What do you buy for someone who doesn’t need any more trinkets or tchotchkes?
Well, nothing. Or consumables would be more accurate I guess. Concert tickets and some random cash maybe? How about a jack-o’-lantern? The GG was johnny on the spot with a jack and even dropped it off at the recipient’s house. It is a lot easier to do stuff like that when the recipient lives two miles away rather than 45 miles (or 2500 or whatever). If you are not part of the cFam, you might not notice that the jack has a cFam face 🤣
So another trip around the sun completed today but not for me. I get to do that in a few months.
Pics are of Jack when the Mad Scientist completed The Cloning and after he was delivered. Hopefully the squoils won’t gobble him up too quickly. Wait! What? You didn’t clone your newborn baby? Ours got cloned every time she took a bath!
When I took YESTERDAY’s pic, I was FOCUSED TOTALLY on the waxing gibbous moon and my shadow in the bottom left corner. It didn’t really turn out well at all probably in part because I still haven’t gotten around to figuring out my phone’s night mode.
What my kids noticed first was BUCKTHORN, BUCKTHORN, BUCKTHORN! And more BUCKTHORN! Our yard is a pretty big mess but we can (usually) tolerate it because there are so many trees and other green things. Including BUCKTHORN! Buckthorn is an invasive species and we have A SHIT-TON OF IT.
I wish for a nicer yard but we have challenges. For one thing, neither the GG or I could be said to have anything near a Green Thumb. About the only thing I have ever done successfully in the “garden” is to put impatiens in pots. And even that can be iffy, like last summer at the moomincabin when Heinrich (snowshoe hare) or maybe deer ate them. Miraculously they had quite recovered by the end of the summer.
I like the IDEA of gardening but over and over my admittedly meager attempts to DO it have been unsuccessful. Weeding was always fun for about a day if I didn’t encounter poison ivy but it never seemed to end and I don’t really know anything about planting. What to plant? Where to plant it? The GG pondered what the point of having a nice garden was if all you did with it was look at it. Um, that is EXACTLY the point!
Other challenges are our horrible clay-ey “soil”, our uber-shady yard (which can also be a good thing), and that we are out of town so much of the summer now that the GG is retaaaarred and I am a full-time telecommuter.
I want to consult with someone who can be creative with sustainable landscape design that fits OUR environment. I mean both in a micro and macro way, our yard and our planet. What do we need to get rid of? BUCKTHORN, for a start, right? What kinds of plants would do well here? Are there things we could plant (or whatever) that would not need a lot of maintenance since we are outta town so often? Well, we have a pretty solid lead on an environmentally friendly landscaper. We’ll see what we get around to doing…
HB to my older daughter ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
October 23rd, 2023 at 6:56 pm
I am quite good with plants and lawns but I live in a relatively mild climate. That makes growing things (or not killing them through extreme temperatures) fairly easy. I’ve never heard of Buckthorn. Here morning glory and blackberry vines are very invasive. I like blackberries but they are thorny and can rip skin and clothing to shreds.