Monthly Archives: March 2010

Sick as a dog today. Feels like the space around my eyes is poured full of concrete–which is pretty much the description that I got from the person who passed this one on to me, so there’s no question that it’s her cold and not allergies. Blarrrgh. Need to get a Digger done today, and […]

So there I was, on the toilet, contemplating the things that one contemplates while on the toilet, and outside the window flashed the showiest of Southeastern butterflies–the tiger swallowtail! I was very pleased to see him. Swallowtails are one of those things that we should preserve for purely aesthetic reasons, damnit–it’s a bird-sized piece of origami […]

So last night, I started to get a sore throat. Unexpected and FAST. And quite painful. I didn’t have it when dinner started, and by the time I was driving home, I was swallowing and going "…huh. This is odd." I medicated with my Home Remedy of Choice–hot lemonade cut with vodka and honey–which will kill any sore throat […]

I spent the morning trying to save part of the backyard from Japanese honeysuckle. I was out there for nearly an hour, and by the end I was mostly just discouraged. There’s a couple of spots in the backyard that I’m about to declare Sacrifice Zones and just hose down with glyphosate, but this particular area […]

Oh. Apparently squirrels will eat mealworms. Urr. I guess…they’re rodents, I should have figured…but…there’s something kind of unsettling about the fellow sitting in the feeder, calmly chomping off dried mealworm heads. I’m gonna write off mealworms as an experiment, I think–I haven’t seen a single bird eat one, and that’s awfully expensive squirrel food.

The problem with having an aerial view of the garden from my studio is that I am staring out at it more or less constantly, going "I could be out there RIGHT NOW." Occasionally I pull my birding binoculars off the windowsill and examine plants. How sad is that? The other problem is that I notice things less obvious […]

In keeping with my resolution to feed the bugs, I am pleased to say that something is noshing on the golden ragwort. Woot! And while I was watering the pawpaw, I spooked a number of tiny hoppy things, and a rather larger jumping spider leaping after them. The best, however, was a cricket frog I startled while digging […]

Epiphany

I noticed a few days ago that something has been noshing on my cabbage-leaf coneflower. Big, blue-green leaves, now with a few holes in them. This irked me a bit. I felt like a bad gardener. It was hardly a life-threatening set of holes, the plant continues to grow well, but…holes. Clearly I was doing something […]