I can't believe it's already Wednesday. Almost Thursday.
This time next week, I'll be digging in someone else's patch instead of mine.
Naturally, I'm going like gangbusters trying to get the plants put to bed before I leave. And stock up on supplies and find all my camping goods.
Before, the excursions were either 1 day or for 3-day weekends. This time, it's a sort of staggered system. You can sign up for a few days or for the whole Tuesday - Sunday gig. And that's the one I took.
Naturally.
Last year, I had to do the drive twice. It's around 6 hours each way. This way, I only do it once. I love the drive, but the car's going to object.
Most of the people are the same as last year. There's only one or two I don't know. The same cook, too, which is great.
I'm so excited I can't stand it. And...it looks like I may leave a bit early, too, because Walter was actually scheduled to deliver a load on Saturday to Arcadia. The Florida one, not the one I grew up in in CA. So I can visit with him all weekend in Arcadia, and finish the drive on Monday.
This Arcadia is very beautiful, and happens to be right at the beginning of Bone Valley. That's the area in FL where I go fossil-hunting for giant fossil sharks' teeth and such.
Oh!
I can't stand it!
I'll explain about all the fossil stuff later. For now, I'm just bouncing off the walls.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Monday, March 27, 2006
Happy Alligator Mating Season!
The day AFTER my birthday, March 25, is even more auspicious. Hard to believe, huh?
Why?
It's the official beginning of Alligator Mating Season.
Whereupon, the great silly beasties start to get...Confused.
Distracted.
Yet - Alert.
Not entirely logical.
But thoroughly biological.
Rambunctious.
Ambitious.
Lively.
And the sum effect of all this is, a bunch of funny, scary, weird -
and highly entertaining -
alligator antics.
They'll attack cars and other inanimate objects: a battle last year had a gator intent upon doing in a car bumper. They'll wander about in unexpected places, walking in the door of a restaurant open for air on a hot day. They'll congregate in huge groups in places where I like to wander about (safely!) and take pics.
Sometimes they'll grab a human, too. Not good. But the results -including tugs-of-war with rescuers - are spellbinding.
So are the antics of some people who cross their paths and do things no sensible human should. Like a lady who managed to drag a big heavy stunned gator into her back seat one day, scared of getting in trouble for hitting him with her car. The kidnapping was a worse offense. That's a felony. Not to mention what happened when that gator woke up.
Need I spell it out?
I just LOVE alligator mating season.
I hope to keep all y'all having as much fun with them as I do.
Why?
It's the official beginning of Alligator Mating Season.
Whereupon, the great silly beasties start to get...Confused.
Distracted.
Yet - Alert.
Not entirely logical.
But thoroughly biological.
Rambunctious.
Ambitious.
Lively.
And the sum effect of all this is, a bunch of funny, scary, weird -
and highly entertaining -
alligator antics.
They'll attack cars and other inanimate objects: a battle last year had a gator intent upon doing in a car bumper. They'll wander about in unexpected places, walking in the door of a restaurant open for air on a hot day. They'll congregate in huge groups in places where I like to wander about (safely!) and take pics.
Sometimes they'll grab a human, too. Not good. But the results -including tugs-of-war with rescuers - are spellbinding.
So are the antics of some people who cross their paths and do things no sensible human should. Like a lady who managed to drag a big heavy stunned gator into her back seat one day, scared of getting in trouble for hitting him with her car. The kidnapping was a worse offense. That's a felony. Not to mention what happened when that gator woke up.
Need I spell it out?
I just LOVE alligator mating season.
I hope to keep all y'all having as much fun with them as I do.
Friday, March 24, 2006
On This Day, a Lizard Said *Happy Birthday!* To Me.
Actually I forgot it was my birthday until midmorning. By then I'd been awake since 4 am, working in the yard since sunup. Thinking - a little guiltily - about the last 3 *stops* I didn't finish on my errands yesterday, and how I might could do them today even though I need a rest day, at home, after an errand day but see I didn't renew my handicap parking tag online in time and it expires on my BIRTHDAY - and then of course I remembered that's TODAY!
And all bets were off.
