Trudy the Artist

I have that incredible feeling that can only be obtained when your child does something really smart, artistic and creative.  Let's put aside the fact that I am talking about my Border Collie when I say child and let me just bask in the moment.  My little Trudy is an artist. As you can see from the top picture, Trudy has made part of the cedar fence a wooden canvas.  She draws on it each and every day.  At first I was just noticing her tendency of rebounding off this fence every higher and higher in her attempts to reach the squirrels.  My husband said he looked out our kitchen window one day and thought he saw a bird in flight, but it turned out just to be Trudy having launched herself about six feet off the ground with her efforts.

She typically rebounds off this fence in order to take a look over the six foot chain length fence that connect to it at this corner.  The first time I saw her doing this I just about came unglued because she did it so effortlessly and it was very evident that if she wanted to she could easily go sailing over the six foot fence.  At that point in her life I had been delaying her spaying, figuring that waiting until she was about a year old would give her a better amount of time to grow more fully.  When I saw her 'bird in flight' abilities I scheduled her spaying for the next week.  All she needed to go sailing over the fence was a reason and I was not about to let Mother Nature give her any hormonal input.  So with her natural urges curtailed I guess she turned as many do to artistic endeavors.  I think she is rather talented, I will let you decide for yourself.

This is a portion of her wooden canvas and has not been retouched in any way.  You can see how she has applied many layers to create texture and has also used the natural structure of the fence in this work.  Look closely and you will see the bear.

The Bear

I took the liberty of outlining her creation in red for the ease of your viewing, even though this diminishes her work slightly.  If you now look back up at the non-outlined image you will see it clearly.  What is more you may also see that this is a composite sketch.  Look to the right of the bear and you will see the mule deer.

 
Bear and Mule Deer

Once again I outlined the images so you can see more clearly where to look.  I find the works even more impressive due to the fact that as far as I know, Trudy has never seen a bear or a deer.  Maybe a deer because after all she was found abandoned at a hunting lease, so maybe she saw a deer there.  But even so, that was back when she was a wee baby of less than seven weeks.  Impressive memory if she is drawing from that experience.  

Now this next part of the canvas is from the upper right side and displays yet another animal theme.

 It took me a while to see it and I believe it is still a work in progress based on some lack of definition in the mane to the lower right but as you can see in the outline it is clearly a lion.

The Lion

Trudy also has another canvas on the back fence.  Sadly I have had to cover up this work of art because as she draws here she likes to use her back feet and hang her front legs over the top of the six foot fence, effectively doing a chin up.  Since her body was rising higher and higher with each effort I felt it was just a matter of time before she accidentally vaulted over.  Therefore, I put a lawn cart in the way, forcing her to draw on another part of the fence that has a large amount of vines at the top as a barrier to 'escape'.  So this work is unfinished and yet I feel you will find it has merit.

Now taken as a whole, you can see a lot of energy and emotion, but not much specific drawing, however if you look at it section by section you will see the brilliance of her work.

This is the lower section of the canvas and at first my husband and I debated as to what this creature was.  He said Graboid from the movies Tremors, and while it definitely looks like that in the front part to the left of the drawing, I think she meant this creature to have legs.  I think you will agree there is a close resemblance to a Triceratops.

The Triceratops

The jumble of legs I interpret as her way of revealing movement.  What a smart girl.  She obviously has never seen a Triceratops, but she did recently chew up a section of our encyclopedia.  I am pretty sure she devoured the T section.  And there I was thinking she was just being destructive when she was just doing research.

This section is taken from the upper right part of the canvas.  She obviously is mostly interested in doing wildlife scenes.

I hardly need to outline this one at all because it is so clearly her depiction of a bird.  I think though she is doing a cross between a mockingbird and a horned owl.

The Bird

So as you can no doubt see I have a very talented girl on my hands.  If you see anymore images that I have missed please let me know.  Right now she seem content with this single media, but who knows when she might branch into other artistic avenues. 

Garden Volunteers - Weeds Part 2

I thought I best finish out the weeds post that I started in Weeds Part 1.  This is not taking into account the many different types of grassy weeds we have growing and also leaves out some that I have as yet to identify, however, between these two posts this is nearly the complete set. 

Sorrelvine
Cissus trifoliata

This is a much better behaved vine in that it is slower to grow. I also like the leaf shape and the color much more than the Snailseed. The only odd thing about this vine is that it releases a weird odor when you crush its leaves or cut its vine.

Oxalis
Oxalis corymbosa

I know that people actually plant Oxalis and indeed we have added in other varieties, but this one came with the yard.  It grows everywhere and has such happy pink blooms. It is attractive and easy to pull up if it starts to crowd other plants.

Sunflower
Helianthus annuus

This weed came up right after we took out the hedge along our fence line and before we installed the ceder fence and the new garden beds. At first we were excited because we thought it would be one of those black and white big seeded ones. It turned out to be a thin black seeded one that was good for birds, but not something worth eating.

Perilla 

When this first started to appear in my garden I thought it was purple basil, and it looks quite a bit like it. It is however Perilla, or Beefsteak plant. It is a relative of mint and has a very strong scent to its leaves. According to Wikipedia, this is the Red Shiso - Perilla frutescens var. crispa f. purpurea variety of Perilla.

Fungus

We haven't seen too many of our fungus friends this year because of the drought, but when the ground is damp enough we will see them in our front yard, as well as on several tree stumps. I have no idea of their exact variety but some of them are quite colorful.

Wisteria

There is such a love and hate thing with this plant. Its blooms are heavenly in that they are abundant in their grape-like clusters. Yet the vine itself is extremely invasive and its growth can overwhelm and destroy fence structures and it can smother trees. This one came from the back of our yard and is doing its best to make its way along one side as well.

 So, there you have it, my almanac of weeds. 

Figs!

Fig season is upon us and that is both a good thing and a bad thing.  The amount of each is proportional to the specific year and there have been several years when the scales have definitely tipped toward the negative.  This year so far (fingers crossed) is turning out to be heavy on the good.

