The front of the house

Sam wanted to see my garden pictures. Well, I only got two usable ones, but these are them. Highlights include mulch instead of weeds and lack of Virginia Creeper VINES on the house, because I am zealously killing them to death and pulling them down, like every couple of days. The left plant is a Texas Bush Sage, and it has large purple flowers all summer (comes back from nothing every year and gets huge). Flowers are just about to start. Then the pink thing I just planted, and can't remember what it is, but there's a purple one, too. The turtle comes from Lee's old house and I made him bring it here because I like it and the Ex is not here to forbid garden statuary any more. It has vinca/periwinkle in it, of various pink and purple colors. The undefined green stuff is a mix of red snapdragons and white alyssum. Bugs just ate all the white flowers, but the snapdragons are doing better than usual, due to better watering and fertilizing than I usually manage. They will croak at some point in the summer, though, but that is OK--usually the white lantana comes up and covers the dead spring stuff.



This one is the other side of the previous picture and includes my sophisticated use of MS Paint to get rid of Older Boy's name on the sign (so Flickr viewers don't see it, not y'all). This shows some blue salvia behind the rest of the snapdragons. The taller plants at the left are pink snapdragons (blooming now) that have been in there at least three years (last time I managed to plant anything). They are much bigger than they were in previous years thanks to mulch, weeding and fertilizing. You do not see the evil honeysucke VINES that are trying to eat the poor crape myrtyle and salvia gregii on the end. I do like the dwarf something-or-other hedge by the windows. In ten years that is as big as it has gotten, and I have not had to trim it. For once, a foundation plant that doesn't soon outgrow its role.

So, that's one little bed in the front of the yard. And note the grass. It exists. I do have a lawn.

And from now on, I will make VINES very big. Because I obsess about them. Not even thinking about how the grape vine in back is trying to come back from the brink. Getting the RoundUp out.

One Other Topic

I was so nice and ordered Lee some flowers to show support for his divorce hearing this morning. Only, after I ordered them, it got canceled. ACK and these were not cheap flowers (they also came with a nice vase and matching picture frame). So, now they are sympathy flowers for not getting to get the thing OVER with yet. It's so stressful!

Green, Green Grass

Look, look look. See, see see. See grass grow.

Grow grass, grow!

This is not a very exciting photo unless you are familiar with the vast expanse of bare dirt that is my back yard. Then, you are thrilled to see those li'l blades of grass shimmering in the sun! And that photo was taken on Sunday. Today you can REALLY see the grass, and Lee has filled in some gaps with more seed. It is conceivable that, soon, a person would consider us to have a "lawn."

Whoa.

I didn't spend all weekend watching grass grow. I taught a lot of knitting, went to church and learned interesting things about societies in an exercise we all did as a family. We were all members of different "cities" named after types of ice cream, and the "mayor" and "sherrif" wandered around doling out favors or not. And there was someone acting as permit person who showed favoritism too. It was supposed to be a microcosm of society and show how you start to act like how you are treated. It was pretty fun! We made our city a commune off the grid, but still could not avoid influences of others.

So, what else...last night was the annual birthday bash of my friend Austin. Not as many people as usual, but still a lot of music. I got to introduce Lee to a lot of my music friends, and was relieved to find out that some of the ones I really care about ARE my friends, and not just people who were nice to me because I was with Jeff. A couple of people made a big point of saying that they would like to see me more and do stuff with me and Lee. And more than one told me how wonderful I am for being so kind to Jeff. I told one woman that Jeff had been hard to live with and she said, "Oh, I KNOW, you are an ANGEL to have been to good to him for so long." So, that was nice.

Lee spent a lot of time out on the labyrinth. He sure loves it, and it had a big pool of moonlight right in the center. Beautiful.

Unfortunately, I ended up having two too many margaritas from the marvelous frozen margarita machine. Lee kept refilling. Then he made another one when we got home. It ended up being QUITE the fun evening, but this morning my head sure hurt, and I had job interview stuff to do!

And Job Interview Marathon went well. 4 hours of talking, but it ended up really, really good. I loved the place and the people seemed very nice as well. Tomorrow I have two--someone called in this morning having looked at my resume from last year and gave me a call--wow, someone actually DID call when something fitting my skills came up!