Not Really Been A Good Year

I'm not gonna try to list everything.   Some things you don't need to know, some are boring, and I'll probably forget to mention some.

The neighbors got a yappy dog.  The Mom there lets it out in the backyard as soon as the kids leave for school.  It runs around barking all day long,  It drives me crazy when I am in the backyard.  It seems convinced it should kill me.  Which is sort of funny, because if it somehow got in my yard I could strangle it with one hand.  Not that I would, but if it died of natural causes or the family moved away, I wouldn't shed a tear.  

And I suspect the Mom doesn't much love it either because as I said, she puts it out in the fenced backyard as soon a the kids leave for school.  It must be maddening to have it in the house.  I am surrounded by dogs on 3 sides.  The yappy dog on the east, a large barky dog on the south (which desperately tries to get at me through the fence), and 2 large dogs to the west (which are at least mostly indoors and don't threaten or make much noise).  But the east and south dogs make being in my backyard less pleasant than it should be.

Taxes were a misery last April.  I fill out the H&R Block software forms, then tried to "finish" them.  I kept getting a notification that I was "not on the network".  Which was ridiculous because I was all over the internet otherwise.  I wasn't going to try to call H&R Block just a few days before the filing date, so I filed for an extention and sent the Feds and State estimated additional tax payments to be safe.

The next day, I had my annual physical exam.  Everything was fine.  But 2 days later I woke up , got out of bed and fell to the floor with terrible right hip pain.  Three days later, I had an appointment with my primary care doctor.  He got me scheduled  for a hip x-ray at the radiology lab in the same building (it's not a hospital but a combined medical center).  

Guess who didn't have an x-ray technician on staff (vacant position for 4 months)?  But the center had an emergency x-ray center a block away.  They were alarmed at the results.  They said I had either bone marrow or metastatic cancer.  I went through a more detailed series of tests over the course of a month (needed a roller-walker to get around with difficulty), and was then referred to an oncologist and an MRI specialist to have more tests.  3 month waiting list...

But the pain went away after another (2nd) month.  It became obvious that the problem was a very severe groin muscle injury that healed slowly.  I felt perfectly fine again.  

But that completely ruined my gardening season.  By the time I could get around outside, I was late with my tomatoes, corn, and beans.  I had ordered ten 10 gallon buckets (so I could put them in the sunniest part of the backyard) to plant them in and bought a small trailerload of 50/50 topsoil/compost to fill them.  But by then it was June.  I never got a decent crop of anything.

Funny thing about the trailerload of soil/compost.  I have good at basic geometry.  I calculated the cubic feet for 10 cylindrical buckets.  Looked up the volume of the nursery bucketloader.  It said I needed 2 bucketloads, so I went and bought 2.

The nursery apparently has a very wrong idea about the cubic feet the bucketloader delivers.  I filled up all 10 buckets with only a 1/3 of it.  Not knowing quite what to do with the other 2/3s, I covered the trailer with a tarp waiting for inspiration.

But before my hip injury, I had ordered about 500 various Spring bulbs.  They arrived in mid November and sat in my chilly basement.  I decided to smother the grassy weeds in the front yard island with standard brown packing paper, cover it with the trailer soil to hold it down, and then plant most of the island with the daffodils by using an auger to drill holes through when the paper was wet.  

But that's a lot more work than it seems.  Even mild breezes want to blow the paper around.  So I bought 50 thin "bricks" to hold them down.  I got the island all covered with bricked paper.  Digging the trailer soil into buckets was harder than it used to be.  I have probably never quite recovered from falling off the extension ladder in 2021.

I am happy to say that I emptied the trailer of the last of the soil mix and covered the paper inn piles and raked them carefully to smooth it out.  We are supposed to get about 1.5" of rain the next 2 days, so the paper with be soft.  I will use my auger to drill 200 holes for the new daffodils.  Drilling holes with the auger is is not difficult.  Dropping bulbs in the holes is not difficult.  Raking the displaced soil back over them is not difficult.  The hard work is done.

I scraped the trailer pretty well of all soil.  The rain will clean the trailer of any leftovers.  So I will finally be done with that project.  Next is the crocuses and hyacinths.  I think I will just plant them (rather than make metal cages).  I'm just too tired these days.  I still have some crocuses and hyacinths surviving after 10 years (that the voles have never found) so I'l just hope for another 10 years.  By then I probably won't be able to do much landscaping anyway.

Civ 2 Game

 Finished a 3 week long game (played a few hours at a time several nights) at Prince level.  Got my civ to land on Alpha Centauri so     I won.  But it was a hard struggle.  The program knows everything I was doing.  And it cheats to make things harder.  If I am being successful, it builds units and advances faster and cheaper.

If I build a spaceship, it just builds a faster one.  You really have to gain a lot to stay ahead of it.  I usually lose.  And there are 2 levels above Prince (King and Deity).  

I won at Deity level once a decade ago.  I suppose my mind was sharper back then.  It's like chess.  At some point, you see everything and win, but in later years, some creativity slips away.

