I just finished cleaning the aquarium. When all was back together, they did their one trick of piling up in the corner, blowing bubbles at me and wriggling their sweet bodies, telling me it had been MONTHS since anyone had fed them.
Apparently, we are neglecting ALL our animals. One of the cats tried to trip me on my way into our office to the computer – her way of telling me she wanted some treats.
And Amber, our 95-pound yellow lab, just tried to crawl up in the chair with me, trying to be cute and licking my ear.
It’s obvious that we have a whole houseful of neglected animals we really should be paying more attention to…
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These photos are of the Tawny Frogmouth Owl. These birds are so ugly they’re beautiful. One of my favorites.
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I mixed and distributed 2 double loads of Mel’s Mix in my garden boxes today. I came in, drank a glass of water, and then went back out. This time my husband joined me. We mixed and distributed ANOTHER 2 double loads.
We are now half way finished with the filling up of the six planter boxes. Each one is 4 feet x 4 feet x 8″, and we’re just topping off the boxes. It takes a LOT of Mel’s Mix to do this. Once we are finished, I’ll take some pics of the finished boxes and then with the tarps over them for the winter.
Also when we finish, I’ll order one more group of ingredients so that the trash cans are in good shape for the coming spring.
When I came in from working in the garden, I had black stuff from head to toe – even in my NOSE from standing on my head in the trash cans. I feel much better now after a nice, hot shower.
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It’s a beautiful Monday here. Lots of sunshine and cool temperatures. I hope that you are having a nice, fall day, as well.
I plan to spend some time in the yard, mixing more Mel’s Mix for the garden if our ingredients can be picked up at the co-op, or mixing up and spraying weed killer, otherwise.
I was thinking about pulling out our tomato plants yesterday, but found tomatoes! They are mostly the size of cherry tomatoes, but they taste good, so I gathered them and will leave the plants alone for now. :0)
I just sent this picture to Laufrain, my friend who gave me the two elephant ear plants last fall. I have never had such great luck with elephant ears before. They are definitely happy in this planter beside our garage. They are HUGE!
Have a wonderful day.
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I hope that you are having a wonderful Sunday.
It was 45 degrees here when we got up! It’s hard to believe that we have been trying NOT to turn on the a/c to sustain life up until just a week or so ago. Thankfully, even though it’s too cool to open doors now, later on today we will open up so that we can enjoy the glorious breezes flowing through the house.
I made keto chili in the crock pot yesterday morning. It tasted quite comforting when we ate dinner last night, having had to close the doors again. :0)
I told you yesterday that I am filling up our raised bed, square foot planter boxes with Mel’s Mix, a wonderful soil alternative. The level of the planting medium has really gotten low. I still don’t know what ‘happens’ to the soil. I know that it settles, but this is as if it simply disappeared. It has been two years since I made a serious effort to replenish the boxes, though, so I guess it’s definitely time. I mix up the loads of ingredients, dumping them into the used cement mixer we bought several years ago. I’ve been mixing double loads, and it took THREE double loads to fill up ONE of the planters. I ordered new ingredients from our local co-op, and they should be ready for us to pick up Monday or Tuesday. We will be spending lots of time mixing and dumping over the coming weeks!
When we started this, I thought we would put a new wood strip down the middle of each row of three boxes and reattach the hoses and sprinklers. I now think it would be better to wait until spring to do that, since the wood would begin deteriorating in the sun and precipitation right away. I will start covering the boxes with tarps, using bungie cords, as we fill them.
The other big project I’m continuing is de-cluttering my house. I did this a couple of years ago, feeling quite ruthless, but everywhere I look now needs another purge. I’m working my way through each room – sometimes only one area at a time, pulling everything out, deciding whether to keep it, donate it, or pitch it, and then cleaning and re-organizing the area. It’s amazing how much STUFF you accumulate when you live somewhere over 33 years! The first area is our master bed room and bath. This includes floor-to-ceiling bookshelves (one for me and several for my husband), closets, plus floor to ceiling shelves in the bathroom and a full medicine cabinet. I’m trying to go through a bit at a time…
Enjoy your day!
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These are our cats, Abby on the left of the picture and Smoke on the right. They were obviously in accord about how to spend the day today.
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My husband joined me in the garden while I was mixing up a double load of Mel’s Mix. We dumped that and then were able to mix up one more double load before we ran out of most of the ingredients, with the exception of vermiculite.
