Notes to self

1.  You need a new shovel.

2.  The morning after a hard rain is a great time to pull up unwanted saplings and other weeds.

3.  When you are pulling up something rooted deeply, brace yourself or plan to land on your butt.  Hard.

4.  If you are standing facing uphill and you hear a jet, do not tip your head back to look for it, or plan to land on your butt.  Hard.

5.  Your neighbors now have conclusive proof that you are crazy if they heard you apologize to the trees you were trimming.

6.  You need a new nail brush!

7.  Your co-workers do not need to know that you habitually turn a towel into lekku after your shower.

8.  Your true friends, on the other hand, will be delighted.

An early and wonderful Mother's Day

Mom was going to be at the lake this weekend with her sister, but my aunt didn't feel well, so Mom went up for the day on Thursday.  That meant she was free today, so we spent most of the morning working on law office stuff, and then headed out around 11.

First we went to the bank, then we went to pick up the map.  I have to give a huge hand to the framing shop at the Hudson Joann Fabrics.  Keri did an amazing job of helping me pick out the frame and then getting the map framed and ready to go, and it looks even better than I thought it would.  While Mom was pulling the car around, I grabbed a fake lavender arrangement she wanted but put back and bought it as a spur-of-the-moment Mother's Day gift.

After the map, we grabbed some lunch at a local Thai place (yum!).  Dad has been working diligently all week to get electronic bits and bobs that he'll never use out of the basement, and he filled six banker's boxes.  I took those and a stray remote and a non-working laptop to the city electronics recycling today, and then Mom and I went plant shopping.

To my dismay, Cochran's was completely sold out of basil, and man, I suck at growing it from seed.  I may have to see if Marc's has a couple plants tomorrow when I do my grocery shopping.  I ordinarily don't do that because I've learned that the chain stores, even local chains, don't treat their suppliers very well and do not stand behind the products at all.  However, for basil and homemade pesto, I will set aside my scruples.

After Mom had picked out two verbena, a sweet potato vine and two Roma tomato seedlings and I had picked out lamium, verbena, petunias, licorice plant, heliotrope and two cherry tomato seedlings, we had our annual argument over who was buying Mom's plants.  This year, she won, because she said the fake plant counted.  No problem, I'll win next year. :-)

Then we headed over to Casa de Jammies and unloaded the map from Mom's car and put it in the living room.  No pictures yet, as it's going to stay wrapped up until Dad comes over to hang it.  Then Little Miss Piggie Pie and I had a nap, and then dinner, and then I watched RuPaul's Drag Race while emptying four boxes of books.

I hugged Mom today, twice, and I will think of that every time I help someone handle their mom's estate.  I am lucky as hell to have such a lovely mother and to still have her here with me.

I am Jammies, hear me roar!

...or at least, hear me not whimpering like an abandoned puppy. I dealt with a hornets' nest over the back door to the breezeway all by myself last night, and today I took my shovel and flicked it off the siding in one swing.

Plus, lots of people at work loved the lemon pound cake I made for our triple baby shower yesterday.  Yup, three of my co-workers are spawning.  Thankfully, they are due in successive months and each works in a different area of the court, so the need for training and temporary replacements is not as difficult as it could have been.

My butterfly bushes are not completely lost--the branches are all dead, but new growth is sprouting at the base of several of them.  The miniature roses are goners, though. :-(

All in all, life continues at Casa de Jammies in a mostly serene fashion, except when Rooter ventures into the front yard and Little Miss Piggie Pie barks herself hoarse.

I have been very clever

...even if I do say so myself.  The sump pump is no longer running continuously, but it is still running, and I'm astonished by how much water must still be saturating the earth around my foundation!  Today I moved the lighter half of my houseplants outside, and since I didn't water them before I moved them, they were pretty dry.  I was just going to water them when I realized my garden hose is not hooked up to the spigot, but to the sump pump.

So after a moment of thought, I put the hose in a bucket, and emptied it into my houseplants when it filled.  It took three hours and three buckets to get them all, but I was pretty happy.  No wasted water, no wasted electricity, and happy plants.

Now to get the mulch down before the idiot landscapers mow down another lavender or daylily.

Spring at Casa de Jammies

Lovely, lovely, slightly damp and gloomy spring!

Lots of pics after the jump. :-)

Not bad for a chick with a migraine!

