organized chaos

Bacon:

check.

Lechuga: (yes, I could’ve just wrote lettuce, but lechuga is much more fun, si?)

check.

Bread:

check.

Wait for it.

No, seriously. Can this tomato take any longer to turn red? For the love of Mike, I’m hungry for summertime novelty foods!

And these:

just won’t work.

And stay tuned for the next volume of Letters From Your Friendly Cashier, coming soon.

Since I have a baby in the house again, I find it hard to tend to my gardening as I have in the past. It’s really too hot to do much right now anyway, but yesterday morning I said poop on the book work for school and took the gremlins out to my little ornamental pond for some algae harvesting.

Yep, I’m growin’ me some algae.

You should try it sometime. All you need in a small body of water

this size’ll do. Then make sure you have a couple of flood type rains.

(sorry for the blur. it was a downpour, after all)

And your small body of water takes in all the run off from the ground above it.

Then follow that with mind numbing heat from the depths of Hades: the kind that keeps the ground from ever really drying out and brings forth from it’s yawning mouth mosquitoes the size of Tallahassee.

By now, you should have some beautiful green floating algae. And boy, did I grow quite a crop this year. The best ever.

So if you have gremlins, put them to work. Otherwise, they’ll be awake until midnight, and we all know what happens then! If you don’t have gremlins, just get your bad self out there and get to work!

Stop looking at my pale, colorless legs and focus on that gorgeous blob of greatness. I’ll be using it to make tea later. So once you take out the pump, that black thing there, and take out the pretty, yet highly impractical water lilies

It’s not so pretty once you see beneath the surface, is it? And aren’t we all a little like that? Trying to be so pretty on the outside, but underneath lurks a tangled mess of ugly. I’m glad God can untangle anything, because I know my insides look like that from time to time.

So. Now you need some buckets, because it’s time to put those gremlins to their labors. Here are two of mine, hard at work while I stood aside and tried not to get my camera wet.

The pumps can only get out so much water, and if you’re harvesting algae, one must be in the pond gather it.

It’s important to get water everywhere.

oops. We have a victim. This time it wasn’t my fault. I just bought this guy the other day and we found at least 5 of them dead. It’s a risk you take when growing algae. The upside is that your gremlins will ask important scientific questions like, “Why do dead bodies float?”

Just get your nice blue net,

and throw him in the alley for the neighbor cats. They look too skinny anyways.

And speaking of cats, you might be wondering where my girl Zoe was during all this.

In the house with our not so skinny cat who got let back in from fear of him getting worms from our skinny neighbor cats. He’s a manipulator, that one.

And it’s too bad Zoe didn’t help with the harvest. Just like the story of The Little Red Hen, since she didn’t help with the work, she won’t be getting any of this for dinner.

I’ve been getting so many nice shots with my new/old digital camera bestowed upon me by my grandma. I’m even considering starting a nature themed blog and using it for the gremlin’s nature study in the place of nature notebooks. They really like taking pictures, and if I can make sure to NOT HAVE A CORONARY whenever they handle my camera, I think it might work out.

Socrates, the 9 year old took this.

I love me a perty tree.

And the next shot is something maybe you fellow nature lovers can help me with. I have often let certain “weeds” grow uninhibited. They surprise me from time to time by growing into something quite loverly. Like this specimen.

But I don’t know what it is. The stalk looks similar to a rhubarb stalk when it’s coming up. It gets bigger and bigger every year, making me think someone planted it there.

These are the buds, which will open up tiny and white.

And this is a shot to show you how big it is in perspective to the other elements in the garden. This is where I plant my tomatoes and cucumbers every year and I’m concerned the Mr. Rhubarb Wanna-Be will slowly invade the edibles. And I won’t even mention the hollyhocks that multiply faster than rabbits. Looks like I’ll be tilling them up in the fall.

So any ideas?

**(edited to add this note: since I posted this the other day, I’ve snapped some nice pics of our flooded river and park and they are available to view on my Flickr link down on the side bar)***

Here in North Eastern Kansas, we’re a little wet. In fact, I’ve read that there’s a nice little strip of rain all the way down the central United States. So we’re not alone.

The Cuteness has outgrown his tub bath. Not really, but he kicks so hard in that thing, he’s going to propel himself under the water one of these times. So I upgraded him to the round bath seat. He did pretty well.

If you look closely at the water by his leg on the left side, you’ll notice some white goo. Yeah, he spit up a little. Socrates, when he was a wee babe, threw up so bad all the time. Once in the bath, he threw up so much we had to let the water out and start all the way over. Here, I just swished the water around a little and called it good.

I think he spotted his vomit.

So this looks like a peaceful, yet wet Kansas day, right?

This is what you would find if you ventured down that front sidewalk a few more feet and took a closer look.

And looking up the street, you might start to think a ring floaty would be a good idea.

And looking the other way, you might actually go inside, hop on Ebay, and buy a really good raft. Because what you don’t see in this photo is the river down the street that seems really safe behind the nice levee system our city has in place. But this much rain? I might actually have to canoe to work tonight, cause you know Walmart won’t tolerate me calling in.

For now, I think I’ll teach The Cuteness how to kick his legs and swim.

So I couldn’t really come up with a cohesive theme for this post, but I am all over The Random. It’s what I do best.

I’ve mentioned Cooper, our microcephalic dog. For those of you that refuse to look up the word, microcephalic, let me finally tell you it means someone with a head too small for the body it’s attached to. I’m sure Webster would have a slightly different version, but you refuse to look it up yourself and now you’re stuck with my version. So stop complaining. You know who you are.

So, I got a couple shots of Cooper. Hyena Extraordinaire.

The first time Commando Demando saw him lay like this, she said he looked like a raw chicken.