We filled up one of the six planter boxes. It took 3 double loads of Mel’s Mix to fill the one planter, so we have a lot of work ahead of us to fill up all six planter boxes.
I ordered ingredients and the co-op will have our order Monday or Tuesday. We have decided that we will cover the boxes with tarps and wait until spring to replace the wooden strips that hold up the hoses and sprinklers. My husband thinks we should let it rain on the filled box at least once before we cover it up to help the new mix ‘settle’ a bit.
The picture above gives you an idea of what we’re working on. We are now using wire instead of the string you see in this picture to demarcate the ‘squares’ for planting. The string deteriorated way too fast, and the wire lasted the whole season.
I ordered one big bag of vermiculite, 2 ‘rectangles’ of peat moss, and 2 bags each of mushroom compost, cotton burr compost, and barnyard compost. It will be interesting to see how far the ingredients go in filling up the planter boxes.
We got a lot of good exercise, feel that we got a good start on the project, and are glad to have a day of rest from it tomorrow.
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I love it when people can paw through a box of ‘stuff’ and create things that make us smile. It’s the old cliche’ ‘one man’s trash…’ but some folks are adept at bringing it to an art form.
I want ALL of these.
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We are having a beautiful day today. It’s actually too cool to have our doors open right now! Imagine that!
It has taken me an hour or so to FINALLY get the beautiful image above to show and start writing this blog post. I kept getting a, “You’re not authorized to edit this post,” or similar aggravating messages. Did I tell you I HATE it when websites change all the parameters?
One really NICE thing has happened this morning –
My husband and I got online last night after dinner and ordered some frozen food from Stu’s Clean Cookin’ in Greenwood. This will be our second order.
This morning I got an email from Keith Dake, a co-owner of Stu’s. He asked if he could meet us after 11:15 to pick up our order today, telling us he had our order ready, but that the store would not be open the rest of the week. He offered for us to be able to set the time of pickup.
This is only one of the reasons we will continue as a customer. The food is delicious. The nutrition information is on the website, so you can choose meals that fit your needs. You order when you want, and the food can be picked up the next day after 10am. The store is clean. The people are friendly. We spent about 2 minutes or less picking up our order last time. This is definitely a place that deserves your business.
Have a wonderful day!
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I LOVE seeing how creative people can be – in this case in carving a pumpkin or baking holiday cookies. I wish the result of their imagination and talent could live forever.
Come to think of it, though, maybe there IS a bit of permanence here because we can share their creations.
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I just published my first blog post of the day. The WordPress people decided to change the entire way one writes a post, show images, credit image sources, categorize posts, etc. No notice – at least none that I saw – and very UN-intuitive. I was told several times that I was not ‘authorized to edit or update my post.’ I finally left it to go to Lunch Bunch and errands, and tackled it again when I got back.
I’m under the distinct impression that people are paid extra when they change things. They don’t have to be GOOD changes, just have everything look different. I have found that as I age, I appreciate things that stay the same. It really irritates me when I have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ in order to post on my blog, save something to my computer, access websites, etc.
Enough of my griping (I guess) but I feel almost as if confetti should be dropping from the ceiling to help me celebrate being able to publish a post or two today. I still can’t figure out how to put my posts in the categories I set up…
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This COULD be our dog, Amber. She’s a 3-year-old yellow lab who didn’t get the memo about calming down once she hit the 2-year-old mark. To say she is ‘quite a handful for two old folks’ is the greatest of all understatements.
She is a good-hearted dog, but definitely wants ALL of our attention. If you get up to go to the kitchen, for example, she rouses from what appeared to be a sound sleep and is either running into the back of your legs, causes your leg to collapse, or pushed past you to race in front, then change directions suddenly to come back to see why you’re moving so slowly, over and over until you hopefully reach the kitchen in one piece. We are trying to discourage this, but she is the eternal optimist, thinking that if she surrounds you. only good things will happen.
She wants to GO. She doesn’t care where, when, or why. If we take her with us for errands, she plays ‘trampoline,’ jumping up and down in place beside the truck, waiting for us to open the back door for her so she can jump in. We open the back windows for her so she can go from side to side, looking out the windows.
If we say, “Go to bed,” when we get up, she hangs her head and dejectedly walks slowly to her bed in the utility room, waiting until we return.
