AMAZING!!!!

Just absolutely amazing! 

I was doing my evening chores when I saw Zoe assuming her predator pose near the pond.  I figured a turtle, right?  When I got there, my jaw dropped.

This guy was coiled up, trying to protect himself from Zoe. 

He? She? is a Redbellied Mud Snake.  They are completely harmless, even when handled they will not bite.  She was so docile ...and absolutely gorgeous.  We showed her to the kids (the boys were terrified...honestly, she was scary big!) and then I took her back to the bayou.  It occurred to me that she's plenty big enough to eat almost any goldfish in my pond.  More likely she was after the frogs, though the websites all say that adults primarily eat amphiumas.

 I grabbed him..(her?  Probably her.  Females are larger.)  Anyway...she immediately coiled around my arm.  Y'all.  This one was at least five feet long...probably a bit more... and as thick as my forearm.  I have seen many of these snakes, they are fairly common here.  But I have never seen one so large!  Average is considered 40-50 inches.  She was much larger than that.

While walking back from the bayou, a flock of roseate spoonbills flew overhead.

I love where we live.  Truly. 

(Though...I did engage in Operate Net Secure when I got back to the pond.  No sushi bar at this pond, thank you very much)

Currently Listening Flyleaf By Flyleaf see related

Sitting here, looking at the cursor blinking.  Lots of swimmy, swirly thoughts.  I keep typing and erasing.  I think my ovaries are being mean to me.  I forget that pre-surgery, I used to do this insane little dance every three weeks or so.  I haven't had mad cow pms in a long time.

So let me not dwell.  Or brood.  I shall ponder happy things.

Like...my muffin top is gone.  I put on my low-on-the-hip jeans yesterday and went...wow.  Looky!  Post surgery swelling is almost gone!  I like it!

I weeded the little flower bed on the far side of the pond yesterday.  Actually, it was so heavily infested with nutsedge that I removed the majority of the native modeling clay soil and replaced it with bagged top soil.  Then I used landscape fabric and cypress mulch.  Not my favorite garden look in the world, but it beats nutsedge any old day.  All my plants seemed to be surviving the transistion.

What astounded me while I disrupted the flower bed was the critters who live there.  Several species of frogs, toads and salamanders, an enormous wolf spider carrying all of her babies.  It's what I had in mind when I envisioned the pond.

I love to be around the pond at dusk or at night (I just went out to take Molly to pee.)  There is a chorus out there.  All kinds of frogs.  Apprently, the leopard frogs particularly enjoy the acoustics of the waterfall.  Several sing from there.  It's so cool.

Also very cool...I was very conscious of fragrance when I chose perennials.  Right now, it's all sort of come together.  The jasmine is blooming from the trellis, the Mr. Lincoln rose has at least a dozen blooms on it and there are four three-foot tall bushes of four-o'clocks.  Dianthus at the ground level.  We moved the little table and chairs to that side, near the pond.  Drink our coffee, watch the fish and the south wind blows all these fragrances around. 

The gardenia shouldn't be too far from blooming too, but I think that last big freeze damaged it.  My grandmother's gardenia looks the same...all beat up.  I am nursing it along, but I doubt we'll get to enjoy many flowers this year.

I tilled the last new flower bed today.  I really like the way it is coming along.  Fragrance is on my mind...and I set out on a online wild goose chase  trying to find lilacs that would enjoy living here.  There are a couple of hybrids that tolerate no winter and humid, balmy summers.  But I am not sure they would thrive here.  It's a trade off, I guess.  I can grow bananas and tropical water lilies, but no tulips or lilacs.  Figs and loquats, but not cherries or apples.

Baby fish!  We have oodles and oodles of baby fish.  I caught a bunch out of the lotus tubs today and moved them to a bigger tub in the gazebo (where the eltrical outlets are, so I can put an airstone in there as it gets hotter.)  I have several baby fantails and some look like baby shubunkins.  So...anybody want some goldfish?   

