Topics

1

Terrestrial Gardening / It's Passiflora Time!

« on: August 18, 2009, 09:28:52 AM »

My passiflora seem to really like the late summer - I've got a ton of blooms right now:

2

Chit Chat / Hey Joyce! Check this out

« on: February 05, 2009, 07:14:13 AM »

It's called "Stole with Swimming Jewels"

3

Chit Chat / Guess who's here!! Pics added

« on: May 11, 2007, 05:51:09 AM »

The tree man . . . . gotta go take pics.

4

Aquatic and Terrestrial Plant Exchange / Water Forget me Not

« on: May 10, 2007, 06:30:42 AM »

Anybody have any for trade or postage or whatever?

5

Chit Chat / The tree man cometh . . . .

« on: May 07, 2007, 10:14:20 AM »

And the river birch will cometh down, down, down . . . . and all the nasty bradford pears will be trimmed and topped . . . . I may have a sunny future after all . . . . .

6

Pond Chat / Pics of my Ochiba Shigure

« on: May 07, 2007, 10:11:51 AM »

These are really bad pics, but I was so excited that I could actually see the fish that I had to take them . . . . she was a birthday present from my big bro and I think she's beautiful (calling her a she because the male shub is trying very hard to mate with her . . . . )

7

Pond Chat / Ponds are done!

« on: May 07, 2007, 10:10:13 AM »

Big pond is replumbed, cleaned and running and the little pond is cleaned.  The big pond has 2 goldfish and one koi and the little pond needs some fish . . . .

8

Photo Album / A few pics from the mountains . . .

« on: May 04, 2007, 06:19:50 AM »

some pics from Mom & Dad's place in the mountains . . .

9

Pond Chat / Tammie's Moss Covered Rocks

« on: May 03, 2007, 05:33:17 PM »

These lovely moss covered rocks are from Hawaii . . . . not the best photos, will try for better when the sun is out tomorrow (if it comes out, forecast calls for rain) . . . .

10

Pond Chat / One Pond is getting filled in, another is getting fixed!!!!

« on: May 02, 2007, 10:45:11 AM »

YAY!!!  I finally found someone to fix my pond!!!  He's going to redo all the plumbing on the big pond and clean it and get it ready for my little fishy!!!  I guess I'll have to get at least one more fishy because just one alone would be lonely, but I'll hold off on getting excited about that until the pond is fixed.  Gonna need a couple more plants too, I guess. 

It's going to be so nice to have the sound of the falls again . . . .

11

Chit Chat / Need help finding a song

« on: May 02, 2007, 06:40:14 AM »

I need to find a song for my Mother . . . . it's called "A Little on the Lonely Side" and it was originally recorded in the 1940's.  She's trying to find a copy of it sung by a female and the only version I can find is sung by one of Guy Lombardo's singers and he's a guy.  If anyone has this song and can upload it for me, I'd be eternally grateful.  When Mom & Dad were young, it was 'their song' and she had it on her computer but lost it when her hard drive failed.

12

Chit Chat / Happy Birthday Lynn!

« on: May 01, 2007, 06:14:48 AM »

Just in case you pop in to lurk today . . . .


Happy Birthday!

13

Chit Chat / Cats opens tomorrow night . . . .

« on: April 24, 2007, 06:33:57 PM »

meet Carbuckety . . . .

14

Chit Chat / Herbs for summer

« on: April 22, 2007, 06:44:18 PM »

This is my daughter's new herb garden . . . .

15

Terrestrial Gardening / Zephyranthes atamasco

« on: April 19, 2007, 11:29:09 AM »

wild,from beside a south georgia highway . . . .

16

Chit Chat / My Dad's legacy

« on: April 18, 2007, 04:19:56 PM »

or my inheritance . . . .

17

Chit Chat / Casey got a haircut!

« on: April 17, 2007, 04:01:23 PM »

This time she Really, really got it cut . . . .

18

Chit Chat / What not to do on a rainy, cold, windy Sunday afternoon . . . .

« on: April 17, 2007, 01:36:27 PM »

but we did . . . .

19

Chit Chat / Just won a buncha tatting shuttles off ebay . . . .

« on: April 03, 2007, 06:53:19 PM »

Learned how to tat when my sister visited . . . .

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sewing-Notions-tatting-lace-stapler-crochet-yoke-hook_W0QQitemZ300095959480QQcategoryZ4836QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sewing-notions-glass-darning-egg-tatting-lace-thimble_W0QQitemZ300095959971QQcategoryZ4836QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sewing-notions-tatting-shuttles-punch-tools-thimbles_W0QQitemZ300094014186QQcategoryZ4836QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Any of you sewers want the any of the rest of the stuff?   Most of it I am totally disinterested in . . . . just wanted the shuttles . . . .

