Marcheline's sweet revenge!

The other day, when Bear and I were driving around enjoying the gorgeous sunshiny afternoon, we passed a Victorian house with clouds of lovely lilac colored phlox and a white picket fence, and I commented on it.  Bear immediately launched into the history of the various breeds of phlox, citing one "Edward Giez" as the botanist who discovered how to make them different colors.  He ended the rant with, "They call them... 'Phlox of Giez'."

At which point I would have hit him with a frying pan, except that a) he was driving the vehicle we were in, and b) I didn't have a frying pan on me at the time.  Note to self: larger purse needed.

 I know I've mentioned that we are going to get a hognosed snake sometime soon... as far as we know, the clutches of eggs at the breeder's have yet to hatch.

Excited as we are, though, in preparation for the arrival of our wiggly wee bundle we've prepared a lovely tank, complete with a hollow hiding rock, for his arrival.

Yesterday I stopped by the drugstore on the way home from work to pick up some necessaries, and was standing in line waiting to pay.  Right there next to me was a display featuring three-foot-long candy "gummy snakes".  One of them was almost the exact same color as the hognose snake in the above photo.

You guessed it... I coiled the gummy snake in the cage, with its head under the hiding rock entrance as if it was just going inside.  When Bear got home I told him there was a surprise in the computer room.  Just as he got a glimpse of the tank and his eyes popped out, I went over and lifted the lid on the cage, reached inside and yanked the snake out and bit its head off.

I figure that was pretty good revenge for "Phlox of Giez", what do you say?

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Here's a big Happy Mother's Day wish to those moms, like mine, who are able and willing to stay home with their kids when they're young.  To limit their TV-watching, video-game playing time and increase their trips to outdoor gardens and parks, beaches and forests.  To teach them the names of the flowers and trees, to sit down at the kitchen table with pads of blank paper and colored markers, to color and hide Easter eggs.  Here's to moms who refuse to let their kids turn in school assignments that are misspelled and grammatically incorrect.  Here's to moms that teach their kids to respect their elders, to respect all living things, to respect the earth.

Here's a big Happy Mother's Day wish for those women, like me, who never had children of their own, but who care for animals, plants, and other people's children.  Surely that's a kind of mothering, isn't it?  Here's to moms who adopt kids that other people gave away or didn't want.  Here's to moms who take in stray animals and give them a loving, wonderful home. 

To good mothers of all kinds, all over the world - HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Garbage You Can't Refuse: A short story

So my tenants bought a new box spring and mattress.  Instead of taking the old ones to the dump, they leaned them up against the street sign in front of the house, at the curb.  Not sure if they called the village waste management to schedule a pickup or not, but in any case that turned out to be a moot point.

I was driving home from a day shift last week, and as I got closer to my house, I saw the mattress portion of the duo apparently dancing around on my front lawn by itself.

Not really believing what I was seeing, I slowed down as I approached my driveway and stuck my head out the truck window to get a better look.  The boxspring was still leaning up against the street sign, not moving.  The mattress, however, was definitely doing the mambo... all over my little yew bushes in the front yard!

I whipped my truck into the driveway, at which point I could see that the mattress had not, in fact, come to life, but rather that there was a small hispanic guy wrestling with the mattress.  And losing spectacularly.  It was interesting to note that while he was staggering around my front lawn underneath the enormous mattress, he kept hold of a bicycle with one hand.

Taking a huge breath, I leapt out of my truck and yelled "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?  GET OFF MY BUSHES!!!" at the top of my lungs.  At this point the dude stopped moving.  He was still standing on my front lawn, holding his bicycle, and the mattress was still leaning on his head, but he was no longer moving.

I ran around to the front and hauled the mattress off the dude - and my bushes - and leaned it back against the street sign with the boxspring.  I said, "PLEASE GET OFF MY LAWN!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"  

Dude wheeled his bicycle off my lawn and onto the sidewalk next to the mattress, and pretended that he was brushing dust off the bicycle.  I suppose he thought that if he acted like I didn't exist, that I'd just go away and let him resume the mattress foxtrot, round 2.

Finally I calmed down a little and looked at the bicycle.  I said, "You can't take this mattress on a bicycle.  You need a truck."  He just looked at me and shrugged.  But he was not leaving the mattress.  It was like they'd developed an intimate bond, before I showed up and ruined the mood.  It occurred to me that a dude on a bicycle probably lived locally.

