They Live!
I wandered around in the sunshine and took a close look at all those grapes that I thought were dead. Most of them have little buds on them. Yay!
Also the lawn is mowed. I feel much better about the yard when it is mowed.
Planning ahead.
Kiki has a birthday coming up. I’ve been planning for it since Christmas. With money as tight as it is, I’m constantly watching for things which would make good gifts for my kids. I’ve already stashed away a fair amount of things for Christmas 2006. (I want to provide a really good Christmas for $200 or less.) Link’s birthday is in the fall and I’ve got most of what I need for that as well. One of the keys to making do on very little money is to plan WAY ahead. And because this might be useful for someone else out there, let me outline Kiki’s birthday. She is getting:
One stuffed dragon made by me from materials and a pattern I already had. Cost $0
One fantasy themed jigsaw puzzle which I acquired for free from someone who didn’t want it. Cost $0
Small bag of Polly Pocket dolls and accessories bought used from a neighbor child $5
Polly Pocket folding castle bought from a thrift store $1
Three pairs of earrings from a thrift store $1
A cake made from a box and decorated by me and herself $2
Balloons left over from some other celebration $0
Then in June we’ll have a birthday celebration with her cousins with all the screaming and laughing that usually attends children’s parties.
Total monetary cost is going to be less than $10. The cost in time is much higher, especially when you count that stuffed dragon, but the time sewing and combing thrift stores is well spent. I say that because I am confident that Kiki is going to absolutely love her birthday and her presents. Every thing on that list is something that she has been wanting for awhile. Naturally there are other much more expensive things that she would also love to have. I can’t provide those right now, but I’ve managed to provide enough. And as Mary Poppins says “Enough is as good as a feast.”
Ladybugs!
Yesterday afternoon in an attempt to ward off my sadness over the death of my grape plants, I went wandering through the yard looking at my trees. This makes me feel better because the trees are all getting big and I’m able to enjoy the fruits of my labor instead of looking at seedlings and knowing I’ll have to tend them for months before they bear fruit. All the trees were beautiful, except one. It is a varigated maple tree and it was obviously suffering. It’s neighbor had big shiny leaves, but this tree’s leaves were all small, limp, and curled. A closer inspection revealed aphids. Lots of aphids. I would never have guessed that something so small as an aphid could have the potential to kill a tree, but when each leaf has a crowd of 30-50 aphids and the trunk has turned into an aphid highway I’m guessing the aphids are going to win.
One solution to this kind of infestation is to spray the tree with insecitcide. Only the tree is 25 feet tall. I’m not at all confident in my capability to adequately coat the entire tree. Also the weather is rainy, so the spray would wash off leaving aphid eggs to hatch into a new infestation. In addition I’d get spray all over myself. Insecticide is death to bugs, but it isn’t good for people either. Insecticide is also expensive. Add all of that up and I knew I needed another solution.
The good news is that nature has provided the perfect one. Ladybugs. Ladybugs love to eat aphids. In fact I was able to spot multiple ladybugs which had found the aphid bonanza on my tree. I was also able to spot no fewer than 6 clutches of ladybug eggs on the low branches of the tree. Nature is pushing to get the system back in balance. Unfortunately I looked at the tree and was not sure that the ladybugs would destroy aphids fast enough to save the tree.
Did you know you can buy ladybugs? I learned this several years back when Link’s preschool teacher brought a box of them to school so that the kids could hold ladybugs and release them. Since then I’ve frequently purchased ladybugs to control aphids on my roses. The kids always love the chance to have ladybugs crawl all over them. Except Patches who is terrified by anything insectoid. So I sent Howard to the garden center to buy two bags of ladybugs. They come 1500 to a bag and you keep them in the fridge so that they stay dormant. In the evening after the sun goes down you take them out and empty the bag over your plants. The ladybugs respond to the dark by hunkering down for the night, then in the morning they eat aphids, mate, lay eggs, and generally make the yard a nicer place to be.