Which appeared yesterday morning when I woke, ugh.  I did absolutely nothing but sleep yesterday. :(

Today, however, I have:

Changed the sheets on the bed
Trimmed the lilacs, the butterfly bushes, the boxwoods and the evergreen bushes,
Vacuumed the hall carpet
Written and scheduled tomorrow's post for Bubbles & Baubles
Loaded the dishwasher
Made chili chicken

My arms are still quivering from wrangling the trimmer, and it's a light one!  Tomorrow will be all inside jobs, cleaning and vacuuming and laundry and, ugh, putting clothes away.  I do have some lavender plants to get in the ground, but I can do that early and then get on with staying inside where it's cool.

I don't know how you're doing because you don't update your blog.

So said Captain Crossword when I talked to him on the phone last month, and it made me face something I've been ignoring.  I have been avoiding this blog, not because anything is wrong in my life, but because I felt blocked on writing about the end of the Disney adventure, and I wanted to finish that before going on to anything else.  So to un-block myself, here's a summation:

The last full day of the cruise was great.  The half-day at Hollywood Studios was nice, and a random guy called me "The best single-serving friend of the day."  The day at Epcot was half-okay, half-not for reasons I won't go into.  Princess Minnie was comped a pair of Disney princess sweatpants and SuperDonut got a set of bongo drums.  I liked the luxury of the Contemporary American resort where we stated, but hated the muddy colors and all of the shapes.  I flew home to eight inches of snow on my car and a dog with vestibular disorder.

The new job is still good.  I feel as though I'm getting a brain workout every day, and I'm still making mistakes but trying not to beat myself up about it.  I'm also trying to get back into a more professional look clothing-wise.

Little brother, I promise to be better about updating.  In the mean time, have some garden pictures:

One of my azaleas:

My double-flowered lilac:

Heliotrope in pots:

A classic lilac:

"Sensation" lilac

The Valiant Little Oxalis

Mom and Dad went to Dad's 50th college reunion last weekend, then spent a week up at the lake house with three other couples.  They had a good time, Aunt Sarah wore and got compliments on the nail polish necklace I made for her, and she and Mom did some wallet damage at a big nursery up there. 

Today, I went out to Mom and Dad's to drop off the tomato plants I've been coddling for Mom and to get drinking water (since Dad shuts off the house water when they're gone for more than 48 hours).  The house was quiet when I got there, and I figured Dad was still asleep and Mom was outside working, so I filled my water bottles, put them in the trunk, unloaded the tomato plants and then went looking for Mom.  She was doing cleanup in the side yard, but was happy to take a break and have a cup of coffee and talk with me. 

As we walked back to the house, Mom said, "Oh, look at that!" and pointed to the compost heap.  Growing out of the remains of a Boston fern that Mom had put on the compost early this spring was a big, beautiful burgundy oxalis!  Mom said it was a shame to leave it there, and I told her I'd be thrilled to take it.  We got a pot from the shed (which the plant was too big for!) and I put it in my car with the water bottles.  Then Mom told me that the gorgeous purple calla lilies in a matching pot on the porch table were for me!  So after Mom and I talked, Dad woke up and I said good morning to him and Mom had given me her opinion on the nail polish jewelry I brought, I headed back home, short four tomato plants but ahead on callas and oxalis.

Now I have to go do laundry, bleah.

Still boring, but still here.

Spring is definitely here, because mulch is now available at my grocery store!  I'll be getting some next weekend and for a number of weekends thereafter, which may mean that Bubbles & Baubles goes on hiatus, given what I tend to do to my nails during mulch time. :) 

Temptation Nursery is open now, and Mom and I have a date for May 12th to go shopping for tomatoes and to fight about letting me buy her at least one plant for Mother's Day.  I swear, fighting with her over buying her things is as much of a tradition as giving her a card.

I also need to invest in a good spray bottle so I can get my butt outside and deal with the nettles.  I don't mind like dandelions, plus Snoopy mows 'em down regularly, but I will not allow prickly things in my flower beds!

Doc and I also have a date for lunch on the 12th, so I'll have to coordinate that with Mom, but then I get Doc to myself for a couple of hours.  She's had a lot of changes in a short period of time, and while we had a long phone conversation on Friday, nothing beats face-to-face chat over a bowl of white chili con queso and chips.

May is probably my favorite month of spring.  There are seeds and seedlings to plant, weeds to kill, mulch to spread, flowers blooming, lots of sun and the heat isn't usually ridiculous.  I'm looking forward to the next month.