Of course I often feel this way at the start of fig season.  Right now the main tree is LOADED with figs and just today I picked about four pounds.  It is highly likely that four or more pounds will ripen every day for the next few weeks.

Sounds great right?  The potential wrench in the works is what sweet little Mother Nature will throw at me this year.  She is not bashful about it at all.  So far this year we have had months upon months of no rain whatsoever.  This tree happens to be strategically placed at the edge of one of our main garden beds.  Its roots spread out into this bed and also into one of the newer beds we have created.  So we have been able to counter the drought which would reduce the fig crop with our daily waterings of the garden beds.  Score one for the good column.

Now the figs this year are out of this world sweet due to the aforementioned drought.  There is a delicate balance to what makes a desirable fig.  Not enough water and you have a puny fig that is likely to be aborted by the tree before it matures.  Too much water and you have these huge sized figs with practically no taste.  This year it is just right.  Score another one for the good column.

But what is that lurking on the horizon.  A forecast for rain?  A tropical storm potential, or at least that kind of rain?  This would be just horrible for the fig harvest as much as it would be incredibly good for the rest of the plant life.  Number one, rain would prevent me from harvesting the figs, which pretty much means the birds and squirrels will get them.  Second, the rain at this point in the harvest will swell the fruit and diminish the sweet, sweet crop we are currently getting.  Third - and this is a big one - there will be mud.  Not just "Oh, land sakes, my little old shoes have a bit of mud on them," but "Dear God, just how much more of this muck is going to stick to my shoes each step I take."  I have been dreading our first real rain because during our 'make the new garden beds' efforts we removed what must be about a metric ton of clay which we used to build up some of the pathways.

Dehydrated Mud

Our desire was to seed this clay with grass seed right before the next rain and then it would be all grassy and perfect.  No rain, so no seeding, so now that pathway is about four inches of this fine and powdery clay dust that the resident Border Collie has managed to create by churning it up about a million times a day.  Right at this moment it seems very benign.  The birds love to dust bathe in it and so does the Westie.  He can turn himself from a basically white dog into a gray and grizzled goat looking creature in the blink of an eye.  Add a little rain and this will become... well you know in art class when you got to mold things in clay.  You know how that when you wanted to smooth out the sides of your lopsided pot you just used water and it made this slick and slippery surface.  Imagine that but about forty feet by twenty feet and four inches deep.  We are talking something far more malevolent than mud here.  And with the heat - I am imagining it becoming a knee, ankle and back wrenching slurry of canine coating muck and then hardening into an impenetrable surface imprinted with multiple dog footprints as well as full body impact marks from my husband and I taking a header into its expanse.  So, let's just say if it rains a lot we are going to chalk this one into the 'bad' category.

Now as I said I have been harvesting an ever increasing amount of fig, but it must also be said that in order to do this and avoid heat stroke I have been getting up at dawn.  This too is a fine line between light enough to see what I am doing and oppressive humid life draining heat.  I also have the difficulty of negotiating a ladder while I am still muzzy with sleep.  We got a really great five foot step ladder last year which is perfect for this task in that it does not weight a ton, but it is not perfect in that for me to reach the highest figs I have to step up on step higher than my ladder comfort zone.  I like to feel ladder firmly on my shins near my knee, not riskily on my shin near my ankle.  I keep writing my obituary while I am up there - 'her quest for figs put an end to her'.

It does not help it that as soon as I am up that ladder, the Border Collie decides it is time to 'zoom around the garden'.  The ladder is new to her and I don't think she really respects it.  After all, nothing bad has ever happened yet in regards to the ladder.  During her zooms she charges ahead at full tilt and frequently rebounds off of fences, trees, garden supports and, to the irritation of the victim, the Westie.  She knocks into Lewey so forcefully that she rolls him over three or four times.  We fuss at her, but she is very resistant to our desires and even deliberately aims for him.  So there I am up the ladder doing the fig thing, hunting for the ripe ones and she begins a zoom.  She hasn't come close to me yet, but I still grab hold of the branches just in case - not that they could support me, but perhaps they could soften the impact.  "How did you break your back, ma'am?" the nurse will ask me as I am admitted to the emergency room.   But it hasn't happened yet - so far...

Now, a definite bad column item are the birds and squirrels who consider this fig tree as theirs and how dare we try and harvest any of the figs.  My 'picking figs at dawn' has been very helpful in this regard.  Birds it turns out are lazy and won't get to the tree until the sun is well up.  The same thing applies for the squirrels.  This means I have the tree to myself, almost.  The almost are the bugs.  This morning there was this red and black bug hanging out near one of the figs.  He looked like he meant business, so I avoided him.  I have also been told that brown recluse spiders like to hang out in fig trees.  I have not seen any spiders and I would like to chalk this up to urban legend, but yeesh - what if it is true?  "How did you get that necrotic and infected spider bite, ma'am?" the nurse will ask me prior to prepping me for the amputation. 

Go ahead.  Grab the fig.

Now just because the feathered and furred varmints are not in the tree when I am there does not mean their presence isn't felt.  Birds are not just lazy, they are wasteful. Each morning I find the ripest and most succulent figs stabbed open via a bird beak.  Just eat the whole thing - okay.  What is up with this 'put your beak into it' method.  And it is not like they come back to it either.  That fig is ruined as if some one has picked up a pastry from a buffet line, taken a bite out of it and then put it back on the tray.  Nobody else wants it now you wasteful avian pest.  And of course since that didn't satisfy them - how could it since they barely ate a molecule of it - they have to peck another one.  Now don't get me wrong.  I know the rules and the birds will get their share.  It's not like we net the tree to keep them completely out.  We actually like that our garden helps support the local wildlife.  My husband asks me each time I pick, "Did you leave some for the birds?"  Yeah, I sure did.  The ones they pecked already.  Stupid birds.