Birthdays are Free Days. I instantly abandoned all pretense at responsible behavior, and played in the yard to my heart's content.
YAY!!!
Finally, I had an easy way to dispose of the poor dead madagascar palm (Pachypodium lamerii) in the front yard. Per Desert Cat! TONGS! Oh I wanted to do that so bad. It was a hurricane fatality. A couple weeks after the storm, some of our odder plants just keeled over with inexplicable cases of Sudden Death. This was one.
As I sat there, happily making a little pile out of the madagascar palm's coral bed and digging up bits of nut grass, I noticed my trash bag for weeds was moving from inside. Like this: Poke! Boing! Poke!
So I opened it up and saw a lizard sitting on top of the mound of weeds. It looked like a pregnant female. Gravid. Big ol' watermelon belly.
Either that, or it just ate a whole lot of bugs. I mean really big fat juicy ones.
Anyway, she just sat there on the little weed pile, right by my latex-gloved left hand. I, of course, talked to her. Gently. I told her hello, thanks for visiting, sorry about the scare in the bag; and said how pretty she was, and that I hoped those were a bunch of nice healthy babies in her belly, good for you mama...
Lizards listen. They cock their heads to hear you better, and look you in the eye. These are not stupid insentient animals here. And for some reason, they seem to like the sound of my crunchy deep voice. Even when it's all high pitched and squeaky from allergies.
She sat there for the longest time, listening to me talk to her. Looking at me, turning first one ear then the other towards the sound of my voice, tilting her head one way then the other to see my face. Listening intently. Looking me right in the eye. Examining me up and down.
Then she hopped on my hand, scampered up my arm, and perched on my shoulder.
To hear me and see me better?
She looked and looked at me, all over my face. She had the most beautiful eyes, green and brown, oh hazel colored with flecks of brilliant gold, just glowing with reflected light. She looked in my eyes. She knew what my eyes were, she knew what they were for. She watched me looking back at her.
What an extraordinary gift.
I talked to her on and on, softly, a good ten minutes or more. She didn't leave my shoulder until I asked her to go. It was time for us to be about our business. Even then she only went a foot or two away, and stayed there in companionable quiet, watching me garden, until I got up to work somewhere else.
Mother Nature? Happy birthday right back to you. Every second of every day.
And all bets were off.
Birthdays are Free Days. I instantly abandoned all pretense at responsible behavior, and played in the yard to my heart's content.
YAY!!!
Finally, I had an easy way to dispose of the poor dead madagascar palm (Pachypodium lamerii) in the front yard. Per Desert Cat! TONGS! Oh I wanted to do that so bad. It was a hurricane fatality. A couple weeks after the storm, some of our odder plants just keeled over with inexplicable cases of Sudden Death. This was one.
As I sat there, happily making a little pile out of the madagascar palm's coral bed and digging up bits of nut grass, I noticed my trash bag for weeds was moving from inside. Like this: Poke! Boing! Poke!
So I opened it up and saw a lizard sitting on top of the mound of weeds. It looked like a pregnant female. Gravid. Big ol' watermelon belly.
Either that, or it just ate a whole lot of bugs. I mean really big fat juicy ones.
Anyway, she just sat there on the little weed pile, right by my latex-gloved left hand. I, of course, talked to her. Gently. I told her hello, thanks for visiting, sorry about the scare in the bag; and said how pretty she was, and that I hoped those were a bunch of nice healthy babies in her belly, good for you mama...
Lizards listen. They cock their heads to hear you better, and look you in the eye. These are not stupid insentient animals here. And for some reason, they seem to like the sound of my crunchy deep voice. Even when it's all high pitched and squeaky from allergies.
She sat there for the longest time, listening to me talk to her. Looking at me, turning first one ear then the other towards the sound of my voice, tilting her head one way then the other to see my face. Listening intently. Looking me right in the eye. Examining me up and down.
Then she hopped on my hand, scampered up my arm, and perched on my shoulder.
To hear me and see me better?
