So......I found this in my garden......

And here's a closer look, incase you weren't quite sure what you were looking at.

My Week - An Overview

It's starting! Fall is starting! I'm very excited about this, as you can see. It marks the end of the dreadful summer, and the start of a cool breeze. That glorious, glorious cool breeze of Fall, my favorite time of year!

Yesterday was B's company picnic. When we got out there, all of a sudden it hit me. It wasn't hot. I wasn't sweating! I had to take a moment to stop and breath in the wonder that is cool air. It was magnificent! hehe Here's the crew getting down to business...eating.

And this was our lovely view. C and C doin' the daughter/daddy thing! I thought this was such a cute pic, I had to add it.
After the picnic, we returned home, and the yard guys were there cutting the grass. This may seem insignificant, but we were very happy to find them there, because our plant beds needed some serious work. I no longer call them flower beds : ( because I have given up on trying to have flowers. Our soil is so bad that they just keep dying, and I'm tired of replacing them. I have noticed that some of our neighbors have people come out and change out theirs occasionally. But I'm not about to do that. Just like I'm not about to hire someone to come put Christmas lights up on my house either. But hey, to each his own, right? I'm sure our neighbors were tired of looking at our weeds. In fact, we even got a "nasty gram" courtesy of the lovely folks at the Community Association, in regards to said weeds. They send their spies out to comb the neighborhoods for evil doers like us. I had never let the beds get away from me like this before, and I was pretty embarrassed, if you want to know the truth. But as you know, the past few months have been exceptionally HOT, and those yard guys had fallen down on the job, as well. Probably because I kept getting upset about them whacking down what few flowers were gracious enough to show themselves around here. So, since most of them had died off, I told them to have at it this time. Oh, they still whacked down some things they weren't supposed to. (It was nice knowin' ya Society Garlic, with your lovely purple blooms. I tried to mark you off with bricks so they would cut around you, but unfortunately, your leaves look very much like tall grass and so, you met your demise.) And they got some of my Walking Iris, which I take very seriously. I started it from some pieces that I dug up from my mom's house in New Orleans. Though, I still have a good bit, and they propagate pretty well. But, the beds are finally cleaned out (it looks pretty naked out there, even with all the trees). And the best part is that I had borrowed my mom's weed whacker to do it myself, and now I don't have to. Yeah, for me! Cause, I had never used one before, and I was pretty nervous about the prospect of loosing a digit, or possibly a limb. Here's two of the three newly improved beds.
Be sure to notice the little flowers in the front of this bottom pic. Don't they look sad and lonely? And the two little bushes behind them used to have Society Garlic around them, but now they stand alone.

And last, but not least, of the home improvements for this week, was having the house, driveway, and walkway pressure washed on Monday. The fact that I nearly busted my ass, every time I walked to my front door, from the grime build up on the walkway, (that stuffs slick!) was certainly a major factor in having this done. You can really see the difference in this photo of the back porch (not that you have a pic to compare it to). I would like you to, also, note my sad little lemon tree, with the only lemon I got this year (the 2nd in 2 years) hanging from it. Isn't it cute? Just hanging there, looking as if it might cause the whole tree to fall over. It's been ripening for several months now, but still not ready. (sigh) With any luck, we'll be having lemon aid by Christmas.Well, other than dinner with Micah and Lisa (yeah), whom I hadn't seen much of lately (boo), and the regularly scheduled "lunch with mom", that pretty much wraps up the notable highlights from this week.

So, I am trying to organize a "girl's" trip with the women in my family. Which, so far is not going so well, because everyone wants it to be on a different date. But a funny side note to this is that I just finished making calls to everyone to find out which dates are good for them and apparently I interupted every one of them while they were watching Grey's Anatomy. I just had to laugh at the fact that they were all watching it. The truth is, I would be watching it myself right now, but I'm waiting to watch it on Tivo to fast forward through the commercials. Needless to say, I didn't get very far on the planning. The moral of the story is - Never interupt a woman during Grey's.

Poinsettias

If any of you kept you Poinsettias from last Christmas, here's some info I found on how to get them to turn red again. Last year after mine turned green, I just put it outside on the back porch and it did fine. Now, we'll see if I can restore it's color.


- Starting October 1, the plants must be kept in complete darkness for 14 continuous hours each night. Accomplish this by moving the plants to a totally dark room, or by covering them overnight with a large box. During October, November and early December, poinsettias require 6 - 8 hours of bright sunlight daily, with night temperatures between 60 - 70° F. Temperatures outside of this range could also delay flowering. Continue the normal watering and fertilizer program. Carefully following this regime for 8 to 10 weeks should result in a colorful display of blooms for the holiday season! -
http://www.fernlea.com/xmas/poininfo.htm

Yeah, I know. It sounds like a lot of work, but I've never tried it, so I'm gonna give it a shot.

Check out this story:
http://www.coinstar.com/US/WebDocs/A3-2-7

Kind of makes you wish you hadn't passed up all those pennies on the ground. hehe

Wednesday, October 3rd:

I've been wanting to paint my dining room for quite a while now. I figured it would be easy when I set out (a few months ago) to find paint, since I had a picture in my mind of exactly what I wanted. Well, let me just tell you, I was wrong! There are a million different variations of tan/toupe (that's my name for it). And I just couldn't seem to find the one that I had in my head. So I went around to a bunch of different places, which I hate to do. I don't like when I have to go to a bunch of places. I want to just go and find it right away. I brought home a ton of paint chips and taped them all over my wall. And after careful deliberation, I chose a color last week. So, a week or so goes by, and then Wednesday morning for some reason I woke up and said to myself that's it, today paint is going up on those walls. So, I brought my mom to the airport, went to my doctors appointment (got poked with needles twice - bloodwork and flu shot), went to Sherwin Williams and bought the paint and supplies, and came home and painted the dining room, hung all the pictures and some additional ones back on the walls, and had the surprise waiting for Brandon by the time he got home from work. And the best part (besides the fact that it's done) is that it is just like the color I had in my head. I had gone back and forth about whether I would paint on the top and bottom of the chair railing that same color because I saw a picture like that and I really liked it. But I just did the top so I could see if I liked it that way first, and I think that I will leave it.

I was so motivated that on Friday I painted the same color in the living room as well. And Brandon gave me a hand. The color looks much lighter in there.

Shannon's B-day

Saturday night we had a little b-day party for Shannon (third from the left) at our house.

Shannon really liked this photo, so I thought I would include it.