I love making bread. I don’t really make anything fancy, like 50 grain whole wheat berry nut loaf. I stick with the basic white bread. In this day and age of Atkins and South Beach diets, I feel alone in my pursuit of really good white bread. I suppose it’s the Swedish blood coursing through my veins that creates such an urge to bake breads and sweets and to drink my coffee with real sugar and tons of chocolate raspberry coffe-mate. But, if you were here at my house and could smell the aroma of homemade bread and got a peek at this

you’d probably eat it too. Carbs? What carbs? You would be in heaven.

My Man showed me this spray this morning

It’s a little blurry, but if you look closely at that print, it says: “…and a long lasting fragrance designed to seduce the ladies. If you spray it, they will come.” He says it doesn’t work. Which begs the question, is this why he says he’s so busy at work when I call? Just kidding, hon! I know you’re very busy crunching those numbers.

A friend of mine from church has been cleaning out her basement. Her youngest child is 17 or 18, I don’t know. She brought me some stuff and upon closer inspection, I realized, with glee, that some of it was quite vintage. Like this:

I felt all nostalgic when I saw Mr. Play Doh Kid’s head at the top right corner of the box. I’m not sure if he’s even on the new ones. I stopped buying this stuff awhile back since everyone here thinks it’s stupid. Not sure why. But what really gave me a kick was the Surprise Inside! that is mentioned on the box. As you can see at the top of the box, there’s “surpise mold in every can!”. I don’t know about you, but anytime I find mold, it’s a surprise. A bad one. Mold on the last package of cheese. Mold on the last package of hamburger buns. Mold in the NEW package of pudding cups. All surprises. All bad.

And after a bad surprise, I like to retreat to my little piece of heaven. My ornamental pond.

This was here when we bought the house, but it needed much work. I’m obsessed with this thing. I had fish, that even survived the winter, but in my haste to get them back into the clean water, I shocked every one of them. To death. Oops.

Here’s what’s growing in my pond right now.

Just gazing at my beauties fills me with peace.

Until someone lets the hyena outside

and he barks incessantly at the neighbor kids he sees every freakin’ day of his life or decides to pee on the stroller I accidentally left in the yard.

My grandma got a new digital camera.  My grandpa says she is now a new woman.  I can understand.  She gave me her old one. 

It’s my first digital.  I really like my Canon EOS.  I inherited it from My Man when we got married and claimed it for my very own ever since.  Sometimes he takes pictures, too.  But only when I let him.

But, alas, film is too slow for this highly impatient girl.  I’ve belonged to the Club O’ the Right Now since infancy and have drooled over the instant gratification a digital camera would give me for a few years now.

It’s not one of those fancy pants cameras that you can do all the tricks with or attach the fancy pants lenses to, but it’s just right for me and what I want to do with it.  I can’t wait to read the booklet and find out all the tricks it does do.

Here’s some fun I had with it tonight. 

Here we have My Man wanting me to give him a kiss.  No thanks.  And The Cuteness with his new favorite things.  His fingers.

And this is the face Socrates gives me when I tell him “No more Playstation for tonight, you need to read a book.”

And Jackelope is just happy to have his picture taken because he is fulfilled for the night, having had a significant drop in adrenaline from waiting all week to open his presents.

A macro shot of my trumpet vine that opens in the evening.

Another of the same bloom.

And it’s interesting how much difference the flash can make. This was right after the previous shot, same light and everything.  It suddenly looks like night time.  Very dramatic I think.

Oh, and never ever eat this plant.  I realize you probably don’t go around consuming trumpet vine, but just in case, it’s poisonous.

Poison Ivy, evil leaf

your oil covers now our skin

they say to scratch is not to spread

then why’ve you moved right down my chin

my forehead’s itch, it makes me wimpy

I cut my bangs, I now look gimpy

Benedryl, you’re not effective

the scratching has lost all perspective

Gremlins moaning all day long

yet Jackelope escaped

You cannot touch him, Evil Leaf

no matter how you scrape

Round Up is thy enemy

I’ll shoot you down I swear

I know it’s only temporary

But I’ll do it again next year

You’ll always be there in my yard

waiting for our skin

to thrust your itchiness afar

and rest upon my chin

Ok, not something I’d normally say, being 6 ft tall and all.  But while I was browsing through my new favorite site, Webshots, I came across a marvelous shot of this picture.  What do you think about this?  Leave a comment with your thoughts.

We have one of these trees in our backyard.  It’s called a Catalpa tree.  It’s tall, but slender and I don’t know it’s age.  I don’t let my kids climb on it; the branches would snap.  In my mind, the tree is a teenager or young adult, giving the appearance of strength, but vulnerable to the core.

I love this tree, for every spring, later than the others, it leafs out in huge heart shaped leaves, shading my little ornamental pond.  Sometime after, tiny white flowers bloom, the smell of which brings pleasure beyond description.

Earlier this spring, we had very warm weather here in Kansas: warm enough, long enough to cause every plant in the ground and out to bud out with urgency. 

Then came several inches of snow.

(more…)

Aren’t you thankful for spring?

I must be in the twilight zone.  Here in Kansas/The Twilight Zone, large chunky snow plummeted from the sky from about 5 pm until right now.  I think it’s still coming down.

My tiny little apple tree is bowing to the ground.  My medium sized bushes out front had just started to leaf out and are now spread out downward.

At 8 pm it was still light outside and snowing heavily.  That’s like summer time light, being so late and all.  Then to look outside and see snow, snow, snow.  I feel like I could step outside and it would actually be sugar falling.  MMMM, warm sugar. 

The gremlins, who I haven’t been able to get a toe outside all week, of course rushed out there like little roadrunners as soon as the flakes started to fall.  That is, until it started to thunder and lightning right in the middle of the SNOWSTORM!

Spring, where art thou?