Garden Care

If there's one thing I neglected during the school year even more than my housework, it's my garden.  I felt really bad about it, but I simply did not have the energy to spare.  That is, until this past Tuesday!  As every morning, I got  up with Bryan at around 5:45 am and fixed his lunch and made him oatmeal (instant--the best kind! lol) and saw him off to work.  Normally, at this point, I would have gone back to bed for a few hours, but on Tuesday I just couldn't bring myself to lay back down.  My theory is that my body knew that I SHOULD have been going to water aerobics at 9, but since the truck is still out of commission, Bryan had my car.

So, I decided to actually work in my garden!  I gathered all of my things together from the various places they had ended up since my last gardening exploit and started working about 7:30 am.

Before I got started, the weeds were out of control.

My bottle brush plants had taken off, and while I was glad to see them growing in such an--enthusiastic--fashion, they really were quite out of control.  The same could be said for my loropetalums.  The bush in the front--I still don't know it's name--also needed some pruning.

The first thing I did was prune all of the above.  As I picked up the trimmings, I also weeded.  For the most part, that went smoothly.  Except for the three--THREE!--large growths of poison ivy I found!  That was disturbing--I hate that little three-leaved plant.  I got them up, roots and all, so hopefully they won't make a reappearance.  I also got the vine-grass that was growing by the mini-gardenias--that stuff has DEEP roots!

It took two hours of steady working.  Of course, I had only planned for an hour, so I got a late start on preparing the Sweet and Tangy Chicken, but overall the front gardens look much better, if I do say so myself!  But don't get me started on the back gardens...sigh.

May Flowers!

It's been a little while since I've done a garden post, and it's definitely time to catch up!  My lovelies have been showing off their beautiful blooms all this month, including my front orchid which is on its fourth or fifth rebloom and the back orchids which have produced a flower apiece!  My two late-blooming mini azaleas have also put in an appearance.  I can't wait to share!

Our magnolia started blooming at the beginning of the month, and still has a flower or two on it now.  I LOVE the smell of magnolia blossoms--it reminds me of summer time at my Dee Dee and Gan Gan's house when I was young.

My pineapple guava plants have also bloomed this year!  I was especially excited about these blooming because last year I only saw two flowers.  This year there were quite a few!  Interesting fact:  if you pull off one of the white petals and eat it, it's actually quite sweet and refreshing!  Very yummy :-).

I also have discovered the name of another plant that I think is just gorgeous.  Even though my husband used the weed wacker on my stalks last year, I am relieved to say that most of my agapanthus (aka Lily of the Nile, aka African Lily) are blooming beautifully.  I'm worried about one of them, but I'll wait and see how it does.

 Another scent that I adore is the smell of gardenias.  We had regular gardenia bushes in the front flower bed at my parents house, so the smell immediately makes me feel at home.  My mini gardenias around the side of the front of the house exploded last week, and the ones in the very front flowerbed have started blooming this week.  Happily this means that every time I leave home or return I get to smell them!

In other plant news, I put my bougainvillea through its first summer prune.  I was really starting to worry about it--most of its leaves had fallen off and it only had a few blooms left.  The stems were all bare and spindly.  That said, ONE DAY after pruning it made an amazing comeback!  I watered it as well, and it got even happier!  I think I've finally got the water schedule down--when the dirt feels dry, water!  It sounds so simple, but with this plant I really have to pay close attention!  I'm just very glad that it has perked back up!  Here's the before and after:

 Another plant that I was afraid I had managed to kill is my ivy.  As you may remember, I attempted to regrow root systems for a couple of cutting from the original plant.  I am happy to say that, so far, it has been a success!  The roots regrew beautifully, and I replanted the cuttings in a clay orchid pot which has very good draining.  So far, the cuttings seem to like the Miracle Grow potting soil and their location on my kitchen window sill.  I keep checking the dirt--I don't want to drown the plant again BUT I don't want to dehydrate it either.  I'll probably water it either tomorrow or Thursday.

All of my plants seem to be happy.  Even our yard, which was horribly neglected by the contractor's landscaping company, has started to prosper under my hubby's amazing care!  In this picture you can see the St. Augustine filling in from the side of the yard (not to mention my sexy husband mowing the yard).  Soon it will squeeze out all of the weed grass!

I sure do love this time of year!

Flowers Flowers Everywhere!

My garden is really doing spectacularly!  I need to weed at some point, and some the plants are still waiting to bloom until later, but I am super excited about how well everything has come back this spring!

