So What's Been Going On?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

It's definitely summer already and we've been cranking the A/C most afternoons. The mornings aren't too bad yet, rather pleasant, but around 3pm it starts to get kind of hot in here and I do not like being hot, so higher electric bills it is.

I got some junk mail the other day (well, actually we get junk mail EVERY day) and as I was tearing it up to throw it away I dropped half of an envelope on the floor and within seconds Little Miss Sit On Things was sitting on it.

Yesterday I got this little table from Walmart that matches the writing desk that I put together all by myself, so got busy putting this little table together that only cost $12.97 if you can believe that and how much do they pay those factory workers anyway? I took a little break between putting the legs on, came back, and apparently upside down half built tables make great cat sit upons.

I did shoo her away and finished the table. I'm not sure if I really like it or not, it is quite small but should work well beside the couch or a bed somewhere. For such a cheap piece of furniture it looks pretty good and is really heavy and sturdy. My writing desk has gotten a lot of use so far, it's perfect for crafting on.

Speaking of crafting, I decided to split my Mimi and Lucy Etsy shop into two shops, one for my gift tags and one for my brooch pins. My new shop is called Fat Pepper, and you can guess who that's named after. And she is really fat these days. We've been letting them go outside again for an hour or so in the mornings hoping they will get a little exercise but it seems like they go out and then just eat grass or roll around/sit in the dirt. Genie hides in her basket the whole time they are out there.

You can't see the enormity of her girth in this picture, but believe me, she is quite the chubby one.

Keith found a weird moth on our patio cover yesterday.

He put it into the tree where it blends in really well and looks like part of the bark. I've never seen such a huge moth in our yard before, I'm sure they've been there all along but I just though they were part of a tree. I certainly wouldn't have picked the thing up like he did, though.

Our front yard flower beds are doing really well, Keith planted some wildflower seeds that should bloom here soon and our climbing Black Eyed Susan has definitely been doing some climbing.

Total Carnage

I heard a thump the other day but didn't think a whole lot about it, when you've got so many cats in the house you do hear thumps on occasion and usually it's just another cat doing the things that cats do.

A little while later I notice Genie outside the back door and she is pacing back and forth like something is wrong and when I go to investigate her basket that she sleeps in by the door is on its side and there are feathers all over the cement outside the back door, hundreds and hundreds of little bird feathers. They are in her basket and on her blanket and on the ground and also in Genie's fur.

I look around for some poor bird's body but all I find are the hundreds of feathers and a few drops of blood. As I'm brushing feathers from Genie's fur, I find one stuck in her claw, so she is indeed the culprit, but I don't find the bird anywhere and I'm pretty sure she doesn't know that they are edible and hasn't eaten it. No feathers hanging out of her mouth in any case.

So, her blood lust has risen and birds watch out!

I still don't have pictures of the new flower bed since Keith decided it was too small and took out the wooden flower bed box and is in the process of making a much large flower bed with a brick border. He is almost finished with it, it being slow going because the ground is so hard here and it takes a lot of digging and hacking at it with a pickaxe to get it loosed up. It's going to look really really nice, though, it would be finished except that he had to go to work yesterday afternoon. Now we need to either buy more plants for it or he can plant the bag of wildflower seed that he bought, the large amount of plants we bought for the smaller bed having already been planted. We also did some flower pots that we had laying around, so our front yard is looking nice indeed, even though I had made up my mind that we weren't spending any money on gardening this year. Now, a few hundred dollars later, oh well...we will have a pretty yard at least.

Spring!

Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day, we had all the doors and windows open all day and it was warm but not too hot with a nice breeze blowing through the back yard. Our flowers have been blooming for about a month now, but they've really popped these past few weeks with the way warmer temps and summer just around the corner. And the summer heat just around the corner, of course.

So, I'm going to enjoy every single day of this nice weather until it gets too hot and we are all sweaty and cranky all the time.

Just some of our blooms.

This is the front yard planter, where our tree that was blown over by the wind a few years back used to live. We took out all the old scruffy overgrown plants earlier this year and replanted and these guys really seem to like this spot. They were all tiny plants when we put them in, those little six pack plants and it seems like they get bigger and bigger every day.

And, these are just some of the backyard blooms.

A Little Gardening

Budget living sometimes means choosing between food for the soul or food for our already well-fed bodies, but today we threw caution to the wind and got both.

This morning we drove over to a new nursery (flowers, not babies) that has just opened up down the road. It was amazing, you walk in on pathways that wind around the nursery grounds, benches and fountains amongst the plants, each area kind of themed, like the Japanese garden area, and even a rock stream that you cross over on a little bridge. So calming and peaceful (except for the traffic noise from nearby Rosedale Hwy, that is.) The many waterfalls and the stream helped soften the highway noise, though. We weren't really planning on buying anything, but we saw a flat of these:

and couldn't resist the almost neon color of these ice plant flowers.

And we found more, at prices equal to or maybe even better than walmart or home depot, and with a much more knowledgeable staff to help you choose. The plants are suitable for our extremely hot summer sun and will also survive the occasional frost in the winter. So, I planted these, Keith being Mr. Boss Me Around and making sure I planted them correctly (argh). I admit, I'm lazy and will just dig a hole and toss that plant in there and hope for the best, but he wants fertilizer and mulch and all kinds of other stuff put into that hole before any plant can possibly go in there. So next time maybe I'll just let HIM do all the planting!

Anyway, our yard is starting to look better and better, slowly but surely!

Here is what our front walkway is bordered with, these were planted 4 or 5 years ago.

And, yes, I planted these WITHOUT EXTRA FERTILIZER OR MULCH OR ANYTHING and they did just fine.

Planting

We've been real tightwads these past few months, not buying anything but the daily essentials, but this past weekend we stimulated the economy a little by buying some shrubs for the backyard.

The same backyard that Keith started working on last summer, building planter boxes and buying paving stones to make a patio. Patio equals less grass, which equals less work in maintaining and mowing said grass. Someday we'll have a backyard that's going to look nice and will be usable instead of a vast wasteland of weeds and dirt. Someday.

So, we went to OSH and Home Depot and found some flowering shrubs that weren't too pricey. Home Depot had these big shrubs (not flowering but pretty leaves) on sale for half price. Score! I think we'll go back and get a few more before they're all gone.



You can see the half finished pavers in these photos. We were buying them like 10 at a time and spreading the cost out over the months. Cheaper than having someone pour concrete!



More shrubbage. Of course, they are not planted yet. Keith is a little OCD about how and where these get planted, so I'm leaving this project to him. And our trees have been blooming, just wish they'd grow a little faster!