Late Night Open Thread- TREATS FOR EVERYONE
Steve and Lily tag team me when they want treats. Steve raises a ruckus, and Lily just gets near me and acts adorable. I fold every time.
Everything Sucks Here’s Pictures of My Backyard
Making more progress. All the perennials are in, just need to dump a bunch more mulch around all the blueberries and blackberries back by the compost bin and to the left there where the apple trees are we’re just making that one big bed where I can plant wildflowers and the like and put the hummingbird feeder:
If you notice we are attracting wildlife already as there is a feral hog rutting already. Pretty much the same on the right:
In the back behind the peas I have hopefully a bunch of different sunflowers that will come up, and all along both sides in between the perennials I sprinkled a bunch of wildflower seeds as well as threw in some gladiola bulbs I bought in the spring and never used.
Rural King sells good grass seed (I use a mix of bluegrass and something else) for a little over 2 bucks a pound, so we’re just waiting on that to take. The sugar snap peas and regular peas are a couple days from me needing to start harvesting them, and are over 7′ feet tall. Once the peas are done I am going to do a bed or two of pole beans.
The upside is that other than maybe some sand, the backyard is done money wise. We’re gonna put in a path to the back gate, but it’s going to just be made out of rocks we get from the creek, and all that needs to be done really is to powerwash the fence and maybe trim some of those god damned pine trees.
Lily Update- Things Are Still Going Great!
Just got back from our weekly chemo, and it was a long one today. There were lots of emergencies with animals that took precedence over a routine treatment, so instead of a four hour trip it took us six hours. Long story short, everything is doing well with Lily, she gained another half lb, all her bloodwork was good, and we’re down to a quarter tablet of prednisone a day and a quarter tab of plavix.
While it took a long time, it was not that terrible because it was (and still is) such a gorgeous day. It’s the first time in weeks where there were no clouds in the sky, and it is a comfortable 80 degrees with (for WV) very little humidity. When I woke up this morning and went outside, I was hit with a wall of smells- everything is blooming at once, and all you can smell anywhere in my littler area of the world is honeysuckle and sweet blooming everything. I swear I smelled some lilac, but it is kind of late for that, I thought. It was so strong I called my dad- “Have you been outside? Am I having a stroke or is the air thick with a floral scent?” He assured me that I am not having a stroke and that he planted some gladiola bulbs three days ago and there are already shoots.
At any rate, it was so nice that after I dropped Lily off, I went to Trader Joe’s, which I know a lot of people just swear by and I like, but I am consistently underwhelmed by it. Regardless, I picked up some of those sesame crackers I adore and I got a container of cauliflower tabbouleh that was AMAZING.
I wish I could describe just how lush and green everything is for all you folks in cities and out west, but I guess pictures will have to do. If I had to describe it I would say it is what everyone thinks Ireland looks like or maybe I would say it looks like video game jungle green- it’s that green! Here are some pics from the ride home:
Since I know my audience, let me say some things before you go nitpicking ballistic in the comments. I the first picture, I was going 3 mph when I took the picture and no one was behind me so, no, I was not being unsafe in the middle of the road. This is WV. I could have stopped and taken a piss in the middle of the road and likely not seen anyone. And for the exceptionally curious, I was listening to OutKast ATLiens. In the second picture, yes, I am aware dogs should not ride with their heads out the window and that airbags can kill a dog but she only rides like that when we are on rural roads going very slow and also she has cancer so we’ll just roll the fucking dice and live a little. So don’t even start with me. Also, in the second picture, that’s one of the corn plots for a local farm and it has grown a full foot in just the last week.
Finally a shot of our girl, happy to be home and strutting her stuff after helping to water the lawn:
Finally, check out the grass we planted last week:
Tomorrow afternoon and Saturday we are planting the shrubbery, digging half the hostas and transplanting them out back, tilling the back yard, and hopefully putting down the top soil and then seeding it.
Ok, there was your break and Lily update, back to our regularly scheduled dystopic Trumpian horror show.
All Present and Accounted For
Finished watching tv downstairs, grabbed my phone, and took pictures of the sights on the way upstairs. Lily on her bed right next to my chair downstairs:
Thurston on his dog bed on the couch behind me:
Upstairs Rosie in her favorite bed in the home office (and as always refusing to look at the camera):
And Steve exploring the space on the chair in the office.