It occurred to me today that it is May.  May!  When did we get to May?  Then I got happy because it  means that school is almost done.  Benjamin finished up his grade level work over a month ago, so he's already begun next year's work.  He had a huge math test a couple of days ago...he made a 100.  I am so proud of him!

Two in the AM...I'll leave you with one of my favoritist songs of late.

Edit:

I heard about this on the radio the other day...I thought this was cool.   You can download the whole CD, The Slip, here.  From Trent Reznor..."thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me."  (We have bandwidth restrictions, so being up at 2AM...I can finally download it.  2-4AM are when the bandwidth limits don't apply )

Careful with that axe, Eugene...

• I did fun things like re-rock one side of the pond.  This is the first time since I dug the pond that I can honestly say it's like I want it.  I re-did the waterfall, I reworked the filter and I removed the ugly "rocks"  from the side near the gazebo, replacing them with real large flat rocks that look spiffy.  I'll post photos tomorrow.  It was dark when I finished today.

Edit:  Photos from this morning...

My turtle. 

The waterfall.

Two views of the pond.

• I tilled the new flower beds.  Again...I really need photos for this:

(The black tubs and cattle trough are home to my "nursery."  Baby water lilies, lotuses and several hundred half-inch long baby goldfish.)

While I was working on those beds, I unearthed  a 12 foot long galvanized steel gate.  It had been buried so long between the cattle pens that a TREE had grown up through the slats.  I might have ignored it, but the gate was sticking out about two feet into the space where I am envisioning daffodils and daylilies.  So, I sharpened the axe and I chopped the tree down.  I can't say that I have ever chopped a real tree down before....just sapling willows that come up like weeds down here.  This one was a fair sized young hackberry tree...about six inches in diameter and about 20 feet tall.  You can see it on the ground in the photo up there.  I have decided that I don't want to be a lumberjack when I grow up. 

This bed will have the daffodils, I think.  Honey is supervising the work.

The gate was under the fence in the foreground.  It was a real chore to get ut out, even after the tree removal.  It was overgrown with honeysuckle and buried in the ground. 

• I did my part to stimulate the economy by buying milk, bread and a Double Delight rose.  I also put $20 worth of gas in my van....it barely got me above the top of the E.   The rest of our economic stimulus went into the savings account.
• I beat up my hands.  My hands work very hard under normal circumstances, but right now they are blistered (from digging and tilling) and swollen from fire ant bites (why were there so many fire ants in my potatoes?  I don't get it.  I dug potatoes and I had to be real fast to pull them out of the dirt. Ouchie.) I have one black fingernail (smashed between large rocks in the waterfall.)  I burned two fingers taking dinner out of the oven.  Oh.  Another reason you gotta keep a tub of Boudreaux's Butt Paste (Click the link...you can get a free sample!)  in your medicine cabinet.  I had two second degree burns...one on my pinky, one on my middle finger.  I put triple antibiotic with pain killer on the pinky and Boudreaux's on the middle finger.  The pinky was throbbing and sore.   The one with Boudreaux's stopped hurting within minutes.  I took the bandaid off and slathered my poor little pinky with Boudreaux's.  Pain gone.
• I bathed three cats.  Josh got sprayed with Cotton Candy scented perfume by the youngest boychild.  So despite the old man cat smelling real pretty, he needed a bath.  Then Junior jumped onto the stove and landed in a skillet filled with old grease.  Yeah.  That was delightful to clean up.  Junior is all soft and fwuffy now...and smells like Pantene instead of three-day-old fried fish.  Then ... I was cleaning the grubby little fingerprints off the fridge and the dishwasher front panel and didn't see Mia sleeping downwind of the spray.  So.... much cat bathing this weekend.
• We are just about caught up on laundry.   I like when we get caught up on laundry.
• I discovered a nest of three week old baby cottontails in the middle of the onions.  Cuteness.  Oh the cuteness!  They pop out around the garden every now and then.  Smart momma rabbit, no?  The onions mask the smell of her babies.
• I have pea sized to golfball sized tomatoes on many varieties.  LaRoma, Garden Peach, Brandywine, Celebrity, but probably others that I can't remember right now.  We are picking cucumbers.  The melons are taking over the back half of the garden.  The winter squash are climbing the lemon tree and the chicken fence.