Poor Amber. We are about to leave for Lunch Bunch, and this will be a ‘Go to bed’ moment….
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Animal Wallpapers-Desktop Nexus
Earlier today my husband came out to help in the garden. I turned off the water to the irrigation system. We removed the hoses and sprinkler heads from the narrow wooden strips that went down the middle of each group of three planter boxes. We then removed the broken wooden strips. We stretched wire in two directions on the last planter, making the planting ‘squares’ we inadvertently forgot to do this year.
(This is a pic from the beginning of the season.)
I went back out about an hour ago to start the process of mixing Mel’s Mix and filling up the planters.
Mel’s Mix is a soil alternative made from
I keep the ingredients in large lidded trash cans we keep along the back of our shop. We also have a used cement mixer. I measure out the ingredients into the cement mixer. I usually mix a double load each time. I mix the ingredients for about 3 minutes, and then empty the mixer into a big plastic yard bucket with handles. I then carry the bucket to one of the garden planter boxes and dump it.
This is kind of a laborious process, but I only have to do this once every few years. Usually, when you pull out a plant and plant something else during the seasons, you add a bit of mix. (I usually keep a small trash can of pre-mixed Mel’s Mix so this is quick and easy.)
Today was hard because the trash cans are getting empty, so I was kind of having to stand on my head to reach in and fill up the measuring bucket in each trash can. I also found a humongous ant hill that was in my way as I was going back and forth. I had to go back to the garage to get the EIGHT bug killer spray so I could hose them down before I got bitten or stung. I decided after mixing and distributing the one double load, that was it for the day. I think I can do one more double load tomorrow, but then I’ll have to replenish supplies.
I just finished calling the Greenwood Co-Op, the wonderful outfit that provides my ingredients. Sometimes they have everything I need. This time they had to order some of it, so it should be ready for us to pick up Monday or Tuesday of next week. (After mixing up another double load tomorrow, it’ll probably take this old lady that long to rest up… :0) )
When the planter boxes are all full of Mel’s Mix, my husband and I will replace the wooden strips, tying the hoses and sprinkler heads onto them. Then I’ll take some pics before we cover the planter boxes with tarps for the winter.
Britannica
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays.
When I was a child – back in 1492 or so – things were much simpler. My brother and I scrounged around, looking for a way to ‘dress up’ for Halloween, creating costumes. We didn’t buy any costumes. Sometimes we bought masks, but they were generic type masks, not a particular character. My parents would get set up to hand out candy. My brother would head out the door to find his friends, disappearing until the time my parents said for us to be home. I went out to find MY friends and we headed for the neighborhood next to ours, where the houses were nice and close together and LOTS of porch lights were on, welcoming all comers.
We walked and walked, happily filling up our Halloween bags and eating at the same time, having the time of our lives. The only parents we saw on the streets had super young children who were obviously out for their FIRST Halloween. Very few cars. Kids of all ages everywhere. When our bags were full, or we were too tired to go any farther, we would finally head home.
My brother and I each took our Halloween bags to our rooms, to be hidden until we had each eaten all we wanted over the next days. Stomach aches were a part of it. Only a HINT of warnings that maybe we should look at what we got carefully before throwing whatever it was into our mouths. The only one I remember was the possibility of razor blades in apples. As I said, life was simpler then. And GLORIOUS.
The world has changed, and the holiday and celebrations have been forced to change with it. Now there are subsidized Haunted Houses and group parties. Kids are still going Trick-or-Treating, but mommies accompany them, or follow in cars. Only occasionally will you see a costume a child has created. Most of them are purchased. No one stays out late. Everyone checks every piece of candy to be as sure as possible that all is okay. The kids don’t know any differently, but it makes me a bit sad. Things will really be different this year, with the pandemic. I hope they still look forward to the celebration and eat too much candy!
Giphy
I can’t quit smiling over this. I hope you get a kick out of it, too.
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Australian Firefighters Fund-Raising Calender – Cameron and Biscuit
Ah. A happy start to a new month. I’m assuming that “Biscuit” is the dog, but I’ll say “Hi,” to the man, whatever his name is, with a huge smile.
We have a bunch of errands this morning. I’ll write more when we return.
Have a great first day of October. I hope this is a good month for all of us.
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creativeartworksblog 