Archive for June, 2008

If it’s summer, I must have poison ivy. This time on my left arm. Not really surprising, considering the amount of outside work I’ve indulged in lately… I just have no idea how it got me.
Call me paranoid, but I’ve made it a habit to wash my arms and legs down with Tecnu Extreme after clearing out the flower beds just in case and so far it’s worked.

I’ve been saved much agony by this product and can assure you that it works - absolutely works like nothing else I’ve found for poison ivy… even days into the outbreak!
One of my outbreaks became infected a few years ago and I had to go to the ER… but that was BTE: before Tecnu Extreme.

No matter how you spend your summer, whether shuttling between Orlando vacations like Oldest Daughter and family, or clearing out a new flower bed in your own yard, Tecnu is handy to have in the medicine cabinet.
I bought mine at CVS, but it can be found at most big box retailers or drug stores.

Up twice with Bree last night, as she had some mild form of digestive trouble. Arthur may have left too much on his plate for her to clean up or it was just one of those things.

I’m so glad that I cut the ficus on the side fence down to six feet, because it enables a clear view to the east and the clouds are usually more interesting on the beach. I was waiting for Bree and looking at the eastern clouds at 2 dark-thirty this morning when someone’s window shaker kicked on and instantly transported me back almost 40 years, to my own room in another cracker box. And my own window A/C unit.

Eerie, when that happens with such clarity. As if time was swept away and I was just entering my first year of high school. I hadn’t made the mistake of marrying the boy idiot, never sold office furniture or tape supplies. Never took clippings in a greenhouse and carted dirt from one place to another. Never Never Land.

My parents were still alive in 1972 and though life wasn’t perfect, it was still out there, all of it, just waiting for me. But, as the old saying goes… I’d only want to do it over if I knew then what I know now.

My sister-in-law, she of the crape myrtle, called looking for an intermediary in her current row with her mom, my mother-in-law. Like I should become embroiled in that conflict, right?

The opinion put forth by MIL: one should give shower as well as wedding gifts. SIL thought no, a wedding gift was sufficient. So I drug out my 16th edition Emily Post. While not up to the minute, some things, like the to-do surrounding weddings, never changes.

Mom was correct, of course. While the shower gift can be any small thing, the wedding gift should be something larger. But both are required.

As any southern belle worth her salt will tell you, good manners are just a set of laws for human behavior. It doesn’t hurt that they put people at ease, and it just might help to know all the right words to say when cutting someone because their skirt is a little too short.
If you’ve never seen a belle in action you’re missing out, really. But bring an interpreter to navigate through the honeys, sweethearts and darlin’s that will issue forth. If you’ve never been ’sugar’d’ by a belle, you just haven’t lived.
King of The Hill’s Nancy Hicks Gribble does a credible Texas belle, with her ’shug’, but it’s not the same….

The wedding is in sin city, which is the only reason why I’m thinking of attending… and looking at vegas hotels. It’s time Vegas got a little sugar poured on it…

The aforementioned crapes arrived… and my sis-in-law didn’t wrap them up correctly so they were horribly dried out. I hope they make it!!

I first soaked them then wrapped the whole lot in a wet towel while I went to Home Depot for Miracle Gro potting soil. They won’t go in the ground until they develop a healthy root structure.

Don’t you love crape myrtles?

Have you ever shipped live plants? That’s how my lilies came last week and today I’ll be getting a box of plumerias and two small crape myrtles. I’m excited!! Pictures, of course, will follow.

I’ve learned a bit from my sister in law’s method of shipping… there’s no need for custom boxes or unusual labels.

Simply make sure that bulbs are dried out as they can be heavy when wet. Whole plants, on the other hand, need to suck up as much water as possible before being packaged, thus necessitating the need for plastic wrap over the roots. [These are un-potted] If you can get a good seal with saran and foil over wet paper towels, excellent. Leaking through a cardboard box would be disastrous.

Upon arrival the plants should be wet down completely and then dried out to minimize the risk of mold.

This is just from my experience; if you have any tips, please feel free to share! I have to go get some potting soil for my new babies…