So I was glad for the win at Prince.  You can win 2 ways.  Kill all the other Civs militarly or land on Alpha Centuri.  I'm not the killer type, so I always go for the spaceship.  

I've tried the military thing a couple times, but it just isn't my nature.  I'm a builder and I arrange my forces defensively.  But I think the next game will be all force.  I need to know what that is like.  Really really really all force...  

A typical game image...

Pearl Harbor Day

I wasn't born yet then, but it was recent history when I was young.

 

Behind Yardwork

I find it harder to do yardwork these days.  Bad knees, bad back, muscle cramps from gripping tools tightly...  I think I have pushed my body too long doing too many things it really takes 2 people to do.  I sure wish I had a cloned Me to help out.  I may have to hire one.

Today, I got up and (because it was going to be 40F and windy) put on thermal underwear to prepare to move the last of the topsoil from the trailer to the front island bed (to start to plant bulbs I ordered last Spring) etc, it was past 4 pm.  It gets dark before 5 now.  Not much time to do anything useful!

Shorter days and Standard Time really mess up my life November to March...  I am not an early-riser these days.  

So by the time I made lunch, fed The Mews, started some laundry, cleaned the litterboxes, got the mail and newspaper, put out trash for pickup, cleaned up the kitchen pans and plates for the dishwasher, the light was about gone.

I just can't seem to get out of bed after only 8 hours these days.   8 hours in bed doesn't mean 8 hours of sleep for me.  I need 10-12 hours in bed to get 8 hours of sleep these days.  Getting old is bad enough, but needing that much bedtime for 8 hours of sleep is worse.  My awake time is getting less.  

I resist taking sleeping pills, but I've seen ads about"non-addictive" ones.  I will add that to the list of things to discuss with my Dr.

When I retired in 2006 after 35 years of getting up every day at 5 am (and returning home at 6 pm) I swore I would never get up that early again.  I might have to start forcing myself to get up earlier.

I have the front island almost covered with paper (to smother the grass) and soil covering most of it (to hold the paper down and fertilize the tree and future bulbs).

But I need to finish the soil covering and plant the bulbs.  😓

The odd part is that planting the bulbs will be the easy part.  The drill auger makes creating 6" holes in good soil easy.  Putting the bulbs in the ground is easy.  Raking the loose soil to cover the bulbs is easy.  

It is shoveling soil from the trailer into buckets and dumping the buckets onto the paper that is the hard part.  But any project has a hard part, and I have to get at that part before I can to the rest!

Food

Typical lunch:  A ham or turkey sandwich with lettuce and onions (actually usually just a half sandwich), surrounded with some crunchy veggies and tomatoes, green tea and half a Coke.  Usually a mug of chocolate milk too, but I had cheese on the sandwich.

Typical dinner:  3-4 oz of meat, a green veggie, a yellow/orange/red veggie, a tossed salad, 2 small glasses of wine.  I only make shrimp rolls about once a week though.  Pic is from last year, but the best one I could find.  And assorted fresh fruit for dessert.

I seldom make breakfast.  When I do, it is usually 2 fried eggs on a pancake with maple sausage.  I have the pancake down to a science.  3 spoonfuls of commercial mix, stirred with enough milk to leave it thick but pourable.  Small non-stick pan, heated to 375F (I have an infrared thermometer, sprayed with extra-virgin olive oil).  Pancake mix poured in immediately.  Two minutes on each side.

Turning the pancake can be tricky.  I can't just flip it up and have it come down centered in the pan, but I have a very thin flexible spatula that helps.  Another brief olive oil spray and both eggs go in.  The instant the egg whites are set, I turn off the heat, flip them, and count to 10.  I like a slighty runny yolk, but I can't stand runny whites.

I have both maple and country link sausage.  Maple goes with the pancakes and eggs.  On the rare occasions when I just make pancakes with maple syrup (the real stuff), I use the country links or bacon.  I pre-cook and freeze them, so it is just a matter of thawing them out.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about my diet, but I had the first picture and wanted to use it.  And all the rest just naturally followed.  😁

A Day Late

But I wanted to remember a sad day.

I remember some parts.  I was only 13.  I saw a lot on TV afterwards.  But my most specific image is the loudskeaker above the teacher's desk.  The Principal broadcast news that we were all to go home as school was dismissed for the day.  Those who could would.  Those who couldn't would stay in class and wait for their parents.  

Because the President had been shot and killed.  I biked to school, so I left.  But the image that remains with me is not the event itself (though that was important)).  What is strongest in my memory is the speaker box.  Because that was all we had to see at the time.  

It was about 12" square and about 6" deep.  It was pale wood.  The front was covered in a square or a circle of brown cloth (somehow, I can't remember that part well).  I picture screws in each corner of the front of the box.  

As events sometimes occur, my family visited the Grandparents for weeklong Thanksgiving Day visit.  It was a quiet dinner.  Grandad had the TV on all day, which in 1963 was a bit unusual.  Everything onair was about the funeral.

I may be slightly off on sone details.  It was 61 years ago.  But that is what my memory says...

 

Yappy Dogs

Marcia commented "But I suppose your neighbors are at work and just don't even think about the dog all day".  Actually, I think the dog was obtained just for the children.  Here is what I have observed...

