Weeds and Life

I'm a weed puller, myself. I know I have a gallon container of Roundup hanging around here somewhere, but I haven't even pulled it out for years now. My yard is almost entirely chemical-free, which not only saves me a lot of money I don't have, it keeps me a lot healthier. I'm allergic to almost all that stuff. Mine is a yard for hypersensitives.

I think it keeps my plants healthier, too.

I do have to remember that those weeds have been providing some shade and a sort of green mulch in certain areas. After a big-time rainy season weeding job, some odd things can happen out there.

A few months ago, at the beginning of the rainy season, I splurged. I bought something I used to use back in my disposable cash days, and will try to keep up with now: corn gluten. About $50 worth covers my whole yard. Twice a year is good. What it does is, it prevents weeds from growing in the first place. The seeds germinate, then they die. It's not 100% perfect, especially until after the second application, but it's really great. I only have about 20% of the weeds I would have without that stuff. At this time of year it's seriously noticeable.

Two other ways I do weed control are that I have absolutely no grass, and I mulch heavily with pine bark nuggets. Where I have weeds right now is mostly where I didn't use the corn gluten or the pine bark.

Lucky for me, I actually like pulling weeds. It's sit-down work, which is always a requirement. Plus I get to see lots of great bugs and snakes and lizards that way. And find old pennies and stuff in the dirt. Artifacts.

Not to mention, the pure joy of feeling all the abundant life around me. Birds everywhere, even a pair of beautiful rare and shy orioles. Anywhere I sit I'm surrounded by plants I've rescued or grown from cuttings, by the incredible lush growth and happiness of healthy nature we get out here. Or that we can get if we pay just a little attention to its realities, and give it love and nurturance instead of battling it.

What I'm pulling down today is mostly these vines we get called bitter gourd, they smell funny and make bright orange little gourds. The glorybower on the east back fence takes over pretty quick too, and it's a beast. A lot of cutting, and a lot of getting scratched by it. With the right tools, it goes fast. Around a half-hour's work gets it back where I want it, a couple times per year. Less time than most people use to mow their grass that I don't have.

It brings scads of butterflies, and its luxurious growth covers my collection of empty pots and other nursery supplies. Keeps it from looking junky out there. When that glorybower grows too lush, I get lots of new stuff for the compost heap.

Last time I plundered the compost heap there was about 500 gallons of the richest, finest, most beautiful black gold you ever saw. It feels almost like peat moss in your hands. Like velvet. You gardeners out there know what I'm talking about. Grabbing a handful of this stuff is like holding a little piece of gardening heaven. Oh, it smells of earth and Mother Nature and plant food and life and goodness.

It's too rich to use straight up; a good mix is 50% - 67% compost mixed into our yard sand. I used it so much on the plant rescues, I'm almost out! I think there's around 30 gallons left. Ha! Running out of important dirt once again, story of my life.

I spend virtually no money on any of these activities. I do have some tools, and I tend to beat them up and have to replace them. I buy corn gluten, Spray-n-Grow micronutrients together with this liquid fertilizer they sell, and rarely some magnesium, palm food fertilizer, and iron chelate. A little chain saw oil as a hurricane prep. I spend around $200/year for everything I use. Say another $100 average for what plants and seeds are actually purchased.

But that's about it. No machines except an electric chainsaw, so no gas, no repairs. All my containers are free, the beautiful wood to grow epiphytes on, the compost, the plant pots (plastic or fancy ceramic ones), stakes, yard art, the plants themselves...Even the wire and such to attach orchids to the wood, or to hang the wood when I'm done? All that is almost always free for me.

Which is good, because I have less than zero money. Also good because I can't help getting a real kick out of Free Stuff. I'm one of those ultimate recyclers. Garbage picker? Naw. This comes from people giving me things they *hate to throw away,* or from our tidy debris piles waiting for The Claw after the hurricane, or on Bulk Pickup Day once a month. I'm rescuing things from their ultimate doom: being designated as Useless, and sent to a nasty grave at Mt. Trashmore.

Instead, they come home with me, where I bring them back to life.

Tired but Happy

On Tuesday, my guy comes home for a week's vacation. Me, I'm jumping for joy.