Last night was windy and I was worried that most of the ladybugs would blow away, but I was also worried that if I didn’t attack the aphid surplus soon the tree would not be able to recover. So I compromised and released only one of the bags of ladybugs. The other bag is in my fridge awaiting the first calm dry evening so that they can join their friends in my yard. The kids all think keeping bugs in the fridge is kind of cool. Patches in particular keeps asking for me to open the fridge so he can look at the bugs. This amuses me greatly. One bug on the floor is cause for terrified screaming. 1500 bugs in a bag are for saying hello to.
This morning I wandered out to see if the ladybugs had all disappeared. They hadn’t. Contrary to my expectation the cool wind followed by rain actually caused the ladybugs to hunker down in hibernate mode. I now have ladybugs all over the tree and they’ll probably all stay there snacking on aphids until the sun comes out. This is good news for me and for the tree. Bad for the aphids I guess, but I didn’t ask their opinions.
garden frustration
Today is supposed to be the only rain-free day this week. So today I spent all morning doing yard work that has been waiting for the rain to stop. It was frustrating. I’ve discovered that I don’t have nearly as much vegetable growing space as I thought I did. The grapes I planted all seem to be dead. Weeds have begun to spring up abundantly as a result of late-last-summer neglect. The flowers are beautiful, but this year I wanted to be able to grow some things I can feed to my family. Right now I’m tired and none of the baby green things have food on them yet.
I could ramble on. Dozens of thoughts fill my head, but I can’t seem to muster the energy to make them into something worth reading.
garden frustration Read More »
Mother’s Day
Even after 10 years it still feels strange that Mother’s Day is supposed to honor me. It comes every year and every year I feel differently about it. Some years it was very important to me that there be a display of some kind. Mostly because it is good for kids to conscioulsy think about the kindness their mothers give them daily. This year I honestly didn’t need anything. I made sure that the kitchen was really clean so it was pleasant to be in this morning. I cut some flowers from my yard so I would have fresh flowers in the house. I even cut a sprig of lilac to wear to church. It was enough. Today is a beautiful day and I’m honestly grateful for the chance I have to be a mother. That’s what matters.
Oh yeah, THAT guy.
Shortly after I moved into this house I was visiting with some new neighbors. One of them spent most of the visit trying to figure out how to tactfully ask why I had a wedding picture of my first husband up on the wall. She didn’t recognize the clean-shaven, head-of-hair man in the wedding photo as bald-and-bearded Howard.
Yesterday Howard shaved his beard off. He’s had that beard for 10 years, which is most of the time that I’ve known him. He shaved off the beard once about 10 years ago and I asked him to put it back. We both like the way the beard alters the shape of his face. In this case the decision for Howard to shave isn’t motivated by personal preference. He talks about it here: (http://www.livejournal.com/users/howardtayler/95121.html) I completely support and honor his decision to put spirituality before vainity. It helps a lot that he is still attractive to me. I keep glancing over at him and thinking “Oh yeah, THAT guy. I married him didn’t I?”
He’s still attractive, what he isn’t is familliar. We’re both a little off balance as we try to figure out what works stylistically with beardless Howard. Two weeks from now when beardless Howard has become normal I’ll look at this entry and wonder why I bothered to write it.
Oh yeah, THAT guy. Read More »
Seeing Spots
The list of side effects said nothing about multitudes of tiny itchy red spots all over my body. But then the note DID caution not to take the antibiotic if I was allergic to it. It would have been nice to know I was allergic before taking the stuff for three days. To add to the annoyance factor, my body is accustomed to reacting to allergens by constricting my bronchial passages, so my itchy red spots get a side order of asthmatic wheezing. The doctor tells me that the various reactions will probably last from 4 to 7 days while the stuff clears out of my system.
The one good note is that when I tell the kids “Mommy isn’t feeling well.” I have something to show to prove it. The kids were very impressed with my spots. Allergy-free Kiki was extremely curious about all kinds of allergic reactions. Cat-allergic Link got a chance to lord his superior knowlege over his older sister. It was a nice little conversation and when we were done, they were both inclined to be nicer to mommy. That’s at least one good thing.
