Sans clean up, I’ve finished the hedge!!! GO ME! That freaking thing is longer than the house and curved around on both ends… and it was between 8 and 10 feet tall. I tamed it using only a pair of pruners and a hacksaw!

So, in celebration, here is a bird.

Click for a larger image so you can see his eye…



Those fresh cut marks? All me, baby. Me, my tools and my sunburn!

Should I go clean up now, or drag my aching body into a hot shower?

This fern called to me through the broken light this morning.

It said: “Stop trampling me, bitch!”

Sis-in-law extraordinaire Debra shipped a box full of some ugly looking bulbs down to us last summer… and told me that they were crinum lilies, which I found out for myself within a couple of months… but also that they’d get about 2 feet tall and die come Autumn. “But don’t worry; they’ll come back in the Spring”.

On my walks I’d seen the exact same thing, fully 5 feet high and going strong. Explaining that it doesn’t freeze in south Florida, meaning there’s nothing to impede their growth, I tried to counter her set-in-stone argument… but she wouldn’t listen. Told me, full of confidence, that what I’d seen around the ‘hood was not the same thing at all and that these can only grow to two feet tall and then they die. I was obviously grossly mistaken.

Well, guess what? Can I sing the ‘told ya so’ song now??

The joke is really on me, because I have waaaay too many in that bed now… close proximity planting is fine in cooler climates, but there’s at least ten of those suckers out there and within a few years they’ll be virtual monsters, all trying to crowd each other -and me- out. LOL!

I believe this was taken during my 2nd grade career. I loved that little felt dog pin attached to my dress. It was lost one day while I ran hell bent for leather on the playground during recess and I was inconsolable in my shock and grief…

I remember crying over my great loss. I could barely see the ground through the tears as I made my way over to where the honeysuckle grew in a virtual wall, encompassing the fence. Their over powering sweet odor hanging in the humid southeast Texas air always made me feel better… probably broke the tip off a few and guzzled the nectar like a hungry hummingbird, too. We did a lot of that, when we weren’t chasing boys. Remember, Gwen?

This is the picture my father carried in his wallet. After he died my mother kept it intact for a few years, then tore it apart, dissecting the contents as one would a dead bug. I treated it more like an archeology dig; studying the items it contained with the reverence they deserved.

B gave me a honeysuckle candle and I keep it close to hand. Every once in a while I pop the top of the jar and breathe in the fragrance of my youth once more. It never fails to take me back to the playground, back to the innocent days of horned toads and boy chasing.

We take succor where we find it… and that day the sweet vine fit the bill. I had no such outlet save my dog when my father died. And I’m still at a loss with loss.

I think I’ll take a pull on that candle one more time…

It’s official: I’m in love. The good news? The object of my affection loves me back!

Version 2.7 took a small period of adjustment, but it’s been worth every peek into every nook and cranny… I love the quick edit, the ability to approve, delete or spam comments without extra clicks… everything is so… available!

And I just installed a plugin from the plugin page!! You can’t beat that with a stick. Upgrades are also done from within now…
Of course, these do not work if you can’t FTP into your server, like my other site.

Other amazing attributes of this version:
Keyboard shortcuts for comments that I don’t take advantage of because, frankly, I’m afraid of the learning curve. I suck and House is always on. You understand.

Media can be uploaded to the Gallery without needing to write a post.

You can customize the write page and the dashboard.

There’s much, much more. The official site, if you’re thinking of WordPress, is a font of information.

NetTuts also has some great images of some of the new features.