Another bits and bytes update

I'm doing another post composed of a bunch of shorter-than-normal little posts, just so I can get it out instead of postponing until that never-arriving day when I'd do full-length versions. :-P

G's been working on our lawn so it'll look nice for our BBQ in (eek!) a couple of weeks. 30 years ago the thing became a lawn by being dirt that various types of grass decided to grow in, so it's a bit of a mishmash of the wilder types. As in, if we spray "Won't hurt your lawn!" weedkiller on it, the lawn will die because those types of grass are often considered weeds. But hey, it's green and grassy, and cheaper than re-sodding, so that's what we have. G's been de-thatching, re-seeding, and I've been tasked with watering it during the day so the seeds don't die on us in this heat. Oh, and I'm slowly taking small bites out of the bindweed and clover (oxalis?) And being out there has pushed me to catch up on my rose dead-heading, bougainvillea trimming, and kiwi taming. I think the raspberry season has been and gone without me, oh well. Everybody think grassy thoughts for us.

In the back yard, everything's still alive, so I count myself doing ok. I've also finally refilled the seed feeders, so our yard is once again the Birdie Place To Be, much to our cats' appreciation. I must plant herbs and pumpkins, though, and move the li'l blueberries. Snarfdog, I thought of you the other day when I found some tiny tomatoes starting to grow on my plants. :-)

Played my Thursday game last night; once again we had 9 skaters, so 3 D. Joe was there (yay Joe!) but he'd been away last week, and said his performance stunk because of it. I thought he did ok, particularly given that our opponent spent the first period hammering us with hard, fast skating and whacking, which tends to be hard on the D. But fortunately as often happens, they slowed down a bit in the 2nd. The score reflected it: 0-0 became 0-3, which in the 2nd became 7-3(!), which in the 3rd became 7-7, ending in a tie after OT. One of our teammates called it the Ron Wilson way of playing: "We'll just hold this two-goal lead. ... We'll just hold this one-goal lead. ... Let's go for the tie." :-P Oh well -- I had fun, I daresay that I had a good game on D, and everything worked out. And we had fewer penalties than average because Shrek wasn't there, ha. We definitely won't win the "fewest penalty minutes" tiebreaker if there is one. My souvenir for the day? A nice bruise on the inside of my left ankle (right on the bone) where I stopped a shot. Knocked my feet out from under me. Looks pretty today, but doesn't hurt -- hopefully that'll be the extent of it. Oh, and kudos to the Oasis for keeping the ice in good condition given the recent heat wave.

We currently have four foster kittens. Well...sort of. Originally we had the two moms and seven kittens, our friend adopted two, we sent the rest in, got two back because they had goopy eyes, they recovered fine, but there's currently no room at the shelter, so I'll have 'em for a while yet. The friend is visiting family for a couple of weeks, so I'm kitten-sitting his new kids until he returns. I figured the whole batch has had more or less the same exposure and shots, so I just put them back in the room together. They glanced at each other as if to say, "Yeah, I know you, no worries", and hardly skipped a beat. Huzzah.

Saw Wall-E last week with G. Good movie, though all I remember of the dialogue is "Wall-eeeee!"
"Evaaaa!"
"Wall-eeeee!"
"Evaaaa!"

I am ashamed to admit that I've lost two of my orchids. No, not misplaced them, they just keeled over after I got back from Vancouver. They were my two weakest ones: April's, and the one I'd periodically lent back to its original owner when it flowered, and which was growing sideways and hard to anchor in its bark. So I'm left with five, including the little one currently on loan to my mother (again, because it was flowering). One of the four I have here is flowering at the moment, with seven beautiful purple blooms, although its first few buds withered after Vancouver, and again after its first water. I'd do something, and the eldest bud would die. All seems stable now; I did another regular watering this past weekend, and they didn't seem to twitch. Orchids don't seem to like an interruption in their watering schedule, I don't think!

Tons of things on my to-do list...find a good spigot to attach to my rain barrels, dig up bulbs, dig in compost, inspect a pipe end that some of my digging revealed (near where the old pool intake was) to see if it's related to our storm drain, sort through files, shred a bunch of stuff, continue work on X, Y and Z...le sigh. But we're slowly making progress.