And as it happens, I finished my little bricklaying project yesterday.

I keep going out and admiring it.

This means I can now turn my attention back to rearranging my little backyard nursery. Like weeding it. Down here in the rainy season, if you turn your back for ONE MINUTE the weeds eat your yard, threaten your house, and start plotting to take over the whole town. If I'm really brave and unembarrassed maybe I'll post some pix to show you what I'm talking about.

I never did get Walter's Western Garden's pix posted for him to admire on the road. He may see it in person by the time I get to it!, oh well.

And kmom is here too! She started her annual snowbirding a bit early this year. She drove her new used car all the way from Chicagoland. Got here safe and sound, had a good time doing it, and still made it in time for her hairdresser appointment. you GO kmom!

It's a beautiful day and the yard is calling me. I hope all y'all have a wonderful day, too.

Man rejects first penis transplant

I like penises. I think they're nice.

Way back when on my Penis Day posts, I explained I like all sorts of other Parts. Which is true. Also, that I'd be talking about them, too, in future posts. I do hope my discussions of hands and feet and such shows I don't have an entirely one-track mind.

This one? Poor guy!
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Man rejects first penis transplant
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Monday September 18, 2006
Guardian

Chinese surgeons have performed the world's first penis transplant on a man whose organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year. The incident left the man with a 1cm-long stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse. "His quality of life was affected severely," said Dr Weilie Hu, a surgeon at Guangzhou General Hospital.

Doctors spent 15 hours attaching a 10cm penis to the 44-year-old patient after the parents of a brain-dead man half his age agreed to donate their son's organ.
The procedure, described in a case study due to appear in the journal European Urology next month, represents a big leap forward in transplant surgery; it required complex microsurgery to connect nerves and tiny blood vessels.

The surgical team claims the operation was a success. After 10 days, tests revealed the organ had a rich blood supply and the man was able to urinate normally.

Doctors have previously succeeded in reuniting men with their sexual organs after traumatic accidents or attacks, but the Guangzhou operation is the first in which a donor penis has successfully been attached to another man.
Although the operation was a surgical success, surgeons said they had to remove the penis two weeks later. "Because of a severe psychological problem of the recipient and his wife, the transplanted penis regretfully had to be cut off," Dr Hu said. An examination of the organ showed no signs of it being rejected by the body.

Jean-Michel Dubernard, the French surgeon who performed the world's first face transplant on a woman who had been attacked by a dog this year, said psychological factors were a serious issue for many patients receiving certain "allografts", or organs from donors. "Psychological consequences of hand and face allografts show that it is not so easy to use and see permanently a dead person's hands, nor is it easy to look in a mirror to see a dead person's face," he wrote in the journal. "Clearly, in the Chinese case the failure at a very early stage was first psychological. It involved the recipient's wife and raised many questions."

In 2001, surgeons were forced to amputate the world's first transplanted hand from Clint Hallam, a 50-year-old New Zealander, who said he wanted the "hideous and withered" hand removed because he had become "mentally detached" from it. The original transplant was conducted by Prof Dubernard's team at the Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyons, who have since performed the world's first double arm transplant.

Andrew George, a transplant expert at Imperial College, London, said: "Doing a penis transplant should be no more complex than anything else. But it takes time for nerve sensations to kick in and it's not clear whether the patient would ever be able to have sex with it. The question is whether it's right to be doing a transplant for what may be seen as cosmetic reasons."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1874818,00.html
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

That Scooter Rides. Yes it Does.

Lest we forget: The purpose of the exercise, all along, was the scooter.

Specifically, being able to drive it in and out of the house without having to hump it over those two steps leading into the house.

My lovely neighbor BB uses a golf cart. She's been watching the bricklaying festivities with interest. Not to mention, she spotted my black mica rock glowing like diamonds in the sunshine all the way from her place a few days ago - which stuff really floats my boat. She's sort of *kitty corner once removed* to me.

So I wanted her to be here for this. I sent the following email:

~You are hereby cordially invited to witness the Inaugural Test Drive of the k ranch Scooter on its Newly Refurbished and Reconfigured Brick Patio and Front Porch.~

She came, she saw, I conquered.

