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neurotwitch

Saturday, March 28, 2009

planting peas

As I mentioned, we started working on the yard today. Stanley chipped and shredded leaves and branches and I raked and picked up trash. We’ve barely made a dent in what we have to do, but it felt so good to be working outside today.

And, finally, I planted peas, both green peas and sweet peas. Meant to do it on St. Patrick’s Day, but didn’t get to it.

This year, I bought the Burpee “Money Saving Garden”—which is a bunch of packets of vegetable seeds that, if you plant them and they grow, provides more than $600 worth of vegetables for $10 (and a lot of labor). Or so they say. So I was looking at them to see which ones needed to be started now for planting later—but Burpee neglected to provide any sowing instructions whatsoever. Not one word about when and how deep and spacing, etc. Zilch! I looked on their website to see if I could find any planting guides, especially for the tomatoes which I know need to be started early, and found nothing. Nothing in the box, nothing on the seed packets, nothing on the envelope holding the seed packets, nothing on the website ... very, very annoying. I wrote to customer service, which is not open on Saturdays or Sundays, so we’ll see if I get a response. And looked stuff up on the internets.

The crocus is really pretty this year, and the squill, which is not as prolific as it has been in the past (click to enlarge).

crocus and squill, March 28, 2009

crocus March 28, 2009

There are lots of wood hyacinths sprouting, and tulips coming up and even daffodils, which I thought had all died out since there were hardly any of them last year. The tiny lilac we planted last year looks very healthy, good sturdy-looking buds.

The puppies got a lot of yard time, which we hoped would tire them out a lot but, of course, it didn’t. Ruby managed to get a stick in her eye last week, which caused her eye to turn all pink and nasty and required a trip to the vet. It was an ulcerated tear of the cornea and required applications of goo several times a day. It’s looking a lot better—she goes back to the vet for a check on Monday so I hope everything is okay.

The Amazing Jumping Mutt Bingo, March 28, 2009Bingo gets impatient—she is an amazing jumper, especially in the house when she’s trying to eat grain moths. (click to enlarge)

Ruby and Bingo on March 28, 2009Here are the sweeties again. Ruby is 10.5 months old and weighs 50 pounds and Bingo is 8.5 months old and weighs about 55 pounds. (click to enlarge)

More "planting peas"

posted by lee on 03/28/09 at 08:59 PM

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the nathan hale middle school piggies

We started working on the yard today—raking and cleaning up the branches. And cleaning up the litter.

While school is in session, we get an unbelievable amount of trash tossed and blown into our yard. We’re next door to Nathan Hale Middle School, and the kiddies are piglets. They toss candy bar wrappers and plastic bottles and school papers and, on the last day of school, entire text books and binders full of paper and crap from their lockers.

Often, their mommies add to the garbage by cleaning out their vehicles when they line up along Strawberry Hill Avenue waiting for their fat little piglets to get out of school and get their rides so they don’t have to walk one step more than necessary—they toss bottles and cigarette wrappers and the contents of their ashtrays. I wish I had the time to gather up their garbage and follow the big pigs home and dump it in the middle of their lawns.

It’s all very depressing and takes quite a while to clean up.

What would help a great deal is a 10-cent deposit on all bottles, including water and Gatorade and any other beverage the piggies consume. A nickel doesn’t mean anything to anyone except the folks who harvest the recycle bins every Thursday. Maybe a dime deposit on water sold in bottles would clean up some of the mess people leave behind—I still don’t get why there is a deposit on soda bottles but not water or Gatorade bottles—it’s ludicrous.

posted by lee on 03/28/09 at 05:13 PM

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march movie

This year, March began with a snow storm, the Megastorm! I used my Flip and shot the puppies and Stanley and cars speeding down an icy street (which is supposed to be 25mph—which not even the Norwalk cops obey despite there being three schools in a very short stretch). Stanley did most of the digging out—I helped some using the Fox electric snow shovel. A lot of work. We said last year we’d get a “real” snow blower, but never got around to it. We decided after this shovel job to for real look for one this summer. The Fox comes in handy, but it’s still a lot of work to use it and it really isn’t designed to handle more than five inches or so at a time.

Today, it was nearly 60 degrees and mostly sunny, and we worked in the yard this afternoon. And I made another little movie of the puppies. Used the Flip software to put them together and then Moyea Flash Video MX Pro to make a Flash movie out of it. It lasts about seven minutes or so and not very interesting to anyone but us. But here it is, anyway:

I’m glad we’re not getting the weather they’re getting in Kansas today—two feet of snow! Tornadoes and flooding down South, flooding in North Dakota ...  ah spring!

 

posted by lee on 03/28/09 at 04:40 PM

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Sunday, March 01, 2009

snow and silly teevee shows

We’re in the midst of the MEGASTORM. Yep, that’s what the Weather Channel is calling it. I wonder what it’s real name will turn out to be—probably something like Frank or Harriet.

The storm started here in Norwalk about 9ish, I think. It was starting to get heavy outside while we were watching the latest Jesse Stone movie. Now, several hours later, I think we have six or seven inches on the ground. Or more—I’m not inclined to go outside and look more carefully. I will in a bit, when I head upstairs to bed.

The Jesse Stone movie. I really like this series, but this latest one, Thin Ice or something like that, was really disappointing. It was depressing and left the story hanging—nothing good happened. They’re filming the next one, or just filmed it, and it’s due out this year some time, but it’s a long time to wait for some resolution. This one wasn’t a Robert Parker version, but based on his characters. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t as satisfying as the last four were. But maybe it was a good ending, because it left me wondering and caring about what happens next. And it makes me want to visit Nova Scotia—it’s so pretty there (that’s where it was filmed—what is supposed to be Boston looks an awful lot like Halifax ... )

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posted by lee on 03/01/09 at 11:43 PM

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