20

Pond Chat / Giving up - filling in pond

« on: April 01, 2007, 01:11:01 PM »

I'm giving up on the lily pond and filling it in.  It has a small bog attached and I'll need to move those plants somewhere, not sure where.  Maybe I'll sink a little tub somewhere for them.  Or maybe I'll move the patio pots up near where the pond was and put the bog plants in them.  It's right in the middle of the upper yard and nothing much will grow in it - water hawthorne, parrots feather and frogbit are all that's been in it for the last several years.  There are too many snakes and frogs and it's too small for nice fish to survive long, so it usually just has a couple of little commets in it - has nothing in it now.

So I'm filling it in and reclaiming the yard.  Sad.   :'(

21

Chit Chat / Another Girl Scout Cookie Rant . . . . .

« on: March 30, 2007, 06:18:44 PM »

Don't read this if you don't want to . . . . I'll feel better just getting it off my chest . . . .

I posted a month or so ago about a new girl in my daughter's troop who just HAD to be the top seller - even to the point of cheating to claim the title.  Well, her parents (and her, tho she's less to blame than them) have caused more trouble . . . . .

If you read my last tirade, you might remember that she sold 325 boxes of cookies - that's quite a lot of orders.  Her orders were mostly 2 and 3 boxes each where my DD sold lots of orders of 10, 20, 30 and 40 boxes of cookies.  (Thanks to those on here that ordered them - you know who you are and I love you dearly!!!)

So, the cookies came in to us in early March - then our school had spring break for a week.  So I can understand not sorting them and delivering them for a week or even ten days.  But it's now been a full month, and it is far too late to be calling and saying what you got was wrong in the first place.

I did not allow any cookies out of my house until they had all been sorted into individual orders and checked and double checked.  Every year, we end up sorting all the orders and the last two orders are missing cookies - we've put the wrong type of cookies into someone way farther up the line.  So we go back to the beginning and check each and every order until we find our mistake and correct it.  I don't allow my 10 year old to do this by herself because it's a huge undertaking to get almost a hundred cookie orders correct - if I can't do it right, I cannot expect her to be perfect.  It takes several hours to get them all sorted, bagged, labled and ready to deliver.  This year we did the entire thing twice before we got all the orders correct.

Apparently these other parents both went to harvard or yale and their kid is an awful lot smarter than mine.  They let her do it by herself.  I'm fairly certain that she took a box here and a box there and didn't mark what had been delivered or even double check what cookies she gave to whom.  I also know that the father started eating cookies as soon as he got them without regard to what was there.  Plus Daughter took a bunch of cookies to school and the parents don't know what she took or what is still in her locker.  (And since they have the poor kid on a starvation diet, she probably ate a dozen boxes or so herself).

They emailed the other leader tonight and said they are 26 boxes of cookies short and we need to give them these 26 boxes again.  They also said that they aren't going to pay the troop the $52.50 they owe for the last 15 boxes because of this mistake. 

Now our troop doesn't do booth sales (in front of the grocery store), so orders as few extras as we possibly can - just enough to make even cases.  This year we ordered 37 extra boxes.  My DD and I have sold 20 of those boxes since we started delivering our cookies, so there are only 17 extra boxes left and those are only 4 flavors.  We couldn't resupply their errors if we wanted to and we don't want to resupply them.  The other leader and I spend hours at the warehouse and loading the cookies into and out of our cars and sorting them and organizeing them and getting them ready for the girls.  She's a CPA and I've been a bookkeeper for years (among other things).  We know how to count.  None of the other orders came up short or over and the troop cookies came in exactly where they should have (the 37 boxes). 

I offered to call the parents and tell them that their order was right when they picked it up and the problem is surely on their end.  I figured they don't like me anyway, so it wouldn't hurt the relationship for me to deliver the bad news (that and I'd enjoy telling them off).

22

Chit Chat / Pollen Count in Atlanta today is . . . .

« on: March 29, 2007, 06:31:11 AM »

5937

Do I have to tell you that it's hard to breath outside?

23

Chit Chat / What did I miss?

« on: March 23, 2007, 12:57:26 PM »

I'm back, at least sorta . . . . will be completely sometime next week.  So tell me what I have missed the last two weeks . . . anything important!?!?!

Missed this place . . . . Note to self:  mustn't get too busy to play again . . . .

24

Chit Chat / Ain't nature freaky sometimes?!?!?!

