Today’s Slideshow, Brought to You by the Garden

Please to click here for pictures from the garden.

It’s Very Lush Here

That’s the sexy way to put it. The other way is that while I was gone the garden attempted a coup, a total takeover of jungle-tropic proportions. Actually that’s way better than everything dying to death of heatstroke while I was gone, so no big deal. Things have grown (literally) feet while I was away. Take a look the yard both pre and post-weeding:

Isn’t my lily there just rocking socks? You can’t see it from this angle, but I also have a butterfly bush that’s at least 8ft tall.

Floating Shelves

I was all overcome this afternoon with the need to do stuff. I needed to clean, tidy up, be useful. Of course I was filled with excessive hostility and aggression all day at work, so that may have been expressing itself in this energy-burst. But there are worse ways to use one’s excess energy, eh? And after the last few months of feeling like death served on cold toast, I will take my energy in whatever (even angry) form it shows up.

But I digress. The whole point of la posta is that I hung my new invisible/floating Umbra bookshelves, and they are just as cool as I wanted them to be. Excuse the flash photography, my room doesn’t actually look like a sterile, institutional-green cubicle (I think).

Adventures in Gardening, Pt. 357

The convergence of

• An actual sunny day
• the return of my energy (can I get a whoo-hoo?)
• the overwhelming amount of weeds in my yard

led to my determining to do some serious weed-whacking this afternoon. I got home from work, changed into scroungy gardening shorts, liberally sprayed myself down with Botanical OFF! and drug the super-long weatherproof extension cord up from the basement. I plugged in ye olde whacker and got to work. Approximately 3 minutes in I ran out of string. Feck. But I was already committed to the whole project, and I was also covered in OFF! which kind of means I just wasted a whole shower unless I do some serious garden work – so I decided to run to the Home Depot and get some replacement string. There you have it, scroungy shorts, OFF!-stink and all, I made my way there. I found the replacement string, bought it and returned home. No harm no foul, right? Wrong. I go to change the string and see that actually I had plenty of string left on my original spool, it had just come un-strung somehow. Feck.

On the bright side – I now have plenty of replacement string, with the added bonus of taking myself out in public looking like a hot mess, which is always fun.

OK whatever, it’s fecking gorgeous here, nothing can foul my mood. So I get back to whacking. Now, here’s the thing. I planted peony bulbs last April. That’s more than a year ago, for those who can’t calendar. Last year they didn’t do anything, but this year three of them came up. Peonies grow slooooooooowly. Two of them have one stalk of green and the other one has two stalks of green and also developed a bud a few weeks ago.

Every day I would go out and check to see if the bud was blossoming, but nooooo, nothing. Every day I would drive back and forth from work, seeing these giant heavily-laden peony bushes all over the place, and all I have is a couple of sprigs and a bud. Then the day before yesterday – it blossomed. And it’s truly gorgeous, almost worth the wait. So in my usual careful manner I was whacking weeds near the peony stalks and whacked one of them off completely, right to the ground. “Feck!” says I. “Well, at least it wasn’t the one with the flower. I will have to be more careful!” then I turned around and cunningly whacked that one to the ground too.

One time I had my horoscope done and in the midst of a lot of other unflattering accuracies it stated that I had a very “unstable” personal energy. This is an example of that, in my opinion. Me and my unstable personal energy. Puppy-like, but not in a cute way. In the way that always ends up with mud on someone’s pant leg.

Oh well. Since my hormones have re-balanced I found it funny and ridiculous rather than either tragic or infuriating. Hopefully they will grow back, sloooooowly or not. And now I get to have the pretty flower inside in a vase – see how delightful to gaze upon it is? (It’s the big fluffy pink one, not the knobbly green thing. That’s an avocado.)

Now I go to shower off all of this OFF!

And it’s the desperation to hold on to
Something that can’t be held on to
So, don’t waste your time filling up my words
Don’t tell me why, assume the worst.

I don’t need to need you
Tell me what to do
Tell me what to say

Don’t you wanna help me?
Tell me what to do
Help me find a way

Hopefully, you make no mistake
If you learn from what you‘ve got to take
Good or bad, it‘s all gonna add up in the end but,
You can never win.

Don‘t thank me,
Don‘t tell me how,
Don‘t break me down,
Don‘t help me make it,

I don‘t need to need you
Tell me what to do
Tell me what to say

- Fischerspooner, Never Win

Gardens By Seuss

I think one of the reasons that I love my garden so much is that I can grow things that look as magical as the things I dreamed of when I was a child. Like truffula trees from The Lorax, for example. Gardening is a chance for me to build my own fairytale kingdom.

The color of these daisies is so vibrant that I think it’s messing up the calibration of my camera.

I TOLD you it was a good year for roses (so far). These are Moondance, English Mary, Angel Face and Abraham Darby varieties. All from my garden. Am I not the luckiest?

