Astilbe

I've been doing very little today. I got up at 9:30 this morning, but I don't feel so bad about that since I really didn't get to sleep last night until 2:30am. It seems that Max couldn't sleep, and when Max can't sleep, he needs someone to stay up it seems to entertain him.

We went to breakfast this morning at the Vernon Diner. It's not much to write about, but while we were eating, we saw Brandi, Jeremy, and Nicholas leaving. I wish I had known they were going. Maybe we could have had breakfast with them.

Kent is out mowing the lawn. It's an activity that I've vowed to never do again, although I will if I have to (i.e. Kent is away on a trip for two weeks). I had to do it when I was a kid and absolutely hated it then. Today, since I control my life, if I were in a situation of having to do it again, I'd "outsource" it and let some lawn service do it.

While Kent was out mowing the lawn, I went around the yard to see what was blooming. It's unbelievable around here now. There are so many things blooming and I've come to realize that I'm a flower nut. The picture above is a group of plants I put in years ago. They seem to prefer if I leave them along and not fuss over them, which is fine by me! The red flowers are Astilbe with the orange lilies.

In another month are so, the "gay lilies" will bloom. They are, of course, my favorite. You might ask, what are "gay lilies"? Are they a new variety ushered in with the new-found social awareness of the desire of gay people to be treated as equals? No. Not exactly. And they aren't exactly "out of the closet" either.

My "gay lilies" (pictured left) are in my back yard where no one can see them. I would prefer that they "come out" and display their wonderful colors, matched only by there unbelievably sweet aroma in the front part of our home. But, you can't tell a plant what it likes. They like the back, where they get just the right amount of afternoon warm sunlight.

The scent is so potent that when they flower you can smell them all around the house. It drives me crazy when I'm out on the deck surfing the web. It makes me want to pick them and bring them inside. I told you I was a flower nut.

It's nice to at least for a little while, not worry about the world outside our home. The worries of the world doesn't enter our home because we have more important issues to worry about, such as who started the cat fight and how we can peacefully resolve it.

Oh yeah... a few nights ago, we were getting ready to go to bed and what we think were two raccoons in our front yard got into a major fight. We could hear them snarling and growling at each other. It's funny how much information you can pick up in a sound. I could almost see the size of their teeth and claws in my mind just from hearing them go at it. I got up as much "he man" as I could muster in my voice and yelled out the window, "NOW STOP THAT!! BOTH OF YOU!!!". It only pissed them off more and I got the feeling that the only thing that would please them more than going after each other was to come after me. So, I decided to take the high road, and closed all my windows, and doors. I did ponder for awhile whether I should take a kitchen knife to bed with me just in case, but Kent talked me out of it. I think he had visions of getting stabbed if I had a nightmare about it. Well, we survived that, but what an odyssey it was!

The forums are back. They will stay apart of my site, but, as I explained in forums, other than posting to them occassionally, I will not be so active in them. They are there should people want to discuss topics with others. In the blog, I talk about what I want to talk about. In the forums, the topics are whatever others want to talk about.