The scooter conquered, I mean.

YES!

Oh yes, it worked beautifully.

She sat in her golf cart, and me on my scooter, taking off for tiny joyrides here and there, circling around her like Indians around a wagon train. I ramped it up to full speed and went flying up the steepest part of the incline on the decorative spiral. I almost popped a wheelie, that time.

WHEEEEEE!!!

The only thing I'll have to watch for is this: When I'm backing out the front door and doing a 3-point turn, I MUST turn first to my right, not my left. *Right* means I back over the bricks on the front porch. *Left* means I may accidentally go too far, and go over this little sidestep of bricks leading into the carport. That would SO not be good.

I'm just ecstatic.

BB ran out of bird seed during my long focus on bricklaying and/or convalescence. Her nephew could bring her some, but I try to keep her supplied from Sam's, where it's seriously cheaper. So I picked up a nice big 40# bag yesterday. Her hungry doves and blue jays and what-all are probably lined up on her driveway right now, waiting for her to get up, looking all pitiful and mournful - *But where's our breakfast? don't you love us any more?*

And she'll see one of my happiest uses for a scooter: hauling Important Stuff around.

Ghost Dragon Bones

I sold one of my little sweethearts yesterday. A collector type customer drops by from time to time and covets my rarities. This was one.

Euphorbia lacteas make wonderful bizarre shapes, which I adore. The rare white form is just stunning. The little tiny round white things on the ends of what look like thorns? Those are leaves.
They're so cute! they just crack me up.

This cruciform shape is pretty on its own. But the way this guy curled and then sprung new growth on his *arms* makes it look to me like he's dancing. A very happy looking plant. Why I took pix from all angles, to show you how he dances.

I know he'll go to a good home. But I'll miss him. He was special.

But...I got $40 for an 8-10" plant. I got the big mother plant for free, as a rescue, and I have another big freebie now, that one a gift from a neighbor who moved away.

Several babes, none quite as great as this, but fine. They fell off the parent plants as I was moving them around. So I let them dry a bit, stuck them in a pot, and then did nothing else whatsoever to them.

I didn't water, feed, anything.

That's what they like down here.

So even though I'll miss him, I did well
and feel lucky.

Bricklaying is easy as pie.

Easier, actually. I can make biscuits like nobody's business, but that pastry crust thing has always eluded me. I rest the dough, refrigerate it, use lard instead of butter, it doesn't matter. Can't do it.

The kind of bricklaying I'm doing now is the easiest of all, for two reasons. First, it's dry paving. *Dry,* in masonry work, means you don't use mortar. So all I'm doing is putting bricks on top of smoothed sand. Simple as can be.

Easier yet? I'm not building anything new. The bricks and most of the sand are already in place. I'm just picking up my old porch and patio to make them into a smooth ramp, where before there were a couple of small steps in there.

So the only work involved is getting more sand - which we have in abundance in our back yards here - and picking up and relaying the bricks.

See?

I should really do this up right, and show you before and after pix, in nice Order of Doing...but I'm so busy taking advantage of every non-raining moment, I'll have to let you into the story right in the middle. I'll try to keep it unconfusing!

Here's what it looks like this morning as I get ready to work.

(Please, kindly overlook the peeling paint, the half-scraped front door, all that. I'll get to it, I promise.)

I call the part under the roof the *porch,* and the open area with the decorative spirals is the *patio.* The spirals are there for fun. I had a plain-jane patio there earlier on, and got tired of it. I wanted to make something fancier. So I combined a lot of different brick patterns, and blended them in with the little walkways along the driveway and all over the front yard.
Since I was building a ramp into the patio, of course, I had to raise it everywhere it joined with walkways. Both of the spirals had to get raised too.

The last two pix show the spirals close up.

This area leading into the house is where one of the little steps was. Now it's all one level. No scooter issues here.

Pic #2 looks out the front door toward the street. Where the front porch meets the patio is where the other little step was, before.

The picture of the porch is from a few weeks ago, after hurricane preps cleared everything off the porch. I've laid out the spiral, sort of as a *rough sketch,* but then I had to wait for the weather to pass before I could work them into the sand.