The Week in Review

Good evening, and welcome to "The Week in Review", in which your lazy correspondent sums up all the blog entries she thought about making and then never made.

Monday, July 4: Holiday! Day off!! Bad patriotic manicure! Slept in, went to Hudson to pick up water and drop off computer but forgot to do the latter, worked out, napped, finished up leftover laundry from Sunday.

Tuesday: Ack! Monday in disguise!! Tons of voice mail, clients going crazy, Mom out of the office to meet with a scary psycho and only Snoopy as backup. Came home to find an amazing box from my perfume forum secret swapper, all full of UK treats and books and cosmetics--thank you, Rachel!

Wednesday: Fairly normal work day, except that I spent time completing a bond application for a bond we not only had, but had filed with the court. Come home, water plants, make pesto, then Snoopy shows up asking questions he should have asked Mom at the office. Also, stripping the leaves off basil (hi Mike!) plants is incredibly tedious, and all I could think about as I worked my way through the double armful was how much fun it was last year with Sherri and how notfun it was this year.

Thursday: Yuck, trial prep! Gotta get all our ducks inna row, in triplicate. Come home, cheat and only water the tomatoes, collapse in front of the computer and die.

Friday: Short morning, started payroll taxes while Mom went to court. Then lunch with Mom and three Probate Court investigators while a thunderstorm pounds downtown Akron. Then a short afternoon, then home.

Saturday: Grocery shopping, tidying up the house, nap, shower, then dinner with Mom and Dad at a local place I really like called Crave. I had two lemon martinis with a stupid name, steak skewers with smoked gouda fondue, a salad and a steak wrap. I brought home most of the sandwich and a bit of the steak kebab. Mom giggled at how inebriated I got after my two martinis, and she wouldn't let me walk to the car with them, but told me to stand still and they'd come get me. Both Mom and I had noticed that the planter outside of the restaurant had a sweet potato plant and a tomato plant with actual tomatoes on it, and that the latter was desperately in need of water. Since Mom and Dad had brought me eight gallons of filtered water from their house, she decided to sacrifice one for a good cause. This led to me declaring that she was guerilla watering, and then trying to explain guerilla gardening with a head full of vodka.

When we got back to my house, Mom helped me unload the remaining seven gallons of water, while Dad fussed over the dog. He continued to do that even while his drunken daughter (wobbling on shoes with one-inch soles) carried her computer out to his car. From a sober perspective, I shouldn't have thumped it into the back where Mom had the trunk open, but then Dad shouldn't have trusted me with it in the first place.

After managing to put the leftovers in the refrigerator and the new spool of line for the weed-whacker on the table in the porch (a decision which took several moments' pondering), I drank a lot of water, played solitaire on the computer, posted on Goodreads and headed off to bed.

So there you have it, all the news that's too boring to print!

Long, long ago,

my mother asked me what I wanted for my 30th birthday.

"Excitement. Adventure. Rubies the size of pigeon's eggs." I answered.

My parents got me a lawnmower.

These days, my mom just starts accumulating things on our shopping trips year-round, and wraps them up, either for my birthday or Christmas, and gives them to me on the appropriate day.

I've never stopped wishing for non-practical birthday gifts, but I stopped telling my parents.

This year, Dad was very excited about the early birthday present he picked out and purchased. In fact, he was so excited, he brought it over a full three weeks early.

It's a weed-whacker. With a bonus leaf blower.

Love you, Dad.

EEEEEEEEEEK! IT'S IN THE HOUSE!

On Thursday I carted two boxes of clothing from our Ward who died from the nursing home to the woman who had cared for him and was going to redistribute the clothing.

On Friday I woke up with teeny-tiny fluid-filled blisters all over both hands and my left arm. I checked WebMD, and in a truly disgusting slideshow about common insect bites, found that scabies bites matched the blisters on my hands. I called my doctor's office, and they squished me into the schedule, and then I had about five hours to worry, fret, and try not to scratch.

After seeing the very nice Dr. H., I was reminded why hypochondriacs should not be allowed to search the internet. Without any hint, she asked if I was a gardener and said I had poison ivy rather than scabies. She wanted to give me some steroids to help my skin heal a little more easily, but since they do such a number on my stomach, we settled on calamine and benadrool.