First off are my bottle-brush plants.  I know I've spoken of them before, but now they are in full bloom!

 As you can see on the right, my orchid is also doing exceptionally well :-).  The lizard still prefers the orchid, but there are some smaller critters that LOVE the red blossoms on the bottle-brush plants...the bees!

The fortnight lilies have also taken off, and now I am seriously reconsidering my plan to pull some of them up.  Now I'm thinking about trimming down the hawthorn bushes in the front right flowerbed so that they and the lilies can coexist without making the flowerbed look overgrown.  I do want to plant some other flowers though, and right now there's just not room.  Oh well, that's a quandary for later.  Back to my wonderful garden!

The flowering plants I have yet to identify around the side of the house have started putting out buds again!  When they bloom, I'll identify them and then post pictures.  The holly trees are all doing very well (much to Bryan's chagrin lol), and the magnolia is about to bloom!  I can't wait...I absolutely LOVE that smell!

And last but not least, my pride and joy--also known as my orange tree--has put on even more height, and its trunk is starting to "wood up".  I am just so relieved that it survived the freezes this winter and is flourishing in the growing season this spring! 

My Quasi-Green Thumb

The recent rain has been very good for my plants and our yard--Bryan says it looks like a jungle lol.  The St. Augustine is finally really waking up, which is exciting to see.  I get no credit for that though--the yard is Bryan's project :-).


I'm really having fun watching my plants grow and learning about them.  That said, as my title indicates, I still have a lot to learn!  First of all, my bougainvillea dropped half its leaves because I put it in a windy place and it got upset.  It is starting to put out more leaves and blooms again though!  Also, I have once again failed at growing an ivy.  My first ivy adventure was back in college, but this time I managed to almost completely kill off the ivy my parents got my for Valentine's Day.

As you can see, there are still a few healthy stems in the pot.  I'm going to leave those be and see how they do.  I did cut out/pull up a few still-healthy stems and place them in clear glasses of water (per my mama's instructions) so that they can start regrowing roots.  I'll give them a few days and once they sprout roots I'll go get a pot that actually drains (which was part of the problem) and fill it with good potting soil.  And THEN I won't over-water (another part of the problem) and make sure they get enough light (the final part of the problem lol).

On to my happier plants--my orchid is blooming!  There are two blooms and at least three buds that will probably bloom in the next day or so.  I love my orchid...I only wish the ones in the back yard were doing as well.  I don't think they get enough sun (due to the huge plant blocking them).  But the one out front is doing amazingly!

Also my bottle brush plants are finally starting to bloom!  There's even doing better than last year, so that makes me super happy.  I love their brilliant red and fuzzy flowers.

I'm starting to compile a spreadsheet of the plants I have, what foods they like, and how to take care of them (when to prune, for example).  Hopefully I'll be able to a)actually finish the spreadsheet, and b)use it to make my plants the healthiest they can be!

And on an exciting note for the next gardening post---my magnolia tree has a TON of blooms getting ready to blossom!

Garden Sleuth!

I am the Garden Sleuth!

Ok, ok not really.  I am just so excited that I found out the names for two more of my front yard plants!

  These are mini azaleas!  My mom thought she recognized the as such when we had our girls' day, and I verified that through a comparison with my true azaleas and through this wonderful thing called Google!  lol.

These are dietes bicolor, or fortnight lilies!  This one took me quite a bit of time to figure out...I ended up stumbling across a Yahoo! question posted about a year ago by someone else trying to figure out what the heck they are!  I love these plants, but some of them are going to have to go.  The landscapers used individual bulbs of them as filler--which they definitely are NOT.  So, some of the will be replaced with some annuals this summer at some point.


Those are my two new discoveries!  I still need to identify much of the shrubbery, but since a lot of that does not bloom, it will probably take me a bit longer.

In other gardening news, Bouncer and Bryan rented an aerator for the lawns.  We hope that by getting more oxygen down to the root systems, our St. Augustine will finish waking up and then CHOKE OUT all the other weed grass that is currently flourishing in our yard.  With that, I'm off to prop my ankle up...silly system coming through has it all flared.  But hooray for the rain for my plants!

Spring Has Finally Sprung!

While this leaves my poor husband at the mercy of the pollen and allergens filling the air, it also means that my plants are starting to bloom and sprout new growth!  I was worried about them after the harsh winter we had down here (hey now! it was harsh by Houston standards), but most of them survived and are starting to flourish once more.  And so, for the first time in a while, I am pleased to present a post about my garden!!!