Flip This House – Please! – Salon.com

We all know I feel almost exactly the same way as this author – but for the fact that I kinda love my house too.

homeownership, real estate, mortgage crisis, housing | Salon Life

Thanks to the mortgage crisis and the inevitable mortgage crisis legislation, we have heard a lot of bloviating recently about what Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., calls “the American Dream of homeownership.” Yes, along with shopping and invading countries that pose no military threat to us, homeownership is now part of the American Dream lexicon, to be invoked as a single compound noun — like a German word, only uplifting. There is only one problem I can see with the equation of homeownership to patriotic bliss, and that is homeownership itself. How vastly overrated and costly and crazy-making an enterprise it turns out to be.

More pictures

This Week’s Garden Pics

Red Daisies
Originally uploaded by superBadGirl



Meadow Sage
Originally uploaded by superBadGirl


Cinderella Sweetheart Ivy
Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

Lots of work in the garden yesterday for seemingly small result. The weeds are/were insane but I managed to get quite a few pulled.

The sunshine (which finally arrived) means that some things are trying to bloom. Like this red daisy – the picture came straight from the camera like this and I loved it.

The meadow sage is doing beautifully in my garden and makes a perfect contrast with the pink of the salvia in front and the Mary rose behind, I am in awe of them.

And finally, there was no way I could resist this Cinderella coach for my sweetheart ivy to twine around. I try to stay away from too many garden tchotkes, but some you just have to have.

Easy come and easy go
Has never been the case
Dreams of you are hard to erase
Call me crazy, call me mad
Call me what you will
But I’m sane enough to know that I love you still

They say that life goes on,
But I’ve been dead since you’ve been gone
I think they were wrong
So who’s the fool?

I am ever after you
Always ever after you
Tell me what I have to do
Is there a way to be happy ever after you?

So, Done with Physical Therapy

Today was my last physical therapy session. In my evaluation I said that I felt I was about 85% better, and the rest of the improving I have to do I can do with my exercises at home. I can now balance on my bad leg for 30 seconds though! When I started I couldn’t even do one second on that leg. It was really busy at the PT place, my 4:30 slot was a pretty popular one for people getting off from work, I suppose. There really are some characters at that place, for real. Made for excellent people-watching.

Oh, and (accidental I think) weirdness. When my therapist was doing my post-therapy evaluation we were chatting about how busy it is there, and how strange some of the goings-on are. Then he was saying that he thought I would do fine with my at home exercises. “But,” he said “Call me if you have any questions. Even if it’s not about your foot, feel free to go ahead and call me.” Which – I kinda blinked at. Like, what sort of questions? I have a lot about the ways of the world. And why people are the way they are, and why bad things keep happening to me, and all sorts of other kinds of queries, none of which I had thought to address to him. And then it made it kinda seem like he was hitting on me. Which I will presume he was not, but go ahead and totally take because I needed the Friday afternoon ego boost.

Fuck I had a shitbag week at work. It just keeps getting more and more insane there. And I can’t find another job that I want at a place that it wouldn’t kill me to work. I can’t work for a chemical company, or a rifle manufacturer, for god’s sake. Nor do I want to work for a stockbroker or an architecture firm. I guess I just love working in education. It’s just that my kind of position at an educational institution is hard to come by. I have several resumes out, so we will see. For now I am just hanging in there. The good news is that as my hormone levels are (presumably) straightening out, I am much more calm. That’s really good. I like being calm. So it takes more to get me wound up. But by the end of the week I tend to be somewhat wound up. And I wanted to go out tonight and realized that MyTodd™ is in Vegas for a wedding (asshole) and I don’t really like to go out without him, as I have mentioned before. Maybe I will go out tomorrow. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I spend a hefty sum on new plants tonight including an emerald phlox that has foliage to die for. And that cheered me. Also I put my keys in the pocket with the hole in it (note to self: examine why so many of my pockets have holes in them. perhaps some mending is in order?) and then had a frantic “dig through purse 30 times in vain effort to find keys” moment and then found that some kind soul had turned them in. But then I got home and two of these foul little dogs had pooped in my office because I was so late. So all in all it’s a mixed bag kind of evening.

OK /end overshare-ramble-rant.

This Week’s Garden Pics

Ajuga reptans “Chocolate Chip”

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

bleeding heart

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

Lily of the valley

Originally uploaded by superBadGirl

I can’t believe the changes in the garden in just the last two weeks. Amazing. I hope it’s never winter again.

In other news, I finally got around to listening to The Weepies new album “Hideaway” and it’s just as amazing as I thought it would be. It’s so good it makes me cry and sneeze at the same time.

Every song, better and better. Just like their previous albums, the marriage of music and lyric is so perfect that it literally hurts my heart.

You can listen to some of it at their site, linked above.

“Orbiting” is my favorite so far. Partial lyric:

Guess I went somewhere to hide
Far behind my eyes
I willed you there to see
But you never came for me

Now I’m out of your range
Now it’s kind of strange
How we change orbit in our lives
You were kind of a moon
outside of my room
I could just feel you nearby

Now I feel you gone
‘Cause I know which side you’re on
And it’s not mine

In other other news, I just had my first pedicure since the infamous bone-breaking stair mishap of 2008. I like pedicures at the same time as they make me really nervous. I am not big on strangers doing personal grooming things to me, so the person has to be really good to make me relax and enjoy it. This person wasn’t like that. She just grinned a lot and was nice to me because she wanted a big tip. Fair enough.