I said, "Where do you live?".  He pointed two houses down the road from mine.  I said, "Two houses away?", and he nodded.  I sighed, and pointed to the mattress.  "Get that side."

We had the mattress and boxspring in the back of my truck in two seconds flat, and he rode his bike ahead of me down the road and up his driveway.  In another two seconds, we had the bed components leaning up against his house.  He thanked me profusely, and I went on home.

Seriously... what is it with people trying to kill the plants in my front yard?  One former tenant's daughter split my young redbud tree in half (she was old enough to know better and nearly as tall as me) by swinging on one of its tender branches.  Another tenant parked his car on my lawn during the wintertime, knocking one of my baby boxwoods sideways.  Now a crazy neighbor wrestles a mattress on top of my yew bushes.  The world is such a big place.  There are entire forests of trees and shrubbery to roll around in.  Why my yard?

Now that it's all over and I know that I only lost one small branch off one of my yews, I dearly wish that I had a videotape of the parts of the "dude vs. mattress" match that I missed.  The part I saw was funny enough, but the whole thing must have been freakin' HYSTERICAL.

This cool Spring of ours

This is one of three "surprise" tulips that came up in our garden this spring.  We planted them six or seven years ago, but they only bloomed the once and never again... until now!

Here it is, very nearly the middle of May, and the temperatures are still pretty dang chilly!  I wore a jacket while mowing the lawn the other day, even though the sun was blazing away.  The temperatures are just not rising as they usually do.

Thing is, the flowers are LOVING it - the forsythia, which usually only blooms a week or so, has been going strong nearly four weeks, and only now are the leaves starting to take over the golden flowers.

Though the largest daffodils have faded, the wee double narcissus are still blooming their little hearts out - and even the large daffies stayed fresh a lot longer than they usually do!

Our planting area near the front gate is full of the most cheerful little pansies - I love to greet their smiling faces each morning.

The spring snowflake (above) and the snake's head fritillaria (below) are fading now, but put on a brilliant show for a lot longer than they did last year!

 

I had an absolutely fabulous day today.  Today, for those of you keeping track at home, was my "Sunday"... and here's all the awesome stuff that happened.

1.  My apartments were inspected by the village and passed with flying colors!

2.  Got my truck back from the shop and it's running beautifully!  Yes, it cost over $500 to fix, but I own it free and clear.  If I have to pay a couple hundred bucks of upkeep once a year or so, I'm still better off than the folks making a couple hundred in car payments every month!

3.  Decided to buck the system and not get a wedding gift from the boring registry list for friends who are getting married this month.  The vintage items I bought instead arrived today, and THEY COMPLETELY ROCK.  The items I bought are way cooler than anything on the registry list, and they actually match the place settings that the bride's mother-in-law already bought them.  SCORE!

4.  The dress I bought on ebay to wear to the wedding arrived today, and IT FITS.  I also bought some sky-high pinup heels to wear with the dress... and THEY FIT.  What's more, I can actually walk in them!  I am gonna be a red-hot vintage mama at this wedding!

5.  I found the coolest vintage jewelry holder for my mom for Mother's Day, and sent it off to her today, with a card, so that it will actually arrive in time for the holiday.  This almost never happens, thus the panicked night-before online flower orders of years past.

6.  Bear and I went out snake shopping tonight, and actually met and handled three hognosed snakes!  For those of you not up on your herpetology, the hognosed snake is one of the friendliest, most beautiful snakes in the pet world.  Bear used to have one.  Me, I had a six-foot long boa named "Slash"... I didn't know nuttin' bout no hognose.  BUT, having now met and handled them, I'm totally in love!  They're much smaller and more petite than boas, and they really have great personalities.  They're inquisitive and fun, and we're really looking forward to getting one.  I've got a friend at work who's friends with a breeder, and we're waiting until his hognosed eggs hatch out (in another couple of weeks or so) before doing any serious shopping.  Tonight was just a look-see.

They come in all sorts of color morphs - of course, the wilder the color, the more expensive they are.  The main thing is to get one that's already trained to eat thawed frozen mice.  In nature, the hognose snake eats toads.  No one in their right mind is going to pay the exorbitant price for toads just to feed them to a snake, so they train the baby hognoses to eat mice.  

