In my own little corner...

Spring!

After several false starts, spring has truly sprung in north Georgia.  My hyacinths and daffodils have shed their brilliant display and are focusing on soaking up the life-giving sunshine through their leaves. The lilac has also completed its brief show (bless its heart, it peaked while I was on a business trip, but saved some blooms for me to enjoy when I returned home).  The redbuds, apples, and japanese cherries have finished blooming, as well.

Now it's the blue and white salvia in my flagpole bed that brighten my day, and the roses, both standard and miniature.  The dormant grass has greened, making it easier to ignore the weeds that stood out like a sore thumb when they were the only green in the yard.  Azaleas are brightening their corners of the yard, as well, a lush and velvety feast for the eyes.

I sold my riding mower in March, achieving my 5-year goal of not "needing" a riding mower in only 2 or 3 years. The time-frame all depends on when one starts counting. I was a tenant from late 2007 to early 2009, and thus limited in what I could do, yard-wise.   So my yard transformation really began in March 2009, and two years later, I sold the riding mower.  On that same day, my self-propelled walking mower started acting up.  LOL  Isn't that always the way?  Thank goodness for helpful neighbors! 

Several projects are in process, and deserve posts of their own, so I'll leave that comment as a teaser for them.

The thunderstorms blow through semi-weekly, usally in the middle of the night, waking me from sound sleep with window-rattling booms. The dogs sleep through it, thank goodness.    But the warm weather is here to stay now, and I'll be moving the house-plants outside in another week or so.

I still need to clean off the back porch, blow away the yellow pine pollen from the back porch table, and start enjoying my morning coffee out there with the songbirds and my friends.  Well, the "friends" part is virtual... I often get the urge to write letters -- the snail mail kind -- while sitting out there. So I pick a friend to kaffee-klatsch with, and visit with them via pen & paper.

But for now, it's time to earn my paycheck, so I must set aside my thoughts of spring projects and good friends, and focus on giving value for value received.  That's hard to do when I'm looking out my home-office window at my young trees and seeing future projects, but it's part of being a grown-up.

Breakfast Blogging...

Woke up this morning to some strange, bright light outside. After 3 days of overcast & rain, including some overcast so dark the streetlights came on, it was odd to see normal daylight. And that strange yellow orb up in the light-blue sky -- is that what folks call the sun?

After doing my usual morning internet playing, I realized that breakfast time had come and gone, and the only ones who had been fed were the dogs (they fuss more than I do if they miss their mealtimes). So I'm just sitting down to my favorite part of Saturdays... a leisurely home-cooked breakfast.

Fresh coffee, 3 eggs scrambled up with fresh mushrooms (chopped) and colby-jack cheese, with some grits on the side. There was supposed to toast, as well, but it burned (stupid toaster). 

Just my little bit of paradise, on a mellow weekend day...

Transition Day

Well, it's day 7 of my 7-day weekend, which means that tomorrow I have to be a functional, working adult again.

Not that I haven't been functional and working over the last few days, just not at things that earn a paycheck.  I usually take time off during this time-frame so that I can spend a long weekend at Jekyll Island attending Sandy Paws, a greyhound gathering that's held in early March every year. But this year, I'm spending the Sandy Paws money (and then some) replacing the 24yr old heating/cooling system on my house.  So I had the time off, but spent it mostly at home.

This was good, though. I'm fully rested and refreshed, instead of coming off vacation exhausted. And it's been a good week.

Last Wed night, I took Pippin with me and we spent the night in LaGrange, GA, about 20 miles from Callaway Gardens. On Thursday, which was a beautiful day, Pip & I wandered all around the gardens. I had hoped that taking him on some of the hiking trails would wear him out, like they did me, but he's way too young and energetic to be done in by mere hiking trails. LOL Although he was more relaxed in the car on the way home than he was on the way down there.

Friday was what I call a "zombie day." I spent it just hanging out in front of the computer, planning the rest of my time off, reading blogs/message boards/facebook, etc.  Saturday was for errand running, and on Sat morning, I wandered around my front yard measuring the distance between trees and plants and house and street so I can draw a reasonably accurate picture of my yard, to use for planning its future.

Sunday was day 1 of the great garage reorganization of 2010 project.   My goal was to get it to where I could have both the car and the riding mower easily accessible for summer. Last summer, I had so much stuff in the garage that the car stayed in the driveway so the mower would be accessible. Now they're both accessible, without either of them having to move so the other can get out. :)  That took care of one half of the garage - what I call the storage half.

Monday I spent all day honoring the memory of Lance M. Warren, an independent contractor who was killed in Afghanistan on Feb 26 of this year. His mother is a member of a friend's church in Jacksonville, FL, and he lived near Atlanta. My friend called and asked if I could go to his funeral in their place, and of course I said yes.  I'm glad I did. He was a much-loved man,  and not only was the church full for his funeral service, but about one hundred cars followed the hearse for the 90 minute drive to the national cemetery.   While I was there, I remembered my friend Joe, who passed away a few years ago, and said a prayer for his family as well.