The squirrels are entirely different in their approach from the birds.  First of all they will eat the whole fig - no worries there. But they have an insatiable appetite and can seriously diminish a crop.  Although I would prefer they not visit our tree there is little we can do to keep them out.  Last year when we had taken down a tall hedge and before we had installed our ceder fence, the squirrels became very brazen.  Previously, the tall hedge and the large canopy of the fig tree practically merged, so it used to be no problem for the squirrels to easily move in and out of the tree.  Without the hedge they had to make an acrobatic transit down the power lines that run on the edge of our property.  However, when that seemed too much work they just hopped across the lawn and climbed the tree.

Now if there is one thing certain in this world it is that dogs naturally hate squirrels.  During the life of our Schnauzer Chewey, he made it his duty to police the fig tree each year.  The moment we opened the back door he would charge out to the fig tree and shout at the squirrels.  The squirrels would respond by abandoning ship and launching themselves out of the tree with vigor.  This sometimes resulted in near misses where Schnauzer nearly catches squirrel.  Oh how that Schnauzer wanted to catch the squirrel.  Later when the Westie was added to the mix and especially when the hedge was removed the near misses were sometimes merely a fraction of an inch.  We figured if the Schnauzer caught the squirrel it would likely get away with little damage, but if it were the Westie instead - dead squirrel.  Maybe the Westie might sustain a little damage, but - dead squirrel.  They have as yet to catch one though.

Some of the squirrels took to taunting the dogs from the power lines and sometimes from the top of  the fig tree.  Their little 'chu chu chu' taunts would drive the dogs into high pitched barking fury.  Some of those squirrels are still around.  One especially has been casing the joint this year.  He travels the high wire of the back electric lines and sometimes perches on the utility pole.  He is very concerned this year and has every right to be because of the addition of the Border Collie.  Trudy hates the squirrels.   She hates them so hard that she launches herself up the eight foot ceder fence as high as possible and based on the paw prints she is traveling a good six or seven feet upward.  She also launches herself up the six foot back chain link fence which thank God has a healthy amount of vines towering over its top or she would go sailing over it.  She is so fast and so determined that the 'will the dogs ever get a squirrel' question may be answered this year. 

Evidence of Trudy's rebounding practice

So, as we tally it all up, in the plus column we have heaps and gobs of great tasting figs.  In the negative column we have the crack of dawn fig picking, scary bug encounters, wasteful birds, and dogs driven to athletic mayhem by irritating squirrels.  If we don't get the torrential floods they are predicting with the accompanying mud then I say this is definitely, all things considered, a better than average fig year.

Evil Tomato

It looked just like another tomato plant which quite frankly don't normally look all that evil.  It was a yellow pear tomato and even though I already had several tomato plants, I bought it on a whim because I didn't have any cherry type tomatoes.

I am trying to remember the exact event, because it would have been nice for there to have been some cackling old woman in the background as I purchased the plant. Or maybe a roll of thunder, but that was unlikely because of our extended drought.  Maybe the drought somehow affects the abundance of cackling old ladies too - I don't know, but I wish there had been some sort of portent of doom.

I planted it in the garden bed near the first three tomato plants, which were doing very well.  At this point in the year I was still of the opinion that three plants in the six by six foot bed was not fully utilizing the space.  However, the plants were already about four feet tall and growing in a way that was quickly decreasing the space between them.  I put the pear tomato in the farthest reach of that garden bed, near the dog proof fence.

Now this was not the first year I had grown a yellow pear tomato.  One year I had the brilliant idea that since we had all these large clay pots, we should use them to grow our tomatoes.  This idea was so brilliant because it meant we could use the ground space for other plants and (this was the part I was most proud of) we could move the pots to whatever spot in the garden seemed best.  It was the best idea I had ever had on paper.  So we filled up three huge clay pots with what we felt was a 'tomato growing' mixture of sand, topsoil and compost.  We positioned each pot in a strategic area and planted them with tomatoes.  One tomato was a bush type, one was a Roma tomato and the third was a yellow pear tomato.

This all started out great, but forget moving those behemoths.  The best you could do was turn the pot and even that took some effort.  No problem because they were 'strategically' placed.  The plants grew wonderfully.  Now tomatoes are a vine in that they will grow up straight and tall for a short time then they will flop over unless you trellis or stake them.  Putting them in a pot that starts their ground level at about three feet high seems to accelerate the 'flopping over'.  So we staked them, which meant we had these three foot tall pots with six or seven foot tall poles sticking out of them.  It looked like very bad modern art.

But back to the yellow pear.  That potted plant grew fabulously and began to set what looked to be an enormous number of fruit.  Then I noticed a couple of brown leaves.  No worries, after all it was in a pot and maybe it was not able to retain enough moisture.  I gave it a good watering and also topped the pot with a mulch to help it retain moisture.  More leaves began to turn and soon I was wagering whether the fruit it had set would be able to ripen before the plant succumbed to whatever was going wrong with it.  I think we got a couple of tomatoes from it and then it died.  I just chalked it up to the 'putting tomato plants into pots was a stupid idea' scenario I had manufactured and my general gardening amnesia blotted the incident from my mind.

So, I was looking at this yellow pear tomato in this years garden and it was putting on all sorts of great fruit.  My mind had a little shudder of deja vu.  I brushed it off.  The plant looked great.  Then I noticed a brown leaf and my deja vu came over and kicked me in the shin.  I said "No, No," as I clutched my imaginary shin, "This means nothing."   The decline was dramatic and the plant went from 'happy little tomato' to 'sad and wilting - won't you put me out of my misery' within about a week.

The unfortunate thing was that the growth of the other tomato plants in that bed and the growth of this tomato plant had somewhat merged into a six by six foot mass of tomato plant.  I had been using a method of tomato support where I had arranged a couple of twelve foot bamboo poles at the edges of each tomato plant.  I then used nylon string to weave in between these poles and contain the tomato plants - sort of a build as they grow kind of loose caging.  It pretty much served to form the tomatoes into a solid mass of leaves and branches.

I think the instructions for this kind of tomato staking said something about cutting off the side shoots that sprout up from the tomato vines, but I don't do this because it causes me guilt.  Yes, I don't just have plantricide guilt from thinning seedlings and pulling up weeds.  I also have a form that says to me "Hey, you could root that cutting -and if you don't you might as well just be committing plant murder."  Someday I am going to sit that weird part of my mind down and tell it what I really think of all its anthropomorphic tendencies.