I spent the rest of the day in a benadrool fog, trying to remember if I'd seen ANY three-leaved plants anywhere in the garden. Yes, I've been weeding the lavender bed like mad, but all I really remembered were nettles and lamium. The lamium can't hurt, and I left the nettles in place until I could get back out with my gloves and long sleeves on.

On Saturday, I was reelling in the hose when I saw several three-leaved plants growing up underneath the hose cart. I'll have to get back out there once I have some more Roundup on hand. I know the traditional method of disposal is to burn the plant, but that's a little too close to the house for me to be lighting fires.

Today, I was hauling all the houseplants off the breezeway and outside, and just barely noticed a three-leaved plant sticking up out of the pot I almost had my face in. Like any good last girl, I screamed and backed away, then sat down and thought. Roundup in my geraniums is NOT an option, fire in my geraniums ditto, but I think if I put on gloves and long sleeves I should be able to dig the whole thing out with a trowel.

But that's a chore for tomorrow. For tonight, I have to shudder and try not to scratch all the imaginary and non-imaginary itches.

Possum: not just for dinner anymore!

Or at least that was what Little Miss Piggie Pie told me, barking at the top of her lungs and straining at the tie-out chain yesterday morning. There was a possum huddled under the dilapidated stone wall on the east side of my property, and LMPP wanted to catch it and kill it and eat it raw. When I hauled her in like a fish on a line, she sulked until it was time for me to leave for work, at which time she was happy to chase the cookies I'd tossed down into the basement.

Because I had dropped my car off for $350 worth of repairs on Thursday (oil change, air filter, new water pump), I had to wait for Mom to stop at a bank before picking me up. We got to work a little before 10:00, and then left at 11:30 to have lunch with three friends from the legal field (and Mom ducked one opposing counsel she'd just left a counter-offer for). After lunch, we got everything Mom needed for Portage County on Monday morning packed up and agreed that while we'd gotten stuff done throughout the week, there wasn't much of a feeling of accomplishment.

Mom took me to get my car, and I stopped for groceries before coming home. My evening consisted of watering plants, finishing the book I was reading, and wrestling the big Norfolk pine outside before LMPP ate any more of the potting soil out of the planter.

This morning I got up early, showered, dressed and stuffed the dog in the basement, and headed for Mom's. We went to a flea market in Chardon, which is northeast of Mom's house. We had a little contest--we each started with $25, and compared notes on how much we'd gotten at the end of the morning. I got three pretty daylilies, a gourmet dog biscuit and two purses. Mom got two hand mirrors, a set of pretty cloth napkins, a basket of sweet white onions and the most adorable birdhouse. She still had money left over, so she won. :) We had lunch at a local coffee shop, then stopped by the knitting store. They were having a big sale for their anniversary, so the $10 skeins of ribbon yarn were only $3 each! Mom got enough ribbon yarn to make ruffled scarves for me and maybe my picky aunt. Or maybe not--the last three attempts at scarves for Aunt Turkey were rejected for various reasons. *eye roll*

I had practiced purling on the way up, since I'd managed to forget how to purl since Christmas. I'm making coasters, because the ones I have are wood, which is nice but doesn't do much to battle condensation in the humid Ohio summer. I didn't knit on the way home, since we went the pretty way instead of the fast way, and I wanted to see everything. I did almost finish my first coaster, though, in a pattern called purl ridges. I'm still just knitting squares, but at least they're interesting squares!

When we got home, both of us slightly gimpy from all the walking and me slightly sunburned and very itchy, Dad told Mom she'd had an urgent call from a nursing home. She called them back, and found out that one of her wards had died of metastized lung cancer, less than two weeks after his diagnosis. Because Mom has been this man's guardian since 1986, she had no idea who his preneed funeral was with, and she was prepared to go into the office to get it. Fortunately, in 2003, I had copied all of the client files off the hard disks she used to use, so Dad remoted in to Mom's work computer, and opened up the Motion. I was able to tell Mom both the name of the funeral home and when she bought the preneed funeral, so unless they demanded the contract, she shouldn't have had to drive down to Akron.

I came home just as Snoopy was finishing up with the lawn, talked to him for about ten minutes, and then LMPP and I took a nice nap. Tomorrow I need to plant my new daylilies, but tonight is going to be all about relaxing.

I ATEN'T DED!

However, both the desktop and the laptop are, so I'm using Dad's spare computer and without any photo-processing software, which means all of the garden pictures that were meant to go on this blog have to stay on the camera, along with all of the nail polish pics for the beauty blog.

