six days into spring

and it's an open declaration of war!

You may recall some of my chipmunk adventures. You may also recall that I absolutely hate those that are living in my backyard and under my back stoop. I'm all for cute, but you're not allowed to wreck my things.

They have also been known to run around in the front yard. I think they may have something to do with my buckling sidewalk. I can't be 100% sure, but since they have been seen tunneling on either side of the buckled area, I'm thinking it's a pretty sure thing.

I went out back today to clean up a little bit, and clear away some dead leaves, etc ... when I pulled the dead leaves from the hosta on the corner, the whole thing came out. No roots left, at all. Nothing. Just a big empty hole in the ground where the roots USED to be. Bastard chipmunks.

It's kind of an unused corner, and it was the perfect spot for my plants. Evidently it was also the perfect spot for my backyard nemesis (is there a plural for this?) to set up a self serve cafe.

Here is the front and back door to their home. I filled it last fall, and they have dug themselves out again.














These are my day lilies. I LOVE day lilies ... I have them in several places in my yard, and they are one of my favorite flowers. You'll see that I don't have to split them up this year because, oh, the chipmunks decided to eat the center of my flowers. See that big empty spot, yep, that's where my flowers used to be.

So, once again, I'm waging a battle with nature. I feel kinda bad about it, but not bad enough to stop. It comes back to this: you're not allowed to wreck my house or hurt my neighbors.

Sorry. Not happening here.

it's that time of year

Where The Husband and I disagree about Q's shoes.

He says I buy him sissy shoes that are going to get Q made fun of or get his ass kicked by kids at school.

I say that they're mass produced Old Navy deck shoes, they're available for everybody, what's the big deal?

We've been having this argument since Spring 2005, when I bought Q a pair of blue deck shoes with a fun hibiscus print. That brought about an argument at my in-laws house, and my belief that my husband needs to let it go. They're shoes. It's a long argument, and there's a bit more to it than this, like my husbands belief that it's cool to wear Hawaiian print in the middle of winter, with shorts, to the mall, but that my son's shoes are going to get his ass kicked. One is cool, the other obviously not. It's a matter of opinion, and I've never known anyone to be teased about the shoes that they wear. I can't recall a single pair of shoes from any of my schooling that sticks out in my mind.

However, the magenta tights that Patty wore in high school, those I remember ....

Wearing of the Green

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, and dinner is at my house.

I've hosted St. Patrick's Day dinner at my house for almost eight years now. It's my one chance to share corned beef and cabbage with my mother in law and Uncle Duff. My father in law and my husband don't care for corned beef and/or cabbage, so they get to eat pork chops while we get the good stuff. Lucky us.

Which, by the way, I found out two weeks ago that I actually am some bit Irish, I think maybe an eighth, it's a quarter if I'm lucky. Go me.

However, I was sick last weekend, and am now so far behind that I wish for my very own leprechaun to come by my house and help me make it presentable for tomorrow.

So I blog. Yep. That's how I roll.

I'm thinking that a leprechaun showing up is not going to happen.

I'm just going to have to cook such a kick ass meal that nobody will notice the dust bunnies hanging out in the corner, and they'll ignore the stack of mail waiting to be opened/filed/shredded/whatevered.

And, as an added bonus, the cake I decided to make for The Husband to take to the clients tomorrow, needs to be made in the morning, no baking ahead for me, because it has to be hot, to melt some drizzley sort of topping on it. That means up at 5:30 to bake a cake that our family won't even get to eat. How's that for the Luck of the Irish.

Wherever you are, whatever you do, enjoy!

it's raining

and I love it!

Yesterday, it was 60 degrees, and today it's supposed to be near that again.

Lovely! (Meant with all sincerity, no sarcasm here today)

I get to wear my uber-cool new rain boots.

The kids get to use their umbrellas, which is always fun.

The tree in my backyard is covered with moss. So is the rock in the front yard.

I really want to get outside, and hook up the rain barrel and put up the clothes line and clean out the garden and order my seeds and sell the castle and clean out the sandbox and and and

The list is a mile long, but I don't care. I love being outside, and can't wait until I can leave the windows open all the time and play in the dirt and have totally dirty kids that need showers every night.

Can you tell I REALLY want spring to make it's appearance.

Is Spring on it's way?

I sure hope so.

I spent a good portion of the time this winter actually being disappointed that the huge snow storms didn't get us. Not to say that we didn't get snow, but they were always predicting feet of snow, when all we ever got were inches. I seriously wanted a foot of snow.

I wanted the world to stop, or at least slow down.
I wanted a world of white mountains and drifts, and fires in the fireplace.
I wanted days of soup and stew and chili.
I wanted to hunker down, wherever that phrase came from.

So now, we've had our usual early March warm up, just enough of a tease, to remind us that Spring is kind of around the corner. I'm sure we'll have our usual cold snap and hopefully one last snow.

But, for now, we've got blue skies, melty snow, squishy yards.

And brown. Yucky brown grass. What snow is left is grey and brown and ugly.

So, for me, spring can't get her soon enough now that it's brown. And ugly.

Yes, I know, we need the yucky brown days so we can better appreciate the beauty of spring, but I don't have to like it. It's part of our lovely weather pattern in this part of the country, the weather pattern I've been a part of for 35 years now ... and I still don't like this time of year, after the snow melts but before the green flies.

Here's hoping for a quick greening up when it happens.