Herb Experiment #3

Tonight when I got home, Husband told me that we needed to go to the Hardware Store after dinner.  Apparently, Iago had asked him for some duct tape.  When Husband asked why, Iago explained that the toilet seat in his bathroom had cracked and he wanted to tape it.  Husband explained, "We're not hillbillies, we can buy you a new toilet seat!"  So we had a plan for after dinner.

Until the three-year-old intervened.  He threw so many tantrums, we didn't dare take him out of the house for dinner.  Husband decided to stay home with us, but beckoned me to take Igor and Iago to dinner and the hardware store.  We had a nice dinner at Steak 'N Shake and then went to Home Depot which was next door.  We bought a nice elongated toilet seat.  Hopefully, either Iago or Husband will install it.

While at the hardware store, I picked up some plants.  It's that time of year.  I picked up some gladioli bulbs to plant in the front flower bed.  We had some there last year and I was surprised when they came up.  I'd like to have some again that I can cut and bring inside.  I also picked up two dalmatian purple foxglove plants (picture from the internet here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/fingerlakes/4710780344/).  They need part-sun (4-6 hours) and will look nice near the pond.  I think the frogs will like them, too.

Then, well, I decided to try Herb Experiment #3.  I paid a little bit more attention this time.  I bought three plants:  Thyme, Sweet Basil, and Rosemary.  All call for full sun (I put the flat-leaf parsley back because it is part-sun).  This means I can plant them in the same container and put them out back on my patio.  They came in biodegradable planters that you can just set in the soil.  That's pretty cool.  We'll see how this goes.  I'll need to remember to water them.

This weekend, I want to go to Aquarium Adventure and look at plants for the pond.  I also want to plant the foxglove plants.  The Metro Park at Inniswood is also having a plant sale on Sunday.  I don't know if we'll have time for that now that we have the Little League schedule for Igor and my study group for my SPHR meets Sunday mornings, but I would like to try.  Next weekend is the plant sale on campus and I'm hoping we can go.

This weekend will be busy:  haircut tomorrow morning on the other side of town, Little League practice, SPHR study group session, Little League opening night game, plant sale at Inniswood. . . whew.

Thursday Dinner

As many of you who know us, there is a suspicion that Iago has Asperger's, a high level functioning on the autism spectrum.  However, it is only suspicion and we have not confirmed it.  One way we see this surfacing is in some of his, what I classify as, "obsessive-compulsive disorder" (OCD) behaviors.  Thursday night (which, yes, I'm just thinking to mention now) is a great example of this.

Iago has been cooking dinner for the family on the Wednesday nights when I don't come home, but go to my 4 hour class instead.  I must have made a comment to Husband because they made arrangements for him to make dinner on Thursday for us instead.  Igor had the day off school.  I came home to homemade pot pie, salad, and pound cake with strawberries for dinner.  It was very nice.  Iago even did all the dishes (by hand, of course, because he needs us to show him how to use the dishwasher because we haven't yet. . . but that's a whole separate issue).  While he was cleaning up dishes, Husband took the kids upstairs to get into their pajamas and brush their teeth.  After that, they planned on coming down to watch an episode of Justice League on the Blu-Ray before bed.

Meantime, I decided to go get the mail.  The kids hadn't brought it inside because Igor didn't have school.  All I did was walk to the mailbox and come back.  In the 2 minutes I was gone, Iago locked the front door.  I knocked on the door and rang the bell to no avail.  I had forgotten the passcode to the garage opener, too.  I went back to the front door, pounded on the door and hit the doorbell repeatedly.  To our neighbors, walking their dog, I looked like a crazy person.

Well, Iago has a habit of locking the deadbolt whenever he passes the front door as he heads upstairs.  Apparently, he'd finished doing the dishes and went upstairs, locking the door as he went.  He heard the doorbell and the pounding, but doesn't answer the door.  Finally, Husband heard the bell and came down to open the door.  I was mad, but Iago didn't even realize he had locked the door on me!  He didn't know I had gone outside, either.  Egad!