Yesterday was day 2 of the great garage reorganization of 2010 project. There is now WAY more room on the side of the garage where I park the car.  There's even room to enter the garage through the human door instead of the big garage doors. But the human door will remain closed for a while longer, until I kill the wasp nests that have been made between the door and the screen door. Yuck.

And today, the last vacation day, I had planned to spend doing projects on the back porch, but it's raining, and 20 degrees cooler than yesterday, so I think it's a stay-inside day.  I've got some computer projects to finish,  and if I get too bored, I can always do some cleaning (yuck).

It's been a nice week off, and I could wish that I had enough vacation days to stretch it through the end of the week, but at the same time, it will be nice to get back to work tomorrow.

Domesticity

Ahhh, Spring…. when a youngly middle-aged woman’s fancy turns to — what’s that? It’s not yet spring? Are you sure?

Well then, that explains the chill breeze that blows across my back yard, and the lack of green growth in my yard. Well, most green growth, anyway. Some of the weeds are still thriving. More importantly, the crocuses (crocii?) have bloomed. So spring is obviously on its way, even if the forsythia is still just foliage.

I must say, Jan/Feb are probably my least-favorite months — bitter cold, even here in the southeast, with spring still a distant promise. But March will be here before I know it, and it will be time to move the house plants outside, clear away the detritus of winter, and transplant the seedlings I’ve not even planted yet. Guess I’d better get some seeds and get them planted.

Reliving Childhood

Summer days.  Blissfully free of worry, no thought more pressing than "what's for dinner?"   These are my normal childhood memories.   I couldn't really tell you which summer any particular memory is from... the summers run together on the movie screen in my mind, for the most part.  But one summer stands out.   It was from early in my childhood... I was maybe 5 years old? I think it was after I'd been to kindergarten, so that would make me 5.

Mom stayed home with us kids, although other moms in the neighborhood worked.  So during the summer days, our house was the gathering place for the neighbor kids.  That summer, Mom put us to work.

We lived in an older house, and Mom decreed it was time to change the wallpaper.   She always preferred wallpaper to paint.  The house had been built in the 1930s or thereabouts, and had plaster walls.  I remember stripping wallpaper off those walls.   All of us helped, including some of the neighbor kids.   I've got vague memories of brushes with water, and huge putty knives/scrapers, and lots of elbow grease as we ripped the wallpaper all the way down to the plaster.  When the upstairs hallway was fully stripped, Mom brought out a pencil, and we all signed our names on the wall, before she papered over it.   I was very impressed with being allowed to write on the wall - I usually got in trouble for things like that.

Mom wrote the current date, and a statement about how all of had worked so hard for however many days to do this job, and we each signed our names. Then we were finally released to go find other, more enjoyable ways to work up a sweat, while she papered over her magnum opus.

I'd not thought of that summer in decades, until today.

Firewood!

I love the sight and sound of a crackling fire in the wintertime.  I know all the stories about how it's not cost effective, etc. But it's aesthetically pleasing, and satisfies a need inside me somewhere.

Today, my next-door-neighbor and I tramped around the outer edges of the property, and collected a good variety of dead branches and small trees. So I now have a good collection of hardwood firewood that is well-seasoned, and most importantly, FREE. :D

I told him I'd buy him dinner tonight as a thank you for his help with it.  We had pretty well filled up the bed of my truck with dead oak, cherry and ash  saplings and brush for kindling. Then we stood outside, not really noticing the cold, and cut it up with his bow saws.  There's a nice stack out there now, and we're going to do it again in January, probably.

Of course, I've been back inside for almost an hour, and am still chilled to the bone, but it was a fun activity, even if it was a cold day (I don't know why we couldn't do this when the temps were in the 50s, and had to wait until today, when the cold front was moving in).

Today's Agenda

Clean house (de-clutter, vacuum, etc)
Bake banana bread

The challeng will be to see if I can keep away from the computer until I've accomplished both those items.

Autumnal Bliss

I really can't wait until I'm in a house again. I miss rooting around in the flower garden, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, picking up branches.... all the stuff that gets you outside and away from the computer, and feels like play even though it's work. Living in an apartment, I'm limited as to my outside gardening activities, but I do what I can..

Yesterday was the first day of Autumn, and a beautiful day it was . Blue, blue sky, crisp morning melting to a warm afternoon and then a cool evening/night. The kind of day that makes you want to open the windows and air out the apartment after a summer spent in air conditioning.

