I'm Startin' to Get the Feeling That

Spring is just around the corner. I'm psyching myself up to put in a good garden this year. I haven't done that in a while. Here's a picture of my second garden attempt. (Pardon the poor resolution - I didn't have a good digital camera back then, in 2002.) I love how the plants blend in to the oak trees in the background - that must have been a good year for rain, because it looks like a jungle!



That same year, one of our friends gave us some calabash seeds, and I planted LOTS of them.........OMG! They ended up taking the whole place over. We picked a ton of the small ones, and they made nice squash bread. These pictured went in the dumpster, along with many, many other wheelbarrows full. I'll never do that again!



My first garden was totally ground-based, and it nearly broke our backs, so I decided the next year to experiment with container gardening. Here's a picture of my lettuce bed - I scarfed a broken liquid feed liner (we do cows) and planted lettuce in it. It was perfect, and I still use it to this day. In fact, I have two of them. I think of them as giant flower pots. You should have seen this bed when all the salad greens were fully filled out and ready to cut - it was beautiful, except for the nut grass. Darned nut grass! Oh well, I could easily separate it from the salad greens.



A dear friend who owns a fertilizer company saw my liquid feed liner-planters and brought over some big, freaking HUGE tractor tires that we modified to plant taters in. We currently have two, but I'll take all he'll bring me. Taters love 'em!



I'm glad I live way out in the country, so I don't have to worry about what my neighbors think of all my backyard gardening experiments! It all looks pretty wacky right now, two liquid feeder tubs, two giant tractor tires, a couple of wooden raised beds..........but when our garden is growing in all it's Spring glory, it looks quite righteous! I need to stop blogging and get to tilling! Here's the rest of my back yard.........



which makes it all worth it!

I Love Pictures of Dogs, Especially Funny Pictures of Dogs

First, here's my dogger, Roxie - the day we got this picture, she heard Dad yelling at the baseball mens on TV, and she thought she had been bad, so she got in her basket. We told her she was a good girl, and hadn't done anything wrong, so she eventually got out of the tub. We gave her a puppy biscuit for doing such a good job pressing the clothes!




I scarfed this one from BON - I love the little brown pibble puppy baby that looks like my dogger, Roxie.



I have been an evil doer several times, when I bought my dog costumes. I got Roxie one of these - a hula skirt, complete with lei and coconut bra, but she broke the lei immediately. I have a picture somewhere, but this will have to do. I am sure you get the idea. She really doesn't mind the coconut bra, but the grass skirt gets in her way sometimes.



I really want to make Roxie be a lion for next Halloween..........



Roxie also loves to ride in Dad's truck, so I think she might like to fly someday.....



And, since we live on a farm, and she goes with Dad every morning to feed the cows, she might consider wearing this costume someday, although she is not spotted, and we don't have any dairy cows, but we do have some brown ones.....



Roxie has a few other costumes: a shark, batman and a pumpkin. She doesn't like any of those, so I think I will quit wasting my money and just get more puppy biscuits for her!

Want

I Love This Song

"Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds. Have you heard it?

I Can't Wait

Godspeed, MS Beluga

A cargo ship pulled by a giant, parachute-shaped kite will leave Germany on Tuesday on a voyage that could herald a new "green" age of commercial sailing on the high seas. The owners of the MS Beluga, a 462ft cargo vessel, will try to prove that modern steel ships can harness wind power and reduce their reliance on diesel engines.

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Tuesday, They Took Away The Boat

Since we live out in the country, we can hear when someone drives up, and our dogs bark. We initially thought it might be UPS, Fed Ex, DHL, or the propane guy, but it sounded bigger and louder than usual, so my husband went outside to check. "Come to find out", it was a big flat bed truck sent by the insurance company of the boat owner to get her remains.



My husband inquired what they were here for, and they told him. They showed him their orders, and one of them remarked that they thought it was owned by a movie star. The name was right.

Actually, my son started the whole "recovery of her remains" process. He called the Sheriff's Office to check up on things. They ended up giving him the owner's cell phone number. My son called him. He was in Colorado, at one of his other homes at the time, and didn't even know his boat was stolen, so he ended up coming back to Texas and calling his insurance company. That led to the insurance company sending the truck out to pick up the boat, which was valued at about $60,000.00. So here's a picture of the guy who drove the big flatbed truck out to our place to pick her up. He had to tie his shoe lace before he started.




You know, if it was a movie star who owned the boat that was stolen, stripped and then driven to our little slice of heaven, and set on fire, I damned well hope I can get his autograph.

I can't confirm the movie star thing based on my feeble, free internet searches, but it's kinda fun to imagine it. I could bring myself to feel fortunate that, if our old house had to burn down unexpectedly, it's better if there is a movie star involved. I guess this all stems from the fact that my beloved, RIP, mother, was named after this movie star:



Crap! Why am I doing this to myself? My son has HIS phone number. I think I'll ask my son to call HIM back, and see if HE IS a movie star. Me? Besides all that, I'm just pining for the old house. I still tear up when I drive by the place where it was.

Evil bastards. I still hate you.