Weekend, Plus a Little WTF

My weekend off, which included Monday, was primarily devoted to some much-needed yardwork and left me sore, sore, sore. On the plus side, I did some hard pruning of one of my apple trees and used the twigs to make this cute little woven trellis for my sugar snap peas.



And before any of you go telling me that sugar snap peas vine a lot higher than that, it's a dwarf variety that should do just fine. The front soaker hose has parsley planted along it, and I also planted lettuce mix in with the red leaf mustard that's coming up from last year's seed and some Sugarsnax carrots in amongst my garlic, which I'll have in spades (Get it? Spades!) this summer. There's quite a bit more yet to be planted outside the raised beds, too, so I'm going to need to get butt in gear and start preparing the ground.

The bulk of the soreness, though, came from doing battle with a couple of huge stands of multiflora rose behind our shed and along the road that we let go far too long. David got out and snipped a lot of the individual branches a few weeks back, but I lopped off more, pulled a bunch down from where it was intertwined in the sumac trees, and got some triclopyr stump treatment to try to kill it off at the roots. While I was at it, I also treated some of my arch-nemesis, bittersweet, which I hate with the passion of a thousand suns. As bad as the multiflora is, it at least provides nectar for bees. Bittersweet is good for absolutely nothing, period.

Hopefully, though, this weekend's endeavors will help us get both scourges under control and, eventually, eradicated from the property. I expect, though, that they'll give my back plenty of reason to ache for at least the next few years.

Um, Yeah

I was just going back through old pages on Fail Blog and just happened upon this one, which is only a couple of miles from where I went to high school.


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Actually, considering the sizable influx of workers from Mexico and Central America over the past 10-15 years, that sign isn't terribly surprising. When you're used to a barter economy and the bulk of your income goes back home in remittances, you're likely to - what else - barter for goods and services. It's still kind of funny, though.

But not as funny as this:


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Weekend Report

I would have dashed this off earlier, but like Rabbitch, my computer has been on the fritz lately. I'm hoping that a new power cord will do the trick, but I fear it may be a terminal illness (Get it? Computer? Terminal?).

Anyway, David & I drove downeast to my grandmother's Thursday night, the plan being to spend Friday and Saturday driving around and scoping out venues for our wedding, places for guests to stay, possible options for rehearsal dinner, post-wedding brunch, etc. Friday, of course, looked like this:



We got at least 8" (20cm - don't ask why I know that without doing any calculations), though it was a little difficult to tell with the high winds and drifting. Needless to say, the day was a total wash and we didn't venture out at all.

Saturday was much nicer and we managed a bit of driving around. We were only able to properly visit Three Pines B & B, which is about 15 minutes from my grandmother's in a lovely spot overlooking the water. I'd been wanting to visit them for some time because they're completely off the grid and they have a small farm with a small flock of rare breed sheep. Though too small for the actual event, I think, it may be a good place for David & myself, and perhaps some of our friends with kids, to spend that weekend. David loved it so much that when we got in the car to leave he said, "Forget making a reservation. Let's just see if we can buy them out."

I took several pics of their animals, but my favorite has to be this one of their Shetland ram, Fideles (I think I spelled that right), who is very handsome and very friendly.




I'm Gonna Live Forever, I'm Gonna Learn How To Fly

After my recent mention on the world-famous Cute with Chris show, Chris posted a follow up letter and cute pic from (not of) me on his blog. Chris is not a pal o' mine, to answer knitnzu's question, but a Canadian actor whose work - particularly one film I first saw several years ago - I like very much.

I have Stephen to thank for finding Cute with Chris, because Chris appears in the full length version of the short posted here. He looked vaguely familiar (maybe because my feeble memory remembered the movie, but more likely because, as the staff at work all pointed out, he looks like a veterinarian we all know, incidentally also named Chris), so a little bit of googling brought me to the CWC site, and I was quickly addicted. After all, who can resist a talking plastic horse with apparent gender identity and God issues and animals with laser eyes. Certainly not me.