First I'll look at my indoor "garden of one".  My mom and dad gave me a beautiful ivy for Valentine's Day.  Unfortunately, I'm beginning to thing I've killed it.  It started out so healthy, but I think I over-watered it, and now about half of the leaves are yellowing.  It is still putting out new growth though, and there are still a lot of healthy leaves, so maybe if I start properly caring for it, it will recover.  Ivy and I don't have a supergood track record though, so I'm a bit concerned.  I hope it will be ok.

Outside, the two plants I worried over the most this winter were my baby orange tree and my pygmy date palm trio.  I covered my little orange tree, but pretty much left the palm trio to fend for itself, hoping that its own fronds (both living and dead) would provide the core with enough protection to keep it alive.  My orange tree managed fairly well, losing only a couple of branches to the cold and several leaves to frost damage.  Now, it's already putting out new growth!  I would say it has gained about an inch in height due to the new leaves, and the trunk has gained respectably in girth.  The trunk also has a woody appearance, as opposed to the green stem it once had!  I am so proud of my little orange tree--it was a gift from Ethan and Julie and arrived at our house as a sapling in pot.  We let it grow up a bit and then transplanted it into the yard.  Last year I put in a citrus spike, and I put in this spring's spike in February.  I am loving watching my tree grow!



The pygmy date palms' fronds did protect the trio's cores from the cold, but at the cost of their own lives.  That said, most of the fronds were only dead about three-quarters of the way in.  This past Saturday, I looked up pygmy date palm care, and carefully trimmed the dead parts of the fronds off, to let the green core and the remaining green stems have access to the sunlight.  The smallest palm of the trio fared the best.  It only lost one frond, due to the helpful coverage of the fronds from the largest palm.  I have to say, trimming those pygmy date palms was one of the most hazardous gardening jobs I've done yet!  The fronds all have thorns on them, the smallest of which was a full INCH!  On top of that, I, smart girl that I am, was working without my gardening gloves!  There was quite a bit of "ow"-ing and no lack of cursing under my breath. 

While I worked on that project, Bryan and Bouncer and Alicia spread mulch (I helped after the palm was trimmed--I also went and got lunch and BEER!!!).  You know you've got amazing friends when they're willing to spend most of their Saturday helping you haul and spread mulch in your flower beds!  Never fear, we'll return the favor this summer when the time comes to mulch their flower beds again!

Of my other plants, we lost four of the pretty hot pink/pink flowering bushes in the front.  I'm not sure what they are exactly, but am endeavoring to find out.  Once Bouncer dug them up though, I was no longer surprised that they hadn't survived.  Whatever contract landscaper put them in originally left them so root-bound that their roots still looked like the pot they came in!  At this point, I'm surprised the others are doing as well as they are:  two of them are blooming, one has all its leaves, and the other two are putting out new growth!

My orchid seems to be happy, and has no less than four new buds getting ready to open in the next couple of weeks!  I really do need to do some research on orchid care--pruning and feeding and such--but I think its a little late right now (except for maybe feeding), since it is the growing season.  It's the favorite resting spot for my garden's lizards, so leaving it a bit overgrown won't hurt anything.

 

Bouncer identified my small green bushes with the white flowers as hawthornes and I finally figured out the purple-leaved pink-flowered shrubs are called loropetalum.  The loropetalum have already had their big bloom--it was so pretty!  They looked fuzzy with their pink flowers!  There are still a few blooms left for us to enjoy, but the hawthornes are the ones blooming incredibly at the moment.  Bouncer did say that they had a bit of fungus on them--nothing too horrible--and offered to let me borrow his fungicide.  I'll probably get it this weekend.  It's good to know that hawthornes are NOT supposed to have purple leaves though!    We have a TON of these pretty plants in the front, and three in the back under the magnolia tree.

My mini camellias are doing ok.  The one on the right side of the garage bloomed spectacularly, but the one on the left has only produced one flower so far.  I'm a bit worried that the cold might have affected it more than the other, but seeing as it is putting out new growth still it might just be a matter of giving it more time.  I think it bloomed later than the other one last year as well--just not by this much.  Oh well, even if it doesn't bloom, it is a very handsome green plant, and there's always next year.  I'll probably get them some food too.