So, oh yes, back to the yellow pear tomato.  It wasn't happy just dieing by itself - it sent it evil little whatever into the other tomatoes in that bed and they began to die off as well - which was really tragic because they were sporting a huge, enormous, tremendous quantity of fruit.

I rushed to the almanac of plant diseases which these days is the internet and found out that what that evil little yellow pear tomato had done was bring in a case of late blight to my paradise.

What late blight does to your tomato plants.

Late blight according to helpful UMass Extension: "is caused by Phytopthora infestans is the most severe disease of potato and tomato. The pathogen, the cause of the Irish potato famine of the 1840's, caused widespread starvation and immigration. The pathogen spreads easily on wind and rain and is capable of destroying entire fields in a few days. Late blight is extremely destructive when not managed, quickly killing foliage and infecting fruit and tubers."

So the evil little yellow pear tomato had brought the tomato version of the Irish potato famine to my garden.   I managed to keep the tomato plants alive by constantly spraying them with fish emulsion so they could at least ripen the fruit they had set.  This worked and in fact right now the plants are rebounding - not that they can set fruit in our 90 - 100 degree temperatures, but it does my heart good to see them recovering.

They look atrocious though with masses of dead leaves and stems.  The yellow pear that started it all.  I pulled its evil little body out as soon as I realized its treachery.  No guilt for that one.

I am RAIN

It's day number... well who knows when it actually rained here for greater than 10 minutes in the last six months or more.  I think we are now at a negative point in the rainfall for this area.  You know how they say "We have 6 out of the 10 inches we normally get for this time of hear"... well we probably are sitting at a negative 6 inches for our year.  This means that the ground is so dry it is actually pulling the humidity out of the air.

Not that we couldn't do with less humidity.  How is it that we can be going through this drought and yet the moisture just hangs in the air?  I mean come on Nature the dry hot weather is punishment enough.  Do you have to taunt us too.  "Feel this?" Nature asks as she slaps and 88 percent humidity day into your face, "It could be rain if I wanted to work that hard and form it into drops, but Nah - I think I'll just take the day off."  Stupid, lazy Nature.

So, since Nature won't do her job, I have stepped in and become the rain for my garden.  Actually I think of it more like RAIN - as if I have become the personification of that phenomenon.  To the outside observer I may look as if I am some overly hot, tired and strangely dressed person holding a garden hose, but on the inside I am RAIN - a benevolent supernatural force bequeathing a fountain of refreshment to the downtrodden plant masses. 

Perhaps it is just the humidity laden heat addling my brain, but this somehow makes the hour or more I spend each and every morning since the first week of March watering the garden just a little bit more tolerable.  I know what you are thinking -"Just turn on the sprinkler and stop your moaning"  but a sprinkler would not do.  In a prolonged drought you must focus your watering where it matters otherwise your water bill will easily slip into the triple digits and you will be paying a high premium for growing your own food.

That's what makes RAIN even more powerful.  The water only falls where I choose to let it fall.  Some plant pisses me off and I can cut off its supply - and don't think I fail to use that threat to certain plants that seem to be holding back on the food crop.  "Set that cucumber you little vine or else," RAIN says, holding the stream of water just out of reach.

Actually RAIN may talk big but in truth I am a wimp when it comes to 'cutting off the supply'.  There are several vegetable plants that have gone past the usable stage and are just hanging around the garden now, looking sort of shabby.  I consider not watering them because after all I am a gardener and we are supposed to be efficient and intolerant of plant weaknesses.  I, however am troubled by a tendency toward anthropomorphism - in short, every plant out there has a distinct personality.   This tendency makes it extremely hard to do things like 'thin the seedlings' and gets much, much worse the longer a plant has been growing.  Killing such a plant gives me a pang of conscience - like it's a small murder.

I am able to pull weeds because I think of them as violent and rude gang members attacking my companion plants but even some of them get into my psyche and I let them live out there lives unmolested.  As you have no doubt already guessed, my garden sometimes looks like a plant riot. 

But at least when I am out there I am surrounded by 'friends' - and I am RAIN.

Gardening A,B,C

When you have something that dominates your life, you tend to take a lot of photos of it.  That is especially true of me and gardening.  Recently I collected my photos through the years and in organizing them I put them into folders according to plant types as well as a few other designations.  The computer brings up the files in alphabetical order, so I thought I would go through them with you that way as well.

A

Starting off the A category is a lovely yearly favorite of mine - Allyssum.  Its dainty little flowers create a sweet smelling carpet.  It definitely wants things to be cool though.  Once the heat gets going little Allyssum will gradually just seem to vaporize.  First go the flowers and then the plant just shrinks back into nothing.  I have had better luck with it in pots rather than the garden bed.

One of the fabled, ever-bearing Amaryllis.  Since these are given to me from someone who forces the bulbs each year, I am always pleasantly surprised to see what blooms they will have.  I have no idea what this ones pedigree is, but it likes to bloom several times a year.

This is Angelonia which I put into the garden for the first time last year.  It managed to make it through August and then the two low twenties freezes we had last winter.  So not only does it have these masses of orchid like bloom clusters, but it is hardy as well.  My kind of plant.

B

This little guy is Barcopa.  I tried him last year and at first things were great and it grew and bloomed very happily.  Then it just died.  So, it has entered into the category of plants I have killed. 

Ah Basil.  A true gardeners friend in that it will grow very well with little effort.  I love it for its aromatic leaves as well as for eating.  Unfortunately it is another plant that finds hot weather offensive.

Here is the bloom of another plant I tried last year for the first time.  This is Bee Balm or Bergamot.  It also survived punishing heat and icy cold which puts it into the category of plants I have not yet killed.

This is Brugmansia also known as Angel Trumpet.  It is a tree like bush that will produce hundreds of these trumpet shaped blooms.  They hang almost a foot in length and give off a heavenly scent at sundown.  To see one of these at their peak of blooming is amazing.  Your mind does not want to believe a plant like this can exist.  The bonus is that they  are very easy to grow from cuttings and even though the winter is tough on them they will come back from the roots.  Their problem is that they like it shady and wilt in the heat.

