So…well…maybe another week and I can see again.
Quel pain!
We’re working steadily, however.
BTW, if you haven’t got your copy of the Netwalkers Omnibus, do, over at Closed Circle (that gives Jane all the money) —and if you’re still waiting for the third book π —it’s a duology, not a trilogy! π There are only 2 parts, and is complete in the Omnibus.
Is it a sign of the times that I’m disappointed you didn’t make hyperlinks out of Netwalkers Omnibus and Closed Circle? To say nothing of an email link for Jane π
LOVED Partners, BTW.
Thank you for doing it! π
We did, by the way, make it to the gym today. 10 minutes on the stepper, 10 on the bike and I quit when I felt the least twinge from the ligaments in the knees. Slow and steady stays for the long hall.
I’m a wee bit tired. Forgot to take the Advil. Time to go do that.
Half our foot of snow has melted now, but it semi-rained, semi-snowed all afternoon, and more is forecast during which time it will likely come down as more snow. The main roads, however, are clear. It’s just the side roads where all-wheel-drive is a good thing. We love our Subaru!
We also love the heated seats for after-gym. They say these exercises get the tops of your legs. Ha. My derriere says it worked hard too, even if I was sitting down.
I’m developing scoliosis. As a consequence, the “facet joints” at L5 can get irritated if I’m out working in the yard bending and stooping. (Yeah, but some of that just can’t be avoided.) Once I had 2ml of fluid aspirated from a synovial cyst that resulted. But I’ve also been prescribed 500mg “etodolac” caplets. It works so much better than ibuprofen. If your doctor offers it, take it! π
That sounds like a prescription for glare ice O_O
@paul: we have this neat little rolling plastic tool chest with a flip lid that makes it possible to sit while doing low-to-the-ground work: my knees won’t take kneeling, not even when I was a little kid: something about the way my kneecaps are shaped, I guess. I’m not fond of constant stooping, either.
Even better is Preen, which, applied 2-3 times during the summer, prevents seeds from germinating but does not affect grown plants. That and mulch. We use weedcloth, and deep mulch, and poke holes in it where we insert a grown plant. WITH Preen, which prevents weeds sprouting, it sure makes a lot less stoop-work.
One of the things that tends to ‘take’ a bed and regrow here is alyssum and johnny-jump-up. A nice solid mat of flowers that out-competes most weeds. We also find that snapdragons are great opportunists. It seems wrong, somehow, to pull up snapdragon, but when it grows in the garden path, it’s gotta go, and if we transplant it, we have another bed of snapdragon trying to take over.
Yes, my sister has something like that, like a little kid’s first pedalless(sp?) tricycle in adult size. But I’ve never borrowed it–doesn’t particularly help when what you need to do is right down on the ground or the back side of the bed. It might help when I’m out in my shadehouse working on my containerized rhododendrons though. When I probably created the cyst I was picking up twigs from pruning a cherry π tree.
I like Preen, too. I bought a 40# bag of the unbranded material from the feed store several years ago! π My south foundation bed has day lilys and peonies, and some stoloniferous invasive heavy grass. A few weeks ago, December, I sprayed the perennial grass in the bed with Roundup, while the flowers are all underground. It’ll take several weeks for the grass to die, but it will. I still have to get on hands and knees to cut away all the dead growth from the peonies and day lilys–it’s just been too wet, and I’ve had other stuff more important on the few good days we’ve had.
Mulch is good, but don’t let it get too thick. Even with weedcloth, the earthworms get into it, add their castings, and eventually raise the soil level–leaving your perennials too deep. π
Off-topic: Vestal Virgins’ hairdo.
http://news.yahoo.com/oldest-roman-hairstyle-recreated-first-time-163120830.html
One thing we discovered in making a rose garden (back in Oklahoma) is NOT to put plantings up against a house wall or yard fence if you can avoid it. For the rose garden we did a Chinese-key motif walk, with the bushes easily accessible; and of course for the gardens we now have, we have generally allowed no wall-edge bed to exceed a foot in width—except one, which started out as a pile of dirt, and I am going to work to move that sucka out a bit and create a continuous path along the neighbor’s retaining wall/fence—it’s caused most of the problems we have.
We MAY get the second water-fall stream/lotus pool done this year back in the garage ell. I kind of doubt it. That would help define and finish off our walkways. But we are looking forward to getting the rest of our edging rock!
I guess you wouldn’t refer to Netwalkers as a “biology”, so “duology” seems to be the appropriate word.
BTW, CJ, would you be up to showing a picture of the Chinese-key motif walk so we can get an idea of what it’s like? I’ve had roses in my front yard gardens up against the porch and have usually been successful. One other house, I did put them in a garden inside a 6′ privacy fence, and some did well, others didn’t. Japanese beetles really did a number on the roses, even though I’d go out there every day with a jar of gasoline and flick the beetles into the jar. I refuse to use the traps, because they attract more beetles than not having the trap, and I believe the pheromone they use is derived from the female beetle. So, she’s not attracted to the traps, but will go after the roses. I tried milky spore disease in my back yard when we first moved in, and while that might have helped in my yard, the beetle grubs in other places would have grown up to be pests in my yard.
I’m not set up to do pix, Joe, and I never took any of the walk, but here are some Chinese lattice designs: imagine where you could plant a rose or have a path defined inside this sort of design. If you look at it as a set of overlapping squares, it makes sense, and you design the path of brick or pavers or gravel, with an edge that lets you stagger the bushes and yet always reach them from all sides. Weedcloth and gravel makes a good path, because the rose roots lie near the surface in a ring around the plant, and like to be cool and damp.
http://www.quiltedgallery.com/quilts/chinese/chinese_lattice_1.html
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=chinese+lattice&id=CE2E483E53C5FF39C3AD32520C719251644D4E9E&FORM=IQFRBA
You’re right about roses, but to be more precise, they are “thirsty” but they don’t like wet beds. They want good drainage and frequent watering, in other words they want to be demanding, “Give me a bed that drains the water away, but water me two or three times a week. While you’re at it, cut my blossoms for your pleasure or at least ‘dead-head’ me regularly. Feed me well–a girl can’t grow on crumbs! Don’t let me freeze, nor ‘rock and roll’ in the hard storms of winter. A light early winter pruning wouldn’t come amiss. In early spring we modern girls need you out here to give us a good shaping, and every few years a good rejuvenation pruning. But for God’s sake don’t just whack at us! Have a care and learn what to do.” Makes one wonder how we got suckered in to indulging them.