(As an aside, he had also planned on coming with us to his father's for Easter dinner, but bailed out right before we left.  Not surprising.  Igor had seen him in the morning and said he had his "mad face" on and that "mad face" looks the same as "grumpy."  I think the kids woke him up too early when they were playing in the bonus room.  Oh well.)

Failed Gardener Meets Resilient Daffodils

I am not a gardener by any means.  My green thumb stops with African violets.  Houseplants.  Apparently, houseplants that few people can grow.  I kill everything else.  But African violets I grow easily.  I almost killed my husband's philodendron even and people tell me they are a very hard plant to kill.  (Note:  It has recovered well from the transplant and is thriving with it's new pot and trellis.  We'll see what happens when I move it into the sunroom again this year.)

A few examples of my inability to grow things are the "herb experiments" the kids and I have tried.  Herb experiment one involved buying a kit with seeds for chives, thyme, basil, oregano, and some other herb.  It came with pots, a stand, the seeds, seed starting medium.  Those that sprouted (about 2/3 of the herbs) died off soon after.  Complete failure.  Herb experiment #2 had an initial 50% failure.  In this experiment, we bought live plants, planted them in a flower box in the sunroom.  Two of the four plants died almost immediately.  The other two survived until we moved them inside to the Dining Room in the fall.  Only the chives survived and they're hanging by a thread right now.

Another example is the rue my father-in-law has given us.  Rue is used in krupnikas, a Lithuanian liqueur that my husband can now make thanks to a recipe from his dad's friend.  He's made two batches that I recall.  To make it, you need rue.  So FIL has given us one plant.  Its dead carcass is still sitting in a planter in the sunroom (yes, I need to throw it away, along with the broken planter).  The second one is in the Dining Room with just a few hints of green left.  I've read up on how to grow them, but whatever I'm doing isn't working.

So, we have this beautiful house with a great yard and I am trying to be a gardener.  Husband has always said he will help plant trees, bushes, and perennials; however, he will not plant annuals for me.  Last fall, I bought a pack of 45 daffodils in a mesh bag from a home improvement store.  I bought bone meal and something else and took them home with the intent of planting so I would have daffodils in the spring.  I love daffodils.  But things got busy and I never seemed to have a weekend to plant them that was right.  They sat in the garage on the floor in the mesh bag the entire winter.  They were near the garage door, so a few times water seeped in.  I thought they'd be moldy.  Imagine my surprise when this week I entered the garage and saw yellow bursting from the bag!  The daffodils were growing from the bulbs in the bag, without even having been planted.  Today, I dug a trench in the back flower bed by the pond and planted the bulbs, leaving the yellow stalks sticking out.  There were some moldy bulbs I threw away (and some I wasn't sure and planted anyway).  I now have a row of "almost daffodils" that should flourish now that they have soil!

Other garden notes:  I also spent some time pulling the dead detritus out of the pond and putting it on the patio to "dry" before putting it in the landscape bag to go for compost.  Husband mowed the lawn.  Pretty sure we have a dead tree.  We have some grass issues, but we'll ask our lawn care company to look at that.  My lilies of the valley still look dead, but I'm hoping they'll surprise me this season.  My creeping phlox is in blooming, the red maple trees (we have 2) I thought were dying have buds on them, and our columbine has green leaves.  A few hostas survived.  I do want to put more plants in the area near the pond to attract some more bugs for the frogs to eat.  Maybe we'll be able to go to the plant sale at the arboretum on campus on Mother's Day weekend?

Anyway, the rain came and we all came inside to the sunroom.  I tidied up a bit.  Now it's off to dinner.