« on: February 20, 2007, 10:27:24 AM »

Ok, so this is going to be a long story.  It starts way back before Christmas.  We always get a live tree because that's just what we do.  So we go pick out a smallish tree in early December and it's unseasonably warm.  Maddie finds a 'pinecone' on the tree and when it falls off, she asks me to hold it.  I drop it in the pocket of my jacket where it lives for the next couple of weeks.  It's not a pine cone at all, not sure what it is, but it doesn't even look like something natural . . . looks like a blob of that expanding foam that we use to seal waterfalls and plumbers use to fill in around pipes.

Sometime later, I find it in my pocket when I'm heading out the door and drop it on the counter where all the bills live.  I pass by it several times in the next couple of months and each time think "What the heck is that stupid thing still doing here?  Someone ought to throw it away."

Fast forward to this morning.  I need to mail Mom's mail to her and pay Dad's bills and figure out if the insurance company and stock broker company have done anything about the problems I still have with them - plus need to transfer vehicle titles so need to spend a couple hours on hold with the DMV, etc.  I figure I'd better gather up my bills too and they're sorta mixed in with Mom's and Dad's on the counter.  So I have to sort the stuff on the counter into piles.

Well, as I start picking the major junk off the counter I realize there are hundreds, no thousands of tiny little 1/4" long bugs all over the counter.  They aren't ants and they don't look like roaches . . . some of them are alive and moving.  Start scooping them off with a piece of junk mail and there are more and more and more and more.  Get the front part of the counter cleaned off and they're still coming from the back part. 

I get my glasses and look really closely and discover that I've got thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of tiny little newly hatched Praying Mantises.  Dig farther and find the egg case behind the pen tub and even more of the little buggers back there . . . . tens of thousands of them (maybe hundreds of thousands).

I put them all outside and then decided it probably would have been a good idea to save some for Maddie to take to school . . . it was her 'pine cone' after all.

25

Chit Chat / From my new camera

« on: February 14, 2007, 11:48:29 AM »

Just playing with it . . . it's pretty neat . . . .

26

Chit Chat / DD got her part in Cats today

« on: February 13, 2007, 07:07:44 PM »

She's absolutely thrilled!  All the ninth graders got small parts because that's how they do it.  She got Carbuckety and she's beside herself . . . she's got several lines and is on stage throughout most of the show.  She has no singing solo, but she didn't really expect one given the circumstances. 

And I get to knit 25 cat tails . . . . . can't grow them, so must knit them . . . . .

27

Chit Chat / Koi Tiles and vase

« on: February 10, 2007, 01:13:26 PM »

My brother sells these in his shop . . . .

28

Chit Chat / Rainy night in Georgia

« on: February 09, 2007, 11:32:25 AM »

But why does it have to be so darned cold when it rains?  It's not even 40 degrees now and the temps are dropping.  They said it wasn't going to be a bad 'winter storm', but I don't really want ANY winter storm!!!

29

Chit Chat / Some parents should be shot

« on: February 08, 2007, 06:31:47 PM »

I'm girl scout cookie mom for M's troop this year - as I've been for several years.  Every year that she's been a girl scout, she's been the top cookie seller in her troop, each year selling more than the year before and each year working harder than the year before.  This year, as in all previous years, she outdid herself and was again the top seller in the troop.

Unfortunately, we let a new girl join the troop this year - new to the troop, but not the school or the girls.  She's never wanted to be in our troop before and I suspect didn't want to this year either but it was easier for her parents to have her in our troop or maybe more comfortable since they tend to have problems getting along sometimes.  She was always the top seller in the troop she came from and rightly proud of it.
 
Orders were due Sunday, but since we didn't have school Monday or Tuesday, we collected them Wednesday.  Her order came in with a check from Dad, like all the rest.

Then she found out that she wasn't top seller.  She emailed the other leader about 5 times last night about the prizes . . . we have to order extra cookies of each kind to round up to the next highest case (12 boxes a case and you must order even cases - if the troop needs 13 thin mints, we must order 2 cases and those 11 extra boxes go to whichever girl didn't get a prize or was near the next prize level).  She was 15 boxes short of the next prize level but wanted to be bumped.  The other leader wouldn't promise until we had an accurate count of how many extra boxes we were ordering or who needed how many just to get the first prize.

So this child's father emails this morning that he forgot to add his cookies to her order and he orders the 15 extra boxes. 

So tell me . . . . if you run really fast after the race is over and catch up with the winner, does that give you first place?  Is that the kind of lesson we want to teach our children?  And is that what Girl Scouting is all about?

30

Chit Chat / Jelly Legs

« on: February 07, 2007, 10:24:59 AM »

Went out this morning and walked my 5 1/2 miles . . . for the first time in many, many months.  I have a serious case of jelly legs now . . . . can hardly stand. 

Gonna do it again tomorrow.