Speaking of the back yard, all of the plants there are doing very well.  I pulled up some grass-like plants that look nice, but were being shut away from the sun by the ball tree/bush.  I need to pull the ones out front too, for the same reason but because of a different plant.  I'm also thinking about pulling up some of the yellow-flowered grass-like plants (still trying to find their name too!) in the front because there are just SO MANY bunches of them!  The shrubs, front and back, came through without much frost damage, and the trees are doing well.  In the back, the small orchids are doing ok, but I'm thinking of pulling them up.  They don't bloom much, and the dogs have pretty much trampled the smallest one.  I feel bad, since they've lived this long, but I think we might be able to put something a bit hardier there.

Also, my azaleas are blooming!  At least, I'm pretty sure they're azaleas.  The look gorgeous, if I do say so myself.  I feel as if I should research care on those as well, but honestly they've done just fine with me only weeding, watering, and trimming.  I will probably look up the best time of year to trim them back, and maybe try a food next year, but they do so well on their own that I really am not too worried about it!

My newest edition, my bougainvillea, is doing well.  After the wind blew off all of the blooms while we were in Costa Rica, it's starting to bloom again!  Since it is a desert plant, I don't need to water it as often I had had been, so I've backed of to once every couple of weeks.  I'll probably back off more than that, but for now that's my pace.  Bouncer said the man to whom he spoke about bougainvilleas said that "torturing" the plant results in the best blooms.  I'll find my own water balance, and maybe try a bit of food, but until summer (when I will cut it back a bunch) I'll mostly just let it do its thing.

I love my garden all year round, but the spring is especially exciting.  Seeing the flowers is always lovely, but I also get excited to see the new growth my plants put forth.  It's also the perfect time to learn more about my plants and how to care for them--which will be the material for many more gardening posts!  On that note, I'm going to go play with the pups for a bit (including Lindsay's Tiberius) and play Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers (I beat Twilight Princess finally--wonderful ending!) which is a fantastic game!  And I intend to fully enjoy my three day weekend, starting with a girls day with my mom (and Alicia for mom's hair appointment) tomorrow!

Summertime Goals

I would say sorry for not blogging more, but 1) I think I might be one of two people who read this, and 2) this summer has been so nice and laid back I haven't really felt the impetus to blog! Anyways...

The dog days of summer are in full swing here in Texas. This means plenty of time in doors, and plenty of jumps in the electric and water bills :-P. But other than the heat and money being tight, it's been a wonderful 3 1/2 weeks since school got out. I can't believe it's already July! I had several goals for this summer, and I feel like I'm just starting to make some progress on them.

My first goal was to learn to cook more than just spaghetti. And I succeeded! Before my husband and I married, my mom's side of the family (mostly women) compiled a cookbook for me of all of their favorite recipes, and my mother-in-law did the same for some of the primary recipes from my in-laws. So, I used one of my grandmother's recipes and made a really good meatloaf! How good?, you may ask. Well, good enough that my hubby was happy to eat it for dinner, and then again for lunch AND dinner the next day! I count that as a complete success! I also made a greenbean casserole that came from his mom's recipe book, and it turned out yummy as well! As for dessert, I made a strawberry layer cake, which required making my own cornstarch/sugar gelatin to mix with strawberry jello for the second layer! I even got creative and decorated it like the American flag (it was for the 4th)! So now, my goal in the coming weeks (once I get paid and can afford to go by foodstuffs just for cooking elaborate meals again) is to try a few more of the recipes out of the cookbooks!

My second goal was to get the gardens in order. My man and I have made a great start on that! I've decided to wait until the spring to plant anything new, BUT we have successfully remulched approximately half of the gardens in the backyard so far! It took nine whole bags of mulch and a lot of backbreaking weeding. Now, we've just got the rest of the back, and then the front to go! We're using a red cedar mulch that looks amazing, even when dried out, smells wonderful, and helps keep the bug population down.

A third goal was to find an exterminator. We ended up going with OnDuty, because they had already installed the in-wall bug system while this house was constructed, and they were the most bang for our buck. I was a bit skeptical about the effectiveness of the in-wall system, but since they've come out, the only bugs I've seen in the house are DEAD bugs! YAY!!! And the spray they used outside was highly effective as well. The only really sad part is that they put poison sheets in the garage and one of our hoppy toads from the garden found his way inside and onto a sheet. He died. I cried...he was a very cute hoppy toad. Hubby was going to bury him for me, but he was stuck tight to the poison sheet, so his grave went from garden to trash can. I'm glad there are no more (or at least fewer) bugs, but I'm still sad about the hoppy toad.