Busy Week

Planted some lilies of the valley in the backyard last weekend.  The kids came outside to "help" but ended up playing light saber duel with plastic baseball bats until I made them go inside.  Hurt my knees a little - I need a garden kneeler because the concrete patio was a little rough on the knees.  I planted about 36 of the little roots and sprouts in the ground around the patch of green that I think is a daylily.  I was a little worried that all the rain this week would be bad for them, but saw a few shoots of green this weekend.  I'm hoping they take and fill in thickly.  My paternal grandmother had lilies of the valley in the same place - under the waterspout that the hose connected to.  Only her water spout was next to the front door off the driveway.  Mine happens to be on the back patio.  I'm having trouble getting pictures off the camera or I would have posted.

This week was a little busy:

• Monday night:  the kids went out with grandpa for dinner.  I worked late to get some things turned in to a vendor and brought home chicken lettuce wraps from Pei Wei.
• Tuesday night:  nothing, really.  It was my one free night.
• Wednesday night:  SPHR prep course from 6-10 pm.  Home by 10:30, in bed by 11.
• Thursday morning:  Compensation association breakfast.
• Thursday night:  HR Association membership committee meeting.
• Friday night:  movie night with the kids - Legends of the Guardians

In between all of that, I have a busy time at work with the departure of one of my coworkers and many of our vendor deadlines this week and next.  Starting Friday, I had some sciatic pain.  Had trouble sleeping Friday night.  We didn't do much around the house Saturday, but did take the time to go through Hannibal's closet and pull out hand-me-downs from Igor that now fit.  We also removed items that don't fit that I'll pass on for her son who's a year younger than Hannibal.  We also drove to our Amish furniture store and placed the order for Hannibal's full size bed - a nice one in maple that will be done in about 8 - 10 weeks.  Then we stopped at Der Dutchman and picked up pies since we were so close.  Husband loves them, I'm not as big a fan.  While I peeked at the gift shop, he picked out a chocolate creme pie, a cherry pie (yuck!), an individual apple pie (since he knew I didn't like cherry), and donuts for Sunday morning.  We really don't need all this in the house!

Last night, I hurt so much I went downstairs and slept on the couch, then the recliner, then the other couch.  I woke up because the dishwasher went off, because Husband's phone beeped for needing to be recharged, and the continued pain in my back.  Oh, and then because Igor came down at 7 am to play Xbox.  At 7:30, my alarm went off and I hobbled up the stairs, grabbed a shower, and went to meet my study group at Starbucks, eating my donut on the way.  Had a chai with the study group.  Pain intense as I drive my stick shift home, hurting each time I have to move my left leg.  

At home, Husband got me a Vicodin and one of my muscle relaxers the doc gave me last time this happened. Then we packed up the kids and went to Roosters for lunch.  We were going to head to the hardware store on the way back, but between my back and husband's intestines we weren't up for it.  On the way back, the meds kicked in and I fell asleep.  So did Igor.  Husband stopped at the hardware store (took Hannibal inside while Igor & I slept), then came back and drove around a bit to let us sleep.  At home, I slept some more in the recliner while the kids played on the Wii upstairs and Husband on the computer.  Then I read my newspaper, Husband brought us dinner from Thai Orchid, had pie for dessert, and then he put the kids to bed.  I'm on the computer now because it's a comfortable chair for my back.  He's watching a movie in the living room.  But I think I'm going to go study a bit before bed.  Bed early, I think, since we meet with some lawyers tomorrow to talk to them about Husband's arm. . . 

Of Death & Divorces

I have discovered that I must now be middle-aged.  I don't like it.  I'm only going to be 38 next month.  But middle-aged, it is.  Why?

I'll tell you why:  I have hit the part of my life where all my friends' parents are dying.  Where I know more people dying than being born.  My friends are not in the stage of life where they are buying first homes, getting married, having kids.  Nope.  They're buying second houses and selling the first, getting divorced, spending more time shuttling kids to and from their activities than to spend time with adults.  They're dealing with the issues of aging parents.  They're reaching mid-career struggles of trying to keep engaged in the work they once enjoyed.

I'm not sure I like this phase.