She looked and looked at me, all over my face. She had the most beautiful eyes, green and brown, oh hazel colored with flecks of brilliant gold, just glowing with reflected light. She looked in my eyes. She knew what my eyes were, she knew what they were for. She watched me looking back at her.
What an extraordinary gift.
I talked to her on and on, softly, a good ten minutes or more. She didn't leave my shoulder until I asked her to go. It was time for us to be about our business. Even then she only went a foot or two away, and stayed there in companionable quiet, watching me garden, until I got up to work somewhere else.
Mother Nature? Happy birthday right back to you. Every second of every day.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
k's 8 Simple Rules for Planting Cactus
1. Before you put on your work clothes, make sure you shave your legs. If you work sitting down, shave your butt too. Hell, shave EVERYTHING. This is especially important if your tiny little body hairs are the same color as tiny little cactus spines.
2. Put out the needle-nose tweezers before you even start. Advise a very personal friend you may be requesting their assistance to remove spines from very personal areas.
3. USE those leather gloves. Will cactus spines go right through them? Of COURSE. But not ALL of them. See? Mitigate!
4. As usual, duct tape works better than scotch tape. Hair waxing stuff works good too. But it can be hard to apply since you don't want to accidentally push those spines in deeper as you spread the wax around.
5. If you try to pull spines out with your (barely existent) fingernails, you'll break more than you pull out. Well, that's life. But the less you leave to fester their way out the happier you'll be.
6. If you have a piece of cactus on the ground, and then you move it, don't sit down where it was. Don't. It's just dumb.
7. Wear long pants. If you don't have any long pants, go get some at the thrift store for virtually no money. If you do your planting in the back yard it doesn't matter what these pants look like. Good. Cheaper. Then when you're done you don't even have to wash them. Just throw them away. That means less suffering all around.
8. Grow orchids.
2. Put out the needle-nose tweezers before you even start. Advise a very personal friend you may be requesting their assistance to remove spines from very personal areas.
3. USE those leather gloves. Will cactus spines go right through them? Of COURSE. But not ALL of them. See? Mitigate!
4. As usual, duct tape works better than scotch tape. Hair waxing stuff works good too. But it can be hard to apply since you don't want to accidentally push those spines in deeper as you spread the wax around.
5. If you try to pull spines out with your (barely existent) fingernails, you'll break more than you pull out. Well, that's life. But the less you leave to fester their way out the happier you'll be.
6. If you have a piece of cactus on the ground, and then you move it, don't sit down where it was. Don't. It's just dumb.
7. Wear long pants. If you don't have any long pants, go get some at the thrift store for virtually no money. If you do your planting in the back yard it doesn't matter what these pants look like. Good. Cheaper. Then when you're done you don't even have to wash them. Just throw them away. That means less suffering all around.
8. Grow orchids.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Gone Again
Yup. He left Saturday morning. Stayed here longer than we thought he would. Which maybe made it a bit harder to say goodbye...
Walter left some really great things behind him on this trip home. I now have a laptop of my own, and he has one too. We're wireless. He can read my blog on the road, and I can live-blog for real from the road. (Assuming I can get the brakes repaired so I can get out a bit!)
The house computer is still alive, cobbled together from bits and pieces that the hurricane didn't fry. Excuse me, the Post-Hurricane Power Surge.
He loves to get me little gifts out on the road. Truck stops aren't what they used to be, believe me. They often have really neat stuff that we both like to acquire. Walter knows me ever so well by now...and knows I'm fond of certain gadgets that I almost never approve expenditures for. Yet, as Budgetmaster, I'm also adamant about each of us having a certain amount of our own money to do with as we please. So these expenditures are what he gets to do from his *grocery* type funds.
Like flashlights of all kinds. Clip-on map reading ones. Tiny things for your keychain, see the keyhole in the dark. Oh, I love flashlights. Silly for a person who can see so well in the dark as I can. (Or used to, before the LASIK). Still, I rarely think flashlights are necessary for lighting one's way on a path outside in the dark. Not necessary. No.
The flashlight collection is all about this: k loves to read, and k often goes gardening in the dark. And doing home repairs in dark places, under sinks and such.
