Redbud

A friend of mine offered a small redbud tree from his yard to me the other day. It was not exactly a small tree, but a nice size tree to get started. It surprised us though. We both expected it to have a deep root system, so I had prepared a hole for it that was about the size of a bushel basket. It turned out that the tree had shallow spreading roots. So, we ended up filling in the hole I'd dug so it was so deep and then expanding the sides of the hole so that we could get the roots properly buried. Hopefully, there are enough roots on it so that it will survive the digging up and transplanting...they are a very pretty tree.

Now, if we'd just get some rain here so I didn't have to water it by hand. We're about 2 inches below normal so far this year.

Weekend

This weekend was an absolutely beautiful weekend to be outside. I did some yard cleanup and also fertilized the lawn. The lawn and dandelions are both starting to come up, so I figured it wasn't too early. Now, we just need a good dose of rain.

Crocus

It was really nice to get outside and work in the yard a bit today. We had a little bit of rain last night, but it got absorbed into the ground rather quickly. I wish we could have gotten more.

There are a few flowers coming up and blooming. Right now, it's just the snowdrops and crocus that are in bloom. Soon, I should have some daffodils and a few tulips. I'm hoping the squirrels are so busy with the bird feeders that they would dig up the tulip bulbs. At the old house, every time I tried to plant any tulips the squirrels always dug up and ate the bulbs. They did that with the crocus bulbs there too.

Here's a pic of one of the crocus flowers that I took today:

The Demise of chewycub.com

The financial contract with my website provider for chewycub.com came up for renewal recently. Since I had not been maintaining my website for a couple of years and hadn't posted any new pictures or information of myself, I decided to let it expire and let chewycub.com "fade" away from the internet. It was fun and a good learning experience...

It seems like the way to connect with people now is Facebook. Maintaining a profile on Facebook is easy and less work than a website, so my efforts are going there instead. If you want to connect with me, look me up on Facebook.

Who knows? Maybe someday I'll have my own personal website again...

Sorry about the picture links that no longer work in my old posts. I may eventually even fix up the pictures in some of my old posts.

Rain Rain Rain

It's been nice to get the rain. It's just too bad it was such a wet and cool weekend. I would have liked to have worked more on our patio pavers, but it was just too wet outside even when it wasn't raining...and then the heavier rain started during the night. Hopefully, it will end before there are any flooding problems...it seems like it's either not enough rain or too much.

Since I couldn't work outside, I had a bit of a marathon playing WoW yesterday. I got my character up to Level 60. Now, if I can just get through the next 20 levels...

Iris Pics

Here are a couple of pictures of irises that I've got started in our yard. I just planted a few bulbs that a friend gave me last year. In a few years we'll have some nice groups of them. The first picture is of an iris called "Three Rubies". Unfortunately, the photo doesn't really capture some of the iridescence in the flower, but it's still a nice photo:



The next one is called "Scout's Honor". At first I thought this one was going to be really ugly and I wondered why my friend bothered to give it to me unless he wanted to get rid of it. In looking at it up close, I changed my mind and I really like its unusual bronze color. The photo turned out really nice too:

This and That

It was very nice to have an extra day this past weekend. I took Monday off since Richard had to take a mandatory day off...it was a good weekend to get mostly caught up on yard work. I got new lawn seed spread in the patches where the grass was thin. We replaced the air filter, changed the oil, and sharpened the blade of the lawn mower. I also mowed the lawn and spread fertilizer on the lawn. It was good to get those chores out of the way.

We finally were able to give our cat Puff a proper burial in the backyard. I put a rock on her grave to mark the site...and speaking of cats. I took Tabby to the vet for his annual exam and vaccinations. He was rather upset, but forgave me rather quickly after we got home. At least he doesn't fight quite so bad as he used to, but the vet still couldn't examine is face/mouth even with the assistant holding him (with elbow length Kevlar gloves).

Work continues to present its share of headaches. The offload of work to China has stalled for now, and I'm back to helping cover some of the work that was already offloaded. Between that and other changes in the way we do things, it's quite frustrating...I could use a vacation but that's not going to happen for a while.