Anyway, my feet feel wonderful and look pretty and tomorrow when I go to physical therapy and the guy “manipulates” my foot at an uncomfortable proximity to his crotch I will at least not be embarrassed of my calluses, I will just be embarrassed that my foot is going to accidentally rub something it doesn’t want to.

Actually since starting PT I have felt so much better, this weekend has been the best yet. I worked for about 3 hours in the garden today and I feel fine. I think it was just finding out what I could safely do, since I was petrified to even look at my foot lest I damage it. This guy has assured me I can’t rebreak my bone that easily and shown me all the things I need to do to loosen the muscles that are all cramped up. He’s also impugned my ability to teeter on one foot with my eyes closed and told me that if I had better balance then I would be less likely to fall in the first place. Again, fair enough. I am supposed to be practicing my balance. Shoot, gotta do that today.

OK that’s all.

Garden Pics

Seedwatch ’08 cont.

Seed update, the coleus has sprung, and the echinacea (coneflower) is on the verge. I think I had my sunflowers way too far from the light source, and the ornamental cabbage too, so they’re kinda wacky. Now that I can actually move around a bit better I constructed a super-large platform atop the ironing board, to bring eveyrthing closer to the light. Hope it’s not too late to fix them. If it is, well, live and learn!

It’s so NICE to be able to move and do stuff. You have no idea. Or maybe you do. :-) pictures after the jump Continue reading »

We Scoff at Rain, Darlink

OK so here’s a cool thing that happened to me. The guys who are rehabbing the house next door asked me if I minded if they painted my foundation white to match theirs. Um… nope. Knock yourself out there, bub. Paint away.

Then a few days later they said they were going to have their contractor up on the exterior of the third floor, removing some kind of rotten fascia board and lining it with copper and replacing it and painting it all white. Did I mind if they did my side too? Again I say “Yeah, go for it.”

Then I was making conversation with this peddler of free services and asked what he paid for his new windows, mentioning that I needed new ones in the front because they both leaked. He said “Oh yeah, our new ones leak too, it’s because of that rotten fascia board right there. That’s why we’re fixing it.” And lo and behold he was RIGHT. Not only does his newly-painted board thing look nice and neat, but it’s raining like all-get-out* here and these windows are not leaking! Now, I still need new windows there, but this buys me time and takes them from a priority 2 project down to… say, priority 5. Sweet huh? Continue reading »

SeedWatch ’08

OK so after a few weeks of my shuffling down to the basement and peering down at plastic trays while making “Hrmmmm…” noises, the seeds have decided to sprout, AND HOW.

It’s actually damn cool to see. Now, I did read a thing this week in Fine Gardening that I should have read BEFORE I started this, which is that you need to put your lamp only a foot above your seeds (mine is maybe 3-4 ft above) so that the seeds don’t strain toward the light and therefore get “leggy.” Some of my seeds are looking a little leggy. But then, my legs are stumpy, so if my seeds are somewhat legalicious this will all even out in the wash. Or something like that. But anyway! I am quite excited about it all and I present to you…THE SEEDS. Or maybe THE SPROUTS.

SIX WEEKS and counting, people!

OK, so six weeks today was when I decided to hurl myself down the stairs for attention and sympathy. And I have to tell you, the attention and sympathy are lacking and the pain and inconvenience are more than I bargained for. So I will definitely think twice before I try that trick again.

SIX WEEKS. Damn. It seems like longer. I go back to the doctor a week from Monday to see how I am healing and if I get the robocop leg off or not. I don’t know if there’s an intermediary step between robocop leg and setting me free to walk on my own, so some kind of mini-robocop-leg may be in my future too.

In the meantime I have gained much skillz in:

• cast-condom donning
• monkeying my way up and down the stairs
• finding the cripple entrance to the building
• putting up with people’s asshole “Oh I had the same thing but twice as bad and for twice as long!” stories. (Thanks fuckwad, that makes my personal hell of pain and disability SO MUCH MORE BEARABLE.)

I have not become any better at:

• learning my limits
• taking it easy
• counting my blessings
• suffering fools
• kneeling down to do things when one leg don’t bend too good

It’s getting particularly annoying now that the weather’s perking up and I want to be out in my garden. Gardening is mostly kneeling-down, and it’s just not happening with this thing on. I have raked some stuff up and cleaned some leaves away from plants though. Also, I have a SHEDLOAD of bulbs coming up. I remember planting what seemed like 796,000 bulbs this fall, and it’s paying off now because I have little leaves poking through the bare soil in many many places! Excitement. Pictures tomorrow, mayhap.

Now I am off to a late dinner and midnight movie, and to remember what it was like to be a night person, before working for a school turned me into some awful hybrid non-night-and-also-non-morning person. I had a meeting this morning at 7:30 in the AM, people! There should be a law. Enforceable with affliction of boils.