The fourth view looks from the carport to the porch. Making a slope using bricks isn't easy. Here the slope is steep. The little wall of 4 bricks is mortared in. I didn't want to raise the level of the whole porch, or build the little walls higher. So I sloped the *ramp.* Here I had to use half bricks to make the slope work out.

Remembering those 9/11 losses...

My heart is with all those who lost so much on this day - but no terrorist will hijack my heart.

Last year I watched a public TV documentary, a tribute to this day, and it remains the most moving one I've ever seen. One person interviewed was a rabbi who thought and thought about how to remember the dead. He found some records of the messages the WTC people had sent out from their cell phones to their loved ones. Saying *goodbye.* He wrote the messages down, word for word, so carefully, and set the words to a chant. He chanted some for the interviewer. Simple words - I don't think we're going to make it, I love you mommy...

I honor his careful and thoughtful and loving way of honoring the dead and the bereaved. It speaks for me, in its haunting and eerie beauty, when I can't find a way to express it myself.

A friend of many years' standing lives out in California now. We met working together at a post office in the Chicago area. I was 19 and married to my first husband, and he was around 26 and fresh out of the Marines. An MP, he was, a sergeant. We were an *item,* briefly, a few years after my divorce, but had the good sense to realize right quick that *it wasn't meant to be.*

We'd already developed the sort of friendship where you know that person has your back, always, forever. As sometimes happens, that friendship only got stronger after we realized any other relationship wasn't in the cards. We may not talk for months or longer at a time - but then pick back up in the middle of the last conversation we had.

He moved to Hollywood. I moved to Florida. I went on to marry Walter, and my friend was one of the 10 guests at our tiny wedding. He went on to marry Little Miss Attila, and LMA later became my blogmom. We bought our houses around the same time, not knowing the other couple was even shopping. We do those parallels pretty often.

From way early on, the Attila Hub and I fell into this habit of calling each other with news of our local natural disasters. Then we added man-made ones to the list. Riots and such.

So as I watched the towers get hit and fall - I'd been watching Good Morning America at the time - I called him. I hated to call there so early, I hate to wake people up, especially with such terrible news. My overriding feeling was that anyone in a major city like LA might be in danger's path, and ought to be warned what was happening.

The answering machine picked up. I had the sense someone might be awake and listening to my message (which never bothers me a bit) - but how all that unfolded at the House of Attila was something I never found out. We were all, of course, paying more attention to other news at hand.

Last year, LMA wrote a post about that day in her life, including the phone call. It surprised me how much it meant to hear how that little piece of the story line ended. No reason for it that I can see. Human nature, I guess.

So thanks, LMA, for filling in the blanks.


The rest of this day I devote to Walter. It's his birthday, and I love him, and I want him to have a happy day. A birthday that didn't get hijacked by terrorists.

Eyeless driver arrested in the U.K.

You've probably guessed I like to see us all do whatever we can to overcome our limitations, and have lots of fun in the process.

Even for me, though, there's such a thing as Over the Top.
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Eyeless driver arrested in the U.K.

Posted Sep 6th 2006 4:05PM
by Damon Lavrinc
Filed under: Etc., Safety

There are plenty of friends out there. Some are closer than family and others are mere acquaintances. For Omed Aziz, his friend was willing to risk his life, Aziz's life and a few other late night motorists in an effort to give Aziz a piece of his world back.

Omed Aziz lost both of his eyes during an explosion in Iraq. He also left behind a few digits from his hands, most of his hearing and now suffers from severe tremors in his legs. With that in mind, you could image the Oldbury police's surprise when they found Aziz driving a Peugeot in the wrong lane, while taking direction from his friend in the passenger seat.

Although legally blind and certainly impaired, the police reported that Aziz masterfully made his way around a few corners and a roundabout, before crossing into oncoming traffic.

Aziz now holds the distinction of being the first blind motorist ever convicted of reckless driving in the U.K., while his co-pilot is awaiting trial for aiding and abetting dangerous driving.

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/06/eyeless-driver-arrested-in-the-u-k