This is the bloom of Buddleia or Butterfly Bush.  I had high hopes for this plant because of its great blooms and because it was touted as growing into a tall mass which I wanted to use to shade some tall ginger.   It was one of those I tried last year who just up and died.  Too bad.

This is Bulbine.  This is the view of its stalk atop which are a mass of these yellow flowers in a cluster.  This one has been surviving well and I was surprised because its leaves make you think it is a succulent that cannot survive intense cold.  Apparently it is much hardier than it looks because it just shook off the cold and has come back rowdier than ever.

C

I have a thing for Caladiums, but I also cannot get in rhythm with them.  Due to our overly wet winters, the bulbs seldom are able to survive more than one season.  They like it in the shade and they don't like intense heat.  Since they are planted as a bulb I am never sure exactly when to put them in to maximize their incredible leaves.

This was the hardest of the plant pictures to choose from since I assigned myself the limit of only one picture per plant group.  Cannas are one of my most prized plants.  This variety has such great leaves that I thought this view was better than the blooms.

This is Cosmos and I like them because they will bloom and bloom and bloom.  Right now the bed I have them in is being slowly overtaken by the Scented Geraniums I put in this year, but this one valiant Cosmos is fighting back.

I had this plant for years before I ever knew what it was.  It was given to me from a defunct greenhouse.  I liked it for its huge curling strap like leaves and its trumpet shaped blooms that arrive several to a stalk.  This it turns out is Crinum.  There are many different varieties but I have no idea which one this is. 

That is enough of the plant alphabet for now...

The Netflix Experience

We are not cable TV people.  We have had access to cable at various times but we were not paying for this 'luxury'.  What we felt about cable was that although it was great that there was something on almost all the time, we never actually watched a full program of anything.  Most of the time when we watched cable TV we were channel hopping due to the unremitting interruptions of commercials. 

Let's say we were watching some movie on a channel and a commercial came on.  Of course we would change the channel which with cable was an endless procession of channels and 'Hey, look at that - that is an interesting program'.  We would watch this interesting program for a while and then 'Oh no, we are missing the movie' and we would switch back to find we had missed some vital piece of movie information. 

What was worse were those times when we wanted to watch something and would begin to surf through the channels endlessly because even though there were hundreds of channels, nothing was on.  Or if something worthy was on, we had already seen it.  Neither of us were capable of finding the channel guide station and even though the Sunday paper provided a TV guide we were incapable of keeping track of it.

The thing was that neither my husband nor I watched all that much TV so we never could get into the rhythm as to when the 'good' shows would be on.  It was all very random and made even more so by our channel surfing.  What really aggravated us was that we would sometimes sit there channel hopping for upwards of an hour or two without actually watching anything for longer than a minute. 

So we became movie renters.  Blockbuster video was our place to go and everything about that era left something to be desired.  First of all, we had to drive to it and it was in one of the most inconvenient places to access from our house.  Second we had to time our acquisition runs so that we would have a chance of getting some sort of quality movie.  We were as unprepared for Blockbuster as we were for watching cable in that we never knew what would be our options.  These  trips were never a strategic strike and always entailed wandering through the store staring at the walls of movies and trying to decide if we wanted what they had to offer.  Worse would be when we knew we wanted a certain movie and were vying with other Blockbuster customers for those precious few videos available.  Nothing is more tragic than that sinking feeling you get from knowing that all the good movies have already been rented and you are left searching the stacks of titles trying to find something.  We sucked at returning the movies on time as well.  If we were to have totaled all the late fees we paid for our movie renting phase at Blockbuster I am sure we could have just outright purchased most of the movies. 

So we stopped doing the Blockbuster thing and entered our 'buying DVDs at Walmart' phase of movie watching.  Walmart had a five dollar movie bin where you could scrounge through a very thoroughly riffled pile of somewhat old movies.  Sometimes they would have double features or boxed sets for the five dollar fee.  They even eventually had all sorts of old movies and cartoons for just a dollar.  Each week we would select something to buy and our movie library began to grow.  Now let me tell you something about a movie library.  You practically never watch the movie again.  There are a few exceptions to the classics, but basically what you have done is paid a similar fee to renting a movie and then have agreed to keep the movie at your home.  A DVD box might be small, but as the weeks go buy they start to add up and soon they have to have their own shelf unit.  All of this for something you will probably never use again.

Thus the idea of not keeping the movies began to become very appealing to us.  It was either that or add on a special addition to our house just to keep all the growing pile of DVDs.  This was when we heard about Netflix.  A friend of mine told me about it and at first I couldn't believe it.  They mail the DVD to you and then you mail it back when you are done.  Better yet, you didn't pay for postage.  And even more miraculous - there were no late fees.  NO LATE FEES.  I think the people that came up with Netflix were at the right place at the right time in a big way.  They even gave us a month free when we signed up.

How glorious.  You just selected what you wanted online and they sent it to you within days.  As soon as you sent that DVD back they sent you another one within days.  You could also select to receive more than one movie at a time.  We tried that for a short time.  This was when the cracks began to appear in the glorious perfection of our Netflix experience.

It turns out that when you get a deal that allows you an unlimited amount of movies whose only requirement is that you return the movie before you get the next one you feel compelled to watch the movies as quickly as possible.   This way you can return the movie and get the next one.  In order to get the most out of what you pay each month, you want the most movies.  It all hinges on you getting the movie back to them as quickly as possible.  We discovered that we could get about three movies a week if we watched them the day they arrived and put them back in the mail the next day.  That is a dozen movies a month.  What a deal.  The problem is that I didn't want to watch 6 hours of movies a week every week. 

The problem was compounded by the fact that my husband and I cannot watch a movie together.  It turns out we have different styles.  My style is to sit and watch the movie from start to finish in a quiet dark room.  His style involves the fast forward button through all the 'needless dialog' and then asking me questions about what is happening in the movie.  So, in the interest of preserving our marriage we don't watch movies together.  This means in order for us to 'get the most out of Netflix'  we have double the running time of the movie. So the movie gets to us about 3pm.  We must both watch the movie and get it into the mail by 8am the next day.  No exceptions or else we were 'not getting our money's worth'.