I did some other stuff.  I am certain of it.  But hubby has poured me a glass of the most wonderful Merlot.  Tired + Merlot = I can't even remember my own name right about now. 

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Your Love is Based on Friendship

For you, chemistry doesn't really happen without compatibility. Companionship and openness are the most important parts of your relationships. Whoever you love should be your best friend. And falling in love with a good friend is never out of the question. Why your love can last: You only fall for people who you truly understand... and who truly understand you Why your love can fail: Sometimes you don't admit how important physical chemistry is to you

You Would Be a Pet Cat

Independent and aloof, you don't like to be dependent on anyone. And as for other people, you can take them or leave them. You often don't care. You live your life by your own rules. And you have deep motivations that no one truly understands. Why you would make a great pet: You're not needy or greedy... unlike other four legged friends. Why you would make a bad pet: You're not exactly running down to greet people at the door What you would love about being a cat: Agility and freedom What you would hate about being a cat: Being treated like a dog by clueless humans

Hello! My name is Busy...what's yours?

To Do List

Garden

plant squash

pull up peas, till those rows for corn

till remaining veggie garden for corn and pumpkins...one more planting of green beans.

till some more in the new flower beds

make mulch with lawnmower...mulch flower beds

pick broccoli, dig potatoes

till former potato rows

Water corn, fertilize, water asparagus.

Water squash beds.

weed flower beds by the hen house

clean chickens' water trough

clean hen house

repair hole in fence on the side of hen house (just finished playing chicken round up!)

new straw in nest boxes

plant angelonia and the thing with the yellow flowers

haul poop for flower beds, veggie garden and palm tree. 

get flat tire on wagon fixed

pick up all the miscellaneous stuff out by the pond

vaccuum pond bottom

 

House

Clean litter pans

dishes

clean kitchen

mop

bathroom

sweep/mop bedroom

laundry (ongoing) ...wash sheets!

 

Other stuff

dental appointments to make...David and Jonathan
May 14 ....10:30     and     Aug 21 ....11AM  respectively

bills:  AT&T, car note 

Money in savings...tax rebate ?  (not there yet.)

Call TFL!

Cooking

Turkey in the rotisserie at 3:30 PM  (rest of menu:  sweet potato casserole, use leftover cornbread for dressing...thinking...everyone is sick of broccoli )

Debone chicken from leftovers and freeze.

Beans in freezer, too.

blanch and freeze broccoli

bake bread

School

Finish novel!

Caitlin's correspondence courses (must do this today, please!)

Penmanship (ignore all protests)

multiplication drills

Field trip planning

Postcards to put up!!!

......................................................

(All this would need to be done today, but probably won't get done not in one day at least...especially the garden stuff.  It'll be a to-be-continued kind of to do list, straight into the weekend.)

So...off with me.  (Wheeeee!!!! )

Rainy day....

so I am stuck inside.  Ah well.  Heaven knows the house needs some serious cleaning.  Plus, I think I am going to do some baking.  Some bread.  Some thumbprint cookies some with lemon curd and some with apricot and some with pineapple, I think.

In the meantime, I wanted to thank Tara, Bonnie, Amy,  Rosemary and JQ...post cards have started to arrive!!! 

I'll be posting photos of our "wall" soon   If you want to participate in our Homeschool Post Card Project, just holler.  I'll PM our snail mail address to you!  Thank you

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I took these this weekend...

The first water lily has bloomed!  Rainy days are perfect to photograph lilies.  Their color is so saturated that they tend to look weird when photographed in daylight.

I love the wildlife I see at the pond...frogs, salamanders, the mockingbirds that come to drink.  This guy may not come to my pond...

He fishes out in the bass pond, usually.  Today he was in the back yard.

He took off as I approached with the camera.