I feel cheated that the BIG STORMS the weather guy promised us for last night never showed. When I got up this morning, the sidewalk was barely damp. Even if we didn't get the storm(s), at least the temperature dropped. It was in the upper 80s/lower 90s from Saturday through yesterday, and I damn near killed myself getting one flowerbed weeded and mulched. I need to rig up a chain so Little Miss Piggie Pie can join me in the front yard while I work out there, because she took advantage of my absence to eat a large portion of the potting soil out of the planter holding my Norfolk pine.

Otherwise, work is normal, online life is semi-restricted but normal, and my offline life is just as boring as it ever was.

Oh, and if you don't recognize the title of this post, do yourself a favor and read some Terry Pratchett. :)

Ow, but worth every minute!

Yesterday morning, Mom and I met at 11:30 at Temptation Nursery, and spent a very happy hour looking at everything, wanting everything, and buying select things. We were in the middle of a spat over how much I was spending on her Mother's Day gift when one of her former colleagues from the university came up behind us, so we spent another ten minutes chatting, and I won the argument. For the record, I told Mom I had $100 budgeted for plants, $25 of which was hers, and the total came to $89, so nyah. I got 5 basil, 3 lavender, 4 tomatoes, 3 sweet potato vines (decorative), a white licorice plant, a heliotrope (!!), a purple and white ivy geranium, and a peppermint. Mom got twelve coleus, a Swedish Ivy, a red ivy geranium, 3 sweet potato vines, 4 tomatoes, an English ivy, two cinnamon basil and two lamium. I did let her pay for the red ivy geranium because it's a gift for her sister.

We took the plants and my car over to my house, and I unloaded everything because I didn't want them to sit in a hot car all day, then went to the restaurant Mom picked in Fairlawn. Lunch was pretty good, but not as phenomenal as the downtown branch. When our waiter brought the check, I tried to get it, but Mom pulled the little tray so hard one of my fingernails went with it, so I let her have the check.

After lunch, we looked for a Sally Beauty Supply, because I need to renew my card and Mom needs to get some ridge-filling nail polish basecoat, but the Fairlawn Sally has moved and I didn't know where, so we just went to the craft store and the discount store. Mom got a bunch of stuff for our secret project for the summer and I got yarn for a brown scarf.

At the discount store, I got a cute shirt to put away for the cruise, three pairs of flip-flops, six pairs of socks, a present to put away for Christmas, two white bath mats and a black iron trellis with "Welcome" along the top. Mom got an identical trellis, plus two shepherd's hooks with "Welcome" on a vertical plate along the upright portion, one short and one tall. She also got a shirt for the cruise, some gluten-free cake mix and frosting and some other stuff I don't remember because by the time we left, my feet hurt! We played car Tetris to get the shepherd's hooks and trellises in, and I need to call Mom and see if she has one pair of my flip-flops. She was tired enough by the time we got to my house that she didn't want to wait for me to cut her some lilacs, so I am taking them to the office tomorrow. That way, she gets pre-Mother's Day and post-Mother's Day goodies!

I feel very spoiled to have gotten alone time with each of my parents in the last few days, and it reminds me of how very lucky I am not only to have two living parents, but to have two amazing people as parents.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms and kids!

spring. oh yay.

Signs of spring at Casa de Jammies:

Dandelions and nettles sprouting.

Allergies sprouting.

Trash all over the front yard from selfish pigs driving by.

The juvenile idiots next door revving their crotch rockets for hours on end.

Spastic robins fighting with their reflections in the living room window.

The damn dog running through the house barking at the last two.

On the other hand, I did get to go outside and clean up last year's leaves. One-half of the flowerbed along the front sidewalk is cleaned up, and if the weather holds, I can do the other half tomorrow morning. Plus I get to have open windows in the house, and dream about having enough money to mulch everything this year.

The yard is still paying for my spring of grief over Bigfoot, but I'm trying to get things back together. I'm also trying to figure out what happened to my lemon balm, which sprouted all over in its container on the front porch last summer and did well on the breezeway this winter, but is currently dying off in great swathes right now. It's a puzzle.

Another puzzle is what the heck has happened to my skin, which is suddenly dry and lizard-y. I haven't changed anything about the amount of water I drink or the amount of baths I take or the amount of moisturizer I use, but I am suddenly a leezard.

It drives me crazy that there is so much at work I can't talk about here, but even if I have fewer than ten readers, it's still a public website, and client confidentiality has to be respected.

