going on right now. Maybe next time I post I'll have been able to get out into the yard and putter around.
Wow! I'm not sure how it can possibly be the last day of 2014, and the last few hours of that day. 2014 has sped past faster than light. I'm not really sure where it's gone.
Such a difference a year has made though. After struggling with health and house in 2013, 2014 was much better. I think I'll start out by skimming the major points of the last year.
I guess the most notable thing about the year was losing Zoe. Even when you know your pet-kids are old, losing them is not something you can really prepare yourself for and having to put Zoe to sleep hit me very hard. I'm recovering slowly, but I'm recovering. I think I'll be able to remember her without so much heartache in the not too distant future. I'm not going to dwell on her tonight because I've been thinking about her a lot for the last couple of months. One of my toasts this evening will be in memory of my sweet Zoe girl though.
The other big news for the year is that I won my election to office with my national professional organization. In 2015 (tomorrow!) I'll be President-elect, and then in 2016 I'll be President. To say I'm delighted would be a mild understatement. I'm thrilled to death. Especially because my opponent was tough. This will mean a bunch more work the next two years, but I'm actually looking forward to it quite a bit. It should also mean a decent number of cool trips too.
Most of the rest of the things that have occurred this year are not very exciting. Health-wise, I finished the TB drugs in June. I've had 2 mild colds over the course of the year and 5 migraines. That's a high number of migraines for me in a year. I usually average 1-2 per year, but one year of having 5 doesn't really mean anything, so I'll just keep an eye on that. I've back-slid a bit on healthy eating, so my cholesterol has come up to around 200 again, but I'm maintaining my weight around 133 so I'm happy about that.
Once I got the house repairs finished in January, I've had no other house issues, except replacing the AC/heat system in July. Compared to all the work I had done on the house in 2013, replacing the central heat/air seemed minor this year. And wasn't unexpected given that it was the original system in a house the age this one is.
One really fun thing I did this year was the trip to Istanbul. I'm glad I had the chance to take that trip. And I had a great vacation to Utah and Colorado this year, despite more rain than I like.
So I guess I'd have to say that 2014 was good to me, even with losing Zoe. I'm grateful to still have Addy, especially since she'll be 19 in February. I imagine I'll spend 2015 being an over-reactive and over-protective Mom with Addy.
Let's see. Resolutions for 2015. Pretty much the same as the last several years, I guess. Maintain my Health: maintain current weight, eat healthier and exercise. And MONEY: STOP SHOPPING!!!!! Actually, the health thing is going well, it's the finances I need to crack down on in 2015. They are way out of control. It's now time to once again do what I did before I bought each of my current houses - get rid of my debt. I hate to admit though that the payoff is significantly more than it's ever been before. Thus my resolution to get my act together and get my finances under control. It's also going to be a tough resolution not to break because I simply love to shop. Oh well. I've done it before, I can do it again.
So I guess that's the short and sweet of it. I'll leave you with pictures of my Christmas tree and other various Holiday decorations, and Addy of course. Here's to Zoe and to 2015.
Happy New Year!