The woman living there is a single parent.  There are 3 elementary-aged children.  I have noticed a guy (I presume an ex) seems to visit every other week and do some yard chores and takes the kids away for a weekend.  The woman and ex seem to get along well enough, but his car is never in the driveway for more than a few hours.

The children seem quite happy.  In the Summer, there is a trampoline and a small aboveground pool.  I hear them yelling in play, they run all over the backyard and they love their new dog.  That is all wonderful!

But I am guessing the Woman does not like the dog all that much and may be annoyed with its endless barking as much as I am.  It seems to me that, as soon as the children leave for school, the dog is sent outside and only brought in at dark.

It's one of those "the kids wanted a dog" things...  So it does what dogs do.  It runs around a lot.  It protects its people from threats.  It accepts the schedule set by its people, etc.

I don't blame the dog in any way, but I sure have known quieter ones!  

Various Stuff

My side-neighbor lit up Christmas lights last night.  My own house lights  are still up from Christmases ago.  Turned off of course.  The main floor hangs 2' forward from the basement and they hang on cup hooks.  I just never bothered to take them down.  You can't really see them from the street when unlit.

And they are nothing fancy, just a string of small blue lights on a timer.  I have a shrub and a tree I planted 2 years ago and put a cage around each to protect them from the deer.  I may add regular old-fashioned lights around them this year.  Blue.  I like blue.  The neighbors all do red/green lights, so the blue stands out a bit.  I am a bit non-standard sometimes.

I'll light them up December 1st.  I'm not crazy for these 6 week ahead of time decorations.  Too far ahead of time, and decorations seem to lose the connection to the holiday.  And I'll attach the nice sturdy white plastic wreath to the grille of the car then too.  

And I have a door-hanging Nutcracker to remember this year.  I have a top-of-the door hook.  And it doesn't blow around.  The front door is metal and I have a bunch of powerful magnets.

Laid down long strips of packing paper around the front yard island (with the Saucer Magnolia and the 3' boulder).  The paper will smother the grass.  I'm adding 2-3" of soil on that.  That will hold it in place.  Then I'll plant most of the 2 colors of 300 daffodils I received recently through that.

My bulb-planting drill auger will go right through the paper without tearing it up.

Then, with 3" of soil on top, all I have to do is rake soil back over all of them.

The rest of the daffs will go in the back yard to break up the large single-color daffs patches planting years ago.  I thought it was a good idea at the time to plant 4 different types in dedicated squares, but it is kind of boring.  So these new daffs will get planted among them for better and broader coverage and color.  

The hyacinths and crocuses will go in cages to protect them from the voles.  The hyacinths among the daffs around the birdfeeder.

The crocuses with be in cages too, but in the back lawn.  They bloom before I need to start mowing the grass.  I like seeing them in the lawn.

I have 2 forms I use to make the cages.  One is the wire mesh cutting pattern.  I first made small paper samples.  Then, when I got that right, I made a full-size cardboard version to cut the mesh with tin snips.  And then glued some scrap wood together so that I could fold the mesh around the wood block.

It sounds easier than it is, but it sure is easier than fashioning each one freeform!  And it is worth it.  hyacinths and crocuses can live more than a decade if the voles can't get at the bulbs.  In fact I have a few of each (unprotected) that are 25 years old.  

But "a few" is not "enough.  So it was time to replenish them.  

I have completely given up on tulips.  They are lovely but most of them don't live long.  I may try them again next Fall.  I have the thought of pulling up the 6' edging (that is sitting only 3" deep) and re-setting it down to ground level.  

Voles use mole tunnels to get around.  And moles don't usually dig tunnels 6" deep.  So if there is edging 6" deep, the moles won't tunnel there and the voles can't use the tunnels to get at hyacinth and crocus bulbs.  So no mole tunnels, no vole finding bulbs, and long-lived hyacinths and crocuses!

Motorcycle Man hasn't been driving up and down the street often lately.  Maybe he got older or bored.  Maybe he is old enough to drive further away.  I cheer for whatever the reason is!

But no problem goes away than a new one crops up.  The side-neighbors got a yappy dog months ago.  It's not that I mind dogs all that much.  The neighbors on the other side of me have 2 large ones and they bark too.  But they are only outside briefly, so the barking doesn't last too long.

The yappy dog is in their backyard almost all day long.  And barks all day long.  And when I am outside, it runs along the fence barking at me.  It probably weighs about 20 lbs, but it is convinced it has to protect the family from me.  So it never stops barking!  

It makes being in my own yard annoying.  I am a relatively quiet person.  I try not to disturb my neighbors.  As far as I know, it is a rental house.  I keep hoping they will move away and take the dog with them.

That's enough for now.

Good Heated Cat Mat

Can anyone recommend a good heated cat mat?  Everything at Amazon seems to get 4+ ratings an I have not had much luck with the last 3.  It's like a few months and they fail.

Veterans Day

 

Flowers

Last of them except the pansies I need to plant around the mailbox and deck pots...

Asters.

 Balsams.