A fourth goal had three parts: 1) get back into a workout routine, 2) eat healthier, and 3) lose weight. The first part has met with partial success, since there was a hiatus of about a week. The second part I feel has been achieved, but there's always room for improvement! The third part I have seen some success in...to the tune of about 5 lbs! Which, granted, I had been hoping for more, but this time, since I'm making a lifestyle change and not just doing a quick diet, I'm ok with slow progress. It makes me hope that I'm adjusting my lifestyle and metabolism enough that whatever weight I lose will actually stay off instead of yo-yoing.

The fifth goal was to paint the garage. HAHAHAHAHA. Yeah, that hasn't happened, and probably won't this summer. 1) Paint is freaking EXPENSIVE and 2) it is freaking HOT in that garage right now! So, maybe, that will be a project for next spring or (maybe) next summer.

Another goal that has been ongoing is the accumulation of furniture for the downstairs of our home. It has almost been achieved!!! We have the couch, coffee and end tables, a kitchen table, and a dining room table! The china cabinet will come next week! So all that leaves for downstairs is the entertainment center! And a new gun safe! And the way we're doing it--saving up the money and THEN purchasing the items--means we will have fully outfitted the main living areas in our house within a year of moving in WITHOU accumulating any more debt or adding an extra bill to our monthly budget (financing). WHOOP! As far as the upstairs goes, my talented husband is working on building the rest of the bookshelves this fall, and then wants to build a Dixie Chicken domino/card/game table for the upstairs game room. We want to get sky chairs and a stand hammock for the library (it totally makes sense if you could see the theme we're developing in there!!!), and I need to finish assembling the furniture/decorating the guest bedroom. So the end is in sight! Or at least it is, as long as we're not talking about decorating the rest of the house lol. I'm gonna try my hand at interior decorating according to our tastes and see how it goes! But that will wait probably til next summer.

Apart from goals, this summer has had a lot of fun times too! There was our 1 year anniversary (not technically summer, but I still count it!), the new grill from my parents as an anniversary gift and all the meals with family and friends cooked upon it, the visits to and from friends who live further away, exciting news (one of my best friends is engaged!!!!), lots of movies watched, video games played, books read, and lots of wonderfully long and alternately active and lazy weekend days with my husband! It truly has been a great summer. I can feel the stirrings of teacherness in me, and I think I'll be ready for school when it starts and even for the professional development at the end of this month and the beginning of next, but for now I intend to continue to enjoy this wondeful, relaxing summer!

And right now, that's absolutely all I'm thinking. ;-)

Accountability

This is going to be a very brief entry--TAKS testing makes me tired. The "accountability" I mention is in regards to both my gardening resolution and my workout resolution! I spent 30 minutes pulling weeds in the front flowerbeds (and got ate up by mosquitoes in the process)! I worked up a good sweat too! I'm glad the ground was wet...otherwise those weeds would have been freaking hard to pull out. So anyway, yay for holding myself accountable!

Funky Town

Well, funky mood anyway. I'm content, but definitely in an odd mood. The hubby keeps asking me if I'm sad about something today--and I'm not. I'm just feeling a bit off. I think it's because this weekend triggered a series of reminiscent conversations covering former friends and the motivations behind people distancing themselves from friends. As often happens, delving back into memories of the past leaves me feeling frustrated with those former friends, and frustrated with the lack of closure in those relationships due to my own decision to leave certain things unsaid. I don't regret that decision--it was the right and mature route to take--but the lack of having had my "final word" said/heard always results in lingering frustration when the past comes back up. Well, that's enough about that. The good news is that the husband and I renewed a friendship from college this Spring, and that friend came down to hang out this weekend. It was great! It feels as if we've hit restart on our friendship, and that the drama and hurt that was involved is truly water under the bridge (though I'm still not sure what exactly I did, other than prioritize my relationship with my then boyfriend-soon-to-be-fiance, and my now husband).

Speaking of the hubby, yesterday we helped one of our couple friends move into a new apartment. Today, it's a "lazy Sunday" for us: which means we're relaxing and working around the house instead of going anywhere. The hubby is working on finishing the third bookshelf for our library, and I'm puttering with the laundry and kitchen, and really want to vacuum the living room here in a bit. I also got out in the backyard and weeded the flower bed for awhile--but then my back started hurting, and it was really hot, so I came back inside. I think I shall set a new goal: work on weeding the garden 15-30 minutes a day for the next two weeks. That way, by the weekend after next, the flowerbeds will hopefully be ready for remulching! And I'll work towards late afternoon/early evening so that it isn't too hot.