I began to resent how the movies were running my life.  It is sort of the same way I resent how leftovers run my life.  My husband will say "That such and such leftover 'needs to be eaten up'".  Well, I have needs too and one of them is not letting some needy food boss me around.  I felt the same way about the movies.  They needed me to watch them, but I didn't always need to watch them. Yet if I didn't watch them then Netflix was getting the better end of the deal.  I call this time in my life the oppressed movie watching guilt phase.  There is probably some sort of official mental illness designation for it by now. 

But then when it seemed I was going to have to resign myself to a life of forced movie watching or suffer guilt, Netflix bailed me out.  I discovered their instant watch feature.  Apparently this is something they always offered, but it took us a couple of years before we ever even tried it.  Streaming movies to our computer.  I was very skeptical at first.  Our computers.  The ones that were malevolent enough to crash on us just weeks before our movie debut, wiping out hundreds of hours of work and leaving us with mere days to restore order.  Those computers were going to do something nice like show us movies.  Ha.

But it worked and it worked very well.  Not only that, but they had hundreds and hundreds of instant watch options. The selections seemed endless.  They didn't just have movies, they had practically every TV show from back in my childhood to present day.  Now, we were not about to waste one of our precious DVD options on a TV show, but limitless amounts of streaming movies meant we could indulge in anything that struck our fancy.  This was heaven.

Of course in application it isn't as perfect as what it seemed.  First of all, when faced with a nearly endless choice your brain just sort of freezes up.  It is the endless cable selection issue all over again.  Sometimes the find a movie part of movie watching takes up almost as much time as watching the movie.  The finding a movie part is also complicated by the fact that Netflix does not list all the movies it features under instant watch in a logical way.  It has categories and movies are classified under listings such as 'Romantic Comedies' or 'Science Fiction Adventure'.  We have found these categories to be incomplete - almost as if Netflix is hiding some of the movie selections.  We can find them if we ask for them by their title, but they just don't appear in the offerings of the categories they present to you. 

Something else that is a snake in the Netflix garden of  Eden is that I think my husband nearly overdosed on the streaming video the first few weeks we tried it.  After all, if we pay a certain fee and we can watch an unlimited amount of streaming movies, then the 'deal' gets better the more movies you watch right?  On weekends he has sometimes stayed up all night watching movie after movie.  Due to his high movie consumption he has also succumbed to watching the 'dregs'.  These are movies that barely rate a star or two.  This kind of thing happens when you have watched all the good movies but now have an addiction you must feed.

He has discovered many diamonds in the rough and who knows maybe someday he will be able to enter some sort of obscure movie trivia contest and win a million dollars.  His 'dreg' watching does weird things to the Netflix algorithms though.  Netflix does its best to try and offer you choices it thinks you might like based on other movies you have watched.  You can even rate the movies you watch and if you want you can also be a movie critic and post your views.  We don't go that far, but Netflix is always asking us to rate the things we watch.  This means I am often asked to rate one of the dregs my husband has watched and Netflix thinks I like things under such topics as 'Violent, Suspenseful, Psychological Thrillers' or 'Supernatural Horror Movies'.

All in all, the Netflix experience is far superior to any previous cable or movie renting experience.  Now if they will just create some sort of spouse feature that will let us sign in under different names so I don't have to be asked if I want to watch some thing called "Valley of the Zombies" or "Burn Witch Burn". 

Border Land Sleeping

Trudy, my sweet and loving Border Collie is almost a year old.  We will never know her exact date of birth but we have decided based on the reports from her first visit to a veterinarian that her birth date was middle to late June 2010, so we picked June 20th as her birthday.  Now we are not the kind of dog people who will have a birthday party for our dog, but we have celebrated her birthday in another way.  Trudy now gets to sleep on our bed.

Trudy had been confined to her kennel at night when she was just a wee puppy - mostly because as a puppy she was likely to 'wee' anytime and anywhere.  When she was several months old we transitioned her to just being confined to the room her kennel was in without locking her in the kennel itself.  She loved this arrangement because we had a 'go to bed' ritual.  First she got to go outside to potty.  This part had to happen even if she had just come inside because - well, because it wouldn't be a ritual if you just did things randomly now would it? This ritual had to begin between 9:30 PM and 10:30 Pm.  If it did not then there would be a concerned Border Collie nudging your arm, then putting her mouth on your arm and then basically slapping her paw down on your arm because now they are UPSET.   An upset Border Collie will need to have your hand on them at all times and will not let you even look at a TV or computer screen because you know, they are UPSET.  So we avoid the whole upset Border Collie as often as possible.

So the ritual begins by letting the Border Collie outside.  As per the specific rules of order she must run to the back of the yard first then circle back to the porch.  You then must ask her "Did you go potty?"  Upon hearing this she will then lift her head up like "Oh yeah, I forgot," and then she will run to the 'potty place' but when she is almost there she will 'hear something' and have to run to the back of the yard again.  She will spend a moment at the back of the yard and then run up onto the porch to the back door.  You must ask her again, "Did you go potty?"  "Oh year, I forgot," and the cycle repeats again.  Sometimes you have to do this part about three or four times but then finally she will actually 'go potty'.  You must say "Good Girl" at exactly the right time in the 'potty' process.  If you say it right away then all is well, but if you wait too long to say it she will give you a 'look' and then run to the back of the yard again when she is done.

Finally the next part of the ritual begins and she comes back into the house.  You must then say "Are your ready to go to bed?"   She needs you to say this while she is at the refrigerator and will wait there until you say it.  As soon as you say the magic words she will rush into her room straight into her kennel and stamp on the floor loudly.  There must not be a delay at this point so you have to grab the bag of chicken jerky and go into the room and turn on the overhead light.  She will be watching from her kennel.  You have to close the gate in front of the door to her room first.  Then you must select two pieces of jerky from the bag and tear them into pieces.  You must scatter the pieces into the bottom of the kennel, throwing them first to one side and then to the other side so the Border Collie can scramble madly around her kennel hunting for the scattered pieces.