Gleek’s Machines
I’m so glad to have my sabbath this week. I’m accustomed to attending church each Sunday. It is a time where I can feel peace and refocus my life on my true priorities. Last Sunday I was at Penguicon and I had none of those things. Today has been marvelous even though it hasn’t been without frustrating moments. Getting four kids up, fed, and dressed in church clothes before 9 am is always a challenge.
This morning Link was particularly recaltrant. He and I emerged from his room with him dressed and me grumpy. I told Howard “Well, I used to have a good mood.” Gleek overheard this comment and cheerfully told me “That’s okay Mommy, I’ll get you another one!” She then reached into an imaginary pocket and handed me a new good mood. Apparently she has a machine that makes them. It also makes hugs. She keeps it with her magic washing machine which washes away bad guys and bad dreams. Gleek knows how to make really good moods because it has lasted for the whole rest of the day.
Flowers!
Finally a day I can feel really good about. I wasn’t sure it was going to be a good day because it began with rain and a doctor’s appointment. But by lunchtime the sun had come out and I had the whole afternoon unscheduled. I got outside and began work on the seemingly endless list of yardwork chores I have to do. I got a lot further down the list than I had any reasonable expectation of doing. One of the things I really like about gardening is that plants want to live almost as much as I want them to. This means that I can put a seedling into the ground and ignore it, then when I come back through and pull out the weeds (which want to live even more than I don’t want them to) the little plant has gotten much bigger. I’ve been in this house for almost 7 years now and so most of the plants in the yard are things that I’ve put in with my own hands. Seeing them flourish is a joy. Right now I’ve got 10 different kinds of flowers blooming in my yard and none of them are things I planted this year.
I’ve got to remember how much getting outside and gardening lifts my mood.
Routine Seeking
I’m beginning to feel settled back into my At Home routine. Planning for a trip, being on a trip, and returning from a trip can turn two full weeks upside down, longer if the trip is an extended one. Having sick kids also seriously disrupts routines. Fortunately Patches recovered from his illness before I had to leave him. Kiki is still coughing lots, but she is otherwise alright. Unfortunately Link has come down with a fever. Since I got a call from my sister-in-law saying that one of her kids was diagnosed with a strep infection, I’m probably in for a doctor’s visit and another round of antibiotics. Whee. To add even more zest Gleek spent the morning playing with a little girl who began throwing up mere hours after the playdate was over.
Oh and speaking of Gleek, I’m not sure whether she is acting out after having been “abandoned” over the weekend, or if she has just passed one of those developmental curves which make behavior less predictable, but we’ve had several “incidents” in the last couple of days. I was getting ready to leave the house and discovered that Patches had been drawn on. The entire back of his neck was purple with bold purple marks across the back of his head and his shirt to match. I grabbed him and wiped as much off as I could, but decided that he could wear the shirt so that I wouldn’t have to rummage through laundry and luggage to find a clean one. I stepped downstairs to inform Kiki of my departure and then the howling began. Gleek had dumped an entire bottle of spray-on hair detangler over Patches head. He was slimy from head to foot. So instead of leaving the house I carried dripping, howling, Patches to the tub where I submitted him to the indignities of having his hair washed. Since he got to play in the water afterwards he became reconciled to the event. To give Gleek credit, she was appologizing profusely throughout the process. She honestly didn’t realize that the stuff would come out so quickly. She had no such excuse the next day when she filled an empty shampoo bottle with water and dumped it on the carpeted floor of Patches room.
I’ve been home for four days. I’ve still got suitcases to unpack. ( In theory I was going to make the kids unpack their own suitcases, but with assorted illnesses and personalities I may just give up and do it myself.) I’ve got a yard which needs mowing and rainy weather expected for the next week. I’ve got a garden that I really need to get planted and a bunch of preparatory work associated with that. Right now I just want some sunny days when I don’t have anywhere in particular to go. Days when I can really focus on my house and yard. Hopefully days when I’m not too tired to get stuff done. I’ve only got 4 weeks until school gets out. In two weeks I’ve got to make a trip to Pocatello for a family event. In five and a half weeks I’ve got to make a trip to California for a family reunion. Where is my comfortable rut? Can I have it back now?