After I am done messing around here for a little bit, I will brush my fangs, wash my face, and the nightly ritual begins. I create a little fort out of pillows in the bottom left portion of the bed, and gently pick up Rosie and she will snarl and try to bite me because her hips hurt and place her there (she no longer has the necessary ups), segregated from my feet, so she can still feel like she is part of the pack and on the bed, but will not be able to bite me at night when I move. Then, I position Lily in the center top of the bed where she sleeps right next to my head. I quickly then position myself and get ready for the onslaught, as Thurston will now LEAP into the middle of the bed, pissing off Rosie and startling Lily, and I will have to fight with him for a few minutes until we both have the amount of covers we want. Finally, I have to wait a couple minutes and Steve will enter the room with a loud meow, saunter over to my side of the bed, and jump up and position himself to the right of me. He will sit there a bit and I will tell him he is magnificent for a while, and then he will climb up on to my stomach/chest and THEN I am permitted to go to sleep.
Every. Single. Night. I’m trying to imagine how insane this sounds for people who do not have pets. But it’s how we roll here.
Sunday Night Open Thread
I gotta admit, I’m always a little nervous when I don’t check the website for 24 hours and then go to see whether or not the ship is still afloat or if there is just a smoldering wreck listing portside with a couple random commenters fighting in the lifeboats. At any rate, good to see things are still ok.
My mom is out of town for the week (she told me what she is doing but I didn’t pay attention but I know she is somewhere in Delaware with a friend) so dad and I drove up to my sister’s house in Pittsburgh and then went to a couple nurseries. There’s a big place up there that we go to called Trax Farms which is just massive, but the prices are ridiculous and the place was super crowded, so we went down the road to another place and picked up some perennials (bee balm, etc.) for the backyard and a couple junipers, barberry’s and the like for the front.
On the way home we stopped at a Greek place for lunch, and I had dawali, tabouli, and lentil soup with feta, and dad had the lentil soup and a rolled pita with falafel.
The soup was gone so fast it didn’t get a picture. Now I’m just sitting on the front porch enjoying the rain storm. We’ve gotten so much rain this year that everything is just so lush and green- it looks like a rain forest driving around this area:
I do so like my wicker chairs and just sitting on the porch. It’s nice. Although I think I am now going to go upstairs and play some Guild Wars 2.
DID YOU ALL SEE THE CYBERPUNK 2077 and FALLOUT 1976 TRAILERS!!!!!!!!!!
*** Update ***
I just looked out my bathroom window into the back yard. I probably shouldn’t have.
I guess next summer I need to think about drainage…
Lily Update
Lily had her weekly chemo appointment today, so I have been pretty much out of the loop today. Lily is still doing super well, all her numbers were good but her platelet count is still high, and we are continuing to ween her off the prednisone and will go down a little more next week. Next week is her last weekly trip, and after that it will be every other week. Here she is right after we got home:
She’s happy and prancing and just doing really, really well. Rosie came over and licked her and greeted her (even though in this pic it looks like she is just trying to dominate her, she was actually grooming her)
Now to address the elephant in the room- “What the fuck is going on in John Cole’s front yard?” Long story short, the yard leveling has begun in earnest. The front yard did not need any additional dirt to level, instead we just plowed it all under with a rototiller and then used a leveling rake to even it all out. We’ve been getting a ton of rain, so we covered it to keep it somewhat dry and are seeding it tomorrow.
The back yard, on the other hand, is a god damned disaster.
I got a local guy to bring 15 tons of “topsoil” over for 200 bucks, and he came over and dumped it outside my fence at seven o’clock in the morning, and when we looked at it, it was half top soil and half fill and clay. It was most certainly not screened topsoil. So we (this is a royal we) put it around and evened out the back yard near the deck and got rid of the major holes and the erosion and slope by the deck, and now we are going to have to till the whole damned thing to break up the clumps, and I will have to go somewhere else to get about 8-10 yards of actual screened topsoil, which I didn’t want to do because it is expensive as hell.
Right now since there is so much clay and clumps, we’re just letting it sit for a while and working on the beds around the fence, which we lifted to cover the bottom of the fence. I’ve got a bunch of hostas to take out of the front beds to put there, and I’ve got friends who are desperate to get rid of stuff like day lilies and the like.
Rule #1 in life- if you think you are getting a super deal, you are probably getting fucked.
Would you look how tall my peas and maters are, though? And the holes in the backyard are gone, so no one (mainly my clumsy half blind ass) is going to break their damned ankle taking the trash out. That’s it for around here.
Also, fuck Trump.
Sunday Night Open Thread
A lazy, rainy afternoon:
Sam enjoyed it though:
And when the rain stopped, we got a pretty rainbow over the park and Castleman Run Road:
Had a very summer dinner of BLT’s, coleslaw, and a pickle, and now are about to netflix it. I’m trying to maintain a peaceful balance in the era of Trump so I don’t explode with rage.