For now, we're watching Happy Gilmore, and I'm trying to shake this funk. I'll get up here in a minute and change out the laundry, and empty/load the dishwasher. Tomorrow I'm going to a conference with several other department members, and I'm looking forward to that--especially because I won't have a "normal" classroom day next week! Tomorrow was the only normal schedule day--the rest is TAKS. Which means test administration, not actual teaching--yay for a mindless, if tiring, week! Wednesday our living room set will be delivered, and this weekend we're flying to Wisconsin for another couple friend's wedding (the hubby is a groomsman--yay for seeing my handsome man in a tux!!!). So, I've got a great week coming up, and today is a wonderful day too...I've just gotta get out of this mood. So, here I go! Wish me luck lol

RAWR*

*RAWR means I love you in dinosaur. <3

I saw that on a T-shirt on Friday, and absolutely love it! I'm thinking about trying to track that shirt down and buy it online somewhere.

Other than that, I don't have a lot of deep thoughts today. It has been a wonderful weekend though. Yesterday, hubby and I worked in the yard. I picked up all the dog shit before he mowed, and then weeded one of the side flowerbeds. We really need to get some ant poison...the fire ants are getting ridiculous! And don't tell me "It's Texas, what do you expect?" I've lived in Texas my whole life, and the fire ant infestation we have in our yard is ridiculous. Other than that, we also bought some citrus spikes for my baby orange tree :-). Thanks to the stakes and line hubby but up and around the tree (in the dark, as it was raining no less...he sure does love me!!!), it no longer is growing horizontally! It's actually starting to straighten and strengthen its little baby tree trunk! And it's recovering from the underwatering I inflicted upon it :-(. The leaves are all a nice green color again! Last night, hubby cooked a wonderful meal: marinated venison steaks, green beans, hominy and wine! I made sour dough rolls (I used the bread starter mix and yeast pack, added water, and actually MADE bread--dough kneading and the whole nine yards--it was fun!). We had a wonderful dinner and watched a movie, then went to bed.

Today we rolled out of bed and went to see the new Fast and Furious movie...and it was AWESOME!!! They definitely did not disappoint, and I love how the wove enough details from the other movies into this one to make the entire series a cohesive unit!!! I'm going to have to eventually buy the other movies in the series--except for Tokyo Drift. We already own that one ;-).

Dirty Hands

I worked out in the garden for about an hour today. I pulled up stupid trailing weeds, stubborn crab grass, and (accidentally) a couple of trailing roots from my bushes. Oooops! But it was really a good time! My hands slowly turned black as the dirt ingrained itself into my pores. My nails became useless for prying up root systems--their was too much mulch and mud underneath. The air was cool, but the evening sun was soothingly warm. My joints weren't exactly happy with a lengthy session of kneeling awkwardly under bushes, but I shifted position enough to keep their complaints to a minimum. There are many religions that espouse the benefits of trying to be closer to nature...my hour in the garden left me feeling at peace and calm. And it makes me happy that the army of not-wanted green things trying to take over my garden has been reduced drastically in size!

I had a lot I wanted to blog about when I started typing. My thoughts generally revolved around what I want to accomplish this weekend, how ready I am for summer, etc. There were a few other thoughts--mostly regarding our beagle's misadventure this morning (she moved the bricks blocking the fence and dug into the neighbor's yard), and an article I read about online RPGs and marital fidelity (apparently some people don't think having online game sexual relationships with avatars of people other than their spouse is cheating---yeah, pretty sure the "forsaking ALL others" part of the marriage vows does NOT differentiate between real people and virtual ones, but anywho). So, after my calming reflection on my gardening activities, I was all geared to go into a full recounting of my main thoughts of the day.

Of course, then I stopped, took a shower, shaved, lounged in my fluffy and cheerful bathrobe (fluffly b/c it's terry cloth, and cheerful b/c it's a bright yellow lol) painting my toenails, and then dried my hair. So now I'm clean, warm, and have pretty toes. I'm cuddled in the recliner with a fuzzy blanket and a good action flick on the TV. In other words, I think my brief overview will suffice for the moment. Maybe later I'll delve further into today's thoughts, maybe not.

Anyways, I was just thinking.