Ah well, scales and puzzled brain and muzzled fingers and all, I'm still alive, still finding my little pleasures, and still haven't gone completely nuts, so I'm good.

The joys of home ownership

As I mentioned, Sherri and Jay made a spontaneous trip to Ohio on Thursday. We had a lovely, quiet Friday and Saturday, full of shopping, baking, eating, movie-watching, perfume-testing, laughing, exercising, lunching with relatives, etc.

On Sunday, I got up at my usual 6:20, and the water was out. I tried flipping the breaker, to no avail. When Sherri woke up, I sent her down to the basement, and explained what had happened, then put some empty bottles in my car and headed out to the folks' house.

Mom was out riding her bike, but I got in the back door to the garage, and started filling water bottles at the utility sink. I was almost done when Mom got home, and she invited the three of us to spend the day at her house. I wound up not going anywhere, although Jay and Sherri went to Barnes and Noble and picked up dinner at the Olive Garden. Somehow, throughout the day, the pump came back to life enough for us to be able to flush toilets, although not shower or wash dishes.

Monday morning, I took a shower at the Natatorium, then went on to work. While I was there, I talked to Dave, the well pump guy, and he said he'd meet me at the house at 12:30. It wound up being closer to 2:00, but he replaced the switch, and didn't have to dig anything up, yay! As soon as he was gone, I told Jay and Sherri to have the long showers they both wanted, and then it was time for a nap, then dinner, then a quick trip to World Market.

Tuesday morning I dropped Jay off at the Nat and went on to work, then headed for a local nursery, where I picked up six pink-flowered lavender plants. When I came home, Jay walked Little Miss and Sherri and I made pesto. We also discussed books and knitting and gardening. She's taken up knitting again, so I can count that and BPAL as my enabling successes for the visit.

While I did very much miss Imp and Rob and Dampy, it was nice to have Sherri and Jay all to myself. I wished they lived closer.

Gardening progress

I was outside from 7 to 10:30, when it got much too hot for me. I have a flaming sunburn on my face despite "sweat-proof" sunblock, I got two or three wheelbarrow loads of weeds to the compost heap and the round front bed is now ready for newsprint, topsoil, new plants and mulch, which I will do this evening. :)

Ded Jammehs iz ded

Mom and I are going to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, so of course we thought this would be a good time to have a handyman take care of one or two things that need fixing. That's all well and good, but I have to move everything out of the library closet while still trying to reclaim my back flowerbeds.

On that subject, I got an early start this morning, removing weeds and schlepping mulch out to the back. I took a short break and went to Ace Hardware for topsoil and Temptation nursery for three white lamium and four blue columbines. I worked outside until it was too hot (noon) and then came inside, finished up the laundry and took a nap. At 6:30, I went back outside and stayed out until 8:30.

I'm both happy with what I accomplished and a bit dismayed that there's still so much too do. The smaller of the tricky beds is weeded, re-soiled and mulched, the seven plants plus two irises which were waiting to be planted are all in, and I scattered a bunch of gladiolus bulbs in there for good measure. At this point, I'm thinking that I'll do the other tricky bed the right way, and on the two narrow beds, I'll wait until fall, then mow everything down and start over in the spring.

Tomorrow night I have to finish cleaning out that closet, and then start packing. My biggest dilemma is how do I know what scents I want to wear until I get there?

*ponder ponder ponder*

The price of mourning

Three hundred sixty-three days ago, I used my tax refund to have my beloved Stormdog put to sleep. I had planned to use the money to buy mulch, but bringing peace to my heartdog was more important. Afterwards, I didn't have the heart or the joy to even go out and weed, so I just let my flowerbeds go.

The beds with the sweet woodruff and the lamium are in the best shape, of course, since that's the job of a good groundcover. All of the rest, however, are a nightmare of nettles, dandelions and dead nettle. Over the last week, I've gotten the bed between the sidewalk and the front lawn completely weeded and mulched, at a cost of ten broken nails, permanently imbedded dirt, and tons of hives.

I still feel Stormy's presence here. It's just as if I had three dogs, only one of them doesn't need to eat or go outside. I've thought about him pretty much the whole time I was weeding, and while I still miss him, I know I did the right thing for him.

On Tuesday, I will take down my big signature picture of Stormy with his birth and death dates. He will always be in my heart, but it's now a warm memory instead of a cold loss.

Love you forever, puppy mine. <3