We were coming up the driveway yesterday, and as we neared the house, we reached an area that was shady. I looked over and a young adult deer was standing in the shade, watching us. I stopped. I was astonished to see this young deer out and about at mid-day. She must have been really hungry to be foraging when she could be seen.
Elegante Mother and I sat and watched the deer, and the deer watched us for a few moments before I put the car in gear again. The doe bounded away, and we wondered if there might have been others traveling with her.
She was a beauty. I don’t often have the chance to see our larger wildlife visitors these days, and I miss seeing families of them use our land to get from grove to grove. As this area has been built up, the government has arranged to have the herds culled because there’s no longer the habitat to support them. I suppose that was the humane choice, but I miss these lovely visitors.
On the Move
Part of my campaign to help Elegante Mother get back to her usual schedule is to pry her out of her chair and get her moving again. I’ve been concerned about this upper respiratory “gunk” shifting over to pneumonia, which we want to avoid at all costs. One of the best ways to prevent that is to get her up and about.
To that end, when I came home from exercise on Monday, I announced that we would be going to a farewell breakfast this morning after exercise. That set her into a tail spin, because she missed her standing hair appointment last Thursday, and she doesn’t care to be seen not looking her best.
So, we made an appointment to have her hair done yesterday. Sneaky, huh? First step in the battle. We’re just about ready to go off to spend a few hours with our exercise buddies, and the contact with friends will help.
Tomorrow, another hair appointment. I felt that two in one week was not overdoing, and this will put her back on schedule. Besides, on Friday, we go back to see the doc, and she’ll want to look her best! *G*
Gad, kids can be SO devious! I hope this helps her get well soon!
Another week starts
I rolled out of the sack before six this morning so that I could deadhead the peonies before I had to go to exercise. The driveway garden looks better for a little trimming back. I carried rings of hardware cloth down to the driveway garden because bunnies have been at work. The wonderful orangey-red lily that I planted as a focal point in the long driveway garden was stripped of it’s leaves and flowers, and the stems have been pulled from the ground. I set rings around the rudbeckia, because the bunnies were testing the flavor of the leaves. I didn’t want to drive past and find them eaten to the ground!
When I got back from exercise I pulled the hose out from the area where it nests and watered the herb garden, the ferns and rudbeckia, the plants waiting to be planted, and the containers along the sidewalk. Watering is the perfect time to take stock of what needs to be done.
I haven’t quite gotten everything planted yet, even though it’s almost mid-June. I’d like to get the last of the plants into the ground and then start trimming back or harvesting some of my herbs. The chives all need to be severely cut back, and the oregano should be harvested. There are areas in the center box of the garden that need to be dug up, to remove weeds and get more things planted. I’d like to see if nasturtiums will grow starting this late in the season, and I’d like to get a little more dill planted..
Three of the tomato plants need either to be staked or caged. The construction debris in that section of the garden still needs to be removed, and I’ll have to weed the walkway once the poppies stop blooming. I hope the guys will help me add more chat to the walkway.
It’s time to pull out the spent blooms of the ox-eye daisy, and I need to unearth several iris that are having some kind of problem with rotten stems. I think I can save the corms if I do it soon. And, I have several iris to divide and share.
There are ALWAYS things to do when you are a homeowner, and a gardener. These lists are reminders to me that I need to get these things done, and a way to look back over the years to see how little things change. I bet I have at least one, or more likely MANY entries just like this for each year I’ve blogged. Sorry for the repetition. *G*
It was a good start to the week.
Follow up
I started out to give you the blow-by-blow description of this past week, but I think I’ll spare you. Elegante Mother is recuperating. I need to ride herd on her medications to be sure that she gets them on time, and in the proper amount, but as to the rest, we just need to wait it out. The doc says she will cough for about two more weeks, but that the cough is productive, and that’s good!
Dear Husband must have finally passed a kidney stone. He seems to be feeling better. I’ve passed on to him all your good wishes. I think he’s embarrassed that I’ve told the world he wasn’t at his top form. It gives you a measure of the man that he continued to work while he was waiting for the stone to pass. What a Stoic!
I ran errands this morning. I planned my travels to minimize the miles. Hair cut, dry cleaning, returning clothing that didn’t fit, dropping off goodies for Vacation Bible School, the bank, the post office, the grocery store and the pharmacy. I put things away when I got home, filled the bird feeders, and then dragged a hose around to water three of the gardens.
