Traditional Post Holiday Activity

 

 

 

 

Teenage Monkey and Middle Monkey joined in their annual, post Christmas wrapping paper tube fight. The warrior whose tube breaks first loses. Teenage Monkey clearly lost, but refused to give up until his tube was a useless rag.

As you can see from the shorts the Monkeys are wearing, it is very warm here today, mid 70's, sunny, with a light breeze. We could not ask for more beautiful weather. I even saw a sulpher butterfly visiting the hen bit flowers. We need to finish the last three beds in the winter garden before the weather turns cold and wet, which is actually the best weather for us to grow cool weather crops

Hope you are having a great start to your New Year.

Help a Fellow Blogger Out, Would Ya?

Hope you all are having a happy new years eve. Obviously, I am having a lame new years eve as I am here blogging like a dork. Anyway, I need your help. My family thinks I am crazy and it is all your fault. I keep saying things like, "This lady I Internet know, in Canada(exchange England, Australia, Oklahoma, or Sweden for location), blah, blah, blah." Or, "I met this person from another tiny Texas town at Scarecrow Festival, but we have been talking (in comments) for months." What is worse, I had to explain to the spouse of the person I met at the street festival why a total stranger was hugging his wife and giving her a passion vine. Anyway, my nonblogging family thinks I have lost my crackers and you are all make believe invisible friends. We need a new name for our friendships. The all to lame, "this lady I know on the Internet," must be replaced with something more respectable, more real, and more awesome.

I came up with Internet friend and blogging buddy, but the offline humans still eye roll me. Well, even the cats eye roll me, but they are bred to be snotty.

Any suggestions?

Super Monkey

 

My Mom and her best friend took the boys on a little adventure today. At first, I was like, "What about me?" Then I realized this would mean one whole day to myself- all alone. YIPEE, and the boys didn't miss me for a minute. They came home a little tired, and the above pictured monkey had motion sickness. Still, they were very happy.

"What did I do with my day?", you ask. I cleaned the refrigerator. Nope, not playing, I cleaned up the refrigerator. It sparkles.

Tell me you would be more inspired if you had hours of time to fill in anyway you desired. Seriously, tell me.

more animals

Gardening Computer Game

 

My lovely sister bought me this computer game for Christmas. I thought it was cute and that I would enjoy it. Well, hell, the stupid thing is crack to plant addicts. I loaded it up last night and started growing plants. When you turn of the game, the plants keep growing, or not. When I loaded it this morning, my plants were dead because they didn't have enough water and they were infested with bugs. So I used most of my money on bug spray for dead plants. Then I had to buy new seeds, because I didn't save my seeds. Down to $35 I spent all day rebuilding my nursery and saving money. I know have over $200 again and healthy plants. There is a silver lining to this new obsession, you have to give the plants time to grow. After each planting, pruning, pollinating, and selling session, there is a period of time where nothing is going on. This produces time with nothing to do on the computer. I cleaned house, gave my potted plants worm castings, and potted up five snap dragons. I acheived more in my house and yard today than I have in the past week. Now, I just wish the internet had a time out feature or I had the self control to stay off of it.

I am probably going to love this game during the cold nasty days when I cannot actually garden.

Weeding Carrots ARRRRGGGG

Weedy Carrot Bed

 

Gratuitous picture of Tisha

 

It looks like the Monkeys put too much hay in the bunny hutch

 

Weeding Carrots is a job, a really bad job. Hen bit, chickweed, and volunteer lettuce have invaded my carrot bed. It is very hard to remove the weeds without pulling up carrot seedlings. This led to a very frustrating afternoon. I hope I didn't pull up to many baby carrots. I even resorted to an Internet search on "how to weed carrots." There was no miracle carrot weeding technique, just as there is no miracle weight loss pill. Still, you can't blame a girl for trying. I did come across this little gem of information, "Soil disturbance caused by cultivation exposes locked up organic material and minerals to oxygen, water, and microorganisms for decomposition." So weeding helps our plants in two ways; removing the competing plants and releasing nutrients. That explains why a newly weeded bed performs so much better. So now I have a different perspective on weeding. Even if the beds are not perfectly cultivated, the work done, however imperfectly, will improve the crop. I no longer feel the pressure from Perfect Weeding Aspiration Syndrome (PWAS). What a relief.

Do you suffer from a syndrome related to an unrealistic gardening goal? If so, please tell.

Beautiful Unnatural Winter Evening

 

 

 

Today was windy but warm and nice. This evening the temperatures were in the 70's and I was able to sit on our deck after dinner. The picture are of our very nice patio umbrella. The lights are solar powered. The plants were brought out of the house this afternoon. They look a little ratty. Tomorrow they will get new potting soil and a haircut.

Tonight, we are supposed to have thunderstorm and tomorrow night the temperatures are supposed to drop into the 30's. We are very thankful for such a nice day today.

If you are still snowed in, please don't hate me because my weather is beautiful.

Sorry, I couldn't help myself, but take heart as I will be whining about the cold/wet again tomorrow.