Our Side Garden

As in: The garden on the Diamond Head side of our house. It's small, so it was the first one I made. Much less intimidating a project than the front yard.

As usual, clik on the pic to see a big version, without the list of posts interfering.

Getting Better

I called the doc back after the pain pills weren't doing much to relieve the pain, but were making me drowsy for a couple hours, and mentioned that whenever I tried to stand up I would get major, and painful, muscle spams. He thought about that for maybe half a second and put me on generic Valium.

One pill: Wow! Relief. I trotted off to the swap meet this morning, didn't get anything other than fruit, vegetables, and a couple small rosemary bushes for the garden, but what an improvement.

When I got home I got roped into a top to bottom clean up of the kitchen. Small invaders have been taking over, and they have now been pushed back.

I hope.

Adirondack Chairs

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article on Adirondack chairs today. We have the plastic version from Home Depot. Unlike the wood versions, they are very light, can be dried quickly for immediate use after rain or washing them, and at less than twenty clams per, cheap enough to bear replacing about every 18 months. Light weight is particularly nice for those who mow their own lawns and have to move each one twice every time they unlimber the lawnmower. Still, painted wood is great looking, and so are the teak ones after a few years. The good teak ones are plenty heavy and fearsomely expensive though.

I Realized I Was a Cheapskate When...

...I went to Goodwill and was appalled at how expensive the used clothes were.

This morning I realized I had crossed a line of some kind when I needed my pick up truck to haul home the stuff which out neighbor Ed had tossed in his dumpster.

Yard Birds

Several weeks ago I added to the garden a cast iron soup bowl, two granite soup bowls and an old copper kitchen bowl to provide water for any birds which happen by.

The water has proven to be quite an attraction. From 4:00 to 5:30 or so the birds come by in increasing numbers to drink and bathe. At one point yesterday we had several Mynahs, two mature Brazilian Cardinals, three immature same, two Japanese White Eyes, two Spotted Doves, a couple Zebra Doves, an adult Shama, another immature, several Common Waxbills, and three Java Sparrows.

While I have seen flocks of 15-20 Javas elsewhere, I had never seen other than a pair in the yard, so three is a new record. The third appeared noticeably after the first two, which have been showing up as a pair for a number of days.

So far this fall I haven't seen a Pacific Golden Plover in the yard, tho there are several charging around the grass at Pearl Ridge Elementary School. Yesterday Valerie raised the ugly possibility that all my gardening i.e. replacing cruddy grass with beds of succulents may have made the yard less interesting to the Plover.

That is a LOT of Pumpkin Pie

CANTON, Ohio (AP) -- (Christy Harp of Jackson Township, a) teacher from Ohio has won top honors in a pumpkin-growing contest with a 1,725-pound behemoth that could land worldwide bragging rights.

Dang!

Putting the Sovereigns in their place

Ohio man arrested for obstruction for mowing unkempt grass at public park

SANDUSKY, Ohio (AP) -- An Ohio man arrested for obstruction for mowing unkempt grass said he just wanted to make his city look nice. John Hamilton said he took control of the situation because the grass in Sandusky's Central Park was about a foot high....

Police said they arrested 48-year-old Hamilton after he refused to stop mowing and charged him with obstructing official business and disorderly conduct.

City Manager Matt Kline...said budget cuts have left Sandusky understaffed for seasonal maintenance work.

And just what official business did he obstruct? The official business of letting the grass grow? Disobeying a ridiculous order from one of his servants? Disorderly conduct: Mowing the people's grass? Threatening non-existent park workers' non-existent jobs? Violating a municipal ordinance against doing servants' jobs for them? Except that mowing the grass wasn't the servants' job because there was no money to pay them for it?

Martha Stewart: Suburban Terrorist?

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has received more than 350 complaints about spontaneously exploding patio tables.

So, did Martha's stay in Club Fed for lying to the (public) servants lead her into a life of radical anti-suburbanist fundamentalism? Will President Obama send her Guantanamo? If so, will she be allowed to redecorate?

Taking a break...

...from removing, or, rather, trying to remove, a defunct and now extremely recalcitrant garbage disposer, I came across this nice little essay on building soil, by Gerri Hershey, in the New York Times.

GARBAGOLOGICAL UPDATE: The stubborn one finally surrendered to a vigorously yet judiciously applied hacksaw. Hence I hie myself off to the Home Depot for another.

Who says violence never solved anything?