Either bunnies, or deer stripped an orangy-red lily of all it’s leaves, and tested the leaves of the newly planted rudbeckia. I need to water what’s left of them tomorrow, and put hardware cloth rings around them to save what’s left. Darned livestock!
Ed, the mighty hunter, brought another bunny to the sidewalk this afternoon. This is his third junior bunny in a week or so, plus one chipmunk. I do not care for the mutilated body parts lying around on my doorstep! EYUCK!
I hope to have a quiet day tomorrow. I have the watering to do, but otherwise, I’d like to be inside, quilting. I’ll squeeze in weeding and the last of the planting this week. Dear Husband suggested hamburgers for dinner, so that should be an easy fix.
The iris and peonies have finished blooming. Lilies are opening. I still have to move the dutch iris.
And so it goes……
I hope you’re all having a good weekend!
Cough, Cough…
Elegante Mother is under the weather. She has that dreadful cough, and sinus stuff that laid me flat in April. She’s been sick since last Thursday, with the symptoms increasing each day.
We went to the doc yesterday and he’s put her on a major antibiotic and a puffer. We need to go back on Friday morning for a recheck. She asked him to tell me to STOP NAGGING about eating. He weighed her, noted about a ten pound loss, and just smiled at her. He didn’t encourage me to nag, but he does want her to eat.
Because of the cough and the difficulty breathing, she’s been excused from exercise for the week, but he wants her to get up and move around regularly.
On top of all of this, Dear Husband seems to be dealing with kidney stones again. Poor man.
That makes two. I wonder when the third shoe is going to drop???
Well, Drat!
It’s rather aggravating when you can’t get into your own comments to make a comment!
I need to talk to the owner of RedEagleSpirit and find out what I’m doing wrong.
I want to direct your attention to a comment made in “To Test or Not to Test,” by my sister.
She works at an Alternative School in Indiana, where kids with all sorts of problems are given a last chance to have a public school education. Of course, one of the problems that the kids are trying to deal with is drugs.
If you read what she has to say, it makes sense for private schools and alternative schools to test their students for drugs, especially if the school is prepared to back up the testing with adequate support and counseling.
Her argument would even be enough to justify testing in public schools, and that may happen one day. Of course, you can imagine the firestorm of litigation when it’s first proposed. I bet in our lifetime we’ll see it happen.
Thank you, sis, for the clear thinking on the subject. I should have realized that YOU would be the expert I should have turned to.
Volunteers
Each year I have volunteers in my garden. The chipmunks have seen to it that I have a steady crop of dill to be found in a number of the beds. One year Cleome took over half the sidewalk garden. Despite that, I’m thinking about sowing Cleome when I move the Dutch Iris this year.
Out in the herb garden, I’ve grown a number of things in the center of the center box. Some of those things are herbal, and some are just for color. The annual poppies have decided that it’s their turn to volunteer.
If you can see the picture above, there are Ox-eye daisies (which have volunteered now for about 16 years), and the red poppies. The salvia is a perennial. I was thinking the other day that we almost have Red, White and Blue going on, if you overlook the purple-ish cast of the salvia.
The walkway of the garden is supposed to be covered with a very white “chat” or tailings, or screenings. It’s a very tiny limestone particle. We had intended to settle brick into the chat to make a brick walkway, but we haven’t gotten there yet. I like the look of the volunteers in the chat, but it’s been so disturbed with the rebuilding, that I may have to dig things up, lay down more chat, and maybe even lay the bricks. Right now, in addition to a few weeds, we have garlic chives, fever few, lamb’s ears, the poppies, ox-eye daisies and thyme on the walk.
I’m frequently of a mind to let volunteers grow. God’s surprises can make for interesting gardens. I purchased a pack of wildflower seeds, intending to have DH rototill an area for me, where I could strew the seed. I don’t think we’re going to get to it, so I might strew the seed on the edge of the property where we don’t mow. I wonder if we will see visitors and volunteers for years to come, or whether we will be simply providing appetizers for the chipmunks?
“Bloom where you are planted!” Is this the lesson of the day, or is my mind just absorbed with the gardens? *G*
More Weather
We’re supposed to be in line for thunderstorms this evening.