You must exit the room turning off the light before she is done finding the last scrap.  On your way out you need to say "Goodnight Trudy."  There will be a little Westie at the door to her room and you have to step over the fence at the door at the same time you hand him a piece of chicken jerky because although a Westie does not need to have bedtime rituals, he does does need to have jerky and will bark enough to upset a Border Collie if he does not get his snack right away.

If one thing in the ritual goes even the slightest bit wrong then the good night magic is all screwed up and a Border Collie will whine and sigh and make all manner of upset noises.  The noises last for a varying amount of time depending on how bad you screwed up the bedtime ritual.  Taking the Border Collie directly in from being outside where she has been until 10 PM is a very serious infraction and will result in about an hour and a half of desperate Border Collie distress.  Thinking that the Border Collie must not need to 'potty' after only two runs to the back of the yard will earn you 30 minutes of whining.  Insisting that the Border Collie go potty after the 5th run to the back of the yard when she obviously is telling you she does not need to go potty and is tired of you being so thick and not 'getting it' will earn you about an hour of upsetness.  Putting up the fence after you have fed her the jerky because you really just don't want to step over the damn tripping thing will get you about 10 minutes of sulking.

Now even with all of this 'training' we had been receiving from her on how to do the 'go to bed' ritual just right there came a time when no matter what, the upset came.  This was a new upset accompanied by a new sort of miserable sighing moan that was indicating how very, very, very unfair it was for a Border Collie to be confined away from the rest of the family in her own bedroom with her own water bowl and special sleeping chair and lots of fun toys.  This new upset was a deep distressing melancholy that would come on about an hour after she had been put to bed.  It would last and last, just loud enough and pitched just at the right level to exert maximum guilt probes into the dog center of your brain.  It translated very clearly into "Sure, go ahead and have your TV watching and family togetherness without me.  I will just pine away all alone and lonely with my heart just breaking and breaking.  Right here.  All alone...  and SAD."

There is only so much of this that we can take, but being seasoned dog parents we had been through this with every other puppy we had ever brought into our life.  This was 'transition' time.  The puppy baby cradle time was over and the juvenile adult dog time had come.  With our Schnauzer Chewey who had spent his night times confined to a child's portable crib we knew he was ready to come out after the third time he chewed his way through the sides of the enclosure.  We had his coming out ceremony by putting him in the crib and cheering him on into breaking his way out of the crib one last time.  We then closed up the crib while he watched and smacked it a few times for good measure and then threw it out of the house.  He smiled the entire time.

Lewey's baby crib started as another portable crib, but he made short work of that well before we were ready for him to have run of the house.  We transitioned him first into a metal crate that we put by the bed.  When he reached the 'don't need to lock me in' stage we had him watch while we took the door off the crate.

Trudy's 'big girl no longer has to stay in her room' event was a little different. For her the majority of her 'go to bed' ritual had to remain intact.  When she came into the house and I grabbed the jerky, she went to the door of her room, but we had it closed.  I called her and Lewey into the bedroom and told her to get on the bed.  I blocked the door to the bedroom with the child gate so she couldn't leave and then fed the two of them her two jerky strips.  She 'got it' right away and gave me a bunch of kisses before settling down. 

She is a great sleeper and does not bother me at night.  She gets on and off the bed very quietly and has even avoided bothering Lewey who is little prince 'don't touch me or I will make a sound like a very compact polar bear growling'.  She does however have anticipatory alarm waking.  About 10 minutes before my alarm goes off she comes over and very gently will give me a kiss on the cheek.  I studiously ignore her and she will settle down right next to me.  As soon as the alarm goes off she is all "MOM!!!  Hi!  We are AWAKE now!" and wants to do the 'awake in the morning' ritual right away.

AWAKE!

I used to be a much more disorganized person.  Who knew the strategic application of a Border Collie would regulate my life.

Garden Photos - Part 2

It is only in retrospect that we can see some things and that is very true about the garden.  I have been mulling over some of my garden photos through the years and found some photos that showed the garden in similar views.  It is amazing to me how much the garden changes from year to year.  The above photo shows the garden as it was in June 2010 and June 2011.

This is a view of the center of the garden starting in 2009, all taken in June.  This is a part of the garden we have been changing the most in the last few years.  As late as 2006 there was an enormous pecan tree in this area of the garden.  I found some video from that era that showed the pecan tree, but apparently that video was taken by some drunken monkeys because the camera was swinging too much to get a decent frame grab.  Stupid monkeys.  I will keep digging in my files and see if I can find some more of this view from earlier years.

This view is just to the left of the garden center and this is one of our oldest garden beds.  We have not changed the dimensions of this bed by much, but you can see how year to year we change what the bed contains.  To the left of this photo in 2009 you will see our fig tree in an upright state.  In the 2011 photo you can clearly see how much that tree now leans thanks to hurricane Ike.

These are the closest shots I can find so far, but we have enormous quantities of pictures from our gardening through the years.  I will create some more of these montages unless the drunken monkeys have gotten to more of the images. 

The Bully

I got my first bully early, and it is no wonder because I was such a scrawny kid.  Just one look at me screamed physically vulnerable to those seeking victims.  It didn't help that I was perpetually happy and talkative either.  That just gave the sullen bully more reason to dislike me.  It also didn't help me that I was so very distracted almost all the time.  This however was great for the bully who didn't even need to sneak up on me - why bother, it was not like I was going to notice anyway.

The first round happened while I was in the school cafeteria.  I was purchasing my lunch, something that I had only just begun to do having started the third grade.  I came up to the cashier and handed her my nickel but she dropped it.  At the same time the boy behind me dropped his nickel too.  I saw his lying on the floor and reached down to pick it up thinking it was mine.  He growled and stamped his foot on top of it.  Simultaneously the cashier said "I found it," and held my nickel aloft.  I just turned my back on the growling boy and took my lunch tray to the table.  Little did I know but the incident was far from over.