Walter got me another one of these hurricane flashlights. Check it out: You recharge the battery by shaking it for a second or two. Ha! I kid you not. That's it. The little keychain flashlight recharges the same way, you purchase the two together in a set.
Now I have two sets of hurricane flashlights. I seriously adore them. He says they're kind of expensive but won't tell me how much they cost. He also brought me a tiny headlamp, waterproof, to back up my big huge waterproof one I got at Walmart.
More! Two tiny little keychain pill containers, nice durable ones, something I've wanted for a long time. A headphone set for my cellphone! Hands free! Driving? NO no no, silly! for when I'm gardening, or cooking! That's when I want that hands free thing the worst. I can talk to him whilst kneading my loaves. Of bread.
A perfect little 12-volt cooler, the kind you plug into your car's cig lighter. I have a big non-electric one for my regular shopping trips, understand - if you grocery shop in Florida, your butter can melt by the time you come home. This one is for my little road trips, for drinks and a sandwich, like that.
He didn't bring me any digital cameras this time - he got one for himself, finally! It's the size of a credit card. For real. Only slightly thicker is all. And it takes very good pix. This cost all of $25.00, deep discount sale.
He fixed a big armoire I picked up last Bulk Day; it was a matter of putting its doors back on. It's a bit battered, but for my storage purposes it's great. It would pass for actual furniture to many.
He did some serious and thoughtful Yard Work Admiration, and gave me the input I wanted on plant arranging in his Western Garden and in the front yard.
A year or so back, he had shoulder surgery and was home for 15 months. I got kind of used to having him around. Maybe one day, in the not too distant future, we'll find a way to keep him hanging around at home again. We'll see.
Walter left some really great things behind him on this trip home. I now have a laptop of my own, and he has one too. We're wireless. He can read my blog on the road, and I can live-blog for real from the road. (Assuming I can get the brakes repaired so I can get out a bit!)
The house computer is still alive, cobbled together from bits and pieces that the hurricane didn't fry. Excuse me, the Post-Hurricane Power Surge.
He loves to get me little gifts out on the road. Truck stops aren't what they used to be, believe me. They often have really neat stuff that we both like to acquire. Walter knows me ever so well by now...and knows I'm fond of certain gadgets that I almost never approve expenditures for. Yet, as Budgetmaster, I'm also adamant about each of us having a certain amount of our own money to do with as we please. So these expenditures are what he gets to do from his *grocery* type funds.
Like flashlights of all kinds. Clip-on map reading ones. Tiny things for your keychain, see the keyhole in the dark. Oh, I love flashlights. Silly for a person who can see so well in the dark as I can. (Or used to, before the LASIK). Still, I rarely think flashlights are necessary for lighting one's way on a path outside in the dark. Not necessary. No.
The flashlight collection is all about this: k loves to read, and k often goes gardening in the dark. And doing home repairs in dark places, under sinks and such.
Walter got me another one of these hurricane flashlights. Check it out: You recharge the battery by shaking it for a second or two. Ha! I kid you not. That's it. The little keychain flashlight recharges the same way, you purchase the two together in a set.
Now I have two sets of hurricane flashlights. I seriously adore them. He says they're kind of expensive but won't tell me how much they cost. He also brought me a tiny headlamp, waterproof, to back up my big huge waterproof one I got at Walmart.
More! Two tiny little keychain pill containers, nice durable ones, something I've wanted for a long time. A headphone set for my cellphone! Hands free! Driving? NO no no, silly! for when I'm gardening, or cooking! That's when I want that hands free thing the worst. I can talk to him whilst kneading my loaves. Of bread.
A perfect little 12-volt cooler, the kind you plug into your car's cig lighter. I have a big non-electric one for my regular shopping trips, understand - if you grocery shop in Florida, your butter can melt by the time you come home. This one is for my little road trips, for drinks and a sandwich, like that.
He didn't bring me any digital cameras this time - he got one for himself, finally! It's the size of a credit card. For real. Only slightly thicker is all. And it takes very good pix. This cost all of $25.00, deep discount sale.
