This is how Tess looked after she did about 15 really fast laps by herself around the car--that's what she did while I played in the dirt.

This is what Chances did while I dug in the dirt.

This is what Mr. Hummer did while I gardened. My feeder is about 5 feet from where I stood but the hummers will come even closer than that to you if you stand still. This male is less tame than the 2 that Tess killed, but he's coming around. The females are pretty tame and are less bothered by my presence.

I'm not really an angry person, I just play one on tv. I look like my mother and my aunt here. You have to wear a goofy hat soaked in DEET in order to be outside during black fly season.


You have to get your hands dirty (nice ring). I think one of my father's favorite things was to clean his fingernails with his pen knife when he finished gardening. Me, I just scrub them with a scrubber and soap. There is something satisfying about dirt under your fingernails when your gardening, though.


Good day sunshine
Amazing the power of the sun, isn't it?
When I got home I had lots of clean clothes to dry, like money in the bank, and lots of plants to play with. I planted some flowers in containers, sorted them out (never have enough!), unloaded the dirt, peat moss and "organic" manure (is there another kind?) from the trunk in prep. of future playing and surveyed my kingdom.

I had a good time but wasn't particularly pleased with the results: I call them works in progress, "things can only get better." They will look good in a few weeks.

I cleaned the fish tank and miracle of miracles, they were all still alive this morning. I nearly killed them all until I figured out that I had stirred up all the ammonia at the bottom of the tank when I tried to suck out all the debris on the bottom. I added Ammo-Lock and it was like a miracle--they stopped sucking for air on the surface and started swimming around. WHEW! Was I ever relieved. This is a nice batch of fish, 3 rasboras who school nicely. I can watch them for an amazingly long time, which is supposed to be very healthy.

Today I have too much going on in my personal life: it will interfere with my work. I have physical therapy and a car appointment at nearly the same time. This means I have to get my car to the dealer, at the other end of town, have the dealer person drive me back to the library, using up personal time to do that, and walk to my p.t. Somehow the notion of walking to the session that's for your bad knee seems counter-productive, but the place is only about 5 blocks from the library. I've stopped taking ibuprofen to see what my knee really feels like. Today I have a sinus headache. If it's not one body part it's another.

I'm not sure what I'll work on today. I need to dig up statistics to prove how much busier we are now than we've been in the past. Hmmm, wouldn't know it by me, now would you.