I spent part of yesterday at Lowes, buying pansies. Yes, it's October, and I"m buying flowers to plant outside. Welcome to Georgia. :) Fall is pansy season here, and since the remnants of Frances and Ivan drowned my petunias, I had some open pots just begging for a little color to be added to them.

As I was leaving Lowes, with my 2 dozen pansies and bag of potting soil, I got into a conversation with one of the workers about whether bulb-type plants can be grown in containers. Not only did I get an enthusiastic affirmative, she told me how she does it at her house. First, she recommended daffodils, since they'll come up every year, and I wouldn't have to re-do my pot every year as I would if I planted tulips.

She puts 2" of dirt in the pot, then plants her daffodil bulbs, about 2" apart from each other. The she fills up the pot, puts a hosta in the center of it, and plants pansies around the hosta. This gives her something in the pot every season. The pansies for the winter, the dillies for the spring, and the hosta in the summer. When the hosta looks to be on its last legs, she trims it and plants her next generation of pansies around it.

I thought that was a brilliant idea, and I might try that in the spring. For now, I made do with what I had, mostly.

As mentioned above, I had several empty pots destined to be pansy homes. I ran to Wal-Mart this morning and bought some daffodil bulbs (some yellow, some white). While buying the bulbs, I saw a beautiful metal tub on sale, and I could just picture it overflowing with flowers, so I bought it, too.

Then Jessie the IG kept me company outside while I spent part of another beautiful fall morning planting pansies and daffodils. I don't know if the metal tub and my window box are deep enough for dillies, but I figured what the heck, and planted some bulbs in them, with pansies on top. We'll know in the spring.
I'm thinking now that crocuses (crocii?) might have been a better option there, but if I'm right, I can rectify it next fall.

Then I put a daffodil bulb in each of my deeper empty pots, and pansies at the top. My larger pots got more than one bulb.

Ihad a couple bulbs left over, and then realized that I had all kinds of room in the large pot that holds Bucko, my Norfolk Pine. So again I decided to experiment, and buried a couple bulbs in that pot, and with one of my dracaenas. Stuck some leftover pansies in there, too.

Watered everything, and am now just sitting back waiting for the pansies to get over their transition shock and take hold.

For the Birds....

I've hung a bird feeder from one of the hooks that my planters hang from, outside. These hooks were here when I moved into the townhome - I'd not have thought to screw hooks into the plywood that covers the eaves.

Shortly after that, I noticed my spider plant (hanging next to it), was looking a little battered. Then one day I saw why -- the squirrels were using it as a base from which to launch themselves over to the bird feeder and rob it.

So I moved Spidey far enough away to eliminate that option, and settled back to see what the squirrels would do next. Whatever they're doing, it's working, because the birdseed is depleting faster than I think the birds could be doing it. I think the squirrels have found a way to spill it onto the ground.

When I was shopping for my bird feeder, I kept seeing "squirrel feeders" - the advertising for them said that if you feed the squirrels, they won't raid the bird feeder. At the time, I thought it was a clever marketing ploy.

Today, I'm wondering if there's any truth to the claims.

Hmmmm......

Spring Cleaning

OK, so it's no longer spring. So sue me.

I'm generally pretty laissez-faire as far as housework is concerned... clutter is acceptable, outright filth is not. But there are times when the clutter begins to overwhelm me, and then my domestic goddess alter-ego comes out of the closet and takes charge.

This seems to be one of those times. Accordingly, I've spent several hours of the last few days rearranging my townhome and working on better organizing it. I'm a firm believer that if I want to be organized *outside* my house, I need to be organized *inside* my house.

But my actions often belie my beliefs, as is true in so many other areas of my life, as well.

So this is spring-cleaning week, in the middle of summer. The TV is turned off for the duration, and I'm trying to minimize my online time, as well. The primary goal is to reach a point where I'm not ashamed to have people come over, *before* my friend arrives next weekend to help me with the finer details of the organizing.

I'd probably be a good candidate for the Clean Sweep team, honestly. Thing is, I've *read* the books on de-cluttering, etc. And I'm a regular visitor to flylady. But have you ever noticed that there's a huge difference between *reading* and *doing,* at least for some people? I'm one of those.

When I visit Flylady, I get sidetracked reading about all the interesting things people threw out during their cleaning, and the next thing I know, 2 hours have gone by without my moving from the computer. Oops.

I have no expectations (or desires) of ever being another Martha Stewart, but I would like to train myself to the point where:
-- mail is dealt with instead of being dumped in a pile to get lost,
-- bills get paid as soon as they arrive, instead of when the disconnect notice is received,
-- dishes are never left overnight in the kitchen sink,
-- clean laundry lives in the closet, instead of the dryer or the clothes basket.

These are achievable goals, I'm sure.

And I'll pursue them diligently, as soon as I finish reading my daily assortment of email, blogs, and message boards.