He fixed a big armoire I picked up last Bulk Day; it was a matter of putting its doors back on. It's a bit battered, but for my storage purposes it's great. It would pass for actual furniture to many.
He did some serious and thoughtful Yard Work Admiration, and gave me the input I wanted on plant arranging in his Western Garden and in the front yard.
A year or so back, he had shoulder surgery and was home for 15 months. I got kind of used to having him around. Maybe one day, in the not too distant future, we'll find a way to keep him hanging around at home again. We'll see.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Back on Board?
It seems like every weird thing that can happen between AOL, Norton, and Blogger HAS been, lately. I THINK I'm back online now.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Walter Walter! I was a GOOD Girl!
So a FEW fire ant stings won't kill me. So far, anyway.
I'm back, I'm back, and I already potted everything I swiped today.
I did! I really did it!
Up till now, I've been raiding supplies rather than plants. Well, a few plants. But lots and lots of supplies. About 6-10 big yard trash bags each visit. Mostly this is empty pots, and plant trays and things.
Today, for the first time at this particular place, I came home with mostly plants.
And being more or less caught up with my other rescue plant potting, I could do them all up today.
Really, it's hard to express what this means. Ever since Wilma I've been working my disabled ass off, as best I can, trying to keep us all a tiny bit greener, a tiny bit more alive, than we would be otherwise. Every day that went by without me finishing meant that one or two more of my would-be rescues would die.
They would ALL die if I didn't bring them home. I know this, and I refuse to feel guilty about the ones that don't make it. I was hoping for at least 50% of them to survive, unpotted, until I could get to them. And my survival rate turned out more like 80-90%. It's fabulous.
But it still feels better to know I'm finally there, and can try for 95% instead.
I was a VERY good girl!
I'm back, I'm back, and I already potted everything I swiped today.
I did! I really did it!
Up till now, I've been raiding supplies rather than plants. Well, a few plants. But lots and lots of supplies. About 6-10 big yard trash bags each visit. Mostly this is empty pots, and plant trays and things.
Today, for the first time at this particular place, I came home with mostly plants.
And being more or less caught up with my other rescue plant potting, I could do them all up today.
Really, it's hard to express what this means. Ever since Wilma I've been working my disabled ass off, as best I can, trying to keep us all a tiny bit greener, a tiny bit more alive, than we would be otherwise. Every day that went by without me finishing meant that one or two more of my would-be rescues would die.
They would ALL die if I didn't bring them home. I know this, and I refuse to feel guilty about the ones that don't make it. I was hoping for at least 50% of them to survive, unpotted, until I could get to them. And my survival rate turned out more like 80-90%. It's fabulous.
But it still feels better to know I'm finally there, and can try for 95% instead.
I was a VERY good girl!
Nefarious Once Again
I firmly instructed myself: No more defunct nursery raids until the rescue plants in my yard already are all potted up!
I am immensely satisfied to say, I'm so close to the end it don't count. One day of odds and ends, then I start on the epis.
Meaning, I'm now *legit,* in my thinking, for another raid. An assault at dawn. The sun is just rising right now, this is the moment of sunrise...and time for me to fly.
If I don't post again by 4PM eastern, then y'all can send out a search party. They may need special Fire Ant Suits.
Wish me luck!
ta!
I am immensely satisfied to say, I'm so close to the end it don't count. One day of odds and ends, then I start on the epis.
Meaning, I'm now *legit,* in my thinking, for another raid. An assault at dawn. The sun is just rising right now, this is the moment of sunrise...and time for me to fly.
If I don't post again by 4PM eastern, then y'all can send out a search party. They may need special Fire Ant Suits.
Wish me luck!
ta!
Saturday, March 18, 2006
I like flowers.
The first three pics are the orchid tree. All those buds are opening up. It's trying to make up for the lost blooming time, when the hurricane came and split it in two.
It's hard to remember that just a few months ago, it was a 5' tall, totally denuded piece of trunk.
The blue flowers are Queen's Wreath. This never bloomed for me before, first time here. Several of my neighbors tell me they have plants that are doing their first bloom, too. All different kinds of plants, some fairly old.
Hurricanes can be such an inspiration.
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