Elegante Mother is not a happy camper about heavy weather. Luckily, her rooms are on the east side of the house, and most of our weather comes in from the west. And, if we are lucky, she will be in bed, asleep, early enough to miss most of the storms.
The light has changed. We’ve gone from a sunny afternoon, to overcast. The grove behind me is still, but you can see leaves here and there starting to sway. It’s time to check out the radar and batten down the hatches.
I’ve moved most of the container garden in under the overhang of the entryway. I moved the last of the plants to be planted into the garage, and I may encourage my son to put his car in the garage, too. Let’s hope that Dear Husband is fortunate, and that the storms miss the lagoon where he is moored on the Chicago coastline.
I think I’ll go see if Ed is ready to come in! *G*
I hope you’re all safe this evening, and getting as much rain as you need….or would like.
Role Reversal
Harrier: “any of several short-winged hawks of the genus Circus that hunt over meadows and marshes and prey on reptiles and small birds and mammals.” *
I was driving home today, and saw a good-sized hawk being attacked by easily a dozen smaller birds. The little birds had banded together to drive it off to save their fledglings. It tickled me to think that the little birds were “harriers!”
There’s a lesson to be learned here. I think homeowners in Illinois need to follow the little bird’s example and harass their state government into restructuring how education is supported. Our property tax system is broken and needs very badly to be fixed! A law was passed roughly 15 years ago that was supposed to cap how much increase there could be per year in property tax. Unfortunately, the assessor gets around the law by re-assessing the value of our property. Soon, we will look very wealthy on paper, and be broke in reality.
I wonder how government believes that it can continue to grow without eventually killing off the hand that feeds it?
I need to ask my sister to direct me to the statistics, but I thought I heard that the State of Illinois was 48 out of 50 in terms of what is given to state education, and this is despite the Lotto, which was supposed to support education, and our gambling casino profits.
As I said….the funding system is broken, and needs to be fixed! Come on, little birds….show us the way!
*harrier. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved June 02, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/harrier
These are the Times that Try Men’s Souls…
…and women’s too. I am concerned about our ecology. Our household recycles more materials than just about anyone I know. Glass, plastic, paper, cardboard, chipboard…you name it, it goes out in our recycling. We are willing to heat the house to less than 70 degrees in the winter, and cool it to 76-78 degrees in the summer. We do not keep our grass to a regulation 2 inches, and a great deal of our outdoor work is done by hand, where it can be.
I’m contemplating keeping a bucket to catch water as the shower warms up, to be used to water the plants, and we have not let the water run as we brush our teeth for ages. We use hair products that pump, rather than spray. We’ve begun to change our light bulbs to those which are better choices ecologically.
We limit our driving. We have ALWAYS done all our errands in groups, and tried to create the shortest route possible. We’re becoming savvy about eating food grown nearby, so that we’re not adding shipping fuels to the expense of getting them to us.
We have areas where we can certainly do even better, but we try, and we try hard, to avoid making our ecology any worse than it is. But, I think I’ve found the point where I may find it difficult to be a good citizen.
I ran two errands today and when I came home, I felt like I was ready for the paramedics! It was all due to the humidity. We have been in a drought area for a number of years now. We finally got a tiny bit of rain the past few days, and coupled with heat in the 80s, voilà: HUMIDITY!
I’d forgotten just how bad humidity affects me. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people whose head and face perspires buckets when it’s humid. I get to the point where I look like I’m standing in my own private waterfall. There’s no way the perspiration can do it’s job to cool me, because there’s too much of it, and the humidity won’t allow it to evaporate. So, I get warmer and warmer, and can’t find any relief. At least during exercise I can wear a headband, but it’s not realistic to think I could wear one all the time.
So, I cannot give up my air-conditioning. I wonder what would happen to me if our circumstances changed and I didn’t have access to cooler, DRIER, air? I can envision renting a carrel at the library (if they had them). I could haunt the mall, or do a lot of grocery shopping. I could fill the tub with cool water and immerse myself for an hour or so. If I was still working, maybe we could find a small part of an air-conditioned office to sublet. I don’t need a lot of space.
Meanwhile, I pray for enough rain to keep my plants going, but not enough to drown me in my own perspiration the following day. There has to be an answer to this problem!