Instant bog!

Instant bog!
Originally uploaded by carabou.

Today sucks. Just in general. I never really viewed myself as depicting the "victim" -- but I'm really get tired of being yelled at. I'm not a scapegoat for others frustrations. Quit killin' the messenger. Really. Obtuse? Yes. But I really can't say much more other than I feel like crap and I don't know how much longer I can handle this. At all.

Birthday!

Birthday!
Originally uploaded by carabou.

Trudy's for a birthday cake in a glass. I had a frustrating day, especially since all I really wanted to do was go to Pedernales and sit with my feet in the water, eat some chocolate cake and think about life. *sigh*

Carolee and Christopher are ver' cool though. Two amazing books (one fun, one supercool), christmas lights, mints, a fabulous butterfly dish (not a butter dish, but the butterfly named "Figure 1"), night blooming jasmine and a rather cool pot. They're so cool. *sigh*

THIS WILL NOT BE A FEEL SORRY FOR ME POST!

Eventful Easter

Weeding 15 April
Originally uploaded by carabou.

N&D's been amazing these past few days. He's watered all the plants that needed watering, built a Chuy fence, helped me build a new door to the crawlspace under the house so we can get rid of the pile of bricks and rather large plant keeping the dogs out, and he created an extension to our side fence to keep people from jumping over it.

The Story with Caveat: I have no concrete evidence; this is based on impressions of the event and it could have actually been something completely innocent.

Thursday night at about 1:30am N&D and I were jolted out of bed by the dogs barking furiously, a loud thunk and a
weird metal sound, and then the 70# dog squealing horribly (she squeals
anyway when she's nervous -- she's a diva -- but this was more of a
pain squeal). After five minutes of "time out" to calm her down, she
didn't jump up to greet me, was breathing irregularly and licking her
side as if it hurt. No obvious broken ribs, but she was acting as if
they were bruised.

In the morning, over on the only side of the house without a motion
sensor light, where I cleared out the hedge so we can fix the metal on
the chain link fence that is bent and loose, I saw the mulch
underneath the tree on the non-dog side completely mushed up in about
a four foot-long swatch. Just large enough for a person jumping a
fence rather quickly to land.

N&D's been leaving the dogs access to the backyard at night as he's been feeling as if someone's been scoping the house. The last time he felt this way, we found out someone had actually been using our yard to dump stolen wallets.

We didn't actually see anyone ... The dogs bark at cats ... and dogs
... and squirrels ... and people walking by ...

... but we're pretty sure someone tried to break in to our house

Happy Easter/Mid-Pesach/Seasonal Holiday of your Denomination!

smack down cat

poppy
Originally uploaded by carabou.

So yesterday I joined my first Flickr group. I uploaded this image this morning.

On my walk this morning, a little black cat was trying to get the smack-down with Maggs and Hope. It followed us for almost a full block, tail puffy, intent in its eyes. I couldn't stop laughing as I was almost pulled off balance. Plus two of my neighbors brightened my day a little more as a minute after that, they told me that they loved the side garden (this one -- the domino garden, where more pictures are posted on flickr than here, the blog that is dedicated to it. Agh!)

Anyway. What a funny way to start the day.

Happy News / Sad News

This weekend was beautiful. Literally. Gorgeous Saturday, and N&D and I spent the morning and early afternoon at the mosaic-jam. Two mosaic-people, two mosaic-flowers, and only one more mosaic-person to go. Yay! And then Aaron and I worked on the brochure, and I cooked really nasty carrot cake that was way to healthy (ew).

Sunday, up early. Aaron washed clothes while I spent the entire morning looking for my keys. Nowhere in the house. I don't know where they are. Watered the plants in the island. Sad to be missing such another beautiful day that I could spend with puppies in the park but the brochure is mostly done (there are some image issues, and it really needs to be printed ... but whatever). And then found out that Lily was PTS. Sweet, sweet, majestic loving girl. 108 in human-equivalent of dog years. She was tired, I bet. Sweet, gentle, grey furred girl.

My heart aches for Sonja. It really does. I hope her spirit flies with Lily tonight in her dreams and she feels that soft warm body next to hers when she's curled up in bed.

Sometimes I love our neighborhood

poppy mosaic #3 Originally uploaded by carabou.

Sonja neighbor is so cool. I've been chatting with her more -- getting to know the neighbors, as it were. She was just about to loan me a book by Hafiz (The Gift) when I realized I have a pretty poor return-book ability right now. I'm just a fuzz-head. So I told her I'd head down to half or bookpeople and just buy one for myself. Maybe I'll just put it on my amazon wish list. Ooooh. Amazon has a new plog thing and it linked me to yougrowgirl.com. How cool is that?

Stasis

shy poppy?
Originally uploaded by carabou.

I'm in a point of stagnation with the garden. The spring growth spurt has stopped, and all of the summer stuff is slowly creeping open. Do I pull the weeds? Do I wait and see what they are? I already know the henbit and the bedstraw, and today I figured out I have a Carolina anemone prairie wildflower (why did I buy big ones?).

The mess from the hackberry fiasco is still sitting, waiting for me to figure out what I want to do with it. I definitely want a plank bench

And I'm making concrete balls so I can get enough feel for the medium to make something a little larger and nicer.

I'm also freaking out a little because I'm just now getting my tax stuff in order to file. AGGGGGH! Okay. A lot.

Mosaic flower planted

Flower
Originally uploaded by carabou.

Finally. A day of not feel sorry for me. We finally got a mosaic in the ground on the Grayson side of the traffic calming islands. They look nice. I thought we would get the Half-penny island all finished before concentrating on the Grayson one, mainly because the half-penny island will have more watering and attention paid to it, but I was wrong. Pascal still needs to weather proof them, and who knows how long it will take for someone to either try to steal them or just run over them in spite and/or malice. People are odd. But for now, they look nice. And I took a picture of them, along with the plants that are doing okay for the time being.

Monarch Butterflies

Playing around with flickr.

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing photos in a set called butterfly garden. Make your own badge here.

Another feel sorry for me post

Again, please feel sorry for me. The garden really is looking much nicer, with very happy poppies, but the dogs tried to kill one of their own last week, and I'm two thousand dollars poorer because of it.

That's a lot of sudden debt. But I've gotten a little joy from the happy flowers in our sideyard, and the rain. Even with all of the mud, the rain is quite nice.

So now we have a permanently inside dog (christened "Cat") and three muddy monsters that insist on laying on top of my tomato plants. But life ... yeah.

I need someone to feel sorry for me today

Sorry for the graphic disgusting thing that follows (don't read it if you're eating, or plan to ever eat again). I just need a little sympathy thrown my way.

Every thirty minutes or so I've been going into the dog porch and cleaning up gobs of diarrhea. I can't let any of the dogs out into the yard because tree guys are here (gate wide open=dogs on walkabout), and although they're tolerant of dogs, falling tree branches aren't the safest environment for sniffy, nosey, barky beasts.

So. Four contained dogs. One with diarrhea. Who keeps licking his nasty sticky butt. And then throwing up.

I feel soooo sorry for him. Vet is closed today, and I wouldn't take him anyway without waiting for at least 24 hours to see if it goes away on its own. But still.

He's spread diarrhea over EVERYTHING! The couch cover, the ottoman cover, the floor (and the floor again - and again - and again (repeat several more times) - the floor hasn't been cleaned this much since we moved in).

I gave him a bath. He spread diarrhea all over our bathtub (ew!)

In short, IT STINKS!

And I can't clean thoroughly or disinfect anything until tree guys go away (b/c there's no place to put the dogs other than the dog room. The cats are freaking out enough as it is without having to share their space with dogs that smell like diarrhea)

So. I'm sick dog mom today. At least the trees are getting trimmed.

I'm almost glad I decided to stay home today, but it sucks because it's -- shitty. He's in the kennel right now. It means an even nastier bath later, but at least I can remove the cover from the couch so two Black dogs have a place to chill. Brown dog hasn't left her kennel all morning.

Poor Red dog. And yet, I doubt he'll learn to avoid whatever he ate to cause this.

FEEL SORRY FOR ME!!!!!

*sigh*

At least I have black pansy sorbet (unless N&D ate the last of it last night). Once I shower (again), I'm having me a pansy margarita.

Mmm. margaritas are such a wonderful panacea.

Some Recipes for Herb/Flower Sorbets which would explain the beautiful picture up top.

Posting!

Ok. There's still some weirdness with posting that I still don't understand, but it seems to be working.

Anyway. Lots going on in the yard. The irises are up. The anemones are up. The bulbine is blooming. The daisy is still kickin'. And everything is just, well, moving along. Planted some clumping shallots, a different type of buddleia (purple!), a couple of bronze fennels (the bulbing fennel that I bought by accident is HUGE!).

I took a whole bunch of free pansies and snapdragons home from Marbridge Garden Center in Manchaca (they were free because they were free. Not because I stole them). What a cool place. Also bought a Sky Pencil: the Ilex crenata of Tomorrow! but I haven't planted it yet.

Also have visited the Sunshine Gardens plant sale, the austin organic plant society's plant sale (at Zilker), Natural Gardener (of course!), it's about thyme, howards nursery ... can't wait until Wheatsville! And the Wildflower center is having their sale in april. I like to visit and ogle more than anything as I know most of what I'm planting is pretty and ornamental for the most part, but darn it, the yard is all grass and I hate grass. Grassy grass grass.

Monkey Man came to our house and told me all of our trees are Old and Sad. Termite Lady came and told me to not freak out about the termites in my pear tree. (And a termite mound in a pear tree ... ) I'm taking action requested by Termite Lady, and Monkey Men will be out on Wednesday trimming back all of the dead stuff way high up in the air. Too bad I have to work; I'd love to watch them.

TAH took some pictures. That's a double blossom purple poppy anemone. All of the other anemone's are just single headed. I'm going to try to let it go to seed (hard to resist cutting!) so I can plant some next year.

The Domino Garden

Spring Fever!

Hopefully this will post. It's been a while since blogger's worked with me. So this may just be fruitless effort.

Lost a blog entry

Sad.

But planted a rose tree, and two different bulb types: Firebird Cannas and The President Clematis.

Also transplanted some more of the poppies, but the dogs keep trampling them to get to the yarrow to eat. Yarrow is a stimulant. Stupid dogs.

Preps for a new bed

So the boy said he wants to do exactly what we did in the first butterfly garden along the entire side yard. I'm not so keen, but whatever. It's not like it's all going to die during the next drought anyway.

We bought a new printer this afternoon. Oddly enough, there was an Epson rep hanging around. He, of course, recommended a couple of Epson printers and one of them looked good enough to buy. Good thing we think Epson's a good printer to begin with, but he had a vested interest in what we were looking at to buy.

Really enjoying finishing up House of Paper. It's warm enough to garden; I'm just pretending that it isn't because I'm enjoying my newfound laziness.

Rose bowl preparations

So it's been forever since I posted. Not that it matters (hehehe). Right now, little longhorn shaped cookies are cooling on racks, waiting for me to decorate them. Yep. I'm making theme cookies. But hopefully this year, a little snub of useless creativity will come back into my life. I'm tired of working on the house, the yard. I want it to be done already! I think we may watch the game at a local theater (with beer), or maybe just watch it at home. Beer is generally much, much cheaper at home, AND there's the spouse's fantastic cheesey gooey goodness served on chips.

The holidays were actually quite pleasant. I'm just going to leave it at that.

The yard has been sitting, although the living christmas cheer is waiting for a permanent home. The spouse suggested next year we get a christmas elm. or perhaps a christmas lemon. Sometimes, the spouse is right on par with genius.

Yardward!

FINALLY got around to raking leaves. This whole search for employment with monetary compensation is driving me insane. It's amazing what people call "jobs" these days. Ugh. So, of course, when raking leaves, neighbor is happy. We had quite the nasty leaf collection going on in the front yard. I kept hoping the wind would blow them all into other's yards, but as luck would have it, the wind turned against us and we were the recipient of all of the neighborhood's leaves. I feel like a shelter for the adrift.

So we raked them all up and in a fit of "what am I going to do with all of these" created a leaf wall, a la the HGTV Living Wall. It's not as nice, and I'm still deciding what to plant on it. Phlox? Echevaria? Passionflower? Moonflower? Sweet Pea? Nasturtium? All of it? It's over in the side yard. I just know I do not want to plant ivy. Unless it's not english. An ecological threat, according to our government. And yet it is still sold in nurseries. Crazy.

Alternative plant suggestions include Allegheny pachysandra (Pachysandra procumbens), American or common bittersweet (Celastrus scandens), trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans), Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), passionflower vine (Passiflora lutea), Dutchman's pipe (Aristolochia macrophylla), and native wisteria* (Wisteria frutescens) -- * but not invasive non-native like w. sinensis or w. floribunda.

Ah, The Weather From freezing one day to really-really warm the next. No wonder I live here. The plants all survived, although I'm sure they looked funny covered in tarp and plastic. I'm glad noone stole the blankets. The radishes are up, the lettuce is up, and the spinach ... Sad. There just aren't any nutrients in the soil, even with the three bags of compost and humus and topsoil. So that area of the yard is going to be a "not right now" project. The dogs have managed to kill most of the grass in the side yard. I suppose I need to research when I can till. Garden care for public spaces. I'm sure there's a book. Too bad the "public" means dogs in my case. And all they ever do is bark bark.

Hmm. I thought I've updated since the third. It's ver'very cold and I covered the plants last night. Half an inch of ice on the dog water (the dogs were safely in their heated dog-room with a smaller dog water to slake their thirst. What else. Mmm. Tired of s'mores. Made cookies instead. I feel like such a traitor to the holiday. And now I'm cookied out, too. The boy wants to order a pizza. It must have something to do with the day of movies yesterday. Too many. And last night, Michael Jordan, of all people, was in my dreams. Weird.

Having fun with header tags

Got the ingredients for ginger-s'mores houses but wasn't able to make them as a friend came over for dog sweater measurements. Yes, I've committed to knitting a little sweater for her puppy boy. All of my needles are still in storage since the move. But they've got to come out sometime. Why not now?

I have made the resolution that this will not be the month where I have a libation every evening. Especially since it was reported that New Zealand researchers found the benefits of alcohol were outweighted by the alcoholism itself.

Was inspired by a gingerbread house at the local food mark-up. Almost took down a kid with my basket as she ran across the aisle to look at it. Sometimes I wonder about parents, but then I'm not one.