 If you aren't careful, you could get a snake that hasn't been trained to eat mice and then you're in for a huge problem.  Snakes don't have the biggest brains in the world, and it's really hard to change their eating habits once they've formed.  So - mice trained hognoses only!

And now, I'm off to watch Bond flick "The Living Daylights"!  I made a crockpot full of pork, onions, apples, and sauerkraut that should just about be done by now... YUM!

When you have a bad day, just look at a Friesian horse and you'll feel so much better.

Today, though a beautiful day weather-wise, was a really obnoxiously crappy day for me. 

When I reported computer malfunctions at work (as we are instructed to do) I was met with several people's suggestions that I don't know how to use a volume knob.  On a machine that I've been using at least 8 hours a day, sometimes more than 40 hours a week, for the past 5 years.

When someone asked me if I wanted to order anything from the deli, I declined, because I planned to get something healthy (yogurt or fruit) from the coffee truck that comes around every weekday morning.  My position got so busy that I didn't hear the call for the coffee truck, which means I got nothing and had to feel my stomach grumbling until lunchtime.  That's five hours.

My truck needs work done, and it's burning oil.  I very nearly ran it dry of oil by accident, found it out at the last minute, and added oil... but my mechanic keeps being unavailable to do the work it needs on my days off.  Am stressing out.  I wouldn't trust my truck with anyone else, he's been taking care of it for over ten years and he always does right by me.  But I can't afford to wait much longer.

There are lots of other stupid little nit-noid things eating away at the edge of my psyche as well, but rather than list them out here and bring anyone else's day down any further, I thought I'd share one of my favorite remedies for the blues.

1.  A glass of my favorite wine (ie: whatever is in the house at the time).

2.  Looking at pictures of Friesian horses.

... and then of course my favorite Friesian, "Goliath" from one of my favorite movies of all time, "Ladyhawke":

There, now, isn't that better?  There's only one thing that puts me in a better mood than looking at Friesian horses.

Happy Beltane!

 

Beltane or Beltain (pron.: /ˈbɛlteɪn/) (also Beltine or Beltaine)^[1] is the Gaelic May Day festival. Most commonly it is held on 30 April–1 May, or halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. It was observed in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. In Irish it is Bealtaine ([ˈbʲal̪ˠt̪ˠənʲə]), in Scottish Gaelic Bealltainn ([ˈpjaul̪ˠt̪ˠɪɲ]) and in Manx Gaelic Boaltinn or Boaldyn. It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals; along with Samhain, Imbolc and Lughnasadh.
Beltane is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and it is associated with important events in Irish mythology. It marked the beginning of summer and was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures. Rituals were performed to protect the cattle, crops and people, and to encourage growth. Special bonfires were kindled, and their flames, smoke and ashes were deemed to have protective powers. The people and their cattle would walk around the bonfire, or between two bonfires, and sometimes leap over flames or embers. All household fires would be doused and then re-lit from the Beltane bonfire. Doors, windows, byres and the cattle themselves would be decorated with yellow May flowers, perhaps because they evoked fire. In parts of Ireland, people would make a May Bush; a thorn bush decorated with flowers, ribbons and bright shells. Holy wells were also visited, while Beltane dew was thought to bring beauty and maintain youthfulness. Many of these customs were part of May Day or Midsummer festivals in other parts of Great Britain and Europe.
As a festival, Beltane had largely died-out by the mid-20th century, although some of its customs continued and in some places it has been revived as a cultural event. Since the latter 20th century, Celtic neopagans and Wiccans have observed Beltane, or something based on Beltane, as a religious holiday. Neopagans in the Southern Hemisphere often celebrate Beltane at the other end of the year (~31 October–1 November).

And now for something completely different...

Lately, Bear and I are catching up on a lot of serieseseses (sorry, never know when to stop pluralizing some things) that we didn't watch first go-round but really thought we wanted to see.  We watched BBC's "Sherlock" (obviously) and loved it (I more than he) (obviously), we tried "Dr. Who" and both hated it so quit, and then there was this series called "Homeland", starring my favorite gal from the teen series "My So Called Life" - Claire Danes.

And we both really like "Homeland"! Except I keep having to yell the word "CAMEL!" every time the leading man comes on screen.

I don't really have to explain why I do this.  I only have to post this photo.