According to school rules we had take the next seat available at the lunch table so I slid into place.  Then I heard a commotion from the lunch line.  The boy who growled was at the cashier and pointing to me.  "She took my nickel," he said.  The cashier looked at me and I shook my head saying, "No I didn't."  I thought it was over because I had not taken his nickel.  Little did I understand bully politics.

The growling boy continued to profess that I had taken his nickel so he could not pay for his meal.  He stayed up at the cashier station making a ruckus. His friend who was in line behind the growling boy paid for his meal and came to sit beside me at the table.  Still my future bully was at the cashier station and the school principal eventually appeared.  I guess one of the cafeteria ladies called him to deal with the growling boy.  The principal came over to me "Did you take his money?"  "No sir," I said, now becoming very alarmed.  He asked me to empty my pockets and I did with my face becoming redder by the moment.  No nickel.  As the principal left the growling boy's friend leaned over to me and whispered. "I saw him pick up the nickel."  I asked him to tell the principal but he just shook his head no.

That lunch eventually ended but not before the growling boy had gotten his meal and sat glaring at me from across the room.  I did not see him again for the rest of the day, even though he was also in the third grade. My elementary school had three third grade classes and we were placed into a particular class based on our grades from the last year.  I was in the second tier class having failed to keep up with the accelerated class in second grade.  The bully was in the third tier class reserved for the slower learners and apparently this included the aggressive students as well.  The only time our classes intermingled was at recess and lunch.

Thus he began to stalk me.  He never actually hit me or anything but his very presence was looming.  He was much, much larger than me and probably at least a year older.  He wore western styled shirts with metal snap buttons, blue jeans and cowboy boots.  His hair was reddish blond and cut in a flattop that made it stick up from his head.  Freckles covered his face and his blue eyes were beady.  I would see all of this from the corner of my eyes because I didn't dare look straight at him.  Any time he managed to catch my eye he would point a finger at me and mouth the words "You stole my nickel."  He always seemed to be on the outskirts of where I was on the playground and in the lunchroom.  He always positioned himself where he could watch me.

Once as I was in my classroom he passed by in the hall.  He must have gotten permission to go to the bathroom or something.  As he came by our door I looked up and he did some sort of rapid back and forth movement with his feet and pointed his finger at me like it was a gun.  It was very, very disturbing and I felt my stomach do a back flip.  Just what was this guys problem?  I knew I didn't steal his nickel.  According to his friend, the bully himself knew I didn't steal his nickel, so why was he acting like this?  Being totally ignorant of the ways of bullies I expected it all to make sense.  However, bullies don't need any reason to bully you, tormenting people is just what they do.

I dealt with it by staying inside during recess and begging my mother to allow me to take lunch to school instead of go through the anxiety of standing in the lunch line.  In other words I hid as best as I could from my bully.  This went on for a couple of weeks and who knows how it would of escalated , but then a miracle occurred.  My bully moved away.  All my fear evaporated overnight and I was free to move about without constant scrutiny.  However, I didn't actually learn any valuable lesson about bullies.

This lack of learning came back to haunt me in the fourth grade.  This was during a span of time when instead of riding the school bus, my mother was picking me up from the front of the school.  The only problem was that I had to wait for about an hour before she could pick me up.  So I waited as the school emptied out and I felt like the very last person on the campus.  Being alone was not a problem and I wasn't afraid to wait by myself.  However, I wasn't always alone.

There was this other little girl Heidi who was in the third grade who also sometimes waited for her mother.  At first we struck up a conversation and it was nice to have someone to wait with.  Then one day another girl appeared.  She was sort of standoffish and wouldn't come over to where Heidi and I sat.  Heidi said she knew her and went over to talk.  Then Heidi came over to me.  "This is Linda," she said.  "Hi Linda," I said, but Linda crossed her arms and looked at the ground.  Heidi then said, "Linda says she wants to punch you in the stomach."

Now, I was not sure exactly what would be the appropriate response to such a revelation.  My confusion was also compounded by the fact that Heidi had announced this in a rather upbeat and non-intimidating way.  It was as if she had just said, "Linda wants to do something nice for you."  I didn't say anything in response.

Linda looked over at me.  She was standing at the foot of some stairs. Her hair was reddish blond and she was wearing a white turtle neck sweater.  Although she was not as large as the growling boy, she did have a really tough look to her.  Linda spoke saying "Did she tell you what I said?"  I looked at her and said "Yes."

Once again I was mystified as to why this person I had never met was singling me out for torment.  She didn't actually seem all that threatening and wasn't shouting or yelling at me so it was a little confusing.  Although she seemed to radiate some sort of pent up malevolence she didn't seem to actually be aggressive.

Then she walked over and punched me in the stomach.  It was a good solid punch and it bent me over.  All the air was knocked out of me but I was more shocked than anything else.  Could a person you had never met just calmly and randomly punch you in the stomach?  Apparently so.  She said "Do you want me to punch you again?" without the slightest bit of menace to her voice.  She might have been asking me if I wanted to play jump rope.  I said, "No." and walked slowly sort of bent over and sat on the curb.  I did not cry and I did not act in any way scared.  This seemed to be very off putting to Linda and she wandered away from me.  The little girl Heidi went with her. 

My stomach hurt for a little bit but by the time my mother came to pick me up I was able to walk without being bent over.  I didn't even mention the event to my mother.  How could I possible explain what weird thing had just happened to me.  I did however as I got in the car see Linda off in the distance looking my way.  She looked very worried and it dawned on me that she was worried I was going to tell on her.  I lingered a bit at the car door before I got in.  I watched Linda the entire time as we drove off and it was gratifying for me to watch her squirm, wondering if my mother was going to confront her.

This event taught me everything I needed to know about bullies.  1. A bully needs you to fear them and without your fear they don't have much power.  2. Apparently the people who like to bully me have reddish blond hair.  3. In order to be bullied you have to understand that someone is bullying you.  4. I would rather be punched in the stomach than live in fear.

Perhaps that is all I had to learn because since that time in fourth grade I never got bullied again.