Showing posts with label scarecrows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scarecrows. Show all posts

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Day 1559

Weekends come with a bonus these days. There are no complicated cancer protocols to follow on weekends. Dash gets a little rest and the dogs can just be normal dogs. Even though it was a normal weekend filled with the usual weekend chores, it seemed much easier to deal with than the previous week.

Since the weather was nice, I thought I'd do some gardening and finish up what the landscaping guys forgot. I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of flats of Liriope to fill in a few bare areas. I thought the landscape guys were going to do this themselves, but apparently we weren't on the same wavelength. They did have extra Monkey Grass in their bid, but when I told them to fill in the bare areas, they started on the East side of the yard and methodically worked their way West. I thought they'd start with the worst looking areas and proceed to slightly less shabby areas until the Liriope ran out. There would have been plenty of ground cover to go around if they'd done this. Instead, they just told me that they ran out of Liriope before they even reached the big bare spot on the West side of the yard.

I should never do gardening. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist and I hate mud and dirt. Gardening is all about mud and dirt, so I always make a bigger mess than I anticipate. It took a while, but the yard now looks the way I imagined it would. I also took some of the white pea gravel I had the guys add to the path and moved it to the small decorative circles that serve as sculpture bases. Just like the Liriope, there was already plenty of pea gravel to accomplish what I wanted. The landscapers just didn't seem to know what I wanted to do with it.  I found the extra gravel I needed under the garbage cans behind the back fence. It wasn't doing much good there, so I shoveled it into buckets and moved it to the two circular areas on either side of the curving path. After I was finished, there was still plenty of left-over gravel.

Everything looks great now, but my gardening efforts took so much longer than I anticipated that I didn't make it to the gym after all. By the way my shoulder feels now, I probably got more exercise gardening than I would have at the gym anyway.

I'll be real glad when my Hepatitis C treatments are finished. Now that my Hemoglobin levels are low, I find that I'm frequently getting nosebleeds in addition to waking up with a cold every morning. When I was making the bed this morning, I leaned over to straighten the sheets and noticed little drops of blood on the pillows. "What the hell," I thought. "Where is this blood coming from?" Then I realized that it was dripping from my nose. It's a nuisance, but a very minor nuisance compared to getting a liver transplant sometime later in life.

Janet and I tried to attach our little bird scarecrows to small suction cups to make them easier to place on the cars. It was an idea that should have worked, since the suction cups seemed to stick easily to a variety of things around the house. They wouldn't stick to the cars though. I don't know why. Oh, well. This was a minor failure. The yard looks nice. The dogs are relaxed and happy. It was a nice weekend.

Ariel is today's Dalmatian of the Day
Watch of the Day

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Day 1558

We went up and photographed dogs at the Dalmatian Rescue kennel today. One of the dogs was actually being adopted while we were there and it was nice to see him go to his new home. There aren't as many abandoned Dalmatians anymore. I think the irresponsible people have moved on to other breeds. That's a good thing. Most of the Dalmatians who get adopted now go to homes that have had a Dalmatian before. These people love and understand the breed and the dogs find good homes. I'm sure there are still people who see a popular movie and end up wanting a dog for all the wrong reasons. At least that dog isn't a Dalmatian now. Hopefully, Disney won't make any more 101 Dalmatian movies. That movie was largely responsible for the surge in abandoned Dalmatians in 1996.

The weather got cooler again today. This is the time of year when Janet keeps turning on the air conditioner and I keep turning on the heater. Back and forth we go. During these in-between times, I'm always cold and she's always hot. In a month or so, there will be no more ambiguity. By the time June arrives, everybody will be in agreement again. Texas summers are hot.

Our water bill is going to be high next month. One of the things about new grass is that you have to water it constantly. It's ironic. We got the grass to keep the dogs from getting muddy, but now that the entire yard is a soggy mess, the dogs get muddy anyway. Hopefully, the grass will last a little longer than it did last year. The landscape guys treated for grubs again, but grubs are a perennial problem in Texas. No matter what we do, we always seem to have grubs.

I thought Janet would laugh at my idea of putting a little scarecrow on my car mirrors to ward off the pooping redbird. She apparently liked the idea though, because when she was shopping today, she got a bunch of little rubber birds at the Dollar Store and now her car has little bird scarecrows on the mirrors as well. The mailman will probably think we are crazy.

I need to go to the gym tomorrow. I need to figure out how to resume going during the week as well. Now that it appears my liver is improving, the real challenge will be avoid slipping back to my old unhealthy ways. I've always been able to rise to the occasion during difficult times. I'm a big advocate of that old "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" adage. When the danger is over, I'm a terrible backslider though. I definitely don't exercise and eat Kale for the sheer joy of it. At heart, I'm more